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Self-driving Waymos secure final clearance for expansion beyond S.F

tanvach
315 replies
1d23h

We recently started using Waymo more often:

- Quality of Lyft and Uber rides have gone down significantly.

- Consistently spacious, clean and quiet cars. You know what you'll get.

- AC always works and not up to the whim of the driver.

- No chatty driver to disturb our sleeping baby.

Negatives:

- Rides have usually 10% mark up over Lyft and Uber.

- Pick up and drop off tend to be a small walk from requested locations.

Forgot one more positive - you can choose a soothing music play list in the car and it automatically resumes in the next ride. Small but really nice detail when traveling with a baby.

firloop
126 replies
1d22h

A rarely discussed negative to Waymo is that they drive slower than human drivers. Anecdotally they can be 10-25% slower than the rest of traffic, and it's not uncommon to see human drivers do unsafe moves to pass a Waymo.

quectophoton
73 replies
1d19h

Anecdotally they can be 10-25% slower than the rest of traffic

I don't know anything about USA, but my understanding of other humans tells me that "Waymo is 10-25% slower than the rest of traffic" actually means "Waymo drives at the legal speed limit for that location, without surpassing it".

worik
54 replies
1d19h

"Waymo is 10-25% slower than the rest of traffic" actually means "Waymo drives at the legal speed limit for that location...

Probably 100% safer too

Speed is the most dangerous aspect of motor vehicles

josephcsible
26 replies
1d19h

Speed is the most dangerous aspect of motor vehicles

Not in the way you think. If you're going 55 because it's the speed limit, but everyone else is going 70, you're the most likely driver to cause a collision. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_curve

Mawr
13 replies
1d17h

The mental hoops drivers go through to justify their unsafe behaviour...

Dylan16807
12 replies
1d9h

Oh please.

Let's assume people are going at a speed that the road is designed to handle, since that's usually the case. In that situation, the behavior you're calling out as unsafe is simply "going faster". Now, in a technical sense that's true, but it's always true. Going faster reduces safety when you're above the speed limit. Going faster reduces safety when you're at the speed limit. Going faster reduces safety when you're below the speed limit.

If you reduce safety to black and white, then you should always go slower, until you're barely moving. If the speed limit is 40, that doesn't magically make it safe to go 40.

Black and white thinking leads to a bad conclusion, so let's add nuance back in. Speed is dangerous but roads are designed to let you go a certain speed while minimizing the danger. You're not being dangerous until you go over that speed. And that speed is almost always higher than the speed limit, especially in good weather.

Going over the speed limit is not itself a problem. It's going over the design speed of the road that's a problem.

concordDance
5 replies
1d4h

I'm quite confused why I keep seeing posts like this downvoted in this thread. This post is nuanced and probably novel to most readers. Even seems correct to me.

LeafItAlone
2 replies
1d3h

Probably because there really isn’t any nuance in it, hand waves the physics and human factor, and it uses vague language.

Want to know what any arbitrary driver on a road has as a reference for “the design speed of the road”? The posted speed limit.

I’m not saying their argument is right or wrong, but just that this post isn’t nuanced or convincing.

marcosdumay
0 replies
1d3h

Probably because there really isn’t any nuance in it, hand waves the physics and human factor, and it uses vague language.

There is a link there, that refers to lots of scientific research. From almost a century ago to almost today, and in a huge amount of agreement.

Do you have more nuance than that?

Dylan16807
0 replies
20h13m

There's a correlation between the speed limit and the design speed, but there's also a lot of mismatch and the bias usually goes in a specific direction.

A few mph over the speed limit in dry weather is rarely outside the design.

And I think I have a reasonable amount of nuance. If you don't have nuance you get "the sign can't be wrong" or "always go slower". The former is objectively not true, and I've never seen anyone seriously advocate for the latter.

Dylan16807
0 replies
20h8m

I am not saying that. You must have misunderstood. There is definitely an inflection point for safety in any given road.

vkou
3 replies
1d8h

Let's assume people are going at a speed that the road is designed to handle

Let's not, because most of the speeding I see is from people who very mistakenly think they know what speed the road's designed to handle, because they don't give a crap about pedestrians, bicyclists, visibility, other vehicles, or really, anything but getting to the next red light faster.

Perhaps you drive in a utopia that's solely populated by traffic architects, but here in the real world, it's populated by normal people, many of whom are bad drivers, and bad judges of road safety, but are really good at hitting the gas.

Our high death rates reflect this.

katbyte
1 replies
1d3h

Overbuilt roads aka “strodes”are real common in North America and as people tend to drive the speed they feel is correct not the limit it leads people to going faster and create unsafe situation. There’s a great not just bikes video on this iirc

A sign doesn’t really change behaviour but narrowing roads , separated bike lanes, pedestrian controlled crossings, roundabouts, and generally making the road “feel slower” does

vkou
0 replies
1d1h

I'm aware of this phenomenon.

My point is that until the road is narrowed, the safe speed on it may be lower than the average backseat traffic architect might think.

Dylan16807
0 replies
1d8h

Perhaps you drive in a utopia that's solely populated by traffic architects

I drive in an area that has a lot of overbuilt roads, and I don't think that's a very uncommon situation.

they don't give a crap about pedestrians, bicyclists, visibility, other vehicles, or really, anything but getting to the next red light faster

That's very dangerous even if you strictly follow the speed limit. It's a separate problem.

scotty79
0 replies
1d5h

Kinetic energy is proportional to square of velocity. It doesn't take large speed reduction to halve energies involved and thus the danger. Even not taking into account how crappy human perception and reflexes are.

Mawr
0 replies
20h20m

You can take that logic and apply it to any traffic law. Blowing red lights? Fine as long as you can tell there's no cross traffic, right?

Laws were put in place because people are not in fact qualified to make these assessments.

The only nuance here is that you are not required to go the speed limit at all, you can and should go only as fast as the conditions allow.

senordevnyc
8 replies
1d15h

Rear-ending someone going slower than you is not their fault.

serf
7 replies
1d15h

Rear-ending someone going slower than you is not their fault.

who gives a shit who is at fault when they're in an accident?

the goal is to avoid the event all together, not to have a scapegoat.

level1ten
6 replies
1d13h

The type of people who see a "lane ends ahead" and immediately merge, blocking up traffic and wasting a half mile of empty lane. "I'm in my assigned place and I did what I was supposed to!!"

Dylan16807
5 replies
1d9h

The thing that blocks up traffic at a merge is when people can't get over smoothly.

If everyone gets over at the first opportunity, then things go fine. The empty lane isn't wasted, it absorbs brief bursts in traffic that need more time to get over. But even if it was wasted, that wouldn't be a big deal. A 5-mile long section with fewer lanes and a 5.5-mile long section with fewer lanes will have almost the same throughput.

Everyone staying split across two lanes until the end and aligning themselves to do a clean zipper merge also goes fine.

What makes everything go wrong is when people drive down the nice empty lane that's ending and intend to do a normal merge at the end, but they don't start it early enough. Then everything slows down as they squeeze over.

plaidfuji
4 replies
1d7h

In my experience what causes the slowdown are the people who merged too early who then resentfully close the gap in front of them when people try to merge later than them, simultaneously increasing the likelihood that they’ll rear end the car in front of them and making it harder for the people trying to merge properly to do so.

dazc
2 replies
1d6h

'...when people try to merge later than them,'

You mean the people who must get past every single car and merge at the last possible second?

level1ten
1 replies
22h52m

Just use the lane normally and zipper merge when the lane ends. Don't waste space. Don't block people. You don't get brownie points for being in the "correct" lane as soon as possible, and it doesn't help to police others who are using the existing lane. It really isn't that hard.

nytesky
0 replies
21h54m

A zipper merge is fine, both lanes tend to fill up.

What I often see if a lane that intended to go through and a turning lane that is backed up; people pretend to be on through lane, then stop to merge at last minute into long turning lane and void the line.

Dylan16807
0 replies
1d7h

Doesn't that just move the gap slightly? If anything, a tight squeeze should mean the gap behind them is even bigger than the gap that existed before.

paulryanrogers
0 replies
1d18h

Indeed. Much as buying a smaller car makes you a hazard to everyone nearby because they cannot see you as easily. The most sensible thing for everyone is ever larger and more heavily armored vehicles. Won't someone think of the children. `/s`

All that said. If you cannot maneuver safely around drivers going the speed limit then they are not the problem.

epolanski
0 replies
1d10h

The wiki you link finds the theory to be biased and without solid backing data.

Not sure why did you link it.

bpodgursky
0 replies
1d16h

Regardless, Waymo is under the spotlight and they can't risk the regulatory hit of openly breaking laws, even if it's a perfectly normal thing for a human to do.

tomp
23 replies
1d7h

There is approximately 0% chance that the speed limit decreed by faceless bureaucrats is the optimal speed for the current circumstances on a given road.

scrollaway
13 replies
1d6h

You're the one calling them faceless bureaucrats. Most speed limits are set in place by a mix of safety boards and urban planners, who do take these limits into account. Explain to me what makes them faceless and detached from the situation?

tomp
6 replies
1d5h

> Explain to me what makes them faceless and detached from the situation?

The fact that they’re not there.

The idea that the same speed is appropriate at 9am when kids are crossing the street going to school and 2am when there’s noone there and no cars parked on the side of the road, is insane beyond belief.

Speed limits are generally repressive and mostly just a tax collection scheme (though I strongly support most daytime city speed limits!)

paulryanrogers
4 replies
1d5h

What are you proposing? No speed limits outside cities in the day time? Or speed limits that change based on circumstances?

Don't we already have school zones which are 20mph when kids are around and higher otherwise?

tomp
1 replies
22h55m

as @katbyte already suggested, yes

No speed limits anywhere, or at least no enforcement.

As I said above, speed limits are repressive and a way for the government to bully its citizens and extract money from them. If the government actually wanted to solve the problem (making roads safer), they would simply design the roads differently. Speed bumps are also a very bad solution. Good solutions are "road islands" [1], "curvy roads" [2] or "metal rods" [3].

No limits on the highway either, except to mark more dangerous parts of the road (i.e. it's a suggestion not a limit).

By definition, if you don't crash, your speed was OK. So maybe there should be speeding-related fines only if you do crash.

[1] https://www.google.ch/maps/@46.9519887,8.6213984,3a,75y,174....

[2] https://www.google.ch/maps/@46.0665621,14.4965949,3a,75y,188...

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/14vls...

paulryanrogers
0 replies
22h10m

By definition, if you don't crash, your speed was OK.

Definition of what? By this logic SBF shouldn't be jailed but rather given an award for making FTX users whole with modest interest.

The law must scale to all of society. There cannot be different rules based on whether you are lucky, "skilled", or not. Most people overestimate the their competence, as evidenced by fatalities involving motor vehicles. (A professional truck driver I knew died, killing his wife, and harming his nephew just driving back home.)

katbyte
1 replies
1d3h

People tend to just ignore speed limits and drive at the speed they feel safe and comfortable.

If you want people to drive slower you just design the road to slow them down.

PlutoIsAPlanet
0 replies
1d

I'm sure emergency services would like that idea

Angostura
0 replies
1d2h

That doesn’t make them “faceless bureaucrats”. It just means you don’t like speed limits because you know best

Workaccount2
5 replies
1d5h

Because everyone drives 40mph on that main road that is marked 25mph, and there is no string of accidents or fatalities after decades of this.

kjkjadksj
2 replies
1d1h

Once you are doing 40 or 50 any accident you do have with a pedestrian is almost sure to be fatal. Lower speeds offer more of a chance.

Workaccount2
1 replies
1d1h

Not driving cars at all offers the lowest. There has to be a degree of nuance when evaluating this.

Ironically in my town, we did have a "string" (3 people in 5 years) of pedestrian fatalities. All of which took place downtown where people actually do drive 25.

kjkjadksj
0 replies
1d

Well its not a sure rule of thumb that lower speeds are safer. People die falling bad from standing too. But it sure as hell makes it a guarantee you kill someone if you hit them at that speed. Especially some of these newer suvs where the front end is effectively a wall at pedestrian height.

worik
0 replies
20h37m

there is no string of accidents or fatalities after decades of this.

Ignoring reality

A lot of people killed on the road

PlutoIsAPlanet
0 replies
1d

All it takes is for a driverless car speeding to hit a pedestrian for the industry to be dead in its tracks.

throwaway7ahgb
4 replies
1d5h

Visit Texas where there are 85mph posted limits and people casually do 95.

tomp
1 replies
1d2h

nothing compared to Italy, Slovenia or Germany haha

throwaway7ahgb
0 replies
4h57m

You're right! I've driving here as well, but one thing people don't realize is how big Texas is.

Texas vs EU: https://i.redd.it/jlqp9vv8flb31.jpg

Jcampuzano2
1 replies
1d4h

I live in Texas and I would unironically feel safer driving the normal ~10-15mph above the speed limit that traffic is normally going than go exactly the speed limit, because I don't want everyone else flying around me recklessly because they all know that nobody goes exactly the legal limit here.

czl
0 replies
22h32m

Yes! Speed difference is dangerous. So yes the difference in speed between vehicle and stationary objects it can hit (trees, poles, parker cars). On highways without a divider the danger is from incoming cars as that will double the impact speed. On highways with dividers having speed different from cars around you can be dangerous because it means either you are changing lanes to pass often else others are changing lanes often to get around you.

marssaxman
1 replies
1d

It has always seemed strange to me that restrictive speed limits persist in a supposedly democratic nation despite the functionally unanimous opinion of the citizenry, expressed through actual driving behavior, that the legally prescribed safety margins are excessive. I doubt you could find any other issue on which Americans of varying political persuasions would demonstrate such a high level of practical agreement.

In comment threads like these, one invariably views vigorous venting of virtuous vitriol versus the vice of velocity, but simply getting out on the road and having a look around - pretty much anywhere in the country - will show that such opinions must either be hypocritical or held by a small minority.

omgwtfbyobbq
0 replies
22h33m

One possibility is that speed limits are set so drivers are safe/efficient at the maximum observed traffic density.

If the maximum traffic density doesn't happen often, then people can understandably be annoyed when they can safely drive faster most of the time.

concordDance
0 replies
1d4h

Laws are necessarily very blunt things. The actual optimal speed limit will vary with car, driver, traffic, weather, time of day etc, would vary hugely along the road and wouldn't be in neat 5mph increments.

But making such dynamic limits would be an extremely expensive endeavour.

badpun
0 replies
1d6h

If you want to optimize for least deaths and injuries, thr optimal speed limit is 0 km/h. Everything else is a tradeoff between convenience and potential harm.

katbyte
0 replies
1d3h

No it is not. Distracted or impaired driving is the most dangerous aspect.

czl
0 replies
22h34m

Speed is the most dangerous aspect of motor vehicles

Speed difference is dangerous. So yes the difference in speed between vehicle and stationary objects it can hit (trees, poles, parker cars). On highways without a divider the danger is from incoming cars as that will double the impact speed. On highways with dividers having speed different from cars around you can be dangerous because it means you are changing lanes often else others are changing lanes to get around you.

Ygg2
0 replies
1d4h

Probably 100% safer too

Not really. Because speed works in relative. I.e. if everyone drives at 200mph it is much safer than if half drive 100mph and other half drives 200mph. Granted you can't have things appearing at 200mph.

Speed is not the problem deceleration is. Which happens more often when some percent of people drives slower than others.

Decreasing speed limits has the counterintuitive effect of increasing vehicle to vehicle accidents, and intuitive effect of increasing ticket fees. Pedestrian safety isn't that imprcted since a portion of drivers drives above limit anyway.

bluefirebrand
12 replies
1d5h

So it's a bad driver then, because matching flow of traffic is more important and safer than stubbornly following the exact speed limit

diggan
4 replies
1d5h

It's a bad driver for adhering to the speed limits?

I'm having a hard time understanding how that makes sense. I understand that matching the flow of traffic is important, but more important than the speed limit? They're there for a reason.

If the speed limit is 30km/h and everyone is driving in 50km/h, you're saying you'll opt for driving at 50km/h?

Besides, if there is multiple lanes, you take the right lane and follow the speed limit. The ones who don't want to adhere to the speed limit, have the left lane(s).

And in the case of it only being one lane, you can literally decide the flow of traffic by adhering to the speed limit, and everyone behind you need to follow it, and once it stabilizes, that's now the flow of traffic, problem solved?

(Just as a disclaimer, I do sometimes drive above the limits myself, but limited only to the highways, never on road with a limit below 120km/h)

rootusrootus
0 replies
1d3h

problem solved?

The consensus from the folks writing laws appears to be that the problem is not in fact solved in that case. There are laws which apply independent of your speed that require you to give way when more than X number of cars are behind you constrained by your speed (X varies by jurisdiction).

Of course the response to this is usually "but if I am going the speed limit that other law cannot apply." Very much like the laws saying you must keep right unless passing someone. Everyone seems to have their own opinion on which laws they will follow, and which they can ignore.

octopoc
0 replies
1d4h

driving 50 in a 30 is a 66% increase, not a 10%-25% increase like gp was suggesting. When speeding is more extreme it probably crosses a threshold where it's safer to drive the speed limit than to drive with the traffic. But when the difference is 10%-25% (which is accurate IME in the US) then you only have to experience it a few times to know it's less safe to drive the speed limit.

josephg
0 replies
1d4h

I’ve heard a lot of debate about this point here in Australia. In the state of NSW, people on their learner permit are restricted to driving no more than 90km/h (55 miles per hour). Arguably, this is safer because learner drivers haven’t learned to control their cars well yet.

Here in Vic (the next state over), people think that law is stupid because it’s apparently less safe having everyone on a freeway driving at different speeds. It makes changing lanes much more difficult and dangerous. Here learner drivers are expected and encouraged to match the speed of traffic (obviously obeying speed signs too).

I suspect vic is right on this one. It probably is more dangerous having different drivers driving at different speeds. At least, more dangerous to human drivers. But what do you expect Google to do about it? Make their entire fleet break the road rules? Their licence to drive their cars on the roads at all is on a trial basis. They’re being closely watched by everyone. Even if it’s potentially unsafe for other drivers who are speeding, sticking to the letter of the law is really the only choice they have here. Maybe in time all traffic will flow at the posted speed. And officials will finally feel comfortable raising the speed limit to match the speed everyone actually comfortably drives at on the roads.

bluefirebrand
0 replies
1d3h

I understand that matching the flow of traffic is important, but more important than the speed limit?

Yes absolutely. Speed limits are cooked up in a room somewhere and do not reflect the actual conditions of the road. The real world situation you find yourself in when on the road is too dynamic to suggest a number on a sign should be the ultimate authority

It's very understood that when it's raining or snowing or foggy you should slow down because you drive to the conditions of the road because that's safest.

If everyone around you is speeding then that's also a condition of the road, which you need to adapt to

throwaway7ahgb
2 replies
1d5h

Flow of Traffic vs Speed Limit Dangers

Many believe the myth that as long as we’re going with the flow of traffic, we’re not doing anything wrong. It makes sense– everyone else is going the same speed, so why shouldn’t you? There’s no way a cop could pull you over if you’re just going with the speed of traffic. Wrong.

If you argue that you were just driving with the flow of traffic, then you are essentially admitting to speeding. Other people breaking the law does not justify you breaking the law.

rootusrootus
0 replies
1d3h

Many believe the myth

Do they? Almost without exception the argument for going with the flow of traffic is that it is safer, not that it is the most legally defensible.

katbyte
0 replies
1d3h

So in following the law vs being safe you say “follow the law and make the roads more dangerous” because… why?

ericyd
1 replies
1d4h

Here in Texas I'd love for more people to stubbornly obey the speed limit to slow down the flow of traffic.

rootusrootus
0 replies
1d3h

Having just returned from Texas, I have to say your problems in that regard are entirely self-inflicted. And frankly, probably by design. You have wide open freeways with ample space in every lane, absolutely inviting people to cruise at high speed. Want to dial it back? Make the lanes narrower. The vast majority of drivers choose their speed based on comfort, not what the sign says. That won't change, so the strategy for how you slow down traffic has to.

darby_nine
1 replies
1d5h

Uh that's just not true and I would not trust any driver who says this.

Jcampuzano2
0 replies
1d4h

If its not true then why do many cars with self-driving build it in as a feature to allow breaking the speed limit (up to a limit, in my car it still won't go above 15mph above the limit) in order to more closely match the flow of traffic.

I think theres a bit of nuance. If the flow of traffic was all being crazy lunatics then yes I'd say so. But I would feel safer without other cars flying past me/around me because I decide to go 70mph when everyone else around you is going 80-85.

aprilthird2021
2 replies
1d15h

You're definitely right. In most of the US there's a speed limit and there's an understood amount over the speed limit you can still drive and cops won't bother you.

josephg
1 replies
1d4h

Same in Australia - though that amount varies by state! In NSW, everyone goes 10-15% over the limit. Just like California. In Vic, they have speed cameras everywhere and they’re crazy strict about it. People joke about speeding fines being part of their taxes for the year.

Apparently they even have entry and exit cameras on some freeways - and they take photos of everyone to check your average speed. Even if they don’t catch you in the act of speeding, if your average speed is over the limit they’ll still send you a fine.

The moral of the story: Don’t speed in Melbourne. It’s a meme that everyone who visits the state gets done at least once. Everyone in Sydney has a friend who’ll tell you the harrowing tale of their vacation speeding fines.

kjkjadksj
0 replies
1d1h

It varies by the state and town in the US. There are some that get a lot of funding from speeding tickets and the police stake it out. Then there are places like southern california where I’ve never seen a cop taking radar ever.

quickthrowman
0 replies
1d19h

The legal speed limit has nothing to do with how fast traffic moves on a road.

Roads can be designed to slow down traffic, but slapping a 25 mph speed limit sign up on an 80-100’ wide 4-lane road does not slow down traffic.

A road near me was reconfigured with a center turn lane and two lanes from four lanes and traffic slowed from 40 mph to 30 mph, the speed limit for this particular road.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/8/6/the-key-to-slow...

https://www.smatstraffic.com/2021/08/30/traffic-calming/

nickzelei
0 replies
1d

This is exactly what they do. They don’t drive slower, they drive the speed limit. I’ve taken a lot of Waymos and their priority is safety, for everyone.

lacker
13 replies
1d21h

If they're really safer than human drivers, like the Google-funded studies claim they are, then this seems like a positive rather than a negative. Perhaps we humans should be slowing down and driving more carefully?

But I'm not sure if we can trust these studies. I'd really like to see a completely independent evaluation, of how the safety of Waymo cars compares to human drivers, and to the safety other companies like Zoox.

Karrot_Kream
6 replies
1d21h

I agree that an independent study would be very useful to get a better idea of what's actually happening.

That said, human drivers in the US are bad. We have the highest traffic crash rate among all developed countries by far. Pedestrian and cyclist crash rates have been increasing in the US, one of the only developed countries in the world that this is happening in. Much of the US remains opposed to automated traffic enforcement or speed governors of any kind. Privacy advocates use privacy as an excuse but given how much Americans care about their privacy in other aspects of their life, I'm doubtful. And anecdotally it's common for friends to talk about driving 10-15 mph over the speed limit, and we know speed is the leading predictor for severity of a crash. Most US drivers, especially of higher income classes, are probably well aware that they speed and break plenty of other traffic laws on a regular basis and don't want to reckon with that fact.

psunavy03
5 replies
1d20h

And anecdotally it's common for friends to talk about driving 10-15 mph over the speed limit, and we know speed is the leading predictor for severity of a crash. Most US drivers, especially of higher income classes, are probably well aware that they speed and break plenty of other traffic laws on a regular basis and don't want to reckon with that fact.

Because 99 44/100 percent of the time, this is not a factor. The true threat is not someone going 10 over on the highway, it's the loons you see zooming ahead of everyone else going 20+ over, weaving like they're in a video game. Equally unsafe are the self-appointed speed police camping in the left lane doing 2 under (looking at you, Greater Seattle). This forces people to pass on the right to keep up the flow of traffic, which is much less predictable.

The correct answer is to keep right except to pass, keep your speed within reason (<10 over max in good weather), keep a decent following distance, and let the cops take care of anyone driving recklessly. If speed was so dangerous by itself, Germany would not have Autobahns.

sho_hn
4 replies
1d19h

As a German, I'd like to point out that about half of the German Autobahn network do have speed limits in place, or had in 2019 (this oscillates a lot between about 30-60%, I think).

According to a government study into Autobahn fatalities that occurred in 2018, "non-adapted speed" (defined as the appropriate speed for the traffic conditions and allowing full control of the vehicle) was the cause of death in 45% of cases overall. For stretches without a tempo limit it was 46%, for stretches with one it was 50% -- this may be a good statistical for the tempo limits, as presumably there would have been more deaths on those stretches without the limits having been set.

Overall, 70% of Autobahn deaths occur on the segments without a tempo limit for a variety of reasons.

Speed limits on the Autobahn are a frequently-discussed and controversial topic in Germany, but for what it's worth, they're quite actively managed for safety reasons.

Gov source (in German): https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/Zahl-de...

psunavy03
3 replies
1d15h

I'm not denying any of this. I'm just observing that there's a faction in the US which seems to say "speed is a leading factor in car deaths" (which it is) and then insists on everyone never going 1mph over our often-arbitrary-and-politically-set speed limits. When what you're describing as "non-adapted speed" is exactly the actual problem . . . driving beyond one's capabilities or the capabilities of one's vehicle.

Our freeways stateside were largely built in the late 20th century to a uniform 70mph (~110km/h) speed limit engineering-wise. But after the 1970s oil crisis, speed limits became a political football that often have as much to do with driving traffic ticket revenue for local governments as actually promoting driving at a safe speed.

So the problem is that a portion of Americans commenting on our speed limits don't understand there's a difference between "what the government puts up on the sign" and "what is actually a safe speed to drive without endangering other people" as if what's on the sign is some sacred totem that shall not be questioned because We Must All Follow The Rules Like Good Little Boys and Girls.

dazc
1 replies
1d6h

So let everyone decide to decide for themselves what a safe speed should be on any given stretch of road and see what happens? In other words, let evolution find the 'safe' speed.

rootusrootus
0 replies
1d3h

Yes, though you are phrasing it negatively. Something like 90% of drivers base their speed on conditions, not on the speed limit signs. No amount of arguing that it should be exactly the opposite will actually make that happen, so we have reality to work with. We can whine on an Internet forum that terrible people are not abiding by the posted speed, or we can engineer the roads to meet our goals.

kjkjadksj
0 replies
1d1h

What the government puts on the sign has significance you know. Maybe the highway was made in the 1950s vs 1970s and interchanges are too tight. Maybe its a surface road with smaller measured sightlines than you might realize. All the yellow lights are going to timed with respect to the posted speed limit and braking distance. All green waves timed with the anticipation you go the posted speed limit.

helloworld
2 replies
1d19h

A matched case-control analysis of autonomous vs human-driven vehicle accidents

Published: 18 June 2024

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48526-4

"The analysis suggests that accidents of vehicles equipped with Advanced Driving Systems generally have a lower chance of occurring than Human-Driven Vehicles in most of the similar accident scenarios. However, accidents involving Advanced Driving Systems occur more frequently than Human-Driven Vehicle accidents under dawn/dusk or turning conditions, which is 5.25 and 1.98 times higher, respectively."

twoWhlsGud
1 replies
1d17h

Unfortunately, that seems to include data regarding Tesla's FSD function, which renders it useless for actual comparisons between human driving and responsible implementations of self driving technology.

natch
0 replies
1d16h

Nitpick, but Tesla does not yet have full self driving technology. They have a beta which is "supervised" by human drivers. Repeating the myth that they have self driving perpetuates the misconception that Tesla's marketing has pushed in the past.

Terr_
1 replies
1d20h

I imagine people will be more tolerant of a slower ride if--as a passenger--they can be engaged reading a book or watching a movie or whatever.

Not just because it's easier to pass the time, but also because there's no push to make the experience of driving "more interesting." (Too much, and someone drives unsafely, too little, and they aren't really paying attention.)

rootusrootus
0 replies
1d3h

they can be engaged reading a book or watching a movie or whatever

Given how commonly understood this situation is, I wonder what fraction of the population can read a book or watch a movie while riding in a car without getting fairly sick.

concordDance
0 replies
1d4h

Perhaps we humans should be slowing down and driving more carefully?

Not necessarily. Safety is not the only thing we care about, we also want to spend less time in cars.

20mph motorways would be much safer than current limits or even 50mph, but the loss of QALYs from people sitting in cars would not be worth it.

rainsford
11 replies
1d21h

Is that a negative of Waymo or a negative of the aggressive/illegal way many humans drive? My assumption is the anecdotal speed difference you notice is Waymos actually following the speed limit, and I imagine Waymo isn't really looking to program their cars to break the law while they're trying to expand their ability to operate.

babyshake
8 replies
1d21h

Not just humans, but Uber/Lyft drivers. It is very common for an Uber driver to perform unsafe and illegal maneuvers while driving me. I don't report them because I don't want to get them fired. Usually I don't even remark on it, unless I think they did it in a way that was especially unsafe.

KennyBlanken
3 replies
1d18h

If you don't hold people accountable for dangerous driving, 1)more people will drive dangerously while doing lyft/uber and 2)you are indirectly endangering vulnerable road users (people on foot and on bike, motorcycles, etc.)

Trust me, you'd feel very differently if you were on a bike regularly in the city. The lyft/uber drivers are the most dangerous drivers in the city. Have been since almost the very beginning of this ride "share" app crap.

Any time a driver did something dangerous with me in the car, they got reported and a one star rating with a comment explaining exactly why. If they did something particularly dangerous around a pedestrian or cyclist, I'd tell them the ride was over and to let me off immediately, and then call uber/lyft to report it to an agent instead of just clicking the "unsafe" button in the app.

You don't have a right to drive for a living.

If you do, you damn well should act like it is your living and be safe about it.

The whole fucking reason we have a massive problem with traffic safety in the US is because police and courts and legislators act like it's so necessary that we must endlessly tolerate people endangering others with their cars, and people get "hardship" exceptions where they're allowed to keep driving even after proving themselves to be a complete fucking menace, because "they need to get to their job" instead of "you knew you needed to be able to drive to get to your job and you still drove the wrong way down that street and hit someone? Sucks to be you."

twoWhlsGud
2 replies
1d17h

This is the aspect that makes me most excited about Waymo and the like –the prospect of no longer having to tolerate terrible driving because removing someone's license is akin to an economic death sentence. Fully commercialized, self-driving should provide an economic alternative to humans driving themselves. And we should be able to leverage that to stop the worst drivers ever getting behind the wheel again.

teractiveodular
1 replies
1d13h

So instead of penalizing unsafe drivers, we'll penalize all drivers by replacing them with robots?

I'm actually a Waymo fan but this particular argument doesn't really hold water.

throwaway7ahgb
0 replies
1d5h

Wait, how is offering driver less cabs penalizing all drivers?

The only motivation I see that drives self-driving taxi development is reduced labor costs. But that isn't different than what has happened since the industrial revolution.

dpe82
1 replies
1d19h

Uber/Lyft drivers won't improve their behavior on their own without feedback from the system, so please for everyone's safety please do report it.

throwaway7ahgb
0 replies
1d5h

You're not wrong but I do feel a bit guilty every time I give less than 5 stars. The rating system is so bad that you can't give any small feedback without serious negative financial consequences for the drivers.

Basically anything negative is rolled up into one signal no matter what the safety aspect is.

toomanyrichies
0 replies
1d19h

This is a far-too-infrequently discussed benefit of self-driving cars. Right or wrong, I (and many others) have qualms about narc’ing on a human driver. I have no such qualms about doing so with a robot.

kristjansson
0 replies
1d3h

Uber/Lyft/Taxi drivers as sin-eater is one of their great values. Rider gets all the benefits of drugging like an asshole with none of the social/moral shame

firloop
1 replies
1d21h

Yes, most human drivers go above the speed limit. I agree that it can be unsafe, but wouldn't a self-driving car be safer at going above the speed limit than humans? I feel like it should be OK for it to go 5-10 miles over, especially if that's what the flow of traffic is.

rainsford
0 replies
1d21h

I don't know if it's actually safer, but I feel like programming your self driving car to regularly break the speed limit would be a hard sell from a regulatory perspective. It's different in "self-driving" cars with drivers who can choose the speed of the vehicle. In this case, Waymo is programming the car to independently pick a speed, and making that programming decide to break the law seems like it could be a problem.

Probably a better solution is more reasonable speed limits and more consistent enforcement of those limits, but now I'm just engaging in wishful thinking.

josephcsible
9 replies
1d19h

This is evidence that most speed limits are too low. The proper speed limit on any given road is the 85th percentile of what drivers actually do.

mike_d
3 replies
1d18h

Speed limits in California are capped at 65 mph by state law (or 55 mph for undivided roads). Any agency wanting to set a lower speed limit has to conduct a speed study and cannot set the limit lower than the 85th percentile of measured traffic speeds.

Of course they can skip the speed study, or not repeat it every 5 years as required, but then tickets are effectively unenforceable on that road.

manquer
0 replies
1d16h

While most roads are indeed capped at 65, stretches of I-5 are set to 70 , there is a process for this I believe.

kjkjadksj
0 replies
1d1h

Highways like the 101 are 55mph in some parts. Whats most dangerous about californian freeways are the people with ten feet of metal scrap in the truck bed going 40mph in the middle lane.

KennyBlanken
3 replies
1d18h

No, the proper speed limit is one that is decided based on traffic engineering safety factors such as sight distances, and who else uses that road.

Cities aren't dropping their speed limits to 25 mph for shits and giggles. They're doing it because the odds of a person on foot or bike surviving being hit by a car goes up dramatically when speed drops from 30 to 25. Fatalities drop to nearly zero at 20mph, which is why many dense residential side-streets are 20mph. It also has the nice side effect of discouraging people Waze-slaloming their way through neighborhoods instead of using major routes.

https://nacto.org/publication/city-limits/the-need/designed-...

The whole "make the speed limit what most people are doing" was just auto industry bullshit that helped make our roads even more dangerous to people not in a car or truck.

josephcsible
1 replies
1d18h

It also has the nice side effect of discouraging people Waze-slaloming their way through neighborhoods instead of using major routes.

I wish cities would solve this problem by making the main roads faster instead of by making the side streets slower.

vkou
0 replies
1d8h

You aren't solve the problem of "Too many people are driving on the arterials, so traffic is going too slow" by making driving faster and more attractive.

rootusrootus
0 replies
1d3h

The whole "make the speed limit what most people are doing" was just auto industry bullshit that helped make our roads even more dangerous to people not in a car or truck.

Hard disagree. It is simply an observation of reality, and a very useful reminder to anyone who wants to waste time and resources putting different numbers on signs. You have to actually engineer the roads for the speeds you want, and I get that it's more expensive than just painting new signs and telling your constituents how much you're trying to help.

We have neighborhoods where cars cannot pass without one giving way and pulling off into the parking area. Is it inconvenient? Sure, sometimes, very much so. But you know what? People drive damn slow. Nobody cuts through the neighborhood to save time when traffic on the arterial road is congested. It matters not one bit what the speed limit signs say (there aren't any, actually), because road design solved the problem neatly.

estebank
0 replies
1d17h

If the speed limit that was deemed safe for an area is lower than the 85th percentile driver speed, then that road is poorly designed. It should instead be redesigned such that people slow down themselves, regardless of what the sign says.

notatoad
7 replies
1d16h

10% slower on a 30-minute journey is 3 minutes. if i'm in the back of a taxi, i'm on my phone or reading a book or something. getting there 10% slower really just doesn't matter.

humans drive fast becuase when they're late it makes them feel like they're doing something to solve their problem, but the time savings are almost always inconsequential.

drivebyhooting
5 replies
1d10h

Hard disagree. Time savings from speeding comes from discontinuities like beating traffic lights.

Also 3 minutes is huge if you’re almost late to a 30 minute private lesson.

amanda99
2 replies
1d5h

discontinuities like beating traffic lights

Sometimes you beat them, sometimes you don't. It's not always in your favor, it averages out.

drivebyhooting
0 replies
1d3h

The average of gain and neutral should still be a gain.

aeonik
0 replies
1d3h

This is only true if they are random, which they aren't.

You can also pay attention to them, and learn the cycle lengths, timing patterns, and pedestrian patterns.

scotty79
0 replies
1d5h

If you are almost late and driving then you are late. Do better next time.

dazc
0 replies
1d6h

If you arrive on time you're already late. I think a lot of problems arise from people trying to optimise their journey time so they can leave at the last minute. Any small inconvenience then leads to road rage.

dpkirchner
0 replies
1d3h

It's probably not even 3 minutes -- it depends at least as much on how many red lights you hit.

Karrot_Kream
3 replies
1d21h

Honestly as a cyclist who takes Waymo, all the Waymos I've seen are much nicer to cyclists than any human driver. Most human drivers in SF either buzz past the 3 ft legal limit going 15 mph over (good luck when their mirror taps you at 40 mph) to try and overtake the cyclist or they'll just edge the cyclist out any time there's space to merge into the lane. Waymos usually give cyclists the whole lane comfortably and take time to merge out properly.

(I've read comments that if you're on a skateboard this isn't true but I've never used a skateboard in SF so I don't know much about the experience.)

Sometimes I wish I could load my bike into a Waymo. I hit a flat yesterday and left my replacement tube at home and it would have been so much nicer if I could have loaded my bike into the car and gotten a ride home.

ssl-3
0 replies
1d19h

I used to work with a guy who liked cycling, and liked doing it light and in open, fairly rural areas near a city.

He didn't carry tools or spare parts. He'd just summon an appropriate Uber to his location and get a ride home home with his bike if he had an issue.

kjkjadksj
0 replies
1d1h

What I found is a hack for cycling on LA streets is just taking the entire lane. It makes it feel like there are actually bike lanes everywhere. It forces the drivers to pass by merging vs squeezing you out. They honk and cuss no matter what you do so you might as well do what makes you most safe and visible to other traffic.

drozycki
0 replies
1d19h

You probably can (although I haven’t tried). The trunk is accessible and you can flip down the seats and ride in the front.

xnx
0 replies
1d7h

Waymo has mounting evidence from millions of driven miles that the presence of their vehicles makes the roads overall safer.

tanvach
0 replies
1d22h

That's quite true, but still surprisingly human like to me when compared to, say, Tesla FSD. It will also take longer to call one due to less supply.

If we want nice, relaxing ride with no time pressure then we call a Waymo. Uber is still our go to if we are in a rush.

IamLoading
0 replies
1d22h

it boggles my mind. why this isnt talked more.

6gvONxR4sf7o
0 replies
1d18h

Human ride shares drive so wildly they make me sick like half the time. Never happened in a waymo. Yeah it's a bit slower, but everyone always overestimates the gains from driving so fast. We all have to stop at the same red lights, or get in the same lines for the stop sign, even if you get to the line way faster. I'm happy to get there 30s later for a smooth ride.

RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u
47 replies
1d21h

- Consistently [...] clean [...]

I don't expect this to hold true once Waymo become generally available, alas.

dventimi
42 replies
1d20h

I do. It'll be easier to keep the fleet on a cleaning schedule, and won't be left to the whims of individuals.

billjings
15 replies
1d20h

I have a good friend who's a Lyft driver. According to him, all drivers are rated on cleanliness by passengers; if you're dinged for a weird smell, there are lasting financial consequences (even if it was for reasons outside of your control, e.g. using a Lyft provided rental while repairing from a traffic accident).

We'll see how Waymo handles it! It will definitely be Waymo's problem to solve, though.

underyx
6 replies
1d19h

Their policy from an email sent out Oct 2023:

Many of our riders choose Waymo for the clean and consistent vehicle we offer. To ensure every rider gets this experience, we’ll be applying a vehicle cleaning fee for riders who leave a mess behind in the vehicle, such as vomit, excessive trash, and smoking odors.

For those that self-report their mess during their ride (not including smoking), the fee will be $50. For issues that go unreported, we’ll charge riders $100 for the first violation and increase the fee for subsequent violations. Repeat trash and smoking related violations may also impact your account standing.
elefanten
3 replies
1d16h

That’s an awesome policy. Compare to car share services (in SF.. apples to apples) such as Gig Car and Getaround which allow unsupervised general access (i.e. no driver there to witness car treatment)… those are generally pigsties. Blunt ash all over the dashboard, used kleenexes in the door handles and cupholders, trash on the floor. It always blew my mind that the perpetrators weren’t fined into the dirt. Good for Waymo.

m_fayer
2 replies
1d10h

Considering that I’m in a social bubble of considerate people all of whom wouldn’t leave a single bottle cap in a car, this makes me despair at how people must be outside of my bubble.

vkou
0 replies
1d8h

A very small percentage of people will trash a clean environment.

A much larger percentage of people will add trash to an already trashed environment.

Jcampuzano2
0 replies
1d4h

I'd say the vast majority of people don't litter or trash things, but the few that do ruin things for everyone. It only takes a few bad apples (on in this case trashy people) to ruin something for everyone else.

Its like living with 4 roommates, but one of them leaves their shit everywhere. It could make the whole place look unkept for everyone else.

And because we generally don't want to pick up after other peoples shit/mess things may be left trashy for a long time before anything gets cleaned.

guiambros
1 replies
1d15h

Plus there's a camera in the car. Pretty easy to keep riders accountable, and solve any dispute.

Compare that to other car sharing options (e.g. Zipcar, where cars are usually a mess, but there's no way to keep users accountable).

ajb
0 replies
1d6h

Hmm zipcars in my area (London) are usually clean.

RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u
4 replies
1d20h

I think the difference is that as an individual driver you have an incentive to keep your car clean, so that Lyft continues to dispatch riders to you. For Waymo the selective pressure is less direct and also spread across their entire fleet. They can accept a level of dirtiness, given some probability that the rider would reject the car x cost of rider requesting a (partial) refund x etc. etc.

More cynically, there are simply too many people that won't take care of "public" property. If every 3rd rider (exaggerated for rhetorical purposes) trashes the car, it's gonna be dirty no matter what.

klipt
2 replies
1d19h

Assuming the cars have internal cameras they should be able to surcharge riders who trash the cars.

KennyBlanken
1 replies
1d18h

That doesn't cover all the normal cleaning needed just from people being in the cars, on top of environmental stuff (sand, dirt, mud, leaf debris, pollen...)

Like others said: the second they have run drivers out, the cars will stop getting cleaned obsessively because you won't have a choice.

Same thing that happened when Lyft and Uber when they ran the taxi industry out of business.

Same thing that happened when Zipcar was established. Cars went from being spotless and well maintained to damaged, dirty, and half the dash being lit up.

dventimi
0 replies
1d7h

you won't have a choice

I will have a choice. I will choose one of the competitors.

Same thing that happened when Lyft and Uber when they ran the taxi industry out of business

There's still a taxicab industry in San Francisco. It became better after competing with Lyft and Uber.

dventimi
0 replies
1d7h

I don't know how many people there are who won't take care of public property, but whatever it is I doubt it's 1 in 3.

dventimi
2 replies
1d7h

I haven't used Lyft in awhile but as an Uber rider what I can tell you is, if that company has a similar policy, it hasn't worked for me. The quality and cleanliness of the vehicle, and the quality of the driving, has been vastly inferior for me in San Francisco than Waymo has been.

Jcampuzano2
1 replies
1d4h

I travel a lot for work so use Lyft a lot and I can say the same. Its not every time, but maybe 1 in 10 times I'll get in a car that smells like absolute shit, smoke odor, unclean, etc.

I think theres a stigma against reporting drivers so most people don't, but then that leaves the people who don't care about these policies to continue giving people bad experiences.

dventimi
0 replies
1d3h

I feel that. With about that same frequency, I encounter a vehicle or a driver or driving that's just dreadful. But, I don't report it or even ding the driver because I feel like that's a hard job that I don't wanna do, and I feel bad. I dunno, maybe I should.

Alupis
12 replies
1d20h

By this logic public transportation should be the cleanest of them all. But, it is unfortunately far from that.

cyberax
8 replies
1d19h

Public transit is actually pretty clean. The main problem is that they can't refuse to board disruptive passengers, who just trash everything around them. Waymo has cameras inside, so they can fine/ban you if you litter.

The driverless cars can also, well, drive themselves to a cleaning center during the night-time when it won't affect the income generation.

Another interesting possible feature is to redesign cars to be more easily cleanable. Driverless cars can dispense with the central console, steering wheel and pedals, with simple hard plastic covered in detachable covering. Even the seats can be made detachable.

alex_lav
4 replies
1d19h

Unsure where you’ve lived but in Philadelphia/New York/LA/SF/Seattle/Portland public transit is pretty disgusting, troublesome passengers or not.

JumpCrisscross
2 replies
1d17h

in Philadelphia/New York/LA/SF/Seattle/Portland public transit is pretty disgusting

In New York right now. Subway stations are dinghy. But the cars themselves are fine. Hop on the Metro-North or LIRR and they're on par with European cleanliness standards. (If not behavioural.)

pclmulqdq
0 replies
1d3h

If you think the cars in NYC are clean, look under the seats. LIRR and Metro-North are OK, but also not exactly clean.

European trains are far cleaner.

kjkjadksj
0 replies
1d1h

In LA county the newer lrt is fine. The old purple and red car trains though are disgusting even when they are clean. Theres usually a constant unpleasant background smell, halfway between stale cigarette and old puke, the cars are usually hot as hell causing everyone to sweat, and sometimes the already quite poor and noisy ventilation is off entirely in the traincar. It also doesn’t help that the aesthetic is beige and brown 90s style, which makes it even more dirty looking than the newer grey and stainless interiors. Most of the stations are overdue for a power washing. Especially down in the tracking thats full of trash and pee. Its not bad enough to be a deal breaker to me even with the occasional tweaker actively smoking some rock, but still its not pleasant.

toast0
1 replies
1d12h

Public transit is actually pretty clean. The main problem is that they can't refuse to board disruptive passengers, who just trash everything around them.

They can. My local state operated ferry plays an announcement on every ride that if you harass the staff, they will issue a no trespass order banning you from the service for 60 days. Violating the order is criminal tresspassing.

Of course, enforcement isn't easy, and confronting passengers to issue the orders isn't easy, and both can contribute to confusion and delay. It's a little easier to do on a ferry vs a bus because there's more staff.

If you're looking for easy clean surfaces, you could go for police car backseats. Not very comfortable from the looks of them, but very amenable to cleaning.

cyberax
0 replies
1d

They can. My local state operated ferry plays an announcement on every ride that if you harass the staff, they will issue a no trespass order banning you from the service for 60 days. Violating the order is criminal tresspassing.

I might believe that for ferries, they have personnel for that.

Our local bus drivers were told that fentanyl fumes are not harmful, and that asking the state to do anything about junkies smoking _on_ _the_ _bus_ is systemic racism or something.

kjkjadksj
0 replies
1d1h

Its not the refusal of certain groups of people that causes the cleanliness issue. Its the fact the bus doesn’t see a custodian until its out of service. The difference in cleanliness between poor and dirty areas and rich and clean areas of a city always comes down to investment in routine custodial service vs any behavioral difference. Rich people litter just as much, more sometimes knowing theres someone to clean it up.

JumpCrisscross
1 replies
1d20h

public transportation should be the cleanest of them all

Privately operated public transport (e.g. jitneys and ferries) frequently are when positioned at a premium, as Waymo is.

Alupis
0 replies
1d20h

This is counter to my personal experiences - but I'm certain it does depend on location/region.

dventimi
0 replies
1d7h

Yes because a $3 ride on a public bus is exactly like a $23 ride in a Waymo car.

akira2501
10 replies
1d20h

The metric will be "cost of time spent cleaning" / "cost of sending out a dirty car." If this ratio is > 1 the "recommended cleaning schedule" will be the lowest priority item in the entire fleet.

alooPotato
7 replies
1d20h

The cost of cleaning goes way down when you do it in bulk at a service center rather than individual lyft/uber drivers trying to do it. A standardized car also helps.

akira2501
6 replies
1d20h

If you can incorporate the cost of large horizontal demand spikes into the off hours and you can find cheap enough labor to fill it, perhaps.

The time spent travelling out of service, in cleaning, and back into service are all lost opportunities. Hopefully you can clean a very large number of cars in a very short period of time.

The cars may be standard. The messes, obviously, will not be.

mgillett54
2 replies
1d19h

The cars already need to go out of services to recharge, they can just clean the cars while charging

akira2501
1 replies
1d19h

The have multiple charging centers strategically placed throughout the city. These seem to currently only have security guards there. The logistics of having cleaning staff there and trying to match their schedule to expected charging times is probably not very difficult but also not very reliable either.

The win they do have, that I did not consider is, they have cameras _in_ the car. So visible cleanliness is something they can manually check before and after the rid and schedule for service if required; however, it currently seems that this requires the vehicle to go to the larger centralized maintenance facility, which I guessing takes quit a bit more time than the auxiliary charge only lots.

Not trying to be super pessimistic, but mixing distributed autonomous operations with centralized manual service, especially in an urban environment, seems fraught with novel challenges.

mlyle
0 replies
1d17h

A. If the car needs cleaning acutely because of a mess, it can go to the centralized location, and top up charge a bit in the process.

B. If the car is reaching the point it needs cleaning without an acute mess, it can go to the centralized location next time it needs a charge.

C. They can also elect to have people at the charging centers at off-hours to clean a subset of cars, to reduce the amount of B you need to do.

kaibee
1 replies
1d17h

Once you have a large enough fleet of roughly the same shape, it starts to make sense to build some automated cleaning thing. I'm picturing like, a long tube with vacuum ports in it that can just be shoved in by a robot arm to vacuum each seat. Unless there's a wet mess, that'll basically get it 90% of the way there.

Robotbeat
0 replies
1d15h

I think we'll see such self-driving taxi interiors optimized for staying clean and then ease of cleaning. At the limit, think like a stainless steel kitchen that can just be sprayed down. Or these sort of self-cleaning public bathrooms: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/z81KtV9w5fo?feature=share

alooPotato
0 replies
1d13h

The cars will all charge overnight. Clean them there. Getting to and from the charging stations / cleaning depots is roughly free. It’s just the electricity which is like 5 cents a mile roughly. Utilization at night is really low anyways so not much opportunity cost.

The overall point being way more efficient to clean than an Uber.

williamcotton
1 replies
1d19h

That assumes a specific low budget market and does not apply to all segments.

OrigamiPastrami
0 replies
1d19h

So you're saying there will be a higher price point for the users that want a clean ride?

skywhopper
1 replies
1d15h

Just wait until they 1) have a near monopoly and/or 2) decide it’s time to actually make a profit. Because it won’t last either way.

dventimi
0 replies
1d7h

That might be a long wait. There's no particular reason a monopoly need appear in this market. If it does, that will be a matter of public policy at it always is. That would be unfortunate, as it always is, but it would also be larger and different problem that goes well beyond this particular market.

tanvach
0 replies
1d19h

If they keep the 10% mark up over competitors maybe there is still hope.

primedteam
0 replies
1d19h

They have some rider rules around keeping the car clean (screenshot link below). I'm not sure if they are enforced to this level but they do have at least one camera in the car (above the middle rear seat).

https://i.imgur.com/vCRvWOc.jpeg

mike_d
0 replies
1d19h

Waymo has a partnership with Avis Budget Group to use their fleet cleaning and refueling facilities. I imagine if a user reports a dirty car someone can pop in on a camera, check it out, and divert the car to a depot.

mbrameld
0 replies
1d18h

I suspect they visually inspect the cars after each ride and send them to the depot if there's something that needs to be cleaned up. There are several cameras inside the car giving a good view of the interior.

fhub
29 replies
1d20h

You can choose a soothing music play list in the car and it automatically resumes in the next ride

Oh wow! There is a non zero chance that was implemented because of some feedback I provided as a trusted tester many months ago. I napped my son in them a lot when they were free and just spent my time thinking up things they should do and reporting them in app.

ssl-3
22 replies
1d19h

Man. My daughter's head would sometimes detach from her body and fly around the room by itself.

Strapping her down in a car seat and taking her for a drive usually rectified the situation.

I look forward to a future where this process can become more automated.

(/s, sorta)

KennyBlanken
12 replies
1d19h

It is automated. Has been for many decades. Hit up ebay and search for "swyngomatic." There are ones that are spring-powered and more modern ones use a couple of d-cells (or a wall wart if you're enterprising.)

That and a white noise machine (set it low, their ear canals are very straight so they're sensitive to noise, although babies get used to noise around them given time and sleep through it, which is more practical / useful.

You can also just do what people have done for tens of thousands of years: wrap your kid against your body and go about your business.

Putting your kid in a car (self driving or not) is putting them in the most dangerous situation they could possibly be in - car crashes are the number one cause of death for kids (in the US.)

willcipriano
7 replies
1d16h

Putting your kid in a car (self driving or not) is putting them in the most dangerous situation they could possibly be in - car crashes are the number one cause of death for kids (in the US.)

It would follow that since no children die each year playing in active volcanos that's the safest thing they could possibly do. Kindergartens should be filled with magma.

wdh505
6 replies
1d11h

Serious preventable accidents happen at 60+ MPH. Generally a slow 20-45 mph (35 mph average) drive around the neighborhood is much safer as there are almost no "serious" accidents.

Source: an organization with a fleet installed some driver tracking gps's and looked at the data over a year or two.

badpun
5 replies
1d6h

Those stats are probably very different for babies, who are more fragile and could get seriously hurt even at lower speeds.

throwaway7ahgb
3 replies
1d5h

Where are the stats on infant motor deaths where the baby is secured correctly and car speed is <= 40mph?

hedora
1 replies
1d3h

Most car seats are improperly installed. If you have one, get its installation checked by a professional.

In the SF Bay Area, you can have CHP check it for free. The full-time job of the officer that checked ours is investigating accidents where kids in car seats died. Almost all the child fatalities around here are due to improper car seat installation.

We had it dangerously wrong. Before the appointment, I read the manual twice and spent something like 60 minutes installing it. The seat used the latch system with a top anchor, it was a new car and we had a top-ranked car seat. All the straps were connected up correctly. During installation, I sat on it with all of my weight, pushed against the ceiling of the car with my back, pulled the tightening strap until it felt like it'd break, and then pulled harder. The straps were still too loose. I'm not small.

Our last car seat had a failure mode where one of the latch straps would just self-release every 1000 miles or so. I'm not sure if it was user error or not. It happened twice.

After that experience, I think part of the certification process for car seats and cars should involve proving that the majority of people that have never installed a car seat (i.e., first time parents) can get it right on the first try without reading the manual. The test group should include people with physical impairments, and should include at least a dozen popular car models going back a decade. (Car certification should be the same, but with multiple car seat models.)

throwaway7ahgb
0 replies
4h55m

100% this should be mandatory reading for all new parents.

Since you mention only SF, for anyone else who happens to read this, just go to your local Fire Department. They will 100% either know how to secure it for you or guide you to the correct place.

smcin
0 replies
12h38m

I found some NHTSA NCSA stats and posted them above.

- "where the baby is secured correctly" => "Restrained", <1 age group and 1-to-3 age group

- car speed is <= 40mph : NHTSA does not separate out accident speed, or separate residential roads from freeways

smcin
0 replies
12h44m

Apparently the NHTSA stats aren't different for babies (likely because babies are usually heavily restrained, and probably brought out in a car less e.g. don't need school runs). Below are some US NHTSA publications with detailed answers, but here's a loose paraphrase a) it's dangerous being a nonoccupant in a driveway: nontraffic backover/backing crashes caused ~460 deaths in 2008 (~300 nontraffic + 160 traffic), see [3]. b) reported fatalities per year age of child seem to be roughly constant, i.e. babies do not exhibit a higher rate of traffic deaths (probably because they're typically restrained in carseats). See [1] p5: Table 1. Passenger Vehicle Occupants Involved in Fatal Traffic Crashes, by Survival Status and Age Group, and Restraint Use, 2021. In fact, the peak is for children passengers 13+ or 15+, not babies. c) (These do not report crash speed, or separate freeway accidents from residential roads (posters here asking about "a drive around the neighborhood"), and you'd expect people would drive babies slightly slower.) NHTSA only separately reports nontraffic accidents (e.g. parking lots). Or non-crash deaths such as hyperthermia.

[1] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... "Traffic Safety Facts, 2021 Data, Children, DOT HS 813-456"

Key Findings • Of the 42,939 traffic fatalities in 2021 in the United States, 1,184 (3%) were children 14 and younger. • An estimated 162,298 children were injured in traffic crashes in 2021, a 17-percent increase from 139,058 in 2020. • Of the 26,325 passenger vehicle occupants killed in 2021 in traffic crashes, 863 (3%) were children. Of these 863 child passenger vehicle occupants killed in traffic crashes, restraint use was known for 769, of whom 308 (40%) were unrestrained. • Of the 1,184 children killed in traffic crashes, an estimated 294 (25%) were killed in alcohol-impaired-driving crashes in 2021.

[2] From NHTSA: NCSA (National Center for Statistics and Analysis) Motor Vehicle Traffic Crash Data Resource Page https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/#/

[3] "DOT HS 811 144, November 2008, FATALITIES AND INJURIES IN MOTOR VEHICLE BACKING CRASHES" https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

A backover is a crash which occurs when a driver reverses into and injures or kills a nonoccupant such as a pedestrian or a bicyclist. Backovers can occur either on a public roadway or not on a public roadway, i.e., in a driveway or in a parking lot. The former are called traffic backovers and the latter nontraffic backovers. There are also “other backing crashes” that are not backovers, i.e., they do not involve a pedestrian or other nonoccupant, that occur when, for example, a driver backs into a tree or pole or when a driver backs out of a driveway or parking space and is struck by another vehicle. Together, backover crashes and other backing crashes are referred to as backing crashes."

Look at the table on page iv.: Fatalities and Injuries, by Type of Crash, Type of Vehicle

bluejekyll
3 replies
1d12h

Something every new parent should learn (which some parts of car rides mimic), learn about the 4th trimester. Then learn the 5 S’s to mimic the womb:

Swaddle - wrap the baby

Side/stomache - position like the womb

Shush - white noise

Sway/swing - walking or bouncing

Suck - a finger, a sucker, etc

These were a life saver for my son. Most nights it was just swaddle + sway, on bad nights it took all 5. I think the reason cars work for so many baby’s is that car seats, the rhythm, the white noise from the car, etc… these all do the same thing.

pc86
1 replies
1d3h

Our first is just out of this period and it really was pretty rough. It look us a month or so to come across the 5 S's and it made a world of difference.

We also somehow got very very lucky in that he didn't need to be transitioned out of the swaddle, he just grew to dislike it so one night we just stopped cold turkey and it was fine. We've had friends that have had to do the one arm in / one arm out, swaddle the legs, etc. and transition over days or weeks to get any sleep at all.

bluejekyll
0 replies
1d2h

My son would always wriggle around until his hands were up next to his face (this is like 11 years ago). I started swaddling him in that position. We had an ultrasound picture that showed his hand in a similar position, so I guess it carried over.

_zoltan_
0 replies
23h25m

I disagree about giving them anything to suck on for the night. IIRC there's even research that could lead to late speech or trouble with speech later on.

unshavedyak
5 replies
1d18h

My father said the same for me. To this day, sleeping in the car is the easiest sleep i get. It's so soothing. Which is problematic considering i'm the sole driver for my household hah.

huppeldepup
4 replies
1d13h

Has anyone ever attempted putting a bed on actuators to emulate a driving vehicle?

toast0
0 replies
1d12h

I swear I've seen a thing for a car seat... But not for an adult.

throwaway7ahgb
0 replies
1d5h

There are many cribs that do this, here is the top of the line: $1000+ : SNOO

czl
0 replies
22h53m

Many car seats are removable and have carry handles so it is possible to hang them and have them moving like a pendulum also spinning. For safety use a strong strap (like for a hammock) and hang just an inch or few cm or so above the ground and make sure what it is hanging from can not topple or come crashing down.

sheepscreek
2 replies
1d5h

Man. My daughter's head would sometimes detach from her body and fly around the room by itself.

Is this satire, or am I missing something (going by the serious replies)? Not sure I would ever use this phrasing to describe anything serious - much less about my own child.

throwaway7ahgb
1 replies
1d5h

Search "Why is my baby crying bloody murder" aka witching hour.

If you've never experienced this, you are very lucky.

sheepscreek
0 replies
1d

Ah, thanks - So satire it is. Thank goodness my kid didn’t scream like that as a baby. Although we’ve had our own share of unusual challenges - she was/is a loud crier and could go on for 20-40 mins in the middle of the night. Not murder screams but still loud enough that my Apple Watch would warn me of prolonged exposure to loud noise :-/

thepasswordis
4 replies
1d17h

It’s been that way for several years.

fhub
1 replies
1d16h

Happy to be corrected. Zero chance it was implemented due to my feedback.

throwaway8481
0 replies
1d10h

I believe in you.

tialaramex
0 replies
1d10h

This also just makes sense when you conceive these taxis not as "Some other person's car" (as they would be with Uber, or with a conventional private hire service) but as interchangeable units. Of course they should all share state and so it makes sense that resuming the music carries on from where it left off.

thebruce87m
0 replies
1d5h

Several years is many months

jliptzin
0 replies
1d4h

You should patent the idea, and then sue anyone who independently comes up with it.

acchow
17 replies
1d20h

Does that 10% markup account for the Uber/lyft driver tip?

MaxHoppersGhost
14 replies
1d13h

You guys are tipping your Uber drivers? IIRC you couldn’t even tip until a few years ago.

dventimi
13 replies
1d6h

Well, you can now, and I do. It's hard enough living in California and especially San Francisco, and I believe being in the service industry here is no picnic. Tipping is the least I can do.

abecedarius
12 replies
1d3h

I know this feels right, but introducing tip culture into a market currently free of it is bad. Where there's a norm of tipping, it doesn't make the servers more money than where there is not; what you should expect it to do is to decrease the quoted price and increase the variance of income to the servers. And incidentally increase the mental overhead for everyone, increase the artificiality of interactions, etc.

dventimi
11 replies
1d3h

I know this feels right, but introducing tip culture into a market currently free of it is bad

I couldn't possibly agree with this less. My view is that "it depends." Level salaries in San Francisco and I'll consider not tipping. Until then, I'm comfortable with my choices.

abecedarius
10 replies
1d3h

Do what you wish, of course. But you seem to think this helps to level income, given the "level salaries" bit. What I'm saying is it doesn't. Markets equilibrate; they adjust when the form of payment changes.

I'd agree that after tipping culture is definitely established in a field, then stiffing someone is unfortunately bad, unless you can coordinate on reversing this harmful cultural norm. This is just very different from not helping to establish the harmful cultural norm, which is a positive, prosocial good; I believe you are doing the opposite of a prosocial good here, without realizing it. Of course I'm a fallible human.

dventimi
9 replies
1d2h

Well. I don't want to speak for other people. If I were an Uber driver I personally would like to make more money rather than less, and if that happened with tips I wouldn't grumble too much about it. Maybe that's just me.

abecedarius
5 replies
1d1h

Huh. Do you also think U.S. employees would be better off if Social Security had been created with a 12.4% tax paid by the employer, instead of a 12.4% tax paid half by the employer and half by the employee?

dventimi
4 replies
1d

Non sequitur

abecedarius
3 replies
23h49m

Sigh. OK, I tried.

dventimi
2 replies
22h56m

Did you? You asked a question about Social Security policy, in a thread that's arguably about individual tipping practices. Perhaps you regard the former as an illustrative thought experiment which helps reason about the latter via shared principles, but it's a shame you didn't elaborate on it because as it stands, I regard it as a non sequitur.

abecedarius
1 replies
22h6m

It's irritating to be accused of not engaging, when you've twice ignored my main point that expectation of tips lowers the posted price and makes life harder for all of the drivers/servers. Making life harder is not a benefit. I tried to probe for what is not coming through to you this third time, with another case where the legibility of a cost is shifted to no benefit.

Not going to continue here.

dventimi
0 replies
21h27m

It's irritating to be accused of not engaging

I can see how that might be irritating. Good thing I haven't done that.

you've twice ignored my main point that expectation of tips lowers the posted price and makes life harder for all of the drivers/servers

That's not a point. That's a claim, which you have not persuaded me to accept.

I tried to probe for what is not coming through to you this third time, with another case where the legibility of a cost is shifted to no benefit.

If only you had been clear that that's what you were doing, I would've told you that what's not coming through is the casual relation between tips and wages. You seem to believe tips necessarily suppress wages. I see no particular reason to believe that's true.

Not going to continue here.

Suit yourself.

kjkjadksj
2 replies
1d1h

I think you both are speaking over eachother. You say on individual terms tipping makes sense and it does make sense in a vacuum like that. The other commenter is speaking in macro terms though. Having tips means theres less pressure to actually raise wages. It also fractures labor. You will have people getting no tips who really want higher wages and then people who are tipped well and comfortable with the status quo. This is a big issue with the restaurant industry; servers and bartenders in big cities might make most of their take from tips yet back of house struggles on the same base hourly wage since they aren’t tipped. Incentives are such that a high tipped server doesn’t want tipping to be replaced by wage increases sustained by menu price increases, since they will be splitting that now with back of house or less well tipped workers and will be making net less.

dventimi
0 replies
1d

Well, from my first comment I have been speaking on micro terms, since I've been speaking for myself, an individual. I'm not speaking on the macro level because as an individual I have little power to make restaurants, say, pay higher wages, or Uber pay higher rates, or lower wages or lower rates. As an individual, whether or not I tip isn't going to change that one iota.

Now, if you want to talk about organizing collectively beyond the individual level, to use political and market power to make structural changes that raise wages but curb tipping, well that's a different topic that's worth discussing. But, absent that, I'm going to keep tipping.

abecedarius
0 replies
23h50m

Yeah, I was thinking of bringing up the restaurant experience too and how hard it is to begin to fix this there. I just try to keep my comments short.

thesandlord
0 replies
1d20h

In my experience, after tip Lyft/Uber are more expensive. The exception is during surges when Waymo's price shoots up like crazy.

jessriedel
0 replies
1d19h

Uber/Lyft drivers only get tips on 15-30% of rides, so tips are like ~3% of revenue. If you choose to tip, then prices are going to be very similar between Waymo and Uber/Lyft.

paxys
16 replies
1d20h

From my experience prices for Waymo are at least double that of an equivalent Lyft/Uber ride and wait times are usually 20+ minutes. It is a great novelty but nowhere near where it needs to be to handle real scale.

laluser
9 replies
1d20h

This won’t last long. Waymo has a treasure chest waiting to be deployed as soon as they start expanding more.

lern_too_spel
5 replies
1d20h

It will be more profitable for them to deploy cars to new cities at a premium than to deploy them to existing cities to capture more of those cities' markets. We won't see affordable driverless taxi service for many years unless competition appears. After Uber and Cruise imploded, I don't have much hope for that.

mechagodzilla
3 replies
1d19h

Is that true? There's a ton of overhead required to have any presence in a city (all of the fueling/cleaning/repairing/storing/etc depots) that you need to amortize over lots of cars. If they can keep the cars busy, I think they'd much rather have 5,000 cars in one city than 500 cars in 10 cities (with 10x the overhead).

lern_too_spel
2 replies
1d19h

They have a big upfront cost to add a new city, but once they add it, their marginal revenue per car will be higher there (partly because they can be sure to keep those cars busy and partly because they can charge a higher premium).

They have to prepare the infrastructure anyway in all the cities to get to the scale they want to get to, but each new car built is going to be sent to the least scaled city so far.

senordevnyc
1 replies
1d13h

Does that make sense from a consumer brand perspective though? If everytime I check Waymo there's no capacity or it's super expensive, pretty soon I won't even bother checking it.

lern_too_spel
0 replies
1d1h

It's worked so far. People are willing to pay the premium.

cyberax
0 replies
1d19h

Cruise is still here, they just stopped their unattened car testing.

crazygringo
1 replies
1d20h

I genuinely expect that there will be a point at which manufacturing becomes the bottleneck.

That's going to be a lot of cars to build.

I really wonder if and when they expand to a lot more car manufacturers and models, just to avoid supply chain issues.

slimsag
0 replies
1d14h

I live 15 minutes from downtown Phoenix, and it took them 2 years to expand to my location. Over 4 years after Waymo launched beta testing here..

Waymo cannot take me on the freeway (backstreets only)

Waymo cannot go to the entire city of Peoria, Surprise, Goodyear..

Waymo cannot go to the entire western half of the state.

If you live 30 minutes from the downtown city centre, there is a 30% chance Waymo can go there. Waymo serves higher-end areas only today (Scottsdale, Tempe, Chandler) - if you live in a poorer area, no Waymo for you.

I have family who lives in Scottsdale and Surprise, Waymo can't take me there.

My dentist is less than a mile from my house, Waymo can't take me there - but can take me to a fashion mall in chandler.

Is it better than Uber/Lyft? Experience wise, sure, but their snail's pace expansion is disheartening. Not to mention the freeway issue.

dventimi
0 replies
1d7h

If they expand their supply, I would expect that to lower prices, not raise them.

jessriedel
3 replies
1d19h

Doesn’t match my experience in SF. I see 10% premium over Uber/Lyft, with Lyft and Waymo displaying wait times that are ~3 slower, but actual wait times are the same. (Uber consistently underestimates in my experience.)

sbuttgereit
2 replies
1d19h

I also haven't had Waymo assign a car and then decide to assign it elsewhere sometime before arrival.

I have had Uber/Lyft cars that were going to come to me and then some time before picking me up, they change their mind and I get to start a new wait for a new car/driver... worse, I've had that happen a few times in a row on some occasions.

I've seen more in the 10% premium ballpark for most Waymo rides (for just the base fare, excluding tips). There was a very stormy day once where the price shot up pretty high very quickly, but that's not the norm I see.

sbuttgereit
1 replies
1d14h

As an aside, Waymo does have a feature which allows you to add stops that, if within certain parameters like the trip being within 30 minutes (I believe) that it kinda treats it as one trip which is rather cheaper than multiple independent trips.

So, for example, I had to pick up my kid from school the other day and found out last minute I wouldn't have a car. So I booked a Waymo, selected my destination, and then also selected that it would be "round trip" in the app. The car got me to the school and an option in the Waymo app for "ready for pickup" was available; the car left after it dropped me off. After my kid came out, I clicked that ready button and another car came to the school and took us home.

The price for the round trip was just over $20. The price for two independent trips would have been about $10 more (if I'm calculating & remembering correctly). So another interesting feature on the pricing discussion which, to my knowledge, isn't an option with the other ridesharing/taxi businesses.

jessriedel
0 replies
1d12h

This feature exists on Uber and Lyft too, although iirc it’s buried underneath some ads

whimsicalism
0 replies
1d12h

in my experience the prices are competitive to 10% more and wait times are 5-12 minutes longer than Uber/lyft

the comparisons are worse if i am coming from the outer richmond

wepple
0 replies
1d18h

nowhere near where it needs to be to handle real scale.

This is a phenomenally solvable problem. And it’ll scale without requiring more humans to train and monitor.

ra7
10 replies
1d21h

Rides have usually 10% mark up over Lyft and Uber.

Waymo says they are a premium service like Uber Black because they have nice cars (Jaguar I-Pace), plus the novelty and safety of being driverless. They’re not trying to be competitive with Uber X or shared rides for in their current form.

gnicholas
9 replies
1d20h

How nice is the backseat of a Waymo compared to an Accord?

paulryanrogers
7 replies
1d19h

It has been explained to me that cars are an extension of ones personality, a social signal, and a hobby. So for some apparently what kind one rides in is significant.

michaelt
6 replies
1d5h

I'm pretty sure I don't get any "social signal" from using fancy taxis. I think you've got to own the vehicle for that to happen.

Much like buying a museum ticket to see a famous painting isn't comparable to owning the same painting.

marssaxman
4 replies
1d

If that were true, I don't know how you could explain the persistence of town car and limousine services.

gnicholas
2 replies
1d

Really? Aren't town cars nicer inside than regular cabs? Limousines tend more in the direction of conspicuous consumption, though I imagine they are also generally more comfortable/clean than less-expensive options. Limos are also not that expensive for some use cases: we once had to get 8 people from NYC to MD, and it turned out that renting a limo was cheaper than us all taking the train or renting a vehicle.

marssaxman
0 replies
23h49m

Likely that is a factor, but people communicate social status and identity in so many different ways, which often appear meaningless or even absurd to people outside their perceived peer group, that I think it would be a mistake to discount the idea. (I recall one person I used to know who certainly did have opinions about the kinds of cars she would and would not prefer to be seen arriving in, regardless of who was driving or who owned the vehicle.)

czl
0 replies
22h42m

generally more comfortable/clean than less-expensive options

Some limos have poor or blocked views of the outside which can trigger motion sickness. I also wonder about their side impact protection and how much testing that gets.

nradov
0 replies
17h10m

Ironically, the actual Lincoln Town Car has been out of production for years.

jyunwai
0 replies
1d4h

Some museums do try to frame memberships as something that is part of one's identity. A museum in my city sells annual memberships with a physical card with nice artwork on it, discounts on tickets (including a discount for a friend), and an invitation to a monthly evening event at the museum that is rather quite nice.

I haven't seen Uber or Lyft effectively go down the route of having their service be a part of a user's identity. But Waymo could make an effort, if they wanted to: they use a distinctive car model, and they could offer incentives to make carpooling with Waymo cheaper (to try and make a user 'known' in their social circle for using the service).

benced
0 replies
1d18h

A little nicer but not something I'd pay for if it wasn't driverless. It's significantly more spacious than a Civic though.

TigeriusKirk
10 replies
1d22h

I'm curious why they can't pick up and drop off at exact locations, as long as the location is in their operating boundaries.

wanderingstan
3 replies
1d22h

In my experience they are very strict about finding a “safe” place to pick up and drop off, which often means turning onto a small side street or looking for a gap in parked cars. They won’t block traffic like a Lyft/Uber driver might.

crazygringo
2 replies
1d20h

They won’t block traffic like a Lyft/Uber driver might.

Wow, then I don't know how they'd ever expand to NYC.

In most areas there's no such thing as a "safe place" that doesn't block traffic.

If there are sides of the road that aren't traffic (or bicycle) lanes, then they're taken up by parking.

Taxis, Ubers, delivery trucks -- literally everything just stops in the street (or bicycle lane) and traffic temporarily goes around it.

mupuff1234
1 replies
1d13h

They'll just have to change the behavior, I assume the current behavior is just out of caution not some technical limit.

crazygringo
0 replies
1h24m

It's because it's illegal to double-park.

Everyone in NYC does it because they have to, but Waymo is obeying the law.

TulliusCicero
1 replies
1d20h

Human drivers are willing to break the law for pick ups and drop offs, and as a society we largely tolerate that as long as it's not egregious in terms of safety or blocking others.

But programming a robot to deliberately break the law is uncomfortable for people to think about.

elsonrodriguez
0 replies
1d2h

This might lead to a beneficial feedback loop for some traffic laws.

vineyardmike
0 replies
1d21h

Because they have courtesy to not block traffic. Anecdotally, drivers are also MUCH more aggressive near them, so I’d be pretty nervous as a pedestrian getting in/out of one near heavy traffic. I’m not handicap in any way, and I’m totally fine walking to the corner of a city block to get in it, in exchange for a much safer ride than an Uber.

I’ve never had it be more than a few hundred feet - usually it’s 2-3 cars away where it can parallel park on the other side of an intersection in the WORST case. Oh I guess they do avoid some of the intense AF hills but I’ve had Uber drivers do the same.

throwaway48476
0 replies
1d21h

They should have flashing lights and stop in the middle of the road like school busses do.

tanvach
0 replies
1d21h

The app forces you to pick locations that the car can park safely (no double parking) that's closest to the requested locations. They can be 1-2 minutes walk.

Not a big deal for us to be honest, except when going to the theaters in SF, where the car can stop a block away in sketchy Tenderloin.

BurningFrog
0 replies
1d22h

When an Uber is near people wave to it, and the driver can stop where they are.

The Waymos probably don't have that kind of social skills.

lopkeny12ko
9 replies
1d19h

Sorry, but any argument that basically boils down to "it's better because I don't have to talk to a driver" is not a real argument. Drivers are people too. Nevermind the fact that you are cheering for people to lose their jobs.

schoen
4 replies
1d19h

Would you accept any historical development that reduced demand for some kind of labor (or human interaction) as potentially positive? There are a lot of those.

(I'm happy to hear if the answer is "yes".)

For example, most kinds of shops were (like jewelry stores today) apparently historically not self-service, so you had to ask the shopkeeper for every item individually, and the shopkeeper would have to retrieve it for you.

Maybe a more direct analogy is that you once had to ask human operators to complete telephone calls for you, and gradually this was replaced with automated switches and direct-dial systems. That has benefits and drawbacks, but I think I appreciate it quite a bit. Do you think it would be better if that change hadn't happened?

lopkeny12ko
3 replies
1d11h

This is not a reasonable comparison.

In Tesla's model, you buy a Tesla, and allow it to operate as a robotaxi when you're not using it. It generates income passively for you. The technology has introduced automation that might have displaced your job responsibility but not your means of generating income.

In Waymo's model, you have completely displaced both the job itself and the means of generating income. This is a strict lose-lose for everyone except Google, who reaps the profit.

senordevnyc
1 replies
1d

Putting aside the fact that Tesla's robotaxi model will likely never actually ship, I don't see how you're not displacing a driver's job by operating your car as a robotaxi instead of letting it sit idle.

Dylan16807
0 replies
19h38m

If the vast majority of the robotaxies are owned by normal households that have 1 or 2 of them, then that's the people owning the means of automated production. Ideally it would be the people that already own taxis getting them upgraded, but it's a lot better than corporate fleets for putting the revenue into the pockets of people.

Dylan16807
0 replies
1d7h

Why is it not a reasonable comparison?

Automated telephone switching fits the latter pattern. The job and the income went away. So the question is valid, would you prefer automated telephone switching was never deployed?

nicksrose7224
2 replies
1d19h

super bad take. by this logic nobody should be excited about any technology whatsoever

Voloskaya
1 replies
1d16h

Many technologies enable some new cool things and in the process automate some stuff.

Here we are talking about paying extra pretty much solely to not have to deal with a human.

konschubert
0 replies
22h55m

Waymos enable fewer families torn apart by car crashes.

tanvach
0 replies
1d19h

It's real for us. We had a ride when the driver wouldn't stop talking and the baby was trying to sleep. Not all people are nice.

perfectstorm
7 replies
1d23h

do you have to tip the 'driver'? jokes aside, i would be happy to take them once the expand to SFO region so i can have a consistent experience.

vineyardmike
3 replies
1d21h

I’d love to take it to the airport, but I imagine it’ll be a mess trying to pull up and park at departures. It’s already incredibly chaotic with the way humans are, and I don’t expect they’ll even pretend to extend any curtesy to a robot.

Maybe I’m wrong though? I think they go to the airport in phoenix, I just haven’t heard any reports on the experience.

ra7
1 replies
1d21h

Allowing Waymo at SFO is a political mess because the airport owned by the city and the city hates robotaxis. Waymo did apply for a permit to operate at SFO, but were denied.

fossuser
0 replies
1d18h

That’s annoying - I hope it gets worked out, that’s the last bit I need to take Waymos exclusively.

JumpCrisscross
0 replies
1d20h

it’ll be a mess trying to pull up and park at departures

I’ve taken it to and from the airport at Phoenix. Pick-up was an in-airport light-rail station to the first stop. Drop-off was right to the curb late night.

tanvach
2 replies
1d21h

Worth trying to sign up now. The waitlist takes a while.

Karrot_Kream
1 replies
1d21h

It's not on a waitlist in SF anymore, Waymo is just open.

tanvach
0 replies
1d18h

Interesting, my wife was still on waitlist in SF last week.

darby_nine
7 replies
1d5h

Wait how do they justify having an even more expensive ride with fewer people to pay? The whole point of cutting the driver out is to save on cost, without that the entire project is no better than uber or lyft (which already overcharges by an arm and a leg)

mensetmanusman
3 replies
1d5h

Initially, automation is always more expensive than cheap labor. That’s why we don’t automate things until human labor becomes more expensive than the ease of automation.

darby_nine
2 replies
1d5h

To some extent this is true, but most of the automation I've witnessed in my lifetime led with direct cost savings. My main conclusion is that waymo's customers are more likely to be scared by other humans than they are to be price sensitive.

lolinder
1 replies
1d5h

most of the automation I've witnessed in my lifetime led with direct cost savings

Direct cost savings to the business or to the customer?

Waymo has been operating at an incredible loss for a very long time. They now have a product that people are willing to pay for and, in fact, find to be more comfortable—from OP's description it's basically a luxury Uber. Further, they expect to not be the only autonomous taxi system forever, competitors will eventually catch up.

Given that, I think it's only rational for them to operate at very high margins for as long as they can before competition drives the prices down. They probably won't come anywhere close to recouping the loss in that interval, but they'll get a head start on it.

josephg
0 replies
1d4h

Yep. They also probably don’t have that many waymo cars yet. I’m sure eventually they hope to blanket the city but for now, I assume they price rides such that supply = demand. If it was so cheap that everyone ordered them, you’d never get a car. That would be a really bad experience for customers and they would bounce. It’s incredibly hard to get someone to try your service a second time if their first experience was negative.

senordevnyc
0 replies
1d1h

without that the entire project is no better than uber or lyft

Obviously not, because consumers appear willing to pay a premium to not have a driver.

scotty79
0 replies
1d5h

You raise the price to reduce the demand to what you can comfortably supply. Price is not a tool of justice. It's a tool for incentivising or disincentivising the customer.

dageshi
0 replies
1d5h

If they priced below human labour they might have their testing licenses revoked due to political pressure. Right now they're still in the testing phase, there's no need to rock the boat by pricing below uber and lyft yet.

diebeforei485
5 replies
1d13h

- Consistently spacious, clean and quiet cars. You know what you'll get. - AC always works and not up to the whim of the driver.

How much of the cars being clean, quiet, and having HVAC working is just because it's new?

A few years down the line the cars will be old (until they're replaced) and won't be as clean or quiet or have reliable AC. It will probably become like aircraft where they prioritize maintenance of safety-critical features but not so much the seat comfort.

There are lots of upsides to not having a driver in the car, but I wouldn't count on the cars always being nice.

dventimi
2 replies
1d7h

A few years down the line the cars will be old

Maybe. Then again, maybe not.

diebeforei485
1 replies
14h39m

A car that's been around a few years is old by definition.

dventimi
0 replies
7h38m

Hard disagree. A car that has been around for three years is not old.

tanvach
0 replies
1d12h

The cars are operated by Waymo, so I have hope it’ll be more well maintained across the fleet.

reedciccio
0 replies
1d11h

My guess is that AC is off because keeping it on increases fuel consumption and that cuts into the driver's tiny profit margins.

Arete314159
4 replies
1d16h

How are the starts / stops? Jerky? I have c-spine issues. That's my main concern.

Why are they more expensive? I hoped they would be cheaper without a driver to compensate.

senordevnyc
1 replies
1d15h

Why are they more expensive?

Likely because they're not pricing based on their costs, but rather what the market will bear.

Although they have a lot of R&D to recoup, so that's a cost.

dventimi
0 replies
1d7h

Also, perhaps it's a consequence of limited supply. If the SF fleet is still just 250 cars that seems quite small to me for a city with a lot of demand for ride services.

whimsicalism
0 replies
1d12h

much smoother than the sf uber teslas that all have jerky regenerative braking on

markerz
0 replies
1d15h

Extremely smooth! I can't comment on the c-spine issues but I'd argue that it's the smoothest driver I've ever experienced. Surely they have some math in their AI driving code that clamps acceleration and jerkiness. It's NOTHING like Tesla Full Self Driving, which I find to be incredibly jerky for both steering and acceleration.

ndesaulniers
3 replies
1d22h

You take ride share with a baby? How does that work, with regards to car seats?

tanvach
2 replies
1d22h

We take an infant car seat and use the European belt routing (or if that fails due to short belts in American cars, American belt routing) to secure to the back seat.

semi-extrinsic
1 replies
1d19h

WTF belt routing? Don't you guys have Isofix over there?

tanvach
0 replies
1d19h

We do, and I have the base with isofix in my own car.

mistercheph
2 replies
1d23h

No chatty driver to disturb our sleeping baby

San Fransisco slave-owning class misanthropy on display.

I'm sorry that the poor tried to talk to you instead of shutting up, and performing his digi-task without disturbing your innocent baby.

Is it any wonder that the same upper-middle class NPC's that treat human beings like machines also (in error) dream of a future where machines will replace human beings?

tdb7893
0 replies
1d22h

Lmao I can't tell if this is satire or not but calling people NPCs always reminds me of this XKCD I once had up in my cubicle. https://xkcd.com/610/

dang
0 replies
1d20h

Yikes, you can't attack another user like that here. We have to ban accounts that do, so please don't do it again.

While I have you: could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait generally? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

bushbaba
1 replies
1d11h

- Rides have usually 10% mark up over Lyft and Uber.

Isn't the whole point of Waymo is that it'll be cheaper than a human driver?

epolanski
0 replies
1d10h

The point is that it's more profitable for who runs the taxi company.

Eventually price will always be what people are willing to pay.

I bet what that in a decade the price will be identical to (disappearing) human drivers and then gouged higher.

It's depressing how focused we are on the wrong things for cities and planet, self driving taxis rather than quality public transport. We are destined to extinction and we deserve it.

nojvek
0 replies
1d3h

Easier to scale and make tech cheaper than humans cheaper.

Waymo just doesn’t want the backlash of them replacing human jobs right now.

Slightly expensive than humans for a premium consistent service is a good play.

Kudos to consistent execution for Waymo.

Wish we could say the same for Tesla.

more_corn
0 replies
1d18h

I had trouble with it not wanting to drop me where I asked, or wanting to pull over or wanting to let me out. Never again.

fossuser
0 replies
1d18h

They’re amazing, I only take Waymo in SF now and will do the same when possible on the peninsula.

eyeareque
0 replies
1d21h

Doesn’t the price end up being the same if you factor in tips with Lyft?

asphodel_gray
0 replies
1d21h

10%? you’re lucky. Every time I check the app it’s usually twice the price of an Uber or Lyft.

aprilthird2021
0 replies
1d15h

You are using a product before enshittification begins, of course it's much nicer.

When it's been 28 quarters of general availability of Wayno and profits need to keep growing faster than before, they'll get dirty, the AC will stop being fixed, they'll start getting flats / engine trouble, etc. in the middle of the drive.

Enjoy it while it lasts. Be sure you move quickly to the next new thing before this one goes downhill too :/

Me1000
0 replies
1d23h

Rides have usually 10% mark up over Lyft and Uber.

I found that to be true as well, but when you factor in the tip to the driver they come out to more or less the same price.

labrador
35 replies
1d20h

Based on anecdotal evidence, I strongly suspect these are remotely driven cars, not completely self-driving, which means there is a remote saftey operator ready to take over if the ride starts to go bad. "Self-driving" sounds sexier and is the ultimate goal, but if it were my company I'd probably lead with "remotely monitored by safety driver" to calm any fears people might have. I'm guessing the percentage of people who are willing to put their lives in the hands of this tech is rather small and the percentage of people who don't trust tech is rather large.

TulliusCicero
18 replies
1d20h

Waymo has been pretty clear about this: they do have remote navigators/coaches who tell the cars what to do if it gets stuck/confused, but they're not directly driving the car, they're telling it where to go, like a navigator in the front passenger seat.

Remote operation is considered dangerous due to possible issues with network connection latency or stability. If it was actually happening, Waymo is big enough now (IIRC they said 50,000 paid rides each week) to where someone would've leaked such a secret.

lopkeny12ko
17 replies
1d19h

they do have remote navigators/coaches who tell the cars what to do if it gets stuck/confused, but they're not directly driving the car, they're telling it where to go

That sounds a lot like remote operation.

Waymo is notoriously tight-lipped about this. Look at the number of journalists and reporters who have, over the years, asked very basic questions, like:

1. How often do remote operators intervene?

2. How many miles are driven per intervention? How does this compare to FSD?

3. How much of a typical ride is remotely operated and not actually driven by the car itself?

Waymo never provides answers, and one can only imagine it is because they are not proud of the answers.

lopkeny12ko
6 replies
1d19h

That article does not answer any of the 3 questions I proposed.

verdverm
5 replies
1d19h

It's an example of how easy it is to find some numbers they posted, countering that they "never" do

I'm not trying to answer your question because I don't want to put in the time with someone who seems to only want to be combative in conversation

YeGoblynQueenne
2 replies
1d6h

Don't the HN guidelines have something about "assuming good faith"? I can't be arsed to check now because obviously the comment above is not in good faith.

/s

verdverm
1 replies
1d3h

It's assume the best possible interpretation and the other commenter has provided evidence to the contrary through multiple posts

YeGoblynQueenne
0 replies
22h56m

The guidelines explicitly say "Assume good faith":

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

The guidelines don't say anything about being free to be a dick when the other person is being a jerk. They even say not to:

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

lopkeny12ko
1 replies
1d18h

Case in point. Plugging your ears and shouting does not invalidate the question. These are very basic questions that, if Waymo were at all confident about their technology, would not hesitate to answer.

And most of these are just simple numbers! Like stating, the number of miles per intervention is 10. Yet that number is nowhere to be found from Waymo's press relations department.

AlotOfReading
0 replies
1d16h

Having seen how the sausage is made, a lack of confidence in what the numbers show is not why the information is withheld. The numbers are highly relevant to competitors and anything that could potentially be used to build a negative media narrative is very carefully considered before release.

Cruise had their numbers leaked during the incident last year and they came up in several negative media pieces despite being fairly good overall.

labrador
6 replies
1d19h

I really don't understand why they aren't transparent about this, but judging by the downvotes I'm getting it seems people really, really want to believe they are intelligent and independent self-driving machines. It's so much more futuristic with a "wow" factor that attracts press attention and future investement.

ra7
5 replies
1d12h

The downvotes are because your suspicions are entirely wrong. There’s no remote “driving” or “take over”. They wrote a blog post on how it works just a few weeks ago: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/

labrador
4 replies
1d8h

So I've learned but it's not reassuring because the safer option would be to give a remote operator the ability to take over

ra7
3 replies
1d5h

That would be the least safe option due to network latencies involved.

labrador
2 replies
1d3h

Drone operators in Ukraine seem to do fine and besides, I'm talking about having the option, not using it 100% of the time

ra7
1 replies
1d2h

Surely, it's obvious that Waymo operates in a different safety critical setting? It's a 5000 pound vehicle with pedestrians and other vehicles around it. You can't depend on a network connection to prevent injuries and deaths.

labrador
0 replies
14h44m

Alphabet has way more money to spend on it than Ukrainians. I was a professional driver in a couple of jobs and as far as I can tell Google Waymo doesn't care about the millions of Americans they want to put out of work, possibly by having cheap foreign labor drive their cars, so you see I can't let it go that easily

TulliusCicero
0 replies
1d11h

That sounds a lot like remote operation.

If you have a friend in the front passenger seat directing you where to go, are they operating the car?

TheAlchemist
0 replies
1d19h

Re 2 question - Tesla doesn't provide any reliable stat on miles per intervention neither, so you would not be able to compare anyway.

s09dfhks
6 replies
1d19h

I had someone remotely intervene on my last ride. A car was trying to parallel park on a narrow street and the waymo stayed put, despite there being plenty of room to go around. I heard a chime and a pop up on the screen said “we’re getting your waymo back on track” and it went around the car, like any sane driver would have done from the get go

labrador
5 replies
1d19h

That's reassuring to me. I don't know why Waymo doesn't reassure safety conscious people like me by being explicit about this. As it stands, as a computer programmer and professional driver at different times in my career, whose seen a lot of unforeseen bugs and weird driving situations, I'm not putting my life in the hands of this software.

labrador
1 replies
1d19h

Interesting. This is about a month and half old, so they are getting more transparent. I am not reassured though because based on my reading, it appears the fleet response can't actually take over and drive the car in an emergency. I double checked with Claude AI

Me: "does it appear the remote operator can take over and drive the car if needed."

Claude: "Based on my reading of the document, it does not appear that the remote operator (referred to as "fleet response agent") can take over and drive the car directly"

verdverm
0 replies
1d3h

Double checking with an LLM is not the way to find the truth. They are more like creative assistants than fact checkers

wepple
1 replies
1d18h

I'm not putting my life in the hands of this software.

If you were a professional driver, you know you put your life in the hands of people right? The average person is a pretty terrible driver. I’ll take a safely trained machine all day every day.

labrador
0 replies
1d16h

I'm a better and safer driver than Waymo. I trust myself over software. I also trust human professional drivers over software.

leumon
6 replies
1d19h

They are only taken over in certain edge cases, and even then the remote operator is only placing the next destination, he is not actually remotely "driving" the vehicle. More on this here: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/

YeGoblynQueenne
5 replies
1d6h

> Fleet response can influence the Waymo Driver's path, whether indirectly through indicating lane closures, explicitly requesting the AV use a particular lane, or, in the most complex scenarios, explicitly proposing a path for the vehicle to consider. The Waymo Driver evaluates the input from fleet response and independently remains in control of driving. This collaboration enhances the rider experience by efficiently guiding them to their destinations

In my reading this is trying very hard to put a self-driving spin on an interface that allows a human operator to set waypoints for a robot to follow. This should at best be called "human remote-assisted self-driving", rather than "self-driving".

Btw, NASA uses a similar setup for its Mars rovers with autonomous navigation capabilities, like Perseverance. There was a report that described how humans on Earth can guide Perseverance to plan paths avoiding areas with potentially deep sand where the rover can get seriously stuck. The human operators draw the limits of what seems to them to be the safe area and the rover's onboard planner than plans a path through the safe area. That's still the farthest that autonomous navigation can go; pun not intended.

Ref: Autonomous robotics is driving Perseverance rover’s progress on Mars

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.adi3099

refulgentis
4 replies
1d3h

In my reading this is trying very hard to put a self-driving spin on an interface that allows a human operator to set waypoints for a robot to follow.

I can 100% confirm you're reaching way too far to find excuses to indicate Waymo isn't self-driving.

YeGoblynQueenne
3 replies
22h55m

OK what the bloody fuck. What is it with the tone of these discussions? You can 100% confirm I'm reaching... the hell is the matter with you? Can't you disagree like an intelligent adult?

Fucking internets.

refulgentis
2 replies
20h41m

(lectures about tone while getting personal and swearing and not asking any legible question)

Come with curiosity! Ex. "How would one be able to 100% confirm Waymo isn't just being live monitored and incremental way points set?"

(I'll leave it to you ask if you want, you seem upset and I worry you'll think the answer is obvious and that's not what you meant and I'm creating strawman. I want to deescalate and make you un-angry!)

YeGoblynQueenne
1 replies
19h24m

Well done for de-escalating but I can't see what "curiosity" you expect when you "confirm with 100% certainty" anything you want. Curious discussion doesn't mean you pretend the other person is not a fool just for the sake of proving they are.

refulgentis
0 replies
18h7m

Oh okay!

akira2501
1 replies
1d20h

Wouldn't the fear just become that not enough safety drivers will always be available or that the internet connection they use to "drive" the car remotely would fail?

It's a taxi that you don't have to risk having a conversation with a stranger in. Outside of that it seems that all other benefits are marginal or well crafted illusions.

Anyways, I'm sure I'm just being a pessimist, it's not as if large monopolistic companies with no human customer service have failed us significantly before. I mean, I trust them with my data completely, so why not my life, too?

labrador
0 replies
1d19h

If it loses remote monitoring I'd rather it would pull over and park rather than barelling down the steep hills of San Francisco without a safety monitor.

steelframe
17 replies
2d

Cool. Can I take one without my identity and travel patterns being tracked? Like, suppose I want to get picked up from work and dropped off at my girlfriend's house in San Mateo. Something I might not want my soon-to-be-ex's lawyer to be able to subpoena. There's one of those machines onboard that are all over the place in supermarkets where I can feed bills right?

Or maybe not. Okay then, Luxor Cab it is. Cheaper, better conversation, more aggressive about squeezing through traffic, and doesn't violate my privacy.

I'm not against automated taxi services in principle. I'm just not interested if it's a package deal where I have to surrender my physical comings and goings to a scummy data broker like Google.

yazzku
8 replies
1d23h

Obviously you do surrender all of your travel privacy to the data broker. That's why they are making self-driving cars in the first place. But you're already doing all of that by carrying an Android phone.

steelframe
2 replies
1d21h

But you're already doing all of that by carrying an Android phone.

I'm not.

yazzku
1 replies
1d21h

My boy. Now, when a self-driving car drives past you, make sure you show them that sweet middle finger of yours.

steelframe
0 replies
1d3h

Actually whenever I give one my sweet middle finger it's stuck in SF traffic and I'm zipping around it on my bike.

pier25
1 replies
1d23h

That's why they are making self-driving cars in the first place

It is?

I thought they wanted to disrupt transportation.

TulliusCicero
0 replies
1d20h

I mean the most obvious reason is making money.

But other things like making the roads safer is a nice side effect.

bamboozled
1 replies
1d23h

Strange this is downvoted no ?

yazzku
0 replies
1d21h

I also found it strange. The parent comment has some amount of hyperbole, but it does not detract from the point they are conveying.

yazzku
0 replies
21h30m

Google fanboys entered the chat room. Care to explain what is it that you dislike about my comment? Was any of it non-factual?

spankalee
3 replies
1d20h

In what was is Google a data broker? Where can you buy this data?

mhfga
1 replies
1d19h

I do not know where/if the plebs can buy this data, but advertisers can:

https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/13381216?hl=en

"Waymo may disclose user personal information to third parties to tailor advertising and offers to your interests. Such disclosures may be considered “sales” or “sharing” of personal information under the California Consumer Privacy Act."

It is rather surprising that so many here downvote the obvious, which even non-technical Guardian journalists have found out.

spankalee
0 replies
1d16h

The phrasing here is due to the CPRA which specifically requires that the link be titled "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" even for ad targeting.

As far as I understand the advertising model is the same as with Google Ads - Google builds profiles and lets advertisers target users based on profiles. They do not sell user data, and I'm not personally aware of a case where Google has even been alleged to be selling user data.

joecasson
1 replies
1d21h

How would you design that system?

I can't imagine a self-driving car request via an app could be accomplished without _someone_ knowing / tracking your travel patterns. You can't do cash transactions because that would be rife for smash-n-grabs from others.

steelframe
0 replies
1d21h

With a regular taxi I just call from a phone in a hotel lobby and ask to be picked up a block or so from my location. No reason there can't be a dispatch service you can call for self-driving taxis too.

Crime happens, but that's why there's insurance. It's not like cab drivers don't get robbed too. It doesn't (and shouldn't) stop cash commerce.

currymj
1 replies
1d22h

interestingly the NYC yellow cabs were recording all this data for a while and released it in an "anonymized" dataset, which turned out to be pretty easy to deanonymize because people tend to be picked up or dropped off near their homes or workplaces.

https://agkn.wordpress.com/2014/09/15/riding-with-the-stars-...

i think the answer is just that you don't have much meaningful privacy when using a taxi service in a normal way.

steelframe
0 replies
1d21h

My trick is to walk a block or two on either end of the trip.

athoun
14 replies
1d22h

In my experience Waymo has been much worse compared to Lyft/Uber for longer rides.

A big problem with Waymo in its current state is how its routes are terribly inefficient.

It purposely avoids freeways and higher speed roads, opting to take more inefficient routes without regards to the number of stop signs, hills, and other factors which will inevitably lead to a longer travel time. It's almost like it's using a worse version of the "Avoid highways" feature on Google Maps, and getting to a further destination can take almost twice the amount of time as compared to a Lyft/Uber.

Another problem is its lack of human intuition and strategies when driving in the city during some kind of event where many of the roads are blocked off. A human driver would have been navigating the blocked roads throughout the day and already know where to go to avoid the crowds, where as Waymo naively follows its navigation system and gets stuck in a bunch of traffic for no reason.

It also drives annoyingly slowly which leads to frustration from human drivers who constantly try to overtake you.

jessriedel
2 replies
1d19h

They announced that for Phoenix in January, but I think freeway driving is still only available to employees or maybe some special customers.

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/watch-waymos-self-driving...

I tried it in Phoenix in May and it wouldn’t take the freeway. And it’s definitely not generally available in the Bay area. (I take them every week or two.)

JumpCrisscross
1 replies
1d19h

I think freeway driving is still only available to employees or maybe some special customers

Not a special customer, can't even get access in LA. Waymo took the freeway in Phoenix in March.

jessriedel
0 replies
1d12h

Waymo took the freeway in Phoenix in March.

Do you mean they were doing testing with employees and special customers? Or do you mean anyone who had gotten off the waitlist could ride on the freeway in Phoenix?

tanvach
2 replies
1d22h

We actually prefer safer and slower ride, some Lyft/Uber drivers drive way too dangerously for no reason.

athoun
1 replies
1d22h

I could definitely see that. If you're not pressed on time it can be a smoother ride for sure. But if you're trying to get somewhere fast or efficiently like going to the airport, you'd want to get a regular Lyft/Uber otherwise you might miss your flight.

It would be cool if you can configure the ride preferences for how aggressive you'd like it to drive.

vineyardmike
0 replies
1d21h

Well it doesn’t go to the airport today, because it doesn’t go on highways or out of the city. So i don’t think anyone has missed their flight.

I suspect with their new permits approved, you’ll see them drive on the highway soon, which will result in much faster trips where applicable.

I am really glad it’s not aggressive at driving - they drive how humans are supposed to - cautiously. Humans kill people regularly from aggressive driving.

standardUser
2 replies
1d21h

Does it do a decent job of estimating the ride time?

ibbih
0 replies
1d18h

ime it consistently overestimates ride time by 50+% or so. usually like 10-20% slower than google maps, but the estimate is often 2x what google maps says.

athoun
0 replies
1d21h

I believe it is fairly accurate at estimating the ride time. The first time I took it though, I mistakenly thought it would take the same amount of time to get to my destination as Google Maps estimated since that is usually the case for Uber/Lyft.

So I was pretty annoyed after I got into the car and then realized that the route it selected was going through a bunch of hills and side streets that would take twice as long as the most direct route (via Google Maps) and there's nothing I could do to change that once the ride started.

Karrot_Kream
2 replies
1d22h

I get around by bike, foot, transit, and car in that order and have mostly lost my ability to not get motion sick in a car when I'm not driving. I prefer taking Waymos any time I'm not in a hurry in SF, but usually traffic is bad enough during the hours I take it that it's not a huge factor anyway and if you can get a MUNI that's close to your start and end points, it's significantly faster. Rideshare and taxi drivers in most of SF are constantly changing lanes, cutting off pedestrians, or speeding from light to light to try and make up the extra 10-15% time lost that Waymo eats and can make for an unpleasant experience for me, but yes if I'm in a hurry I do prefer a human driver.

(There's a slight component where as primarily a cyclist I feel that Waymos are much nicer to cyclists than human drivers are and it gives me affinity to Waymos that I don't feel for human drivers in the city.)

I find Waymo the most useful to take after a concert far from a MUNI stop because usually surge pricing makes Lyft and Uber really expensive and I'm usually tired enough to not want to walk to a stop or it's late enough that MUNI headways are far apart.

rootusrootus
1 replies
1d3h

ability to not get motion sick in a car when I'm not driving.

As someone who lives in a city without Waymo, I'm curious -- are you allowed to ride in the front seat?

I can generally tolerate riding in the front passenger seat, as long as the driver is competent, but I suffer a bit riding in the rear. And don't get me started on what it's like riding in a limo...

cco
0 replies
1d2h

Yes, you may sit in the front passenger seat. The only place you can't sit is the driver's seat.

neilyio
0 replies
1d19h

This seems like a pretty low price to pay for the huge upsides of safer rides and potentially lower car ownership, on top of the more comfortable experience discussed elsewhere here.

ortusdux
9 replies
1d23h

I'm still surprised that they, and most of their competitors, chose to start off in such difficult to navigate regions. I would have started off in a retirement community or the like.

AzzyHN
5 replies
1d22h

They did some driving in some Arizona suburbs too, iirc. The reasoning for having so much driving in SF is twofold

1. Silicon Valley, both for the workers and the general public's willingness to embrace fancy new tech 2. SF is DIFFICULT to drive in. If you follow all driving laws & drive super defensively, you'll never get anywhere on time. If an AI can learn to effectively navigate around traffic, construction, stopped rideshare and foodshare cars, large crowds, etc etc, it can drive anywhere.

SF also gets a lot of rain and dense fog, good for testing low-visibility conditions

joshchaney
2 replies
1d22h

They did some driving in some Arizona suburbs too

I think you are really understating it. I believe Chandler, AZ has been Waymo's proving grounds for years, and according to this article (https://www.wsj.com/us-news/waymo-phoenix-arizona-self-drivi...) the Phoenix area is the leader of autonomous vehicle service.

thepasswordis
1 replies
1d17h

Waymo has almost completely replaced Uber/Lyft for everybody I know in the Phoenix area and it’s been this way for several years.

It’s just absolutely normalized here to the point of barely being a novelty anymore. Waymos are absolutely everywhere.

dntrkv
0 replies
1d16h

I mean it’s been like that in SF for a while now. Tons of people take Uber/Lyft still but I see dozens of Waymos everyday and I’ve been Waymo only for about a year now.

standardUser
0 replies
1d21h

SF gets mild rain and mild fog, which may be even better for early testing than places with more severe weather.

extragood
0 replies
20h59m

Your 2nd point was what really sold me. I was apprehensive before my first ride but it deftly navigated around double parked cars in narrow side streets like I would have done myself. Surpassed my expectations for sure.

SheinhardtWigCo
1 replies
1d23h

They kinda did that - they were operating in the suburbs around Phoenix AZ for years before launching in SF.

Not operating in difficult areas would slow them down because progress in this domain is bound by the breadth of edge cases encountered in the wild.

AlotOfReading
0 replies
1d16h

There was actually an autonomous vehicle company focused specifically on retirement communities called voyage. They were acqui-hired by Cruise several years ago and the project shut down because there was no real viability.

whiplash451
0 replies
1d21h

You need to work on the real problem head-on. « Solving » retirement zones might lead to a tech stack that is totally unfit to dense areas.

Also, the risk aversion of people in retirement zones does not make it a great target customer base.

seeknotfind
5 replies
2d

Wooooooo! Goodbye Lyft and Uber. Honestly, I get a bag driver, use the AI for a while. Feels too sterile, switch back, get some interesting drivers. Waymo has everything going for it but good company. Love it.

Me1000
3 replies
1d23h

Unfortunately Waymo still wont operate on freeways or at SFO. But I long for the day when I can take a Waymo between SF and Berkley or to SFO, those are my most frequent reasons to call a Lyft.

dntrkv
1 replies
1d16h

Anytime I go to east bay I go for BART. I’m not trying to sit in bay bridge traffic. BART gets a bad rap, like every other public transit in the US, but I’ve been using it pretty frequently recently (stopped around beginning of lockdowns) and it’s a great experience.

Me1000
0 replies
21h54m

I also use BART most of the time, but I often end up heading back to SF pretty late in the night so that’s not always an option.

vineyardmike
0 replies
1d21h

Well they just got the permit to expand, so you shouldn’t have to wait too long. That said, I think the plan was first to expand down the peninsula.

extragood
0 replies
21h4m

Keep using Waymo and stream with a stranger on one of the Omegle clones when you ride. Problem solved.

worstspotgain
2 replies
1d20h

Some curiosities from seeing them on the road a lot. You can tell it's them even when you can't see the extra protuberances:

- They take extended stops at stop signs, around 3-4 seconds.

- They have extra-bright headlights and brake lights.

- When waiting for a ride, they pull up next to parks and parking lots to avoid bothering residents. Their brake lights are on the whole time. If demand is low, they'll hang out in batches of 2-4. If a block has a hazy red hue at night, you know you've found a Waymo nest.

kjkjadksj
0 replies
1d1h

If they use waze logic for routing they are screwed with their baked in hesitation. Enjoy waiting until 8pm to get a sufficient gap for the far too polite waymo to make that unprotected left across six lanes waze is asking you to do.

jart
0 replies
1d8h

Waymo nest

I love this

8f2ab37a-ed6c
2 replies
1d22h

Waymos are fantastic, I actually look forward to riding them every time. It's a quiet, peaceful space where you can relax for a bit on the way to your destination. Haven't had any issues with them except for one time where the car was super hot on the inside for whatever reason and the AC was not working.

tanvach
0 replies
1d21h

Same! It's funny how I actually look forward to get into a ride. I've been so used to a crappy experience in Lyft/Uber.

nmca
0 replies
1d12h

I had the same temperature bug recently despite changing the AC, hot air was coming from the vents. Not a hot day. Very odd.

kristopolous
0 replies
1d8h

I don't think uber/lyft drivers will be the culprit here. Generally, it's a pretty lousy job these days. There's also other options like survey or click work which pays more or less about the same net income.

If I were to place my bets on the biggest risk it'll be YouTubers finding out how to fuck around with the cars in unexpected ways and potentially tricking them.

Here's a dumb example. If you use one of those phone apps that flashes your screen like a police siren, could you trick the car to pull over? Would it unlock the doors and allow you to just hop in? What if you put a dog shaped balloon in the road on front of it? Could you set up some confusing cones and get it to drive into a wall? Could you confuse it at a stoplight with a green flashlight and have it start driving?

benced
1 replies
1d18h

As a cyclist, I trust the Waymos significantly more than human drivers to not hit me (I've been biking in SF since Jan and already had 3 unsafe incidents). The more, the better, I say.

konschubert
0 replies
22h54m

Yep. Once human drivers are banned from streets, cycling will be much safer!

_jab
1 replies
1d20h

Glad to see this development. The amount of FUD around AVs is too high, and allowing each individual municipality to set their own regulations for AVs would have been a ridiculous amount of red tape for these companies to deal with. Just to pull one particularly bad quote from this article:

“I hope that, in the meantime, our communities do not suffer too much in terms of injuries and community damages due to the current regulatory gaps,” Cortese said in a statement.

What gaps? What injuries? What community damages? If someone can actually present statistics that these cars are more socially dangerous than an equivalent amount of Ubers and Lyfts, I would be very, very surprised.

benced
0 replies
1d18h

It's been nonstop lies from opponents, especially South Bay opponents of this technology with the tiniest kernel of truth that Cruise has not been very responsible. I still can't get over San Mateo County flatly lying about Waymo not talking to them (https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/-/media/cpuc-website/divisions/consu..., "in its protests, San Mateo stated...").

Rakshith
1 replies
1d5h

they should move away from the shitty jaguars and chryslers they have in their fleet though. Maybe Honda would make a good partner as they have the only US autonomous level 3.

refulgentis
0 replies
1d3h

Shitty Jaguar? Pacifica we can quibble, but really? Jaguar?

sherbondy
0 replies
17h16m

Can’t wait to be able to hail a Waymo from SFO. They are truly a marvel of modern technology.

rsingla
0 replies
1d17h

I love Waymos compared to my ride sharing experience.

The base car is appealing (currently Jaguars). They're spacious for a >6 ft individual like myself. The user interface is intuitive and fun. There's a cool factor that exists.

Against ride sharing, given the lack of a driver, there's no variability in driver with regards to ambiance, scents, cleanliness, chattiness, and smoothness of the ride.

I am very much looking forward to this expansion.

revlolz
0 replies
4h41m

Waymo rides in PHX area were a pleasent surprise. While on our trip, the waymo slammed it's brakes as a precarious event transpired that I'm almost positive if a human was at the wheel, would have resulted in an accident. Very optimistic to see how many lives they can save over the next decade.

renewiltord
0 replies
1d21h

They're fantastic. I can't wait to take one to the airport.

diebeforei485
0 replies
1d13h

I know it's still the "honeymoon phase", but I actually do like Waymo when I'm walking, biking, driving another car, or riding in the Waymo.

brap
0 replies
1d8h

Can’t wait to have it in my country.

With the current apps/services, 70% of the time the driver won’t stop talking on the phone, or won’t turn on the AC, or will drive in a way that’ll make you want to throw up, etc etc.

blendo
0 replies
1d6h

And Elon Musk would improve on these 5,000 lb Waymo SUVs carrying 1-2 passengers in favor of 7,000 lb Cybertrucks carrying 1-2 passengers.

The improved 0-60 times alone will prove Elon the more effective accellerationist.