Waymo services driverless car software after Phoenix truck collision

Self-driving car company Waymo – a subsidiary of Google owner Alphabet – has voluntarily filed a recall report after one of its vehicles collided with a truck in Pheonix. The company said it had chosen to file the report with the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for software previously running on its …

[Wempy]

oh dear:

"I can't tell which way round you are, nor whether you are coming or going, so I'm going to run into you."

that bit of exception handling must have been fun to write!

[Mike 137]

"that bit of exception handling must have been fun to write"

There, maybe, is a key root cause of the whole problem. An unusual situation encountered while driving can not realistically be classed as an 'exception' (i.e. one of a predicted list of specific events that trigger specific actions). Driving requires continuous re-evaluation of what's going on, consideration of the range of possible outcomes and dynamic choice of optimum responses, even where the specific situation has not been previously encountered. In fact, it requires forethought, which these 'autonomous' vehicles are incapable of -- they only respond reactively to stimuli.

Any attempt to create an 'exception list' in advance will fail as not every eventuality can be foreseen, and incrementally updating one will not only require an incident to occur before every update is considered, but will ultimately result in an unmanageably huge list that will still miss some possible events.

[John Robson]

Re: "that bit of exception handling must have been fun to write"

"In fact, it requires forethought, which these 'autonomous' vehicles are incapable of -- they only respond reactively to stimuli."

A huge number of human drivers are incapable of the former, and many don't bother with the latter either.

Does that make autonomous driving perfect? No - but the barrier it has to surpass is much lower than people think.

[DS999]

Makes me wonder

What happens if it encounters a vehicle driving the wrong way down a one way street. Or if someone is driving in reverse in the correct direction. Or just has one of those bizarre cars you see pictures of where someone welded two front ends together so it looks like the car is going in reverse from behind but there's a whole other front end that actually has the driver.

There are an endless variety of legal, illegal and legal but "no one has thought of it yet" circumstances Waymo might run into. Literally, it appears.

What I want to know is how does not recognizing something result in hitting it? It seems like the overriding rule of self driving vehicles should be never run into anything that you may encounter on a road, whether or not you can recognize what it is. I find that is a very good rule to follow as a human driver - I won't even run into a random plastic bag or cardboard box I see on the road if I can possibly avoid it, because while it may be empty it could be full of bricks for all I know.

[John Robson]

Re: Makes me wonder

"I won't even run into a random plastic bag or cardboard box I see on the road if I can possibly avoid it, because while it may be empty it could be full of bricks for all I know."

Learning to drive in the UK during the troubles... "full of bricks" used to be "an explosive device"

[Wempy]

there must be a 'CoPilot' joke here somewhere, let me just rummage under the seat while my car runs into this truck

[FILE_ID.DIZ]

Stupid Computers.

Improperly towed is a different statement than illegally towed.

If I had to guess - since the vehicle was towed backwards, it was a rear-wheel drive vehicle and the front wheels were locked to an angle (other than TDC) by the steering column lock, causing the front of the vehicle to shift out a bit to the side.

The tow truck driver chose not (for whatever reason) to place the front wheels on dollies.

I can tell you that in my city, relocation tows for temporary No Parking areas (construction/tree trimming/etc) are pretty rough if you have AWD/4WD or have your parking brake on. Every tow I've seen with an AWD/4WD vehicle, the rear wheels aren't dollied and the vehicle is dragged down the street with the rear wheels fighting who gets to spin forwards and who is relegated to spinning backwards. (No locked differential I guess on those few examples I recall.)

Improperly towed means that Waymo was still at fault for failing to detect the otherwise legal condition, albeit "different".

Also, proof positive that computers do exactly as they're programed... since a second Waymo car performed an encore performance just minutes later.

Wonder how or why the Waymo car didn't pay attention to the likely lit amber strobes of the tow vehicle.

[DS999]

Re: Stupid Computers.

Since most modern cars no longer lock the transmission for "park" and have an electronic parking brake, it seems like it would be relatively trivial to program them so that if one end is lifted off the ground, the wheels are allowed to spin freely. Then they wouldn't need a flatbed to tow an AWD vehicle.

Sounds like where you live the city (I'm assuming the ones you saw were towed against the owner's will) pays a minimum amount to the towing company, who has no incentive to not damage vehicles they tow. If you complain to the towing company or the city they'll say "you should have parked legally then you wouldn't have been towed!" lol

[_Elvi_]

not once, but Twice in one day!!

... must not have been a "rare" scenario ..

[Chloe Cresswell]

Re: not once, but Twice in one day!!

Maybe it was rare in the steak sense. Because it wasn't well done.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: not once, but Twice in one day!!

Surely they should get points for consistency of programming though? Our self-driving cars are so well designed, that given two opporutinities, both our cars followed their programming perfectly and hit the target victim.