Hacker News

I thought the same thing. A very small float switch would work here. Somewhere between the radiator and the bumper.

It’s a particularly hard problem in Texas. We get torrential rains and the landscape is relatively flat. Couple that with shallow soil over lots of limestone and it means flooding is really common. We also have roads that have a “low water crossing,” where a road crosses a creekbed that is normally dry but which will flood. There are often water depth signs there (basically a vertical ruler with feet marks so you can see where the water is up to). We lose people to this scenario (driving into flood waters) every year. It’s particularly problematic when it’s dark and you miss a warning sign. Before you know it, you’re in deep water and the flow can sweep the whole car downstream until it gets pinned against a tree, possibly with water forcing its way into the car.

If they have a laser measurement of the road from before, couldn't they see that the level of water vs the expected road surface?

This is also why they recommend not to use polarized while cycling, it can obscure slicks or water in certain sections. I still use mine but I know it's not as ideal as photo chromatic lenses.

They should really just park themselves on the side of the road (or observe in real time), wait for another car to go first, then follow that path

Pretty sure the right answer mainly involves the car knowing about the weather and other emergency events.

Doesn't Land Rover historically have like a wading sensor?

If they've mapped the surface of the water relative to themselves... couldn't they slowly wade in and just calculate the depth based on that 3d model without extra sensors.

Assumes there's no abrupt cliff to fall off... but short of the ability to make a 3d map underwater that seems inevitable.

By a water sensor do you mean a sensor to detect the water level relative to the chassis? It seems like a very inexpensive downward-facing ultrasound sensor could work.

Human drivers look for Waymos up ahead, water up to their windows.

<jk>

> Humans make that mistake frequently.

They have been known to make that mistake. To use the word "frequently" demonstrates a misunderstanding between number of incidents and total miles driven. It also ignores that humans often drink and most of these types of accidents happen after 2am and most often in the state of Florida.

> equipped with a water sensor

Car washes will be fun.

> DARPA Grand Challenge

The problems the grand challenge ignores are more important than the ones it solved.

Do they make this mistake frequently? How frequently? I've seen people overestimate things, but I don't think this is as hard as one might think

My commaai can do this. I'm pretty sure tesla can as well

> frequently

I've never made that mistake; I'm not aware of anyone I know doing it. I very rarely see it myself, except on news footage. Of course it happens some time somewhere but that says nothing about frequency.

> That's a tough problem

Not really. Don't drive where you don't know it's safe. Definitely don't drive into moving water - puddles only, and only if not too deep: I can usually figure it out based on the rest of the road - unless it's a sinkhole, the geometry is somewhat consistent - and especially by looking at objects in the water such as other cars driving through it. Sorry your friend isn't competent to figure it out.

People here are always quick to defend the autonomous cars, like a close friend. How often will we fall in love with a technology or company? It always distorts the truth.

Any human can distinguish wet pavement from a flooded street. Some voluntarily drive into the flooded street.

And that is the difference. In a Waymo you are a prisoner, in your own car you can turn around.

This is important as flooded vehicles are a common sight on the salvage-title market.

Though the idea of a single rider calling for a Waymo and slowly one-by-one 3,800 Waymos drove into a flood and were washed away ...

Around 40 years ago, I was cycling around Andover (Hants, UK). Me and a mate were whizzing around near a small artificial lake. I decided to run into what I thought was shallow water and it wasn't. With hindsight that was a really daft failure of perception but you live and learn.

Forty years later touch wood I have not yet broken myself or a car ...

This is a HW4 Tesla on FSD 14.3.2 trying to drive into a lake five days ago (a la The Office): https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaFSD/comments/1t9rl2u/fsd_tried..., so I would not say Tesla has solved standing water yet.

That said, FSD seems quite capable of routing around standing water in many cases (e.g. https://xcancel.com/planoken/status/2030754820462633031, https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaFSD/comments/1pw9f2m/fsd_navig..., https://xcancel.com/BLKMDL3/status/1991862465328779317, https://xcancel.com/JVTacoma/status/2046313902749921638), so handling the remaining cases seems more like a model intelligence / data issue rather than a sensor limitation. Lidar beams generally bounce off mirrorlike surfaces without returning to the sensor, so I think all lidar would tell you about standing water is "there's something shiny/reflective within this region of the image", which you already know from cameras+headlights.

Waymo has LIDAR and cameras, so it is better equipped for every situation.

LIDAR isn't helpful for water. Standing water behaves like a mirror on LIDAR.

They suspended service areas they deem high risk until the software update can be applied. So while, yes, it's just a software update, it's a recall in the sense that they've temporarily pulled all the cars off the road in certain areas

"Recall" is a technical term meaning: "public dangerous defect notice".

A "recall" is stating that the defective version of the product in the field must be "removed/recalled" and replaced/updated with a non-defective version at the manufacturer's expense. It just so happens that the removal and replacement of defective software from the field can occur remotely.

The important part is that the manufacturer delivered a defective product that risks your safety, that fixing that safety defect is the responsibility of the manufacturer, and the system is unsafe until that occurs.

I think so. For some kind of legalese reasons that's generally what a Tesla "recall" amounts to these days.

Yes, this is a common terminology issue. "Recall" is legally defined in terms of the kind of problems that require one, not the solution to those problems, because the relevant regulations were written when there was no way to fix consumer products other than physically delivering them to the manufacturer or an authorized repair person.

How about a Mastodon, Lamb of God take with Floods of Triton:

  Heap data upon this modern age
  All human drivers now phased away
  A lidar's glow, the soft wheel's echo
  Autonomous force of code remains
  
  We are last of the before rides
  Now hear the robot cars rise
  Hum into eternity
  Remember this, all roadways lead to the fleet

That gives me a horrifying idea for a short story about a Waymo being hacked to carry out an assassination where it purposely drives off a bridge and into a lake.

Exactly what I was thinking, the CNBC article feels very clickbity because they don't say that in the opening lead that it's just a software update. They make it sound like they need to be taken back to some factory somewhere and get their systems updated. Which is not true because they just get a software update.

On a normal day it should suffice to train the model to use its judgment and maybe monitor how other cars are reacting to water covering the road, but when it starts flooding everywhere maybe they should pause the service until it dries out.

Maybe you drive into flood waters, but I don't. That's not a difficult skill to pull off.

We're still in the early days of self driving cars, and as much simulation and miles as they have, they're still constantly getting exposed to real world conditions that are new to them. The world is dynamic, so this will always remain true.

It remains to be seen where we'll converge on capability, incident rate, and acceptance.

Wikipedia has

>A product recall is a request from a manufacturer to return a product after the discovery of safety issues...

I think using the term for a software update is abusing the language a bit. And may confuse people who have a real recall where the thing has to go to the dealer.

Also I think it's wrong to call something a recall if it's not owned by customers. Waymo is a service.

aw, I was having fun imagining 3,800 Johnny cabs just immediately changing route to go to headquarters.

The difference between that and usual software updates I'm guessing is the cars are pulled from service until the update takes place.

Recall makes for better headlines.

Gah, thanks for this. Thought I was used to that slight-of-hand but this one got me

Legally and technically true, and I hate it.

We really need a better term for when an urgent software update for a vehicle is issued. The extreme majority of the population completely misunderstands it when a "recall" is done when it's actually just an OTA software update.

We've updated the title above. Thanks!

About what

If the car drives itself we will have more time to talk to each other in person.

Or invest in public transport instead

Just this morning I was almost killed twice on my bike ride to work by two separate drivers, one of whom looked to be 80 and could barely see over the dashboard, and one who was on their phone. I didn’t even bother trying to remember the plate numbers, knowing that the odds of any kind of consequences are absolute zero. No, we can’t go back to driving our own vehicles. Waymo everywhere and human driving outlawed, ASAP.

Actually, we’ve just returned to 2007.

https://youtu.be/DOW_kPzY_JY

> can we just go back to talking to each other in person

He posts on an internet message board