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

sfchronicle.com

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

#151

Post by nicksrose7224 »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #108
tanvach wrote: post #7

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…

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.

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

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

#152

Post by mike_d »

RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u wrote: post #46
tanvach wrote: post #7

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…

> - Consistently [...] clean [...] I don't expect this to hold true once Waymo become generally available, alas.

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.

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

#153

Post by paulryanrogers »

josephcsible wrote: post #133
worik wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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

> 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

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.

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

#154

Post by [deleted] »

josephcsible wrote: post #133
worik wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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

> 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

[deleted]

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

#155

Post by KennyBlanken »

klipt wrote: post #121
RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

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

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.

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

#156

Post by ssl-3 »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #140
ssl-3 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

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 practi…

[flagged]

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

#157

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

firloop wrote: post #18
tanvach wrote: post #7

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…

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.

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.

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

#158

Post by lopkeny12ko »

verdverm wrote: post #135
lopkeny12ko wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

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.

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

#159

Post by mike_d »

josephcsible wrote: post #137
firloop wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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

#160

Post by [deleted] »

quickthrowman wrote: post #125
quectophoton wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

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.or…

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