> Someone at Waymo must have known that this was going to be an issue, and decided that it was an issue they could live with to get their service on the street.
It is possible, likely even, that engineers thought this was a solved problem, but it had not been thoroughly tested.
Imagine a situation where 9 out of 10 times these vehicles will do the right thing and treat a blacked out traffic light as a 4-way stop. Everything will be fine until the 1 out of 10 times that the system fails, in which case that vehicle and everyone queued up after it will be stuck in place.
Testing is really important. It’s possible that some engineer(s) realized this was a problem, and they couldn’t convince management to take it seriously. But, it’s also possible that it’s an “escape” - a failure mode which escaped detection due to insufficient testing.
You are correct, regulations are important, without them chaos is inevitable. For example, healthcare is heavily regulated and it should be. Certain cancers are known to develope with over exposure to radiation. This why operators using xray must be thoroughly trained, licensed and are required to obtain continuing education annually and radiation doses are closely monitored. I say "YES" to regulations, they should work together with innovation for the best possible outcomes.
> Someone at Waymo must have known that this was going to be an issue, and decided that it was an issue they could live with to get their service on the street.
It is possible, likely even, that engineers thought this was a solved problem, but it had not been thoroughly tested.
Imagine a situation where 9 out of 10 times these vehicles will do the right thing and treat a blacked out traffic light as a 4-way stop. Everything will be fine until the 1 out of 10 times that the system fails, in which case that vehicle and everyone queued up after it will be stuck in place.
Testing is really important. It’s possible that some engineer(s) realized this was a problem, and they couldn’t convince management to take it seriously. But, it’s also possible that it’s an “escape” - a failure mode which escaped detection due to insufficient testing.
It’s also possible that the failure rate is something like 3%, and management just didn’t prioritize fixing it.
You are correct, regulations are important, without them chaos is inevitable. For example, healthcare is heavily regulated and it should be. Certain cancers are known to develope with over exposure to radiation. This why operators using xray must be thoroughly trained, licensed and are required to obtain continuing education annually and radiation doses are closely monitored. I say "YES" to regulations, they should work together with innovation for the best possible outcomes.
What a kerfuffle!