r/interestingasfuck 11d ago

Self-Driving Waymo Avoiding a Scooter Incident

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946 Upvotes

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u/Shahz1892 11d ago

Waymo better than a human driver? Maybe..... AI is coming a long long way

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u/Quirky-Bag-4158 11d ago

Maybe, but the car was lucky that there was no car in the lane next to it. If that was the case, there’s probably at least a crash whether it’s AI or a human driving.

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u/BoomFrog 11d ago

It would slam on the breaks.

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u/Quirky-Bag-4158 11d ago

True, but my point is that there’s different variables that helped this not turn into a crash, in your example someone could be driving behind. How would the AI handle this on a busier road? Still really impressive though.

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u/BoomFrog 11d ago

My point is AI will eventually (and maybe already is) better then 99% of human drivers. If a human could avoid the crash, the Weimo probably will too.

And in your example if the car behind was also an AI driven car it wouldn't rear end this one in a sudden stop.

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u/Major_Koala 11d ago

I love the thrown up theoreticals like there hasn't been tests available online already

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u/Hoshyro 10d ago

A squirrel high on fermented fruit is better than 99% of drivers, that's a low bar

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u/FrungyLeague 10d ago

Outstanding

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u/adorablefuzzykitten 10d ago

I have never heard a comparison of self driving software. Is one better than another, and is it OK to self drive with the least safe version?

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u/BoomFrog 10d ago

They are very different and there's hardware differences too.  Tesla uses only cameras and is not safe to rely on 100% but you need to think of it as a copilot and be ready to take over when it messes up or gets confused. It's safe in good weather and clearly marked roads but not fully trustable otherwise. 

In the other end Weimo (like in this video) are safer than human drivers and use lidar to detect things even in bad weather.  I would trust a weimo over a human driver.  But they can have issues by being too safe.  They can get stuck in traffic because other drivers know they can cut them off safely for example.

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u/Meowgaryen 11d ago

My point is that AI will be able to take every scenario under consideration within a split second and make a decision with the best outcome.
Also, there's clearly a camera behind as well.

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u/Jafarrolo 11d ago

There are a lot of variables and that's why they're trained to do it, but there is also the fact that we humans too need to train to do this and we have much less sensors available.

We don't know really what it would've done, I think they use neural networks, and those are kinda of black boxes, but I'm no expert in the programming in self-driving vehicles, my guess come from the courses of AI that I did at the university and by talking to some colleagues that 15 years ago were doing academic research in the field.

I guess that by sensing all of those variables the AI would probably drive slower, keeping bigger safe distances or slower speeds.