Waymo pulls out with no way to go left, so it starts driving the wrong way in traffic...
Smells like a regression somewhere to see two instances of this so close together.
Yeah that is very bad. Deliberately driving the wrong way in a lane, especially with traffic, should never happen. And mistakes like this give ammo to the critics who say that AI is not ready to drive a car yet. I find it frustrating that AI can seem so good sometimes at driving and at other times, be so dumb. Driving is one of those tasks that seems so obvious to humans but seems to be perplexing to AI. I want to see autonomous driving that is safe and reliable.
The mistake is very odd to me because we would assume that Waymo's camera vision and lidar would see that it is driving the wrong way based on how other cars are facing, plus it has HD maps that also tell the car the correct direction of travel. Furthermore, if the left turn was blocked, the obvious thing to do would be to reroute right. The Waymo could have just turned right.
Yeah, I agree there seems to be a big regression in the ML planner. Maybe in order to try to solve some of the issues with the Waymo needing remote assistance to reroute, Waymo is training the ML planner to reroute on its own. So the ML planner, when faced with a blocked path, is looking for an alternative route but it is somehow ignoring the rules of the road about direction of travel. In this instance, I think the Waymo wanted to do an unprotected left but the path was blocked by cars in the suicide lane, so the ML planner saw another lane that was free and took it. I am getting the impression that Waymo is doing more with all ML in the planner and the ML seems to be hallucinating. Thus, we are seeing the planner doing odd things.
Waymo did respond to the tweet so they are aware of this issue. Hopefully, Waymo fixes these regressions quickly. Tesla FSD has regressions but it is supervised. Waymo is not supervised. These regressions could cause a serious accident which would be very bad for Waymo.
Imagine the media's collective heads exploding if a Tesla on FSD did this...
Believe me the media will have a field day bashing Waymo over this. The fact is that any AV that makes an egregious mistake should be called out. If Tesla FSD was so heavily criticized by the media it is because it used to make a ton of these mistakes. Fortunately, the latest V12 makes fewer mistakes, so Tesla FSD is less of a target nowadays. Also, Tesla FSD is supervised so the media never gets to see most mistakes because the driver disengages. Waymo is actually more of a target since they are driverless. There is no safety driver to "hide" the mistake. So when Waymo makes a mistake, it is in plain sight for everybody to see. And Waymo will be heavily criticized for this mistake.
