It took me a while to get around to watching this video in full. I think everyone who has an interest in autonomous vehicles should watch it. The dash cam footage gives a reality check on Waymo’s current capabilities:
You can’t just watch marketing videos and executive speeches and use that to draw your conclusions about the current state of the technology. We need better evidence than that.
I think all the problems shown in the video are solvable, and they may even be solved in a short timeframe. That would be great.
But we need to dispel the notion that Waymo’s vehicles can drive 5,000 miles without making a mistake. We’ve all been misled by the California DMV disengagements data because the Cali DMV rules don’t actually require all disengagements to be reported. Reporters, technologists, analysts — everyone — have been misled. It’s frustrating that this misapprehension went on for so long, and it’s sad that the driving skills of Waymo, Cruise, et al. aren’t as advanced as we thought.
It also seems unlikely that Waymo’s vehicles are ready to launch with zero human monitoring or intervention by the end of 2018, even in tightly geofenced areas. In fact, we know that Waymo will continue to have people either in the car or operating it remotely. And the dash cam videos help show why.
You can’t just watch marketing videos and executive speeches and use that to draw your conclusions about the current state of the technology. We need better evidence than that.
I think all the problems shown in the video are solvable, and they may even be solved in a short timeframe. That would be great.
But we need to dispel the notion that Waymo’s vehicles can drive 5,000 miles without making a mistake. We’ve all been misled by the California DMV disengagements data because the Cali DMV rules don’t actually require all disengagements to be reported. Reporters, technologists, analysts — everyone — have been misled. It’s frustrating that this misapprehension went on for so long, and it’s sad that the driving skills of Waymo, Cruise, et al. aren’t as advanced as we thought.
It also seems unlikely that Waymo’s vehicles are ready to launch with zero human monitoring or intervention by the end of 2018, even in tightly geofenced areas. In fact, we know that Waymo will continue to have people either in the car or operating it remotely. And the dash cam videos help show why.