Self-driving Waymos secure final clearance for expansion beyond S.F • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by kjkjadksj » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 4:47 PM UTC

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #39

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.

Honestly as a cyclist who takes Waymo, all the Waymos I've seen are much nicer to cyclists than any human driver. Most human drivers in SF either buzz past the 3 ft legal limit going 15 mph over (good luck when their mirror taps you at 40 mph) to try and overtake the cyclist or they'll just edge the cyclist out any time there's space to merge into the lane. Waymos usually give cyclists the whole lane comfortably and…

What I found is a hack for cycling on LA streets is just taking the entire lane. It makes it feel like there are actually bike lanes everywhere. It forces the drivers to pass by merging vs squeezing you out. They honk and cuss no matter what you do so you might as well do what makes you most safe and visible to other traffic.

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

#372

Post by kjkjadksj » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 4:51 PM UTC

cyberax wrote: post #119

Alupis wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By this logic public transportation should be the cleanest of them all. But, it is unfortunately far from that.

Public transit is actually pretty clean. The main problem is that they can't refuse to board disruptive passengers, who just trash everything around them. Waymo has cameras inside, so they can fine/ban you if you litter. The driverless cars can also, well, drive themselves to a cleaning center during the night-time when it won't affect the income generation. Another interesting possible feature is to redesign cars to…

Its not the refusal of certain groups of people that causes the cleanliness issue. Its the fact the bus doesn’t see a custodian until its out of service. The difference in cleanliness between poor and dirty areas and rich and clean areas of a city always comes down to investment in routine custodial service vs any behavioral difference. Rich people litter just as much, more sometimes knowing theres someone to clean it up.

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

#373

Post by abecedarius » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 4:55 PM UTC

dventimi wrote: post #366

abecedarius wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do what you wish, of course. But you seem to think this helps to level income, given the "level salaries" bit. What I'm saying is it doesn't. Markets equilibrate; they adjust when the form of payment changes. I'd agree that after tipping culture is definitely established in a field, then stiffing someone is unfortunately bad, unless you can coordinate on reversing this harmful cultural norm. This is just very differe…

Well. I don't want to speak for other people. If I were an Uber driver I personally would like to make more money rather than less, and if that happened with tips I wouldn't grumble too much about it. Maybe that's just me.

Huh. Do you also think U.S. employees would be better off if Social Security had been created with a 12.4% tax paid by the employer, instead of a 12.4% tax paid half by the employer and half by the employee?

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

#374

Post by kjkjadksj » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 4:56 PM UTC

alex_lav wrote: post #138

cyberax wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public transit is actually pretty clean. The main problem is that they can't refuse to board disruptive passengers, who just trash everything around them. Waymo has cameras inside, so they can fine/ban you if you litter. The driverless cars can also, well, drive themselves to a cleaning center during the night-time when it won't affect the income generation. Another interesting possible feature is to redesign cars to…

Unsure where you’ve lived but in Philadelphia/New York/LA/SF/Seattle/Portland public transit is pretty disgusting, troublesome passengers or not.

In LA county the newer lrt is fine. The old purple and red car trains though are disgusting even when they are clean. Theres usually a constant unpleasant background smell, halfway between stale cigarette and old puke, the cars are usually hot as hell causing everyone to sweat, and sometimes the already quite poor and noisy ventilation is off entirely in the traincar. It also doesn’t help that the aesthetic is beige and brown 90s style, which makes it even more dirty looking than the newer grey and stainless interiors. Most of the stations are overdue for a power washing. Especially down in the tracking thats full of trash and pee. Its not bad enough to be a deal breaker to me even with the occasional tweaker actively smoking some rock, but still its not pleasant.

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

#375

Post by kjkjadksj » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 5:07 PM UTC

dventimi wrote: post #366

abecedarius wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do what you wish, of course. But you seem to think this helps to level income, given the "level salaries" bit. What I'm saying is it doesn't. Markets equilibrate; they adjust when the form of payment changes. I'd agree that after tipping culture is definitely established in a field, then stiffing someone is unfortunately bad, unless you can coordinate on reversing this harmful cultural norm. This is just very differe…

Well. I don't want to speak for other people. If I were an Uber driver I personally would like to make more money rather than less, and if that happened with tips I wouldn't grumble too much about it. Maybe that's just me.

I think you both are speaking over eachother. You say on individual terms tipping makes sense and it does make sense in a vacuum like that. The other commenter is speaking in macro terms though. Having tips means theres less pressure to actually raise wages. It also fractures labor. You will have people getting no tips who really want higher wages and then people who are tipped well and comfortable with the status quo. This is a big issue with the restaurant industry; servers and bartenders in big cities might make most of their take from tips yet back of house struggles on the same base hourly wage since they aren’t tipped. Incentives are such that a high tipped server doesn’t want tipping to be replaced by wage increases sustained by menu price increases, since they will be splitting that now with back of house or less well tipped workers and will be making net less.

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

#376

Post by lern_too_spel » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 5:09 PM UTC

senordevnyc wrote: post #221

lern_too_spel wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a big upfront cost to add a new city, but once they add it, their marginal revenue per car will be higher there (partly because they can be sure to keep those cars busy and partly because they can charge a higher premium). They have to prepare the infrastructure anyway in all the cities to get to the scale they want to get to, but each new car built is going to be sent to the least scaled city so far.

Does that make sense from a consumer brand perspective though? If everytime I check Waymo there's no capacity or it's super expensive, pretty soon I won't even bother checking it.

It's worked so far. People are willing to pay the premium.

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

#377

Post by kjkjadksj » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 5:13 PM UTC

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…

If they use waze logic for routing they are screwed with their baked in hesitation. Enjoy waiting until 8pm to get a sufficient gap for the far too polite waymo to make that unprotected left across six lanes waze is asking you to do.

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

#378

Post by Workaccount2 » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 5:14 PM UTC

kjkjadksj wrote: post #367

Workaccount2 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because everyone drives 40mph on that main road that is marked 25mph, and there is no string of accidents or fatalities after decades of this.

Once you are doing 40 or 50 any accident you do have with a pedestrian is almost sure to be fatal. Lower speeds offer more of a chance.

Not driving cars at all offers the lowest. There has to be a degree of nuance when evaluating this.

Ironically in my town, we did have a "string" (3 people in 5 years) of pedestrian fatalities. All of which took place downtown where people actually do drive 25.

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

#379

Post by vkou » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 5:20 PM UTC

katbyte wrote: post #350

vkou wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Overbuilt roads aka “strodes”are real common in North America and as people tend to drive the speed they feel is correct not the limit it leads people to going faster and create unsafe situation. There’s a great not just bikes video on this iirc A sign doesn’t really change behaviour but narrowing roads , separated bike lanes, pedestrian controlled crossings, roundabouts, and generally making the road “feel slower” d…

I'm aware of this phenomenon.

My point is that until the road is narrowed, the safe speed on it may be lower than the average backseat traffic architect might think.

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

#380

Post by astrange » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 5:20 PM UTC

quqalx wrote: post #38

astrange wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretending they're being tracked and that people are making money from it makes them feel important, more like. You aren't actually that valuable.

It isn't actually a secret: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/04/smile-you...

You can tell this is an academic fight because it contains the phrase "disproportionately harm marginalised groups", which is the San Francisco version of pounding the table when they don't have an actual argument.

More importantly it doesn't mention making money off it.