I saw they were/are offering free rides to anyone who wants to be one of the testers in my metro area. I'm all for free but I'm not too sure about being a human beta test lol.
Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
601–610 of 634 posts
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#602I own the same model of vehicle as Waymo is using (2017 Pacifica PHEV). It's cool to see how little they've had to visibly modify the car (apart from the sensors)—the interior looks 100% stock, other than the row of buttons on the ceiling. Given the level-1 autonomous features in the vehicle (self-parking, etc.), all of the integrations are probably done over CAN-bus, with no additional hardware required (again, apar…
I'm pretty sure there's a huge computer setup that takes up a good portion of the trunk space.
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#603Earlier quoted context omitted.
The train usually doesn't arrive exactly on time where I live, but delays aren't so bad that I have to wait 30 minutes on average. And if it's a 4-12 minute walk to the station, as OP says, I'm sure they don't need a huge buffer to get there on time. Personally, I just make sure I have a five-minute leeway and I'm good. There certainly must be places in the world where trains are so unpredictable that the average del…
But without baking in a 30 minute wait on a train platform how would the parent have been able to make their point?
Not all trips are to and from locations on specific timetables, such as work. Sometimes you want to go from your house downtown, or some other location. There's still an average wait of half the train interval time. You can wait at the train station, or wait at home and travel closer to the arrival time (and hope you don't miss it), but there's still a wait involved. Sometimes you can effectively use this time, sometimes you can't. Acting like it doesn't exist isn't useful though.
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#604So did they solve the Trolley Problem?
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#605Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone said a few weeks ago that buses that run very often on the same route is just a very expensive train. I think for self driving to realy work well, we have to ban humans from driving (and perhaps make it a felony to interfere with a self driving bus the same way we cover assault on a bus driver). I thought it would be easier to implement self driving trains than to implement self driving cars. Who is working o…
Having worked with trains I'd guess that frequently running busses are actually very cheap trains. Rail infrastructure is incredibly expensive.
> Rail infrastructure is incredibly expensive.
I didn't know that but I assumed it would be cheaper than roads? I mean four tracks of trains (two local, two express) compared to four lanes of road?
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#606Earlier quoted context omitted.
Camper-van, pick-me up at the office (London) on Friday evening, by Saturday morning we in the highlands of Scotland. It sounds silly - but the more automation the more I want to spend within my fictional camper-van. Soccer away match - no problem. Trip to the beach again, overnight. It is like an sleeper train - only more comfortable and spacious, as it would be my families camper-van.
>Camper-van, pick-me up at the office (London) on Friday evening, by Saturday morning we in the highlands of Scotland. I just want to point out that there is a pretty decent sleeper train that departs from the center of London and will have you wave up in the center of Glasgow. You'll have a full-size bed with sink, toilet etc. and a dining car and a bar if you want to avail yourself. Tickets are pretty cheap too.
There are also sleeper trains to the highlands.
They leave a little earlier, at 21:15, and stop at the stations in the Highlands between 7 and 10 the next day.
If you wake up with the early sun, like I did, then the views from the train are wonderful.
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#607Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you perhaps misread the post. It suggests that there is only 12 hours driving per day but the kids would be asleep for at least 8 of those. The idea being drive overnight and stop at the next waypoint (see friends in flyover country/national park etc) during the day. I guess the plan being to do interesting stuff when awake and travel when asleep, for the most part. I suppose as long as you get in the hours y…
>It would take a complete redesign of car interiors to something far more comfortable/secure for lying down but no reason that problem couldn't be solved. Well, it's solved. They're called RVs. As a kid (or even as an adult), I think I'd still find it being pretty cooped up. It's one reason that I've never taken long-haul Amtrak that I suspect I'd find is more interesting in the theory than in the practice.
I've never been in an American RV, which I know are huge, but still narrower than a train. The ride on a train is usually much smoother than the best road, and of course you can walk around, use the dining car etc while the train is moving.
There are some pictures of various Amtrack train interiors at [1], aimed at tourists. That toilet next to the seat is weird, I think I'd prefer a shared toilet at the end of the corridor. But overall, the US has very spacious long-distance trains.
(I have taken one long-distance Amtrack train, for about 11 hours. The standard seat was as big as a first-class seat in most of Europe.)
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#608Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the China/US rivalry will guarantee that there will always be at the very least one major rival to Waymo with global ambitions.
If history is to repeat itself, Waymo will dominate on the whole planet excluding China, where Chinese self driving companies prosper but cannot reach outside.
I am not convinced. Many sovereign nations will think twice before handing a foreign corporation the keys to their mass transportation industry. They will have the motivation, and the means, to keep manufacturers in check, and play them off of each other. Hopefully this will prevent runaway monopolies from taking root.
I think it will be very hard to convince French regulators, for example, to allow any foreign corporation to have more visibility and control over the national transportation system than the French government itself.
And unlike ridesharing, which appeared practically overnight, self-driving car technology is under mainstream scrutiny several years before achieving meaningful scale. This means regulators have more time to prepare.
The car industry, and the national transportation infrastructure, is considered a matter of sovereignty, and a politically sensitive topic. This won't be anything like ridesharing, consumer electronics, or advertisement.
I think (and hope) that the result will be that Waymo will fail to get a winner-takes-all stranglehold on the global self-driving car industry. Instead it will be forced to compete on a relatively level playing field, against Didi, Apple, Amazon, or whoever decides to compete in the space. The more the better.
I am rooting for the regulators on this one. If they fail to protect our national transportation systems from Google-style walled gardens... Then that sends us down a very scary road, where almost every aspect of society and government ends up privatized, and managed from either the US west coast or China, with no accountability or representation.
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#609Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People would rather pay 10x to sit in their own luxury bubble in traffic I think it has a lot less to do with the bubble factor than the fact that public transportation in the US just sucks, period. My 3-mile commute from Menlo Park to Palo Alto would take - bus: 58 minutes (2 minute walk from home to bus stop + 12 minutes average wait for ECR bus + 10 minutes on ECR + 12 minutes average wait in Palo Alto Transit C…
Why wait for a train or bus? Install an app that tells you when you need to leave your place to get to the station just in time.
Okay, so instead of waiting at the platform 30 minutes, it becomes waiting at my destination (e.g. restaurant, office, whatever) 30 minutes for everyone else to arrive or for the meeting/event to start because it is unprofessional to arrive late, so I must arrive 0-60 minutes early, dictated by the train schedule. Doesn't change the fact that I have to waste 30 minutes on average either way.
In many cases, running, biking, driving would all waste less time because I can leave on-demand, even if the actual transit time takes longer.
Public transportation needs to be either frequent enough (e.g. Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, New York, etc. where rush-hour trains arrive about every 1-2 minutes, non-rush-hour every 5-8 minutes or less) or on-demand (e.g. UberPool, autonomous cars) to cut the time waste.
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#610Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone said a few weeks ago that buses that run very often on the same route is just a very expensive train. I think for self driving to realy work well, we have to ban humans from driving (and perhaps make it a felony to interfere with a self driving bus the same way we cover assault on a bus driver). I thought it would be easier to implement self driving trains than to implement self driving cars. Who is working o…
> I thought it would be easier to implement self driving trains than to implement self driving cars. Who is working on that? We already have self-driving light rail systems (London's DLR for instance).
...and much of the normal rail is running at Level 3-Level 4 equivalent.