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Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco
281–290 of 651 posts
Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love how we've gone from "Taxis are gross and dirty, that's why I love Uber!" to "Ubers are gross and dirty, that's why I love Waymo!" in the span of 5 years. What do you think comes next? These cars are literally unsupervised.
> These cars are literally unsupervised. Unsupervised in what sense? There's internal cameras that are periodically checked. Weight and seatbelt sensors that give alerts if a passenger is or puts objects in the drivers seat, or if too many individuals get in the car. I'd be shocked if a similar or greater level of observability doesn't also exist outside the car.
I've had a dude with a Tagalog accent take over the speakers in my car and asked me and the folks I was inside with to leave because I decided to clown car it with friends visiting from out of state. With that said, there for sure is someone monitoring, but it's similar to how checkout at Amazon Go stores went.
I'd be curious to know how this monitoring scales over time.
Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco
#283They solved the wrong problem. I still have to sit in a car for 30 minutes after work. If instead they made a robotic chef cook, that would actually save me 30 minutes every day.
Giant chain hamburgers coming to a waymo near you. Available in all rides longer than 7 minutes.
Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d say the same, maybe. But yesterday I had an Uber with a guy that had a degree in history and a love for SF lore, and told me about the tomb of Starr King, and then I went on a quest to find it with my friend. Just saying that there’s magic out there that’s not technological.
> Just saying that there’s magic out there that’s not technological. Dark magic too, I've been on one too many rides where the driver insists on monologuing on topics that range from detestable (politics) to alarming (the driver was armed, and had picked me up from the airport)
Was there a law against being armed in the airport dropoff/pickup area there?
Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco
#285Can they drive over steam yet? https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1dm3cqf/se...
Is it stopped for the steam? Or for the person holding the camera directly in front of it?
> “When I first saw it before filming, it was all alone, no peds, no other moving traffic. So, I don’t think it was yielding for any of the peds, just stopped for the steam.”
Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are freeways within the geofence in SF. My understanding is that Waymos will not drive on those freeways without a safety driver for now.
Freeway driving is easier than surface streets. Maybe merging in is the hard part.
You haven't driven on 101 in SF, I take it.
10 mph would be a great average speed, usually.
Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco
#287I highly recommend everyone try it out if you're in SF. It's an incredibly smooth and sure ride. The cars are really nice too (Jaguar I-Pace electric cars), clean and spacious. The first time you ride in one, it feels truly sci-fi. But within 5 minutes, you're almost bored of it - that's how good it is. If I had to choose between an Uber of questionable cleanliness and driver temperament and a Waymo with a slightly l…
I wonder if the cleanliness will be maintained over time? Presumably this requires humans to physically clean periodically, and it seems like this would suffer when the company starts to squeeze costs to improve margins.
I imagine the cars all head to some centralized location for cleaning and whatever other maintenance. That probably makes cleaning a very economic, factory-like procedure. Beats something like Uber where drivers have to bring their cars to a car wash or whatever (although presumably the Uber drivers aren't being paid to wash the cars because they aren't employees, so the unpaid labor there gives Uber an advantage).
Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
Waymo is in a better position because: 1. Robotaxi is a better target than general self-driving because the human baseline is much lower for robotaxis (most people dislike their experience with uber, while most people think that they are a better-than-average driver) 2. Google took the high road on safety. The move-slow-and-dont-break-things DNA of Google (that hurts them in so many domains) is a golden asset in self…
The main factor though is that California appears poised to hand them a monopoly.
Cruise did not help themselves. The market is open.
Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
> HD Mapping is great when it's accurate and available. But it requires a ton of data and constant updating, or the car will get "lost," and realistically will never be implemented in general, at best in certain cities. Waymo have said time and again they don’t rely on maps being 100% accurate to be able to drive. It's one of the key assumptions of the system. They use it as prior knowledge to aid in decision making.…
> They can also do constant updates because the cars themselves are able to detect road changes, self update maps and rollout changes to the entire fleet. Which leads to mapping failures being unchecked, as the system that generated the data is the one checking the data by driving it. See bullet point 1 in their recent recall for an example. > Prior to the Waymo ADS receiving the remedy described in this report, a co…
> the Waymo ADS’s perception system assigned a low damage score to the object;
and Tesla would do better how in this case? It also routinely crashes into stationary objects, presumably because the system assumes it wouldn't cause damage.
Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Just saying that there’s magic out there that’s not technological. Dark magic too, I've been on one too many rides where the driver insists on monologuing on topics that range from detestable (politics) to alarming (the driver was armed, and had picked me up from the airport)
Was there a law against being armed in the airport dropoff/pickup area there?
No, I added the pick-up locationbut to make it clear the driver knew I was unarmed as I was coming off a flight, since one can't legally fly with a gun.