Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF • Hacker News Board

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#351

Post by xnx » Sat, May 06, 2023, 4:45 PM UTC

ajcp wrote: post #164

jamiek88 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they will cross it will stop and wait until the heat-death of the universe for them to cross. There's something adorable and HHGTG about that whole thing! Reminds me of the robotic Star Liner that refused to take off because of the peanuts hadn't been delivered thus its checklist was incomplete. It had waited eons as its passengers withered to corpses securely locked into the cabin only stating that it was 'statisti…

It's funny because for some reason they definitely do feel adorable and polite. I know we shouldn't actively anthropomorphize them, but it's just the feeling you get when you see them go about their polite little way, adorably plotting our downfall.

Their first cars were even more anthropomorphic: https://blog.waymo.com/2019/08/from-post-it-note-to-prototyp...

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#352

Post by gonehome » Sat, May 06, 2023, 4:46 PM UTC

zamnos wrote: post #255

gonehome wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cruise’s “entire city” coverage is currently only for employees. The beta coverage is sunset to pacific heights and only 10pm to 530am - making it effectively useless.

More specifically, it excludes the night club district which is when the 10pm to 5am service time would actually be in demand.

Yeah it's weird for me that the CEO bragged about it on Twitter as if it was open to everyone, when it's only open to employees?

I'm in the beta but still haven't tried it because unless you live directly in the zone it operates it's not useful. Even then rarely am I ubering in the middle of the night anyway.

As is, I'd have to take an uber to the zone it operates in after 10pm, then get a cruise point to point in an area where everything is closed, then take an uber home.

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#353

Post by jhurliman » Sat, May 06, 2023, 4:58 PM UTC

readwriterick wrote: post #227

ajcp wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live downtown PHX (Roosevelt Row) and beyond riding in them I MUCH prefer them driving around on the streets than actual human drivers. There isn't a day goes by that I don't see drivers make up 4-way stops, disregard the 4-way stops, flip a youey in the middle of an intersection, etc. Contrast that to the ever predictable Weymo, just quietly going about their little self-driving existence. Only problem I've seen w…

My wife swears up and down she witnessed someone wave a driverless car (maybe a Cruise?) through an intersection in the Sunset.

Yes, Cruise cars have enough pose/gesture recognition for this. It’s needed for road construction with flaggers.

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#354

Post by xnx » Sat, May 06, 2023, 5:02 PM UTC

dymk wrote: post #337

throwaway5371 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it solves static traffic, which in many cities will solve traffic

How does it solve static traffic? Do you mean parking? Because a Waymo car takes up just as much space on the road as a human driven one.

Traffic isn't a function of road space. The true throughput of roads is immense when utilized by better drivers (one extreme example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pbAI40dK0A). A lot of traffic is caused by bad human drivers: accidents (and associated rubbernecking), shockwaves, running red lights, double parking, circling around looking for parking. Additionally entire additional lanes of traffic (for cars or personal mobility vehicles) will be available when streetside parking isn't necessary. Personally I look forward to the possibilities of turning all that unecessary parking space into something useful ("we’re the Saudi Arabia of developable land in cities").

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#355

Post by ra7 » Sat, May 06, 2023, 5:05 PM UTC

fastball wrote: post #342

ra7 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the keyword you’re looking for is ‘sensor fusion’, which apparently is only a problem for Tesla because the others have figured it out years ago. Perhaps there is a talent gap at Tesla or an unwillingness to invest in it. They generally avoid having to do anything that’s hard and try to look for shortcuts. Case in point: the whole radar removal and reintroduction flip flop. It seems like they don’t believe th…

I don't think anyone has "figured it out" if they still don't have unconstrained driverless cars.

That’s tangential to your original point of discussion which was sensor integration. Sensor fusion is absolutely a solved problem. Autonomous driving requires more than just sensor fusion though.

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#356

Post by xnx » Sat, May 06, 2023, 5:05 PM UTC

sagarm wrote: post #181

abecedarius wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most buses off rush hour are sparsely populated. Look up actual energy efficiency of American mass transit systems per rider mile. https://www.templetons.com/brad/transit-myth.html Re traffic: with robot-driven cars, congestion pricing would be technically easy. This is an example of not considering possibilities created by the new tech.

Most roads off rush hour are sparsely populated; seems inefficient, let's pedestrianize them.

With autonomous vehicles we could! You could safely bike coast to coast on the shoulder of any highway. The possibilities are truly spectacular.

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#357

Post by xnx » Sat, May 06, 2023, 5:11 PM UTC

pfsalter wrote: post #284

George83728 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good public mass transit presumably involves cops kicking out the smelly homeless people, right? I don't think that would fly in most places these days though, it isn't humane. Yet it's the only way to make public transit tolerable.

A better idea might be to provide the homeless with a better standard of living, therefore making them nicer to be around on public transport

I don't know if they're un-homed or not, but I've encountered a lot of people smoking, shouting, or making a mess with food in rail cars, making them unusable for everyone else.

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#358

Post by xnx » Sat, May 06, 2023, 5:15 PM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #281

hansworst wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone can share a small fleet of self driving vehicles, they don’t need to take up a lot of space at all. I’m assuming you were talking about parking space; I don’t see how self driving cars would take up significantly more space than mass transit while on the road.

> If everyone can share a small fleet of self driving vehicles They cannot. > I don’t see how self driving cars would take up significantly more space than mass transit while on the road. They would take up more space because they're cars. Cars can't get to similar efficiencies of space compared to buses unless you compared packed private cars with sparsely ridden buses. And then of course, there's trains. Perhaps so…

Trains are a very inefficient use of space. Trains often run nearly empty, and the tracks can only be used by trains. A road (utilized by autonomous vehicles) can be used at any time and any schedule by any vehicle, including the possibility of giving automatic intersection right of way to pedestrians, or safely sharing road space with personal transport (bikes, scooters, etc.)

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#359

Post by xnx » Sat, May 06, 2023, 5:19 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #194

HALtheWise wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spouted this line for a long time, but was recently corrected by commenters pointing out that 2-3 occupancy electric cars actually beat the vast majority of subways and trains in practice, because you don't need to accelerate and decelerate every passenger at every possible stop. Cars are designed to be remarkably aerodynamically efficient, especially compared to motorcycles or bicycles, and an electric battery+mot…

In cities where space is at a premium, a bunch of people standing, or on a bicycle, will always beat out people sitting down with room for an engine and a trunk. Average occupancy of a car is 1.5 in the US, and that number shrinks as household size declines. (It’s also worth noting that there’s no reason that automated technologies wouldn’t also spread to buses and trains. In fact, you can already automate trains. Th…

Keep going with that thinking. What if trains were autonomous, electric, exactly/efficiently sized to what they were transporting, didn't require expensive/dedicated tracks, and could go directly between any 2 points? You end up with autonomous vehicles.

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#360

Post by xnx » Sat, May 06, 2023, 5:22 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #265

Chathamization wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In cities where space is at a premium, a bunch of people standing, or on a bicycle, will always beat out people sitting down with room for an engine and a trunk. It depends. For example, you can theoretically fit more people into crowded bike lanes than you can into crowded streets. But around here at least, bike lanes don't get a lot of people. I lived by one for years that I don't think I ever saw a bicycle on on…

Most of the time the issue with bike lanes is really an issue of a bike lane network. Where a wide high-quality network is deployed quickly, you do often see high ridership increases, but usually in the US what you see is a bunch of scattered lanes that barely reach anywhere in an unbroken link, and no one wants to ride a journey that is even 5% dangerous. But for example, London has seen 25% growth since pre-COVID b…

As a regular, enthusiastic, urban cyclist, there is nothing I want more than widespread use of autonomous vehicles. With well-behaved (i.e. not human) drivers, every street becomes safer and less stressful than a dedicated bike lane.