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Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

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Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#191

Post by mrlase »

smeyer wrote: post #178
vthallam wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can run a car for longer with no driver and of course the human capital involved is none. But the flip side is that the cars wear out quickly.

A lot of taxis are already run 24 hours a day, switching off between drivers at shift changes. The per-mile gas, maintenance, and depreciation (ignoring any fixed per-day or per-year costs) are already much more than 10% of the total cost of a ride. I came across a (possibly outdated) Uber pricing model for LA of a $5.60 minimum fare and a $0.90 per mile charge, and among other fees, NYC cabs are $2.50 per mile. Comp…

The fare for NYC is incorrect -- $2.50 is the base price and $0.505/mile and $0.50/minute the car is stopped (i.e. in traffic if they're waiting). There's also a $1 surchage between 4-8pm on the weekdays.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/passenger/taxicab_rate.shtm...

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#192

Post by ghaff »

carapace wrote: post #182
ghaff wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a) Any examples of technologies prematurely introduced that had negative impact on their growth or contributed to their demise? Not really a class of product, but there certainly have been interesting processor architectures whose implementations weren't very good (and/or their timing was bad) out of the gate. Itanium comes to mind although there are others as well. One can reasonably argue whether it made a differe…

Off topic, but years ago a friend of mine participated in a jury research program around tobacco. He learned a lot of weird and fascinating stuff there. One thing he said was that cigarettes et. al. were "the only product which, when used as directed , will kill you." He also said that they had apparently come up with a strain of tobacco that wasn't addictive but didn't bring it to market.

Tobacco is actually a good example of an inherently dangerous consumer product. It just doesn't make a strong case for "and everyone's just fine with it."

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#194

Post by Rotten194 »

sharemywin wrote: post #107
samstave wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

im 42, so no not too young - and I appreciate your point. I feel that people are latching onto their opinions about driverless car tech and not talking about the wider implications. That is the point, I am poorly, making, apparently.... I just think that not all the questions have been asked about what it means to be a "driverless car" and that we need to run through all the risks -- and thats the one thing I find re…

did you not read the terms of service when you opened the car door? they are not responsible.

I'm just imagining opening the door and getting a 10 second long 2000wpm recording of someone reading the TaC.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#195

Post by thaunatos »

julbaxter wrote: post #5

Is there a website/document that compare the status of all existing self-driving cars initiatives?

California requires all companies with self-driving cars operating in the state to provide reports about miles driven, cars operated, number of disengagements, etc.

Here's a link: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen...

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#196

Post by rayiner »

joshuamorton wrote: post #83
rayiner wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These aren't "wacky what ifs." I don't know what things are like in the Valley, but here on the east coast something unexpected changes my commuting route a couple of times a month (multiply that by tens of thousands of drivers). "Do whatever the human would do, but more efficient" isn't an answer. These cars can't get on WTOP the day before and listen to the warning that the Pope is visiting and X, Y, Z streets will…

>"Do whatever the human would do, but more efficient" isn't an answer. These cars can't get on WTOP the day before and listen to the warning that the Pope is visiting and X, Y, Z streets will be blocked off. One can imagine various contingency scenarios, but the devil is in actually handling all the edge cases. Google maps already accounts for changes in traffic patterns and actively detects road closures, both based…

> The answer is "do whatever the humans do, but more efficient", because the same technology has already made humans more efficient.

I don't really buy that. Google Maps regularly gets confused in D.C. due to changes in traffic patterns. And Apple Maps once tried to send me down a highway on-ramp that had been closed for several weeks. They also get confused at the beginning/end of trips ("proceed to the route"). I don't even try to catch Ubers from downtown D.C. anymore because mapping applications can't reliably get drivers to a pickup point without spending several minutes coordinating with the driver over the phone.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#197

Post by smileysteve »

nroets wrote: post #186
zjaffee wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car pool lanes will likely be a big reason people choose to pool in autonomous cars. I imagine that self driving cars will make traffic much worse, and we will see a movement where cities create more and more HOV lanes to reduce traffic in such situations.

Self driving (and taxis) cars can reduce traffic, because commuters can combine them with mass transit (e.g. trains). If a commuter travels more than 2 legs in a day, it's very likely that mass transit will not cover one of the legs and he will take his car.

Yeah... I've been trying to do this and laughed at by my drivers (when it's them that are taking a long time to make it to the station).

in ATLanta

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#198

Post by sirclueless »

TheCoreh wrote: post #141
maxerickson wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will have to handle the case where the passenger doesn't exit the vehicle somehow or another. But the fact that it is occurring in an automated vehicle shouldn't make anyone worse off.

Ya, this sounds like an easy problem to solve. If the passenger doesn't exit the vehicle after a set time, start a video call to a support central (perhaps the person is unable to get out because the doors won't unlock? or they fell asleep?) The attendant could then instruct the vehicle to go to a pre-specified location nearby where a human can intervene, call another vehicle or notify the competent authorities.

There are certainly cases where going to another location will be impossible. If the passenger opens the door and does not exit, for example, there is no way to close the door or to move the vehicle.

But I agree with the overall point, while occasional incapacitated passengers or manual intervention may occur, these are not insurmountable problems.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#199

Post by a9a »

sudhirj wrote: post #164
a9a wrote: post #148

It will be interesting to see how Lyft's partnership with Waymo evolves given this tech announcement and Waymo's acknowledgment that they plan to offer their own ridesharing service. Lyft's approach to self-driving partnerships in general seems to rest on the assumption that self-driving providers will catch up to each other before any of them can fully handle everything a human driver can do. If this assumption is c…

Think it's unlikely that Waymo will build out and operate a full fledged ride service - there's a lot of other factors to work out like scheduling, routing, supply-demand management, optimal vehicle distribution, pooling etc that they could just delegate to Lyft for. They might just build a service to the extent of push a button and a vehicle will come, and take you where you tap. That's enough to work inside a contr…

I agree those other factors are complex and challenging to develop, particularly for Waymo which has the additional challenge of delivering self-driving tech that works.

But Lyft (and Uber for that matter...) doesn't really have those capabilities today anyway, at least to the extent they will be needed for autonomous fleets. They have blunt tools for supply and demand management, but drivers take on much of the risk in terms of positioning, routing, and deciding whether or not to get on the road in the first place. If Waymo owns their fleet, will they let Lyft have complete control over their assets without some balance or at the very least data to make sure the vehicles are being used efficiently? And if Waymo learns enough about scheduling, routing, etc. to make sure Lyft is using the vehicles efficiently, how much harder is it for Waymo to just run the vehicles efficiently themselves and capture the value of owning a direct relationship with the end rider?

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#200

Post by elsewhen »

samstave wrote: post #97
kllrnohj wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So now we have driverless cars effectively classified as emergency ambulances That's quite a huge leap you made there. Care to back up and explain how a drunk person calling an uber magically turns the uber into an emergency ambulance?

They manage to climb in, they OD/go into arrest, cant climb out. What then? So the uber now has to either get a person or take that car to a hospital - how do they know to do such? So is uber running a massive call center that watches every driverless ride and monitors the situation? Are they monitoring if people get into a fight in the car? That actually happened to me, where I took an uber pool, and the two other r…

video camera monitored by a machine learning system, which escalates unknown or edge cases to a human dispatcher for a decision.
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