Tag: California

Google’s Waymo Cars Driven 2.5m Autonomous Miles and Accelerating

13 Feb 2017 IAC Staff

Waymo, formerly the Google self-driving car project, has completed more than 2.5 million miles of autonomous driving on public roads in the past few years, Dmitri Dolgov, head of Waymo’s self-driving technology, said in a blog post.

He said that Waymo is accelerating the pace of testing on public roads and in simulation as part of its efforts to bring fully self-driving cars to more people. Citing this year’s California disengagement report, Dolgov added that the company has significantly improved its fully self-driving technology. The report shows that Waymo’s rate of safety-related disengages has dropped from 0.8 disengages per thousand miles in 2015 to 0.2 per thousand miles in 2016.

“Disengages are a natural part of the testing process and occur when a driver takes manual control of a vehicle while it is in autonomous mode. Testing, including disengages, allows our engineers to safely add to our software’s driving skills, expand hardware capabilities, and identify areas of improvement,” Dolgov said.

He noted that disengages are helping Waymo to further improve its technology.

“During testing our objective is not to minimize disengagements; rather, it is to gather, while operating safely, as much data as possible to enable us to improve our self-driving system. Therefore, we set disengagement thresholds conservatively, and each is carefully recorded. We have an evaluation process in which we identify disengagements that may have safety significance,” according to Waymo.

The report shows that Waymo operated its self-driving cars in autonomous mode for more than 2.3 million miles as of November 2016. Of those, 635,868 miles occurred on public roads in California, with the vast majority on surface streets in the typical suburban city environment of Mountain View, and neighboring communities. Though Waymo increased its driving by 50% in California, its total number of reportable disengages fell from 341 in 2015 to 124.

Further, Dolgov said that despite cars getting smarter and more advanced, road fatalities in the United States are on the rise. And human error is involved in 94% of all crashes. That is a reason for Waymo to work “harder than ever to bring self-driving cars that don’t get tired or distracted, to our roads.”

He noted that the drop in safety-related disengages shows the significant work Waymo has been doing to make its software and hardware more capable and mature.

“And because we’re creating a self-driving car that can take you from door to door, almost all our time has been spent on complex urban or suburban streets. This has given us valuable experience sharing the road safely with pedestrians and cyclists, and practicing advanced maneuvers such as making unprotected left turns and traversing multi-lane intersections,” Dolgov said.

Dolgov said that Waymo will continue to work harder to make its cars safer. With a hundred tragic road deaths every single day, Waymo is “motivated to work with governments and policymakers to deploy our technology safely and quickly.” He added that Waymo is very optimistic about bringing fully self-driving cars on the public roads.

Floods in California Forced Evacuations

27 Jan 2017 IAC Staff

Successive winter storms unleashed heavy rains in Southern California over the weekend flooding roads, freeways and homes, trapping people in swamped vehicles, mudslides and bringing down trees in the region.  It made evacuation of stranded residents in several affected areas unavoidable.

The storm rained heavily for several hours with damaging effect. The frightening weekend storm added plenty of precipitation, which suddenly had its arrival in the State after years of withering drought.

The National Weather Service says the system is gaining strength Sunday and could be the strongest in at least seven years. Evacuations are ordered near wildfire burn areas in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and Orange counties. Officials say potential debris flows could limit access for emergency responders.

Coastal areas of Los Angeles County were among the worst hit with Long Beach Airport setting a new all-time rainfall record, 3.87 inches.

The heavy downpour was too much for the local roads. Both the 110 Freeway in Carson and the 710 Freeway in Long Beach were shut down on Sunday afternoon due to extreme flooding that left cars stranded like islands in a lake.

Heavy snow in the Sierra Nevada triggered an avalanche that shut down a highway just west of Lake Tahoe. Schools were cancelled in northern Nevada after it witnessed nearly half-foot of snow fall near Reno. Several intersections in Long Beach and surrounding communities were flooded and residents reported that their parked cars were damaged due to rising rain water. Several people were rescued from their cars and thousands lost power. It is reported that the storm dumped as much as four inches of rain at some places.

Rockslides blocked the roads in Malibu and other coastal mountain areas. According to close sources, about 15 to 20 residents of ocean-front apartment units had been evacuated.

Heavy rains can cause mudslides in the burn areas caused by wildfire last year. Evacuation orders have been issued for burn areas in Glendora, Duarte, Silverado Canyon in Orange County and parts of Santa Barbara County. However, some residents in the burn areas chose to stay in their homes in order to protect their homes in case things run out of their hands.

Brett Albright, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s office in San Diego, said the storm dumped as much as four inches of rain in some places.

The State has deployed extra emergency crews to help, including a bulldozer operator and two additional swift-water rescue teams. The epic rains wreaked something unusual in Disneyland Sunday characterised by a quiet day with small crowds. Although thunderstorm conditions were expected to come down slightly, rainfall is expected to pour until Tuesday.

The storm has caused heavy rainfall over the days along with mudslides and snow blocked major roads including Interstate 80. U.S 395 and Highway 17 the main freeway linking Silicon Valley with Santa Cruz. According to NWS (National Weather Service) the incessant storm and rainfall has seen a record-breaking wave height for the Monterey Bay of measuring 34.12 feet.

Bill Wolcott, a California State Parks public safety superintendent said, “We’ve seen very large surf, with very little break in between, and it’s that repeated beating down by the ocean that seems to be having the biggest effect on the ship this year.”