181–190 of 424 posts
This is incredible news. In the next 10 years more and more transportation will shift to self driving and save thousands of lives and prevent many more injuries. Already in San Francisco waymo's are and feel much safer than human driven rideshare.
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A recent Uber driver of mine encountered bay bridge traffic, said, "I know a shortcut!" and veered out of the line waiting to enter the bridge. Then, Uber Safety called my phone asking if everything was alright. Then, the driver realized he didn't know where I was trying to go, asked me, realized I needed to go to Oakland, and spent 10+ minutes going in a slow circle to get back to the line of traffic. A few drives l…
> Stuff where I want to be surrounded by robots all my life. I mean, if a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound? Even if yes, does it matter? If we're just going to let the robots be the only thing we see all day long, why not just call it - hang up the hats build full AGI and blow up the humans.
I'm surprised there's such a staunch defense.
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Waymo is public transport, but you mean mass transit. People don't use mass transit because it sucks, blaming other modes of public transit doesn't cut it. The design and implementation of it is what keeps people from using it. The good news is automated vehicles will add flexible options for new types of public transport that are between single-trip taxies and mass transit and will lower costs to all kinds of public…
It sucks because we don't fund it. Europe does fine.
Older US cities (Boston, NY) have great public transit/walking options, though I agree deferred maintenance is taking its toll. But if you look at cities designed around the car, for many of them it's just prohibitively expensive to add things like light rail or subways now. Austin TX will be adding more light rail, but the price tag keeps exploding and the route keeps getting shorter.
I'd be curious if anyone could point to any city that was built around the car where they subsequently made substantial public transit improvements that carry more than, say, 10% of commuters.
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I don't think you understand. I was specifically saying that people prefer private transit to public transit because of safety related concerns.
Are the concerns rooted in statistical fact or just fear? Most people in the United States basically can’t imagine an alternative to car-first infrastructure.
If somebody is too afraid to ride the bus because they think they'll get raped, does the facts really matter? Or their feelings of physical insecurity?
No thanks — driving in LA is dangerous enough.
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Show me indenpendant research that they are safer. I can’t find any.
If they were less safe than human drivers, one would there would be more accidents where Waymo was at fault than another party. Having personally gone through several years of AV collisions reports to California a few months back, that wasn't the case. Indeed, in most of the small number of cases where Waymo was at fault, there was human driver in control of the vehicle. The were a four cases where the Waymo was at f…
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Safety is the most important point across all customers. But as someone who is less concerned with safety, I still get enormous value out of Waymo. Let me try to explain: Consider the distribution of Uber/Lyft drivers you have had. All the way from smooth driving, well-maintained car, through to erratic behavior and unpleasant environment. Imagine if the next time you got a driver you really like, you said "this driv…
That's because the cars are all brand new Jaguars that are impeccably maintained. If Waymo succeeds in becoming a widely used service that is price competitive with Uber, the experience won't be this good forever.
More importantly: the fleet is owned and maintained by Waymo. So they can achieve a higher degree of consistency. It is not the fanciness I value, it is the consistency.
Put another way: I can get a fancy car and a good driver with Uber Black. I would rate my waymo experience slightly above Uber Black.
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I feel like no one in this thread lives in LA. This is going to be an absolute catastrophe. Driving out here is like Thunderdome. There is zero way in hell I'd ever trust some Waymo car to make some insane left turn across 6 lanes of rush hour traffic out here, let alone the freeway.
> There is zero way in hell I'd ever trust some Waymo car to make some insane left turn across 6 lanes of rush hour traffic out here, let alone the freeway. This quote highlights why I would trust it more. I have been an Uber that essentially tried to make that turn, and it was insane. I'm hoping Waymo would be smart enough to try alternate routes (that said, I've had Google Maps route me in West Hollywood going acro…
This announcement makes me more willing to travel to LA for work.
Fantastic news. I use them all the time in Phoenix. My mom uses them to get to her doctor appointments. I think people underestimate how much of a quality of life improvement these are for people even when compared to Uber/Lyft.
> people underestimate how much of a quality of life improvement these are for people even when compared to Uber/Lyft I do underestimate it. What are quality of life improvements? Seems to be the same thing from a customer perspective. I guess if you are concerned for your safety from the uber driver it is an improvement but it is the only one that comes to mind.