Anticipating the Green
⏲ 2-minute read | last updated 7 months, 3 weeks ago
The other day on my way home, I saw this:
Waymo is launching autonomous ride-hailing in Austin, and right now they're testing out the service.
As the service rolls out in Austin, sometimes cars are supervised (someone in the driver’s seat), sometimes there's someone in the passenger seat, and sometime's (as in the case with this Waymo) there's no one in the car at all 1.
Rear-Ends
From Arstechnica:
Waymo says 43 percent of crashes across San Francisco and Phoenix had a delta-V of less than 1 mph—in other words, they were very minor fender-benders.
But let’s focus on the 25 most severe crashes: those that either caused an injury, caused an airbag to deploy, or both. These are good crashes to focus on not only because they do the most damage but because human drivers are more likely to report these types of crashes, making it easier to compare Waymo’s software to human drivers.
Most of these—17 crashes in total—involved another car rear-ending a Waymo.
People keep rear-ending Waymos because they don't move when other drivers expect them to. They're so timid that they're unsafe.
Progress
Self-driving is a hard problem to solve, it's been "a few years away" for almost a decade, with few signs of outward progress. And the progress made has been hard-earned and frankly, glacial. Even in the face of limited incremental progress, companies like Waymo are still faced with the next hurdle: teaching robots to act more human.
But here in the scenario above? A glimmer of hope. The car's behavior is eerily human. Creeping forward before the green is the habit of an impatient driver. Anticipating the green is advanced (you need awareness of the light cycle). And the slow creeping of the car is human behavior. It's what other drivers expect.
It seems like we've finally made a dent in the intractable problem of cars behaving like humans. Small, but like all progress - foundational. I wonder - what else has gotten better?
At least, not that I could see when I drove by and looked in. Are all the cars supervised remotely? I suppose that would make sense right now as they scale.↩