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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

#271

Post by dventimi »

senordevnyc wrote: post #209
Arete314159 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are the starts / stops? Jerky? I have c-spine issues. That's my main concern. Why are they more expensive? I hoped they would be cheaper without a driver to compensate.

Why are they more expensive? Likely because they're not pricing based on their costs, but rather what the market will bear. Although they have a lot of R&D to recoup, so that's a cost.

Also, perhaps it's a consequence of limited supply. If the SF fleet is still just 250 cars that seems quite small to me for a city with a lot of demand for ride services.

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

#272

Post by dventimi »

laluser wrote: post #84
paxys wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience prices for Waymo are at least double that of an equivalent Lyft/Uber ride and wait times are usually 20+ minutes. It is a great novelty but nowhere near where it needs to be to handle real scale.

This won’t last long. Waymo has a treasure chest waiting to be deployed as soon as they start expanding more.

If they expand their supply, I would expect that to lower prices, not raise them.

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

#273

Post by dventimi »

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #225
acchow wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that 10% markup account for the Uber/lyft driver tip?

You guys are tipping your Uber drivers? IIRC you couldn’t even tip until a few years ago.

Well, you can now, and I do. It's hard enough living in California and especially San Francisco, and I believe being in the service industry here is no picnic. Tipping is the least I can do.

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

#274

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

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

Don't the HN guidelines have something about "assuming good faith"? I can't be arsed to check now because obviously the comment above is not in good faith.

/s

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

#275

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

leumon wrote: post #129
labrador wrote: post #71

Based on anecdotal evidence, I strongly suspect these are remotely driven cars, not completely self-driving, which means there is a remote saftey operator ready to take over if the ride starts to go bad. "Self-driving" sounds sexier and is the ultimate goal, but if it were my company I'd probably lead with "remotely monitored by safety driver" to calm any fears people might have. I'm guessing the percentage of people…

They are only taken over in certain edge cases, and even then the remote operator is only placing the next destination, he is not actually remotely "driving" the vehicle. More on this here: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/

>> Fleet response can influence the Waymo Driver's path, whether indirectly through indicating lane closures, explicitly requesting the AV use a particular lane, or, in the most complex scenarios, explicitly proposing a path for the vehicle to consider. The Waymo Driver evaluates the input from fleet response and independently remains in control of driving. This collaboration enhances the rider experience by efficiently guiding them to their destinations

In my reading this is trying very hard to put a self-driving spin on an interface that allows a human operator to set waypoints for a robot to follow. This should at best be called "human remote-assisted self-driving", rather than "self-driving".

Btw, NASA uses a similar setup for its Mars rovers with autonomous navigation capabilities, like Perseverance. There was a report that described how humans on Earth can guide Perseverance to plan paths avoiding areas with potentially deep sand where the rover can get seriously stuck. The human operators draw the limits of what seems to them to be the safe area and the rover's onboard planner than plans a path through the safe area. That's still the farthest that autonomous navigation can go; pun not intended.

Ref: Autonomous robotics is driving Perseverance rover’s progress on Mars

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.adi3099

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

#276

Post by badpun »

wdh505 wrote: post #239
willcipriano wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Putting your kid in a car (self driving or not) is putting them in the most dangerous situation they could possibly be in - car crashes are the number one cause of death for kids (in the US.) It would follow that since no children die each year playing in active volcanos that's the safest thing they could possibly do. Kindergartens should be filled with magma.

Serious preventable accidents happen at 60+ MPH. Generally a slow 20-45 mph (35 mph average) drive around the neighborhood is much safer as there are almost no "serious" accidents. Source: an organization with a fleet installed some driver tracking gps's and looked at the data over a year or two.

Those stats are probably very different for babies, who are more fragile and could get seriously hurt even at lower speeds.

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

#277

Post by badpun »

tomp wrote: post #268
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

There is approximately 0% chance that the speed limit decreed by faceless bureaucrats is the optimal speed for the current circumstances on a given road.

If you want to optimize for least deaths and injuries, thr optimal speed limit is 0 km/h. Everything else is a tradeoff between convenience and potential harm.

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

#278

Post by dazc »

plaidfuji wrote: post #261
Dylan16807 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that blocks up traffic at a merge is when people can't get over smoothly. If everyone gets over at the first opportunity, then things go fine. The empty lane isn't wasted, it absorbs brief bursts in traffic that need more time to get over. But even if it was wasted, that wouldn't be a big deal. A 5-mile long section with fewer lanes and a 5.5-mile long section with fewer lanes will have almost the same thro…

In my experience what causes the slowdown are the people who merged too early who then resentfully close the gap in front of them when people try to merge later than them, simultaneously increasing the likelihood that they’ll rear end the car in front of them and making it harder for the people trying to merge properly to do so.

'...when people try to merge later than them,'

You mean the people who must get past every single car and merge at the last possible second?

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

#279

Post by dazc »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #245
notatoad wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10% slower on a 30-minute journey is 3 minutes. if i'm in the back of a taxi, i'm on my phone or reading a book or something. getting there 10% slower really just doesn't matter. humans drive fast becuase when they're late it makes them feel like they're doing something to solve their problem, but the time savings are almost always inconsequential.

Hard disagree. Time savings from speeding comes from discontinuities like beating traffic lights. Also 3 minutes is huge if you’re almost late to a 30 minute private lesson.

If you arrive on time you're already late. I think a lot of problems arise from people trying to optimise their journey time so they can leave at the last minute. Any small inconvenience then leads to road rage.

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

#280

Post by scrollaway »

tomp wrote: post #268
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

There is approximately 0% chance that the speed limit decreed by faceless bureaucrats is the optimal speed for the current circumstances on a given road.

You're the one calling them faceless bureaucrats. Most speed limits are set in place by a mix of safety boards and urban planners, who do take these limits into account. Explain to me what makes them faceless and detached from the situation?
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