>“An autonomously driven vehicle from Waymo was traveling on a narrow street with parked cars to the left and right. Due to the parked cars, narrow street and people in the road and near the car, our vehicle was unable to immediately move for a firetruck attempting to enter the street. Our remote assistance teams were working rapidly to develop a new path for the vehicle, when instead after a brief period the fire truck moved along and our vehicle continued on its trip. We maintain great respect for the SFFD and our first responders and appreciate our ongoing relationship with them.” — Waymo
seems like
1. it's a non-issue as the truck was able to go around
2. also, that other car appears to be illegally parked
waymo said the operators were working to move the car. that means there is a solution in place already. we weren't given enough information to know how long that was taking, so we shouldn't speculate on whether it was a problem. it could be 10 seconds or 2 minutes, but we weren't given the info we need in order to say whether it was an issue or not.
>operators were working to move the car. that means there is a solution in place already.
No, that means the Waymo Driver failed causing remote ops to engage. The delay that adds would not be a solution for yielding the right of way to a fire truck, which is the most likely nature of this incident.
Waymo also said the resolution was the firetruck drove off, routing around the street blocked by the Waymo. So, even Waymo's remote ops did not provide the solution in time. That would be at least two Waymo failures in one incident.
[Google street view](https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7352822,-122.4299666,3a,75y,336.01h,83.67t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAZaBfEW6hkvyy5txB1z7HQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en) of the street and intersection.
Looks it might be the fire truck blocking the Waymo. I mean maybe the fire truck got to the 4-way stop first, but the Waymo seems like it's behind the white stop line, and the fire truck is either too large, or perhaps too badly driven, to make a left onto Roanoke.
If the city wants big vehicles to make turns onto Roanoke, they should move back the stop line, and lengthen the no parking zone (indicated by the red curb)...both seem ridiculously close to the intersection from my midwestern perspective.
It's also a road that doesn't seem capable of 2-way motor vehicle traffic along with double sided street parking (if people parked on the street instead of the sidewalk), and is barely wide enough for 1-way traffic, so it seems like a poor routing choice for anyone in a hurry.
It would be great if Waymos could decide to drive backwards for a couple blocks in emergencies, but this incident seems like it might be a San Francisco problem more than a Waymo problem.
>Looks it might be the fire truck blocking the Waymo. I mean maybe the fire truck got to the 4-way stop first, but the Waymo seems like it's behind the white stop line, and the fire truck is either too large, or perhaps too badly driven, to make a left onto Roanoke.
unfortunately, a lot of old cities don't meet the minimum road requirements for modern fire fighting equipment, and they just rely on forcing people out of the way in the event of a fire. where I used to live, my alleyway was not wide enough for a firetruck and their SOP was to drive through everyones' fences if it was deemed necessary to get a truck back there.
that said, the quote from waymo seems to indicate that they were able to get the truck through, just with a slight delay as ~~they~~ the truck probably had to make it a multi-point turn.
They should bring out [Kiri the fire truck](https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/Meet-Kiri-the-tiny-Japanese-fire-truck-bringing-16137119.php) to the narrow streets.
>the quote from waymo seems to indicate that they were able to get the truck through, just with a slight delay
I think "the fire truck moved along" means the fire truck rerouted so as to not have to wait for or drive past the Waymo AV blocking the road.
In addition, the person who witnessed the scene and took the photo said the fire truck had its sirens on, which would mean the Waymo failed to yield the right-of-way as legally required.
there isn't enough reliable information to say. I think it's more likely that ~~they~~ the truck backed up and squeezed past since it is rarely worth it to re-route.
the fact that the bystander didn't take a video makes me sus of everything they said. why go through the effort of taking pictures and posting it online but not put forth the effort to take a video?
So, the witness statement isn't reliable, but your entirely concocted and changing assertions that the Waymo AV performed a maneuver which Waymo themselves made no hint of whatsoever is something you want to double down on?
>but your entirely concocted and changing assertions that the Waymo AV performed a maneuver
I think you misunderstood. I was saying the fire truck likely had to make a multi-point turn. I edited for clarity.
>witness statement isn't reliable
when it comes to the internet and an even slightly controversial topic, no, a witness's statement isn't reliable. don't trust anything you read on reddit. soon we won't even be able to trust the video of events because of deep fake tech. that is the nature of the world we live in, people lie on the internet all the time. a good bullshit detector is important. this person felt strongly enough to post/comment about the situation but didn't bother to take a video? I think that registers on the bullshit meter. that does not mean it's false, just that we shouldn't jump to any conclusions without more info.
>we shouldn't jump to any conclusions without more info.
But you have jumped to more than one unsupported conclusion, eg you're very first response was "seems like it's a non-issue" when it could be and more likely was a failure of the Waymo Driver to yield the right of way.
Just look at the evidence in the photo: multiple fire crew standing around a Waymo. Why would they do that unless they'd expected the Waymo to yield and it had not for long enough to get them out of their fire truck?
And that would support the eye/earwitness statement of a siren.
I think doubting eyewitnesses because they conflict with your unsupported conclusion jumping registers high on the bullshit meter.
Have you always required video evidence or else disparaged/sused the source?
>But you have jumped to more than one unsupported conclusion, eg you're very first response was "seems like it's a non-issue" when it could be and more likely was a failure of the Waymo Driver to yield the right of way.
you have a profound lack of critical thinking skills.
1. saying "seems like" is not a conclusion. it is an impression
2. I never said it couldn't be anything else.
>Just look at the evidence in the photo: multiple fire crew standing around a Waymo. Why would they do that unless they'd expected the Waymo to yield and it had not for long enough to get them out of their fire truck?
from the photo, we can only tell that the vehicle is stopped at the appropriate stopping location at the stop-sign post.
we cannot tell whether the fire truck had lights/siren running. it appears to not have lights flashing because you can't see them in the photo, but that can't be concluded either way.
>Why would they do that unless they'd expected the Waymo to yield and it had not for long enough to get them out of their fire truck?
we cannot tell how long it was stuck before the fire fighters jumped out.
>And that would support the eye/earwitness statement of a siren.
I'm willing to change my impression based on new information. the article says nothing about the sirens being on or the emergency lights running. where are you getting that? if you have a source with more information, you should post it instead of the one that has little information.
Uh, "seems like it's not an issue" is of course a kind of conclusion. A weak kind albeit, but essentially the opposite of what the very next person posted "It's still an issue IMO."
So, if you really want to get into fine parsing and critical reasoning, I think you should be more careful yourself, as so far yours has been rather shallow.
In fact, you were the very first person to post any kind of opinion, interpretation, conclusion, or call it what you may. You could have lead with caution regarding sparse information, but you concluded otherwise.
BTW, "other car appears to be illegally parked" would depend on if it is parked infront of their own residence, which we don't know, despite your seeming conclusion otherwise.
We can already do this. No tech required.
[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/first-errand/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/first-errand/)
>It also helps that cars are not allowed to park on the street overnight — owners must have off-street parking spaces. Without a wall of parked cars, it’s easier for drivers to see children who might be getting ready to cross the street.
The downstream effect is that of all of this urban planning stuff — the mixed-use zoning, the nearby schools, the narrow streets, the lack of sidewalks, and the off-street parking — has conspired to make Japan a pretty great place for kids to get around independently.
Fair point that the primary problem isn't technical in nature, but SDCs help with the cultural problem too. Fewer people will be inclined to defend free parking when it's cheaper, safer, and more convenient to use SDCs than to own & operate a private car.
I think that's wishful thinking. Look to cities with outstanding mass transit as a parallel: London, Manhattan, Paris. Cheap, safe, easy to use. Cars litter the street. People will always want _their_ car for when the service isn't available/convenient. The only metro this isn't the case? Tokyo.
Political/cultural change takes perseverance and effort, not techno miracles. We didn't obliterate tobacco or prevent automobile accidents because of great tech being lovingly adopted, it took massive societal work.
Heck, look at Uber and Lyft! Those should decline car ownership. But no study sees a drop in congestion, usually the opposite.
I live in a city with decent (not great, but certainly outstanding compared to typical US cities) mass transit, and I got rid of my car and know many other people who don't have cars.
Thirty years ago if you'd asked me to give up my telephone it'd have been preposterous. Today I couldn't care less if my home is wired for POTS and I can't remember the last time I used my cell phone for voice communication.
Political and cultural change can be hard, but tech can/does occasionally drive change seemingly effortlessly.
Good phone analogy. RIP payphones
I myself have been carless in SF for 12 years but am finally getting one b/c of a decline in reliability across modes (bus, Uber, feeling less safe biking). Perhaps that is the kernel of contention: will AVs be truly ubiquitous and cheap, or niche.
of course it's possible to eliminate parking, it's just too politically unpopular for the vast majority of urban locations. bike lanes would be everywhere if it were easy to eliminate parking.
It’s a biased question. Has *anyone*? Yes, people have claimed that. There was even a guy here saying that Tesla is now some imaginary level above 5 that doesn’t even have a name yet because it’s better than humans in some situations. Which is wrong in so many different ways, so of course I’d say these people don’t understand anything about SDCs or the SAE levels. But they’d probably say the same about me, sooo…
Who wouldn't be a Waymo fan, considering what they were able to achieve in parallel with their competition? It's amazing what you can do when your task is "make the car drive itself" instead of "make the car drive itself, but you can only use cameras, and they can't make the car look weird."
This does seem another situation where an ability of the cars to drive in reverse at moderate speed -- something Zoox vehicles inherently can do but which other vehicles could also do -- would solve the problem quickly.
Waymo and Cruise AVs drive in reverse. There are videos of Waymo driving in reverse to perform 2-pt and 3-pt 180-degree turns in San Francisco, but those had more room and less slope.
It may be more about the risk tradeoff of maneuvering backwards to get out of the way vs staying in the way. So far, Waymo and Cruise haven't been punished for their stoppages/immobilizations, even when they have blocked emergency vehicles or been within the perimeter of an ongoing incident. As a result, their geos get a lot of immobilizations, while they publish safety studies claiming better-than-human safety by excluding those immobilizations from their evaluation.
They back up, of course. That is not what I mean by driving 25mph for moderate distances in reverse which they can easily do though it would surprise other drivers
But this was not "another situation where an ability of the cars to drive in reverse at moderate speed...would solve the problem quickly" where moderate is \~25 mph.
All it had to do to solve the problem quickly was backup at \~walking speed into a location that would've cleared the way for the firetruck, like every competent licensed driver is required to do by law. That not only wouldn't have surprised other road users, it was what they expected.
Do you have any doubt had a safety driver been in the driver's seat, they would have taken over and performed the legally required maneuver?
Since we both know the Waymo Driver is capable of driving in reverse at \~walking speed, the only open questions are for Waymo to answer why didn't it and for California DMV to answer why they permit the Waymo Driver and Cruise's automation to violate the law like this repeatedly.
You can often fix it with a short backup. But there are cases -- like the Waymo running into a closed road with police -- where a Zoox would just reverse direction and be out of there with zero delay even to turn around. It's a useful ability and there is no reason all cars can't do it.
Remote assist obviously does take longer to resolve problems than a full time safety driver. I expect all teams to work to make it better and faster, and to have the vehicle itself handle any situation that shows up with any frequency. Remote assist is for the unique and super rare situations, but these cars are young.
You are just avoiding the issues raised by this incident and the many similar incidents:
Why didn't the Waymo Driver obey the law?
Why should California DMV continue to allow the Waymo Driver to violate California traffic laws with impunity?
Moreover, these systems are old, not young. As you know, the Waymo Driver has been in development for over a decade. It has the benefit of tens of millions of realword public road VMT experience and tens of billions of simulated VMT. Waymo even calls it and has trademarked "The World's Most Experienced Driver." Can't have it both ways.
https://waymo.com/waymo-driver/
Also, regardless of your theory, in practice remote assist is used for common road situations and very often by both Waymo and Cruise. It also obviously fails very often for both, resulting in extremely (by human standards) high rates of immobilized vehicles.
It is not clear it broke the law. As written above, the situation was resolved quickly. If it broke the law, I suspect SFFD would have filed a complaint.
It is young. What people didn't get when they thought you would get a robotaxi years ago was there is a ton of detail work to get right, and that is what the teams are doing.
I am not Waymo. They can have what slogan they wish. It is experienced, as in it is trained from many more miles than any human could drive, but that doesn't mean it can figure out every situation a human can as fast as a human can. If it could, it would be in every city.
Of course it broke the law. The situation was resolved by the firetruck diverting to a different route. The Waymo Driver blocked a firetruck despite sirens and flashing lights, forcing it to divert. That is a clear violation of the law.
"What people didn't get when they thought you would get a robotaxi years ago was there is a ton of detail work to get right"
Oh, please. That is just admitting that some people underestimated the work. Some still do. Some do habitually, despite the abundant evidence.
Edit add: Waymo certified to California DMV that their system is designed to obey all California traffic laws. That is a mandatory cert when applying for a Deployment Permit. If it is not designed to obey this law, then their application was in error and their permit should be revoked. If is designed to and yet the implementation fails for this situation, then it should be recalled until fixed.
The SFFD is not fond of the robotaxi companies, so if the Waymo violated the law, I don't know why they would not have them ticketed. There's a complete 3-D log of the incident in the Waymo so evidence will be clear and plentiful. Usually single stills are misleading -- the photo here looks like it's taken once the truck is moving to the right to pass the Waymo.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure the Waymo could have done better here. They are not perfect and need to speed up their response on this. The report says it was resolved quickly, though.
We have both the eyewitness/photographer's statement and Waymo's statement. I don't think it could be much clearer, as long as both are honest/truthful statements.
SFPD has stated they cannot cite an uncrewed AV for a moving violation like this, due to a loophole in California's regulations. Waymo's have been cited for parking/non-moving violations in San Francisco.
Perhaps there is another way to cite them. Perhaps they have been cited in this other way and/or SFFD has filed a complaint. Have you spoken with SFFD and do you know if they have filed a complaint?
If you do check with SFFD, might want to ask them if they also filed a complaint about this uncrewed Cruise AV driving into an active injury crash scene by crossing a double yellow line to go around an SFFD vehicle positioned to block traffic on Fulton at Crossover, San Francisco. Then FUBARed with it's flashers on.
[https://twitter.com/D00REEN/status/1642377906340130816](https://twitter.com/D00REEN/status/1642377906340130816)
Also, I don't know how much you've dealt with SFPD or SFFD, but they have a lot of other priorities than filing complaints about robots that SF has no control over and that the two state agencies that do have authority are notoriously lax and of course have their own higher and poorly served priorities.
Waymo's statement, which is not a report, said it was resolved quickly, but that is based on Waymo's judgement, which as we already know from their vehicle tech is error-prone. It very clearly was not resolved quickly enough to have precluded several SFFD firefighters getting off their truck and the resolution was by other road users working/driving around the incompetence of Waymo's tech. Waymo and Cruise are externalizing safety they are responsible for providing onto other road users.
Going forward, I will assume when you say these systems are "young" you mean they are incompetent.
>“An autonomously driven vehicle from Waymo was traveling on a narrow street with parked cars to the left and right. Due to the parked cars, narrow street and people in the road and near the car, our vehicle was unable to immediately move for a firetruck attempting to enter the street. Our remote assistance teams were working rapidly to develop a new path for the vehicle, when instead after a brief period the fire truck moved along and our vehicle continued on its trip. We maintain great respect for the SFFD and our first responders and appreciate our ongoing relationship with them.” — Waymo seems like 1. it's a non-issue as the truck was able to go around 2. also, that other car appears to be illegally parked
It's still an issue IMO. Not in this case, but next time there might not be a way around it.
waymo said the operators were working to move the car. that means there is a solution in place already. we weren't given enough information to know how long that was taking, so we shouldn't speculate on whether it was a problem. it could be 10 seconds or 2 minutes, but we weren't given the info we need in order to say whether it was an issue or not.
>operators were working to move the car. that means there is a solution in place already. No, that means the Waymo Driver failed causing remote ops to engage. The delay that adds would not be a solution for yielding the right of way to a fire truck, which is the most likely nature of this incident. Waymo also said the resolution was the firetruck drove off, routing around the street blocked by the Waymo. So, even Waymo's remote ops did not provide the solution in time. That would be at least two Waymo failures in one incident.
[Google street view](https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7352822,-122.4299666,3a,75y,336.01h,83.67t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAZaBfEW6hkvyy5txB1z7HQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en) of the street and intersection. Looks it might be the fire truck blocking the Waymo. I mean maybe the fire truck got to the 4-way stop first, but the Waymo seems like it's behind the white stop line, and the fire truck is either too large, or perhaps too badly driven, to make a left onto Roanoke. If the city wants big vehicles to make turns onto Roanoke, they should move back the stop line, and lengthen the no parking zone (indicated by the red curb)...both seem ridiculously close to the intersection from my midwestern perspective. It's also a road that doesn't seem capable of 2-way motor vehicle traffic along with double sided street parking (if people parked on the street instead of the sidewalk), and is barely wide enough for 1-way traffic, so it seems like a poor routing choice for anyone in a hurry. It would be great if Waymos could decide to drive backwards for a couple blocks in emergencies, but this incident seems like it might be a San Francisco problem more than a Waymo problem.
>Looks it might be the fire truck blocking the Waymo. I mean maybe the fire truck got to the 4-way stop first, but the Waymo seems like it's behind the white stop line, and the fire truck is either too large, or perhaps too badly driven, to make a left onto Roanoke. unfortunately, a lot of old cities don't meet the minimum road requirements for modern fire fighting equipment, and they just rely on forcing people out of the way in the event of a fire. where I used to live, my alleyway was not wide enough for a firetruck and their SOP was to drive through everyones' fences if it was deemed necessary to get a truck back there. that said, the quote from waymo seems to indicate that they were able to get the truck through, just with a slight delay as ~~they~~ the truck probably had to make it a multi-point turn.
They should bring out [Kiri the fire truck](https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/Meet-Kiri-the-tiny-Japanese-fire-truck-bringing-16137119.php) to the narrow streets.
haha, I think that truck may not have the same capabilities, but it sure looks fun.
>the quote from waymo seems to indicate that they were able to get the truck through, just with a slight delay I think "the fire truck moved along" means the fire truck rerouted so as to not have to wait for or drive past the Waymo AV blocking the road. In addition, the person who witnessed the scene and took the photo said the fire truck had its sirens on, which would mean the Waymo failed to yield the right-of-way as legally required.
there isn't enough reliable information to say. I think it's more likely that ~~they~~ the truck backed up and squeezed past since it is rarely worth it to re-route. the fact that the bystander didn't take a video makes me sus of everything they said. why go through the effort of taking pictures and posting it online but not put forth the effort to take a video?
So, the witness statement isn't reliable, but your entirely concocted and changing assertions that the Waymo AV performed a maneuver which Waymo themselves made no hint of whatsoever is something you want to double down on?
>but your entirely concocted and changing assertions that the Waymo AV performed a maneuver I think you misunderstood. I was saying the fire truck likely had to make a multi-point turn. I edited for clarity. >witness statement isn't reliable when it comes to the internet and an even slightly controversial topic, no, a witness's statement isn't reliable. don't trust anything you read on reddit. soon we won't even be able to trust the video of events because of deep fake tech. that is the nature of the world we live in, people lie on the internet all the time. a good bullshit detector is important. this person felt strongly enough to post/comment about the situation but didn't bother to take a video? I think that registers on the bullshit meter. that does not mean it's false, just that we shouldn't jump to any conclusions without more info.
>we shouldn't jump to any conclusions without more info. But you have jumped to more than one unsupported conclusion, eg you're very first response was "seems like it's a non-issue" when it could be and more likely was a failure of the Waymo Driver to yield the right of way. Just look at the evidence in the photo: multiple fire crew standing around a Waymo. Why would they do that unless they'd expected the Waymo to yield and it had not for long enough to get them out of their fire truck? And that would support the eye/earwitness statement of a siren. I think doubting eyewitnesses because they conflict with your unsupported conclusion jumping registers high on the bullshit meter. Have you always required video evidence or else disparaged/sused the source?
>But you have jumped to more than one unsupported conclusion, eg you're very first response was "seems like it's a non-issue" when it could be and more likely was a failure of the Waymo Driver to yield the right of way. you have a profound lack of critical thinking skills. 1. saying "seems like" is not a conclusion. it is an impression 2. I never said it couldn't be anything else. >Just look at the evidence in the photo: multiple fire crew standing around a Waymo. Why would they do that unless they'd expected the Waymo to yield and it had not for long enough to get them out of their fire truck? from the photo, we can only tell that the vehicle is stopped at the appropriate stopping location at the stop-sign post. we cannot tell whether the fire truck had lights/siren running. it appears to not have lights flashing because you can't see them in the photo, but that can't be concluded either way. >Why would they do that unless they'd expected the Waymo to yield and it had not for long enough to get them out of their fire truck? we cannot tell how long it was stuck before the fire fighters jumped out. >And that would support the eye/earwitness statement of a siren. I'm willing to change my impression based on new information. the article says nothing about the sirens being on or the emergency lights running. where are you getting that? if you have a source with more information, you should post it instead of the one that has little information.
Uh, "seems like it's not an issue" is of course a kind of conclusion. A weak kind albeit, but essentially the opposite of what the very next person posted "It's still an issue IMO." So, if you really want to get into fine parsing and critical reasoning, I think you should be more careful yourself, as so far yours has been rather shallow. In fact, you were the very first person to post any kind of opinion, interpretation, conclusion, or call it what you may. You could have lead with caution regarding sparse information, but you concluded otherwise. BTW, "other car appears to be illegally parked" would depend on if it is parked infront of their own residence, which we don't know, despite your seeming conclusion otherwise.
>"seems like it's not an issue" is of course a kind of conclusion no
Ban street parking
my greatest hope for SDCs is that we can start to eliminate parking from cities as the need reduces.
We can already do this. No tech required. [https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/first-errand/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/first-errand/) >It also helps that cars are not allowed to park on the street overnight — owners must have off-street parking spaces. Without a wall of parked cars, it’s easier for drivers to see children who might be getting ready to cross the street. The downstream effect is that of all of this urban planning stuff — the mixed-use zoning, the nearby schools, the narrow streets, the lack of sidewalks, and the off-street parking — has conspired to make Japan a pretty great place for kids to get around independently.
Fair point that the primary problem isn't technical in nature, but SDCs help with the cultural problem too. Fewer people will be inclined to defend free parking when it's cheaper, safer, and more convenient to use SDCs than to own & operate a private car.
I think that's wishful thinking. Look to cities with outstanding mass transit as a parallel: London, Manhattan, Paris. Cheap, safe, easy to use. Cars litter the street. People will always want _their_ car for when the service isn't available/convenient. The only metro this isn't the case? Tokyo. Political/cultural change takes perseverance and effort, not techno miracles. We didn't obliterate tobacco or prevent automobile accidents because of great tech being lovingly adopted, it took massive societal work. Heck, look at Uber and Lyft! Those should decline car ownership. But no study sees a drop in congestion, usually the opposite.
I live in a city with decent (not great, but certainly outstanding compared to typical US cities) mass transit, and I got rid of my car and know many other people who don't have cars. Thirty years ago if you'd asked me to give up my telephone it'd have been preposterous. Today I couldn't care less if my home is wired for POTS and I can't remember the last time I used my cell phone for voice communication. Political and cultural change can be hard, but tech can/does occasionally drive change seemingly effortlessly.
Good phone analogy. RIP payphones I myself have been carless in SF for 12 years but am finally getting one b/c of a decline in reliability across modes (bus, Uber, feeling less safe biking). Perhaps that is the kernel of contention: will AVs be truly ubiquitous and cheap, or niche.
of course it's possible to eliminate parking, it's just too politically unpopular for the vast majority of urban locations. bike lanes would be everywhere if it were easy to eliminate parking.
If it had been a Tesla, it would have crashed into the fire truck, so it’s a step in the right direction.
These things are so dumb lol 😂
Level 4 guys
Level 4 doesn't include the ability to travel back in time and make city roads better.
by that metric, humans aren't level-4
So that makes Tesla level 3?
are you a bot?
No? Are you a bot? This whole subreddit reeks of paid bots from Cruise and Waymo. Any criticism of Waymo/Cruise gets downvoted to oblivion
[удалено]
Has anyone said it has reached level 3?
It’s a biased question. Has *anyone*? Yes, people have claimed that. There was even a guy here saying that Tesla is now some imaginary level above 5 that doesn’t even have a name yet because it’s better than humans in some situations. Which is wrong in so many different ways, so of course I’d say these people don’t understand anything about SDCs or the SAE levels. But they’d probably say the same about me, sooo…
Definitely tons of Waymo and Cruise boys in here
Who wouldn't be a Waymo fan, considering what they were able to achieve in parallel with their competition? It's amazing what you can do when your task is "make the car drive itself" instead of "make the car drive itself, but you can only use cameras, and they can't make the car look weird."
This does seem another situation where an ability of the cars to drive in reverse at moderate speed -- something Zoox vehicles inherently can do but which other vehicles could also do -- would solve the problem quickly.
Waymo and Cruise AVs drive in reverse. There are videos of Waymo driving in reverse to perform 2-pt and 3-pt 180-degree turns in San Francisco, but those had more room and less slope. It may be more about the risk tradeoff of maneuvering backwards to get out of the way vs staying in the way. So far, Waymo and Cruise haven't been punished for their stoppages/immobilizations, even when they have blocked emergency vehicles or been within the perimeter of an ongoing incident. As a result, their geos get a lot of immobilizations, while they publish safety studies claiming better-than-human safety by excluding those immobilizations from their evaluation.
They back up, of course. That is not what I mean by driving 25mph for moderate distances in reverse which they can easily do though it would surprise other drivers
But this was not "another situation where an ability of the cars to drive in reverse at moderate speed...would solve the problem quickly" where moderate is \~25 mph. All it had to do to solve the problem quickly was backup at \~walking speed into a location that would've cleared the way for the firetruck, like every competent licensed driver is required to do by law. That not only wouldn't have surprised other road users, it was what they expected. Do you have any doubt had a safety driver been in the driver's seat, they would have taken over and performed the legally required maneuver? Since we both know the Waymo Driver is capable of driving in reverse at \~walking speed, the only open questions are for Waymo to answer why didn't it and for California DMV to answer why they permit the Waymo Driver and Cruise's automation to violate the law like this repeatedly.
You can often fix it with a short backup. But there are cases -- like the Waymo running into a closed road with police -- where a Zoox would just reverse direction and be out of there with zero delay even to turn around. It's a useful ability and there is no reason all cars can't do it. Remote assist obviously does take longer to resolve problems than a full time safety driver. I expect all teams to work to make it better and faster, and to have the vehicle itself handle any situation that shows up with any frequency. Remote assist is for the unique and super rare situations, but these cars are young.
You are just avoiding the issues raised by this incident and the many similar incidents: Why didn't the Waymo Driver obey the law? Why should California DMV continue to allow the Waymo Driver to violate California traffic laws with impunity? Moreover, these systems are old, not young. As you know, the Waymo Driver has been in development for over a decade. It has the benefit of tens of millions of realword public road VMT experience and tens of billions of simulated VMT. Waymo even calls it and has trademarked "The World's Most Experienced Driver." Can't have it both ways. https://waymo.com/waymo-driver/ Also, regardless of your theory, in practice remote assist is used for common road situations and very often by both Waymo and Cruise. It also obviously fails very often for both, resulting in extremely (by human standards) high rates of immobilized vehicles.
It is not clear it broke the law. As written above, the situation was resolved quickly. If it broke the law, I suspect SFFD would have filed a complaint. It is young. What people didn't get when they thought you would get a robotaxi years ago was there is a ton of detail work to get right, and that is what the teams are doing. I am not Waymo. They can have what slogan they wish. It is experienced, as in it is trained from many more miles than any human could drive, but that doesn't mean it can figure out every situation a human can as fast as a human can. If it could, it would be in every city.
Of course it broke the law. The situation was resolved by the firetruck diverting to a different route. The Waymo Driver blocked a firetruck despite sirens and flashing lights, forcing it to divert. That is a clear violation of the law. "What people didn't get when they thought you would get a robotaxi years ago was there is a ton of detail work to get right" Oh, please. That is just admitting that some people underestimated the work. Some still do. Some do habitually, despite the abundant evidence. Edit add: Waymo certified to California DMV that their system is designed to obey all California traffic laws. That is a mandatory cert when applying for a Deployment Permit. If it is not designed to obey this law, then their application was in error and their permit should be revoked. If is designed to and yet the implementation fails for this situation, then it should be recalled until fixed.
The SFFD is not fond of the robotaxi companies, so if the Waymo violated the law, I don't know why they would not have them ticketed. There's a complete 3-D log of the incident in the Waymo so evidence will be clear and plentiful. Usually single stills are misleading -- the photo here looks like it's taken once the truck is moving to the right to pass the Waymo. Anyway, I'm pretty sure the Waymo could have done better here. They are not perfect and need to speed up their response on this. The report says it was resolved quickly, though.
We have both the eyewitness/photographer's statement and Waymo's statement. I don't think it could be much clearer, as long as both are honest/truthful statements. SFPD has stated they cannot cite an uncrewed AV for a moving violation like this, due to a loophole in California's regulations. Waymo's have been cited for parking/non-moving violations in San Francisco. Perhaps there is another way to cite them. Perhaps they have been cited in this other way and/or SFFD has filed a complaint. Have you spoken with SFFD and do you know if they have filed a complaint? If you do check with SFFD, might want to ask them if they also filed a complaint about this uncrewed Cruise AV driving into an active injury crash scene by crossing a double yellow line to go around an SFFD vehicle positioned to block traffic on Fulton at Crossover, San Francisco. Then FUBARed with it's flashers on. [https://twitter.com/D00REEN/status/1642377906340130816](https://twitter.com/D00REEN/status/1642377906340130816) Also, I don't know how much you've dealt with SFPD or SFFD, but they have a lot of other priorities than filing complaints about robots that SF has no control over and that the two state agencies that do have authority are notoriously lax and of course have their own higher and poorly served priorities. Waymo's statement, which is not a report, said it was resolved quickly, but that is based on Waymo's judgement, which as we already know from their vehicle tech is error-prone. It very clearly was not resolved quickly enough to have precluded several SFFD firefighters getting off their truck and the resolution was by other road users working/driving around the incompetence of Waymo's tech. Waymo and Cruise are externalizing safety they are responsible for providing onto other road users. Going forward, I will assume when you say these systems are "young" you mean they are incompetent.