A short new clip posted to social media this week shows how speedily an autonomous vehicle can respond to an unexpected event on the road, saving at least one life.
Many moons ago, in 2015, I wrote an opinion piece for automotive site Drive.com.au that made clear I was ready for autonomous cars to join us on the road.
It’s a strange position for a driving enthusiast to take (I’m a motoring journalist), but I published that piece not long before my first child was born, so my motive was simple. I enjoy driving and I believe I have the skills, awareness and reaction times for the job – but I’d rather my newborn be surrounded by well-programmed autonomous cars than an increasingly under-skilled and under-aware driving public.
Regardless of my position or yours (and boy have I heard it all), 2015 was a golden age of anticipating an imminent future of self-driving cars, with most big auto brands throwing millions to billions of dollars into developing the necessary technology – and, to a lesser extent, working with governments to plan out the necessary infrastructure.
Neither has really come about, and indeed, big carmakers like GM have killed their dedicated self-driving divisions outright. In GM’s case, that meant closing down the Cruise business it bought in 2016 – a US$10 billion investment up to now.
One that is still going, however, is the Waymo business owned by Google’s parent Alphabet. It’s not profitable, but Alphabet has the budget to keep pounding away at the problem of autonomous driving like few can – and as the video below shows, it appears to be paying dividends.
Note: The below was originally posted to X by Dmitri Dolgov, Co-CEO of Waymo.
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Of course, a few questions spring to mind…
What would the car (a modified Jaguar I-Pace) have done if another vehicle or a motorcycle was in the lane to its left? Would it have knowingly collided with that vehicle, or would it have slammed on its brakes and hoped for the best?
Don’t go thinking there are no answers to this, though. Here’s a summary of what Waymo says at greater length on its blog:
Waymo’s autonomous vehicles are engineered to handle complex scenarios by evaluating multiple factors in real-time to determine the safest course of action. In situations where a pedestrian unexpectedly enters the vehicle’s path, the system assesses the positions and movements of surrounding vehicles, motorbikes, and other road users. The Waymo Driver employs advanced prediction models, such as VectorNet, to anticipate the behavior of other road users, enabling it to make informed decisions that minimise risk.
So, the reality is that the Waymo car may be entirely unable to completely avoid a collision, but neither can a human. And, as the above summary outlines, the Waymo system boasts far greater capacity for awareness of its surrounds than a human can, let alone the reaction time of a computer versus that of a human.
Still, it’s hard to overcome the idea that humans inherently have a split-second reasoning and response capability that machines lack. When you’re a good driver, it can be hard to believe a robot could be better – especially when we keep seeing glitches and errors and failings all across the consumer tech in our lives.
I do wonder how much longer we’ll be able to hang onto that thought…
If you’re keen to know more (before you rush to debate me…), the below stories are a great insight into it all.
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