Driverless cars have advantages over humans too. Faster reaction speed, constant 360 degree surveillance, lack of distraction, (theoretically) better control of brakes and steering to handle skids.
Waymo has demonstrated solutions for many of the edge cases you mention. This video is from 3 years ago:
https://youtu.be/tiwVMrTLUWg?t=530
Regarding snow, it maybe a difficult problem, but if cars can't see road markings, neither can humans, so how do they do it? Sometimes by following a car in front. Though far from real autonomy, my Tesla doesn't need to see road markings for autopilot to work, it will fall back to following the car in front.
And.. Why does Waymo have to solve this inclement weather problem now? Surely it would be better to demonstrate safety in good weather, then light rain, then heavy rain, then light snow? They can just refuse to operate in bad weather unless they are confident about it.
Weather and trips being not completely predictable, the car would have to be able to pull over and stop if there was weather the car wasn't certified to handle, and if the human was asleep in the back seat or whatever and took a long time to get ready to take over.
I think I've seen at least a prototype Waymo car (it was exhibited in the Computer History Museum) that was designed without the steering wheel and pedals for a human to use. That wouldn't work so well given that the car might pull over and be unable/unwilling to drive anymore. (Maybe you can put an expected upper limit on how long the weather will remain bad ... Nah, storms can last for days, by which point a human who didn't bring food and water could be in bad shape.) I guess you could rely on being able to call AAA. Though a bad blizzard might be exactly the case where AAA would have a hard time reaching you. The human being able to take over eventually seems like an important feature. I guess that is the way all the cars in the field (that I've seen) work.
Does anyone happen to know if self-driving cars are practicing "pull over and stop" maneuvers? For some reason I've never heard of it. I think it is the only potentially reliable fallback mechanism if the car encounters, say, weird terrain it knows it can't handle. (I don't think you can assume the human will be able to respond within n seconds.)
> I think I've seen at least a prototype Waymo car (it was exhibited in the Computer History Museum) that was designed without the steering wheel and pedals for a human to use. That wouldn't work so well given that the car might pull over and be unable/unwilling to drive anymore.
It'd be fine - you just need to have some backup option. A small joystick or two behind some panel, or screen control, or perhaps you control the car with a phone app. It's like having an emergency spare tire - you just need a minimal driving UI that can be used in case of emergencies but users otherwise don't need to see or deal with. It can be inconvenient and speed-limited, since you don't expect to use it much.
Though if there's decent connectivity an obvious intermediate option is remote operation. Some human who is really good at driving might take over for a bit, driving your car from the comfort of their own home or office if you're not comfortable doing so yourself using the backup control pad.
Waymo has demonstrated solutions for many of the edge cases you mention. This video is from 3 years ago: https://youtu.be/tiwVMrTLUWg?t=530
Regarding snow, it maybe a difficult problem, but if cars can't see road markings, neither can humans, so how do they do it? Sometimes by following a car in front. Though far from real autonomy, my Tesla doesn't need to see road markings for autopilot to work, it will fall back to following the car in front.
And.. Why does Waymo have to solve this inclement weather problem now? Surely it would be better to demonstrate safety in good weather, then light rain, then heavy rain, then light snow? They can just refuse to operate in bad weather unless they are confident about it.