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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

#251

Post by labrador »

ra7 wrote: post #234
labrador wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand why they aren't transparent about this, but judging by the downvotes I'm getting it seems people really, really want to believe they are intelligent and independent self-driving machines. It's so much more futuristic with a "wow" factor that attracts press attention and future investement.

The downvotes are because your suspicions are entirely wrong. There’s no remote “driving” or “take over”. They wrote a blog post on how it works just a few weeks ago: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/

So I've learned but it's not reassuring because the safer option would be to give a remote operator the ability to take over

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

#252

Post by gfna »

huppeldepup wrote: post #222
unshavedyak wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father said the same for me. To this day, sleeping in the car is the easiest sleep i get. It's so soothing. Which is problematic considering i'm the sole driver for my household hah.

Has anyone ever attempted putting a bed on actuators to emulate a driving vehicle?

Ford even did an ad campaign around this concept some years ago https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2017...

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

#253

Post by vkou »

m_fayer wrote: post #246
elefanten wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s an awesome policy. Compare to car share services (in SF.. apples to apples) such as Gig Car and Getaround which allow unsupervised general access (i.e. no driver there to witness car treatment)… those are generally pigsties. Blunt ash all over the dashboard, used kleenexes in the door handles and cupholders, trash on the floor. It always blew my mind that the perpetrators weren’t fined into the dirt. Good for…

Considering that I’m in a social bubble of considerate people all of whom wouldn’t leave a single bottle cap in a car, this makes me despair at how people must be outside of my bubble.

A very small percentage of people will trash a clean environment.

A much larger percentage of people will add trash to an already trashed environment.

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

#254

Post by kristopolous »

coolspot wrote: post #216

Once it goes really mainstream, I can see angry Uber/Lyft drivers and/or their supporters destroy Waymos in large quantities (isolated incidents already have happened multiple times in SF [0][1]), driving economical feasibility to zero and causing Waymo to cease operations in some cities. [0] - https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/11/24069251/waymo-driverless... [1] - https://abc7news.com/waymo-sf-attacked-self-driving-ca…

I don't think uber/lyft drivers will be the culprit here. Generally, it's a pretty lousy job these days. There's also other options like survey or click work which pays more or less about the same net income.

If I were to place my bets on the biggest risk it'll be YouTubers finding out how to fuck around with the cars in unexpected ways and potentially tricking them.

Here's a dumb example. If you use one of those phone apps that flashes your screen like a police siren, could you trick the car to pull over? Would it unlock the doors and allow you to just hop in? What if you put a dog shaped balloon in the road on front of it? Could you set up some confusing cones and get it to drive into a wall? Could you confuse it at a stoplight with a green flashlight and have it start driving?

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

#255

Post by vkou »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #249
Mawr wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mental hoops drivers go through to justify their unsafe behaviour...

Oh please. Let's assume people are going at a speed that the road is designed to handle, since that's usually the case. In that situation, the behavior you're calling out as unsafe is simply "going faster". Now, in a technical sense that's true, but it's always true. Going faster reduces safety when you're above the speed limit. Going faster reduces safety when you're at the speed limit. Going faster reduces safety w…

> Let's assume people are going at a speed that the road is designed to handle

Let's not, because most of the speeding I see is from people who very mistakenly think they know what speed the road's designed to handle, because they don't give a crap about pedestrians, bicyclists, visibility, other vehicles, or really, anything but getting to the next red light faster.

Perhaps you drive in a utopia that's solely populated by traffic architects, but here in the real world, it's populated by normal people, many of whom are bad drivers, and bad judges of road safety, but are really good at hitting the gas.

Our high death rates reflect this.

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

#256

Post by jart »

worstspotgain wrote: post #95

Some curiosities from seeing them on the road a lot. You can tell it's them even when you can't see the extra protuberances: - They take extended stops at stop signs, around 3-4 seconds. - They have extra-bright headlights and brake lights. - When waiting for a ride, they pull up next to parks and parking lots to avoid bothering residents. Their brake lights are on the whole time. If demand is low, they'll hang out i…

> Waymo nest

I love this

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

#257

Post by vkou »

josephcsible wrote: post #170
KennyBlanken wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the proper speed limit is one that is decided based on traffic engineering safety factors such as sight distances, and who else uses that road. Cities aren't dropping their speed limits to 25 mph for shits and giggles. They're doing it because the odds of a person on foot or bike surviving being hit by a car goes up dramatically when speed drops from 30 to 25. Fatalities drop to nearly zero at 20mph, which is why…

> It also has the nice side effect of discouraging people Waze-slaloming their way through neighborhoods instead of using major routes. I wish cities would solve this problem by making the main roads faster instead of by making the side streets slower.

You aren't solve the problem of "Too many people are driving on the arterials, so traffic is going too slow" by making driving faster and more attractive.

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

#258

Post by Dylan16807 »

vkou wrote: post #255
Dylan16807 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please. Let's assume people are going at a speed that the road is designed to handle, since that's usually the case. In that situation, the behavior you're calling out as unsafe is simply "going faster". Now, in a technical sense that's true, but it's always true. Going faster reduces safety when you're above the speed limit. Going faster reduces safety when you're at the speed limit. Going faster reduces safety w…

> Let's assume people are going at a speed that the road is designed to handle Let's not, because most of the speeding I see is from people who very mistakenly think they know what speed the road's designed to handle, because they don't give a crap about pedestrians, bicyclists, visibility, other vehicles, or really, anything but getting to the next red light faster. Perhaps you drive in a utopia that's solely popula…

> Perhaps you drive in a utopia that's solely populated by traffic architects

I drive in an area that has a lot of overbuilt roads, and I don't think that's a very uncommon situation.

> they don't give a crap about pedestrians, bicyclists, visibility, other vehicles, or really, anything but getting to the next red light faster

That's very dangerous even if you strictly follow the speed limit. It's a separate problem.

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

#260

Post by Dylan16807 »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #241
schoen wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you accept any historical development that reduced demand for some kind of labor (or human interaction) as potentially positive? There are a lot of those. (I'm happy to hear if the answer is "yes".) For example, most kinds of shops were (like jewelry stores today) apparently historically not self-service, so you had to ask the shopkeeper for every item individually, and the shopkeeper would have to retrieve it…

This is not a reasonable comparison. In Tesla's model, you buy a Tesla, and allow it to operate as a robotaxi when you're not using it. It generates income passively for you. The technology has introduced automation that might have displaced your job responsibility but not your means of generating income. In Waymo's model, you have completely displaced both the job itself and the means of generating income. This is a…

Why is it not a reasonable comparison?

Automated telephone switching fits the latter pattern. The job and the income went away. So the question is valid, would you prefer automated telephone switching was never deployed?

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