Creating an all-weather driver
34 comments
·October 27, 2025milleramp
At the Los Angeles Ciclavia two weeks ago Waymo's were getting stuck at the car crossings. There were police standing there waving cars through but the two I saw were not willing to drive through the intersection.
nradov
Properly responding to informal hand and voice signals from law enforcement, road workers, and other humans is going to be one of the toughest technical challenges for autonomous vehicles to solve.
darth_avocado
Stop signs became universal. No reason why machine readable signals/devices to communicate don’t become the norm with law enforcement and emergency response workers.
tonymet
I hope this improves rigor and common sense around winter driving in the USA. In Eastern Europe, drivers care more about tires, angility and driver skill. In the USA , drivers rely on large 4wd vehicles with high clearance for snow and ice driving. I’ve seen way too many issues with large clumsy vehicles losing control due to poor tires .
I hope Waymo shares more solutions for winter driving to debunk a lot of the marketing for winter activity driving in the USA
chemotaxis
I don't think the cultural difference you're describing here really exists. Maybe if you mean people from the SF Bay Area who visit Tahoe. If you go to places with real winters, people know about winter / studded tires, will often carry chains, and so on.
ghaff
Many large 4wd vehicles are nothing special with respect to ground clearance which mostly doesn't make much difference for snow/ice driving on paved roads anyway.
micromacrofoot
It won't, our economy is somewhat reliant on giant vehicles that people can barely afford to maintain.
b0rbb
> Upstate New York
I'm guessing they meant _Upstate AND Western New York_.
Glad someone in Waymo saw the potential for testing for extreme snowy conditions there.
boulos
Yes. We went to Buffalo, and a few other locations (https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/15/waymo-to-double-down-on-wi... and other reports)
umanwizard
Anecdotally I feel like the Upstate vs. Western NY distinction is mostly only made by people who live there.
When I lived in NYC I used "upstate" to mean anything not in the five boroughs, Long Island or Westchester, and I don't think this usage is uncommon.
daft_pink
i’m really curious at what point it decides that it shouldn’t be driving.
url00
Exactly. I picture a dystopia where the car refuses to attempt escape from a storm because of the liability factor.
brookst
Sounds preferable to a dystopia where AI driven cars are getting into wrecks because they’re overconfident in their abilities.
dingnuts
I picture one where it locks the doors and drives you right to the ICE center as soon as the facial recognition cameras realize who you are
even better if this is the only way to get around. no transport for whoever the Trump admin decides is insufficiently loyal!
y'all need to get more creative with your dystopias
2OEH8eoCRo0
Humans are horrible at this I wonder what the limit is. I've always thought that I can tailor my speed to conditions but not everyone on the road slows down.
hangonhn
It's really interesting because that's something they definitely don't teach you when you first learn to drive. Growing up in Florida, I learned to pull over and turn on emergency blinkers if the rain gets bad enough. The reason I know to do this is because I saw other drivers do this on the highway and realized that's pretty wise. It's tempting to imagine that a younger version of me would have been smart enough to realize this on my own but I think most of us learn a lot by observing the behavior of others. Or maybe I would have learned eventually after a few close calls with skidding. Or maybe I would have never learned until it's too late. I wonder if the different responses to averse conditions you've observed is a function of the different experiences we've had as drivers. You might be a more experienced driver than some of those around you.
ghaff
And pulling off through a patch of heavy rain is one thing. There are a lot of issues with pulling off in heavy snow unless you can really navigate off the highway to a safe location. Sometimes there aren't great solutions.
XenophileJKO
It's funny because when I lived in Texas, we just turn on windshield wipers on full blast, put the hazard lights on and drive around at 15mph. (This would have to be an epic downpour though.)
The only time people stopped was when it was hailing.. and then they would hide under bridges if they could.
candiddevmike
Hazard lights are almost never used by folks when driving, when you really should turn them on anytime the conditions are forcing you to not go the speed limit, IMO. The other lizard brains will see blinky lights and hopefully put down their phones so they don't rear end you.
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antisthenes
> The reason I know to do this is because I saw other drivers do this on the highway and realized that's pretty wise. It's tempting to imagine that a younger version of me would have been smart enough to realize this on my own but I think most of us learn a lot by observing the behavior of others.
Did you ever hydroplane in a car, even ever so slightly? That experience teaches you to slow down or stop and wait for the rain to be over pretty quickly.
amluto
Humans have one advantage over autonomous cars in ice: they can pull over and put on chains. Cars can’t do that (yet).
(I’d love to see a serious winter vehicle that can deploy traction devices by itself, perhaps while rolling at very low speed. Off the top of my head, it seems like it might be easier to put them on then to take them off.)
beaviskhan
Automatic snow chains are a thing, often seen on emergency vehicles even outside of the normal snow band. Ex: https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/yus43b/wha...
No idea if they're compatible with Jaguars or whatever Waymo is rolling these days, but my guess is that Waymo could make the economics work.
nradov
Chains are usually not the best option. Dedicated snow tires are better than chains for most light vehicles when there's snow and ice on the road. For fleet vehicles you would think they could install the proper tires at the depot based on the date or weather forecast.
ghaff
Outside of some specific areas, how many people do you think carry chains with them?
dingnuts
when the remote operator watching five feeds notices it's doing something dangerous
awaymazdacx5
dragnet which is LPRs for fleet vehicles
I was told by a very intelligent man demanding a trillion dollar salary that you only need vision cameras to have full self driving in all weather conditions. All of this is apparently unnecessary.