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

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

#441

Post by wepple »

labrador wrote: post #195
wepple wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not putting my life in the hands of this software. If you were a professional driver, you know you put your life in the hands of people right? The average person is a pretty terrible driver. I’ll take a safely trained machine all day every day.

I'm a better and safer driver than Waymo. I trust myself over software. I also trust human professional drivers over software.

The data disagrees with you, significantly. Level 5 technology is only improving, and you’ll regress over time. A waymo never loses focus or gets distracted or tired in the way humans always will.

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

#442

Post by labrador »

wepple wrote: post #441
labrador wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a better and safer driver than Waymo. I trust myself over software. I also trust human professional drivers over software.

The data disagrees with you, significantly. Level 5 technology is only improving, and you’ll regress over time. A waymo never loses focus or gets distracted or tired in the way humans always will.

100,000 miles as a paid professsional driver and a couple 100k more for pleasure and I never once drove into a telephone pole. But keep talking about the mirage Level 5. I can think of many snap decisions I've had to make to prevent death or serious injury, including once when someone tried to commit suicide by jumping in front of me. I seriously doubt AI ability to outperform me in those situations. You're right, humans do regress, that's why I don't drive anymore. But no matter, Waymo's goal is to put millions of American drivers out of a job and they'll do it no matter what I say. Consider me shouting from the void as I disappear along with my working driver brothers and sisters, who Alphabet couldn't care less about.

Waymo recalls driverless cars to make them less likely to drive into poles https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/13/business/waymo-recalls-driver...

This conversation is invisible since everyone downvoted it so I don't know why you bothered to comment

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

#443

Post by ssl-3 »

sheepscreek wrote: post #288
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)

> Man. My daughter's head would sometimes detach from her body and fly around the room by itself. Is this satire, or am I missing something (going by the serious replies)? Not sure I would ever use this phrasing to describe anything serious - much less about my own child.

I mean: That part was of course satire. It's not like her head literally detached and flew around the room by itself: She was a real, human little kid (and a pretty awesome one at that), not something from some horror film full of practical effects and CGI, with disembodied heads flying around and screaming tirelessly like their very essence is being destroyed.

But it sure did feel like that was happening every now and then, despite our very best efforts and resources. And sometimes, something like a trip to the store ("HEY, DO WE NEED MORE EGGS AND MILK FOR TOMORROW?" "YOU KNOW WHAT? I THINK WE DO NEED MORE EGGS AND MILK FOR TOMORROW!" "OK! LET'S TAKE THE KID AND GO TO THE STORE!") was the the only thing that allowed for a return of sanity for anyone involved.

It was not the first option. We always employed all positive options first and had good support for finding new methods; we really did do pretty-OK at that time as non-robotic human parents, I think.

Going for a short drive was the last option before "Let her scream. It's hard work to make that much noise and she'll tire out eventually, and fall asleep [0]" would come into play after everything else has already failed.

[0]: We once got this advice from her doctor as a last-resort option. And maybe that was good advice or maybe that was terrible advice, but it was absolutely untenable advice for us when we were living in a stick-framed apartment building: Letting a kid scream like that for a prolonged period with a multiplicity of neighbors on the other sides of the walls is an easy road towards getting the police, CPS, and/or building management involved through no particular fault or misdeed of our own. And as a practical matter, when third parties become involved like that, now there are at least two problems (at least one of which is now an ongoing major problem) instead of just one relatively minor problem of a clearly-tired little human who chooses to scream instead of sleep.

I'm very glad that you never had the opportunity to experience this kind of thing. It's awful, and if it were easy to resolve I wouldn't have any of this to write about.

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

#444

Post by UncleMeat »

marssaxman wrote: post #389
tomp wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It has always seemed strange to me that restrictive speed limits persist in a supposedly democratic nation despite the functionally unanimous opinion of the citizenry, expressed through actual driving behavior, that the legally prescribed safety margins are excessive. I doubt you could find any other issue on which Americans of varying political persuasions would demonstrate such a high level of practical agreement.…

People are bad at risk management. I see oodles of people making wild decisions in their cars (sweeping across 4 lanes at once, backing up on the highway shoulder to return to a missed exit). The norm for trailing the car in front of you is also way way too short based on real physical limitations of braking.

Speed limits can also exist for reasons beyond the safety of drivers. There are roads around me that are wide, straight, and empty enough to comfortably drive 40mph but are right next to a school. The school-zone limit exists to provide extra safety for children who might foolishly step into the road very suddenly.

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

#445

Post by pc86 »

bluejekyll wrote: post #363
pc86 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our first is just out of this period and it really was pretty rough. It look us a month or so to come across the 5 S's and it made a world of difference. We also somehow got very very lucky in that he didn't need to be transitioned out of the swaddle, he just grew to dislike it so one night we just stopped cold turkey and it was fine. We've had friends that have had to do the one arm in / one arm out, swaddle the leg…

My son would always wriggle around until his hands were up next to his face (this is like 11 years ago). I started swaddling him in that position. We had an ultrasound picture that showed his hand in a similar position, so I guess it carried over.

Same, almost all his US pictures show him with hands next to his face and he sleeps like that most of the time now too.

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

#446

Post by Zigurd »

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.

Marked NOTABUG. One reason to like AVs is that they follow the rules, and a critical mass of AVs, even as a minority of vehicles, will impose a "phase change" on traffic.

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

#447

Post by guiambros »

ajb wrote: post #281
guiambros wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus there's a camera in the car. Pretty easy to keep riders accountable, and solve any dispute. Compare that to other car sharing options (e.g. Zipcar, where cars are usually a mess, but there's no way to keep users accountable).

Hmm zipcars in my area (London) are usually clean.

I wish it was the same here. In NYC (Brooklyn specifically) it's 50/50.

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

#448

Post by darby_nine »

Jcampuzano2 wrote: post #314
darby_nine wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh that's just not true and I would not trust any driver who says this.

If its not true then why do many cars with self-driving build it in as a feature to allow breaking the speed limit (up to a limit, in my car it still won't go above 15mph above the limit) in order to more closely match the flow of traffic. I think theres a bit of nuance. If the flow of traffic was all being crazy lunatics then yes I'd say so. But I would feel safer without other cars flying past me/around me because…

I speed on the freeway too, I just don't believe it's "safer". The margin between the traffic speed and the speed limit is just not generally large enough to be a hazard, and driving at a higher speed is just more risky and potentially lethal in every way.

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

#449

Post by nazka »

tialaramex wrote: post #247
thepasswordis wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s been that way for several years.

This also just makes sense when you conceive these taxis not as "Some other person's car" (as they would be with Uber, or with a conventional private hire service) but as interchangeable units. Of course they should all share state and so it makes sense that resuming the music carries on from where it left off.

Ya I think it does. But tell that to any C level after sometime a company grow… They will look at you wondering which weird idea you talking about.

Maybe it’s the Silicon Valley but it’s cool they still care about details like this.

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