If Waymo cars were not really self-driving but instead there were remote operators somewhere remote controlling the cars at a distance, then you would be correct.
Literally in the Verge video above, the Waymo rep. describes how they have remote operators for fall back. In his own words. You can't really argue with Waymo about what Waymo says they do, can you? Nobody here is claiming those operators are driving the cars full time, I'm claiming by that chart you posted, they meet the Level 3 criteria, and specifically not the level 4. They are not doing "dispatch" work (also defined in the document), they are doing remote operator work. That's Level 3.
Do you really think Waymo is making remote realtime interventions on their test vehicles?
Yes. Their representative literally said as much in the Verge video posted today.
That would be inane and unsafe.
Perhaps. But considering the area they're operating in is fairly flat and likely has high quality mobile data reception, they can probably mitigate any risks reasonably well. And presumably a loss of signal means the vehicle degrades to its safest state and pulls over.
or gets into a situation it can't deal with
From what we've seen repeatedly, unprotected left turns are their biggest failure domain right now. And at a guess, that's what those people are still mainly focusing on. The video showed a lot of behaviors that exist in a Tesla when driving on surface streets, for what that's worth. Not least of which is the wheel rapidly jerking back and forth as lane lines disappear and control confidence goes out the window.
ODD can include location, weather, road type, time of day, etc.
Yep. But based on the examples given, and the path for degrading into safer failure modes, it seems like these ODD choices are based on preferences rather than technical requirements. So, like I said above, a delivery company or taxi service not operating outside of a region, or a patrol vehicle not operating at night, etc.
I say this because if we look at how Level 3 is supposed to degrade, it can pass control back to an operator when the parameters of the ODD are no longer met. But with Level 4, there's no such call out. To me, this would mean that if ODD parameters were about being
capable of operating, then a Level 4 vehicle would need to transition to an operator when, for example, it starts raining. But only Level 3's definiton has that language included.
If we were to use the overly generous definitions being presented by people here, then Tesla has a Level 4 capable vehicle right now. I hope nobody would agree with that assessment. But, in fact, the vehicle degrades autonomy functions when inclement weather or poor visibility is detected, the vehicle operates autonomously within geo-fenced areas of highways and freeways as well as on and off ramps. And, they're only engaging the human while they test their beta software. Once it's not in Beta, you can totally take your hands off the wheel.
That would be a truly dangerous interpretation of those autonomy levels.
