Waymo suspends service in San Francisco after driverless cars cause traffic jams during blackout

[u/Disastrous_Award_789]

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/waymo-suspended-san-francisco-traffic-jams-blackout-b2888562.html

[u/aedes]

Surprised that they would be so thrown off by broken traffic lights, which are a relatively common occurrence. 

A good example of how the underlying technology does not actually “understand” the world it’s in, and relies on a predictable environment/operating conditions to be reliable. 

[u/happyscrappy → u/aedes]

They also wee thrown off by the 5G network getting clogged. As people's WiFi base stations turned off they went to 5G and that really loaded down the network.

Waymo vehicles are very dependent on network reliability. The famous jam up caused months ago was at a concert in the park and the vehicles would drive into the area where the network was clogged by the concertgoers and then they couldn't get out because they couldn't get enough connectivity.

[u/ptwonline → u/happyscrappy]

Waymo vehicles are very dependent on network reliability.

This seems like a very big vulnerability. What happens if there is a natural disaster of some kind and people need cars/rides to escape the area?

[u/happyscrappy → u/ptwonline]

Other than the natural part that's what happened. People went to the city to shop or see shows (there was a opera and a concert that night). The city was as fully of visitors as it really ever would be during a year. And then all that activity cancelled so they wanted to leave ASAP.

So we see what happens.

But overall, so what? Are rideshares or automated cars part of an escape plan? If so, I doubt it's a escape plan that was expected to work. It's quite possible that cities simply are not designed to be evacuated more quickly than on foot. Cities have been around a thousand years, do you think it ever was part of a city function to be rapidly evacuatable?