Day: July 23, 2018

Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that spun out to become a business under Alphabet, has driven 8 million miles on public roads using its autonomous vehicles.

Waymo CEO John Krafcik shared the company’s milestone Friday while onstage with Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval at the National Governors Association conference in Santa Fe, N.M. The figure is notable when compared to where Waymo was less than a year ago. In November, the company announced it had reached 4 million miles, meaning the company has been able to double the number of autonomous miles driven on public roads in just eight months.

Waymo’s fleet of self-driving vehicles is now logging 25,000 miles every day on public roads, Krafcik said. He later tweeted out the stats along with a graphic. Waymo has 600 self-driving Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans on the road in 25 cities. It’s also adding 20,000 Jaguar I-Pace crossovers and has plans for another 62,000 Pacificas.

The company also relies on simulation as it works to build an AI-based self-driving system that performs better than a human. In the past nine years, Waymo has “driven” more than 5 billion miles in its simulation, according to the company. That’s the equivalent to 25,000 virtual cars driving all day, everyday, the company says.

This newly shared goal signals Waymo is getting closer to launching a commercial driverless transportation service later this year. More than 400 residents in Phoenix have been trialing Waymo’s technology by using an app to hail self-driving Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans.

The company says it plans to launch its service later this year.

Waymo’s driverless ride-hailing service has received the most attention. But the company is also working to apply its self-driving system to three other areas, including logistics (so trucking), making public transportation more accessible and, further off, plans to work with automakers to make personally owned vehicles.

Waymo, and more specifically Krafcik, has never provided much detail about how its self-driving system would make public transportation more accessible. On Thursday, Krafcik teased a future announcement.

“We’ll have announcements soon about how we’re going to use our technology move people from their homes or work to existing public infrastructure hubs so we as a society can get more ROI from those public transportation infrastructure investments,” Krafcik said.

You can watch the full video with Sandoval and Krafcik at the top of this page, which begins at the 46:40 mark.

The drownings of 17 people when a “duck boat” in which they were riding sank in a storm on a Missouri lake on Thursday was reminiscent of an accident involving the amphibious tourist vessel in 1999 in which 13 people died.

Authorities were investigating on Friday how the boat capsized and the cause of the deaths, on Table Rock Lake near the tourist destination of Branson during a storm.

A Philadelphia lawyer who has advocated for victims of other duck boat disasters said the canopy roof on duck boats turned them into a “death trap” even for anyone wearing a life preserver.

“You drown if you do, you drown if you don’t,” said Robert Mongeluzzi, who is calling for federal and state transportation officials to immediately halt all duck boat operations.

The maker of the Missouri duck boat, Ride the Ducks International, did not respond to a request for comment.

A decades-old report by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said duck boats’ canopy roof contributed to the 13 deaths in the 1999 incident, on Lake Hamilton in Arkansas.

“Canopies present major safety risks that need to be addressed … both adults and children wearing life jackets are at risk of being drowned if entrapped by the overhead canopy,” the NTSB said of the sinking.

Gerald Dworkin, a consultant for Lifesaving Resources, an aquatics safety training firm in Maine, said, “Even if they were wearing a life jacket when the boat went down, unless they could evacuate through the side windows they would’ve been trapped by that canopy.”

The U.S. Coast Guard did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the NTSB report but confirmed it is responsible for regulating boats.

Among the questions being examined by investigators was whether passengers were wearing life jackets.

‘Safe and comfortable’

On the state-run Missouri Division of Tourism’s website, VisitMO, Ride the Ducks said, “Our Ducks use the latest in marine design and safety. They are regularly inspected, tested & certified by the United States Coast Guard to ensure a safe and comfortable experience for our guests.”

The state agency pulled the page from its website on Friday. Kate Renfrow, an agency spokeswoman, said in an email, “Our web team made a decision to pause the listing this morning to give the associates of Ride the Ducks the ability to focus on those impacted by this tragedy.”

“Once we confirm the business is operating again, we intend to restore,” Renfrow wrote.

A number of duck boat tragedies occurred in 2015 and 2016.

A woman walking in Philadelphia’s Chinatown neighborhood was killed by a duck boat on land in May 2015. That September, a duck boat crashed into a charter bus carrying students in Seattle, killing five and injuring dozens.

In April 2016, a woman riding a scooter was killed by a duck boat in Boston.

Reporting by Tea Kvetenadze and Barbara Goldberg