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Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

waymo.com

61–70 of 129 posts

Re: Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

#61
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're confusing us with Cruise. Lots of reporting did the same, but we're expanding a lot across California. For example, now anyone can use our service in Los Angeles: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/11/waymo-one-open-to-all-in-los-...

https://www.the-independent.com/tech/waymo-driverless-taxi-b...

> One of the world’s first fully-driverless taxi firms has been blocked from expanding its business in California, where several of its vehicles have recently been involved in accidents.

> Waymo, which is the driverless car division of Google parent Alphabet, currently operates in parts of San Francisco. Attempts to roll-out its robotaxi service to Sunnyvale and Los Angeles were suspended for up to 120 days following a ruling by the California Public Utilities Commission’s Consumer Protection and Enforcement Division (CPED).

Then there's the federal investigation for Arizona crashes: https://www.azfamily.com/2024/05/15/feds-investigating-eight...

Your cars honking at each other in their own parking lot, at 4AM: https://youtu.be/Xvs0K1LG1ac?t=15

Your cars getting confused by a traffic cone: https://youtu.be/fMFzs0NZ_Mc?t=55

Your cars barely able to make a lane change under the most ideal circumstances: https://youtu.be/spw176TZ7-8?t=95

Unable to respond to the instructions of a police officer and it taking a minute and a half for employees to manually control the car: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ix98jFVyGxs

Blocking a fire truck: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eZMXVaF7Bj8

Breaking the law and getting pulled over by police for driving in the oncoming lane: https://youtu.be/7W-VneUv8Gk?t=28

One of your cars cutting off another one of your own cars in a wildly unsafe, illegal maneuver:

One of your cars running a red light: https://youtu.be/CHEtQ3Egt0c?t=244

...and then a few minutes later, illegally entering an intersection and stopping, then continuing to block the intersection because someone made a u-turn 30 feet in front of it while it was stopped: https://youtu.be/CHEtQ3Egt0c?t=474

And here's the icing on the cake: your company harassing reporters, calling the police on them because reporters were following it: https://youtu.be/spw176TZ7-8?t=170

Re: Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

#62
post #11

Going to be very interesting to see how the Japanese people react to this. The service the taxi drivers provide when you take the taxi in Japan is on another level, such as waiting for you with the open door and closing the door for you as you enter. A driverless car will never be able to copy that. Japan also has very good public transportation reducing the need for a car for day to day travel so cost might be less…

also, wearing white gloves, and actually helping you with luggage

Re: Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

#63
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're confusing us with Cruise. Lots of reporting did the same, but we're expanding a lot across California. For example, now anyone can use our service in Los Angeles: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/11/waymo-one-open-to-all-in-los-...

I literally just watched a video of a Waymo vehicle driving through and over the debris of a fresh car accident. Sorry, one day this technology will be ready for primetime but it currently is not. I think its complete BS that Waymo and others get to operate and test on public roads. The decision to prototype and test novel technology in public spaces where it can and will kill innocent people should be determined by a public referendum in elections, where I would vote NO.

Re: Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

#64
post #46
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in rural Japan, and in my experience, drivers are also crazy: * They stop on the side of roads and streets whenever they feel like it without worrying about blocking the traffic. * They don't turn the lights on no matter how bad the weather is. Super fun to be in the middle of a snow storm and people are driving white cars with the lights off. * Whenever someone wants to turn right at an intersection, the cars…

>* They stop on the side of roads and streets whenever they feel like it without worrying about blocking the traffic. To be fair, that's also true of pedestrians in this country.

True. It doesn't help that most streets don't have sidewalks and you are forced to walk on the road. And even when there are sidewalks, people ignore them...

Re: Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

#66

I guess the biggest challenge is gonna be not to get stuck in those narrow alleys that they call streets in Japan. Some of them can hardly take a kei car, let alone a sedan I can already see in my imagination all the jijis swearing when they see those cars stuck :)

They can barely change lanes: https://youtu.be/spw176TZ7-8?t=88

...and are completely flummoxed by a couple of traffic cones closing off a lane: https://youtu.be/fMFzs0NZ_Mc?t=56

Re: Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

#67
post #8

This will be interesting. As an aging nondriver living in Yokohama, I’ve been both hoping that self-driving cars become available here before I develop mobility issues and wondering how feasible they will be. Since I don’t drive, I don’t have a sense of what the roads here are like from the vehicle’s perspective. But many of the streets, including in the neighborhood where I live [1], are narrow, have no sidewalks, a…

Waymo is doing alright in San Francisco as well. That's not directly comparable to Tokyo, either, but I expect it's a much less distant of a comparison than Phoenix.

In SF you still have clearly delineated sidewalks with curbs and crossing lights. Japanese side streets are basically equivalent to alleys and cars are guests. There aren’t too many streets like that in the US at all.

Re: Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

#68
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confusing us with Cruise. Lots of reporting did the same, but we're expanding a lot across California. For example, now anyone can use our service in Los Angeles: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/11/waymo-one-open-to-all-in-los-...

I literally just watched a video of a Waymo vehicle driving through and over the debris of a fresh car accident. Sorry, one day this technology will be ready for primetime but it currently is not. I think its complete BS that Waymo and others get to operate and test on public roads. The decision to prototype and test novel technology in public spaces where it can and will kill innocent people should be determined by…

So don’t try to improve the existing system that already kills tens of thousands a year?

Saying it can and will kill innocent people when this hasn’t happened in fifteen years doesn’t pass the smell test.

Re: Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

#69
post #14
post #11

Going to be very interesting to see how the Japanese people react to this. The service the taxi drivers provide when you take the taxi in Japan is on another level, such as waiting for you with the open door and closing the door for you as you enter. A driverless car will never be able to copy that. Japan also has very good public transportation reducing the need for a car for day to day travel so cost might be less…

> waiting for you with the open door and closing the door for you as you enter I know you meant more than this, but I'm sure automating opening and closing the doors will be a lesser challenge then developing autonomous self driving?

Old Japanese sedan style taxis universally had a handbrake-like lever around front driver side door sill that opens rear passenger side door through a mechanical linkage.

Toyota JPN Taxi[1] replaced most sedan cabs, and it has electric sliding doors which is nicer than swing-out doors. Already opens and closes with electronic commands from driver seat. No big deal.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_JPN_Taxi

Re: Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

#70
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confusing us with Cruise. Lots of reporting did the same, but we're expanding a lot across California. For example, now anyone can use our service in Los Angeles: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/11/waymo-one-open-to-all-in-los-...

https://www.the-independent.com/tech/waymo-driverless-taxi-b... > One of the world’s first fully-driverless taxi firms has been blocked from expanding its business in California, where several of its vehicles have recently been involved in accidents. > Waymo, which is the driverless car division of Google parent Alphabet, currently operates in parts of San Francisco. Attempts to roll-out its robotaxi service to Sunny…

Why do humans get a pass but computers don’t?

Why do computers have to be perfect but it’s perfectly legal for humans to kill someone if the sun was in their eyes?

Make a list of those stuff for humans every day and it would be gigabytes of records. Almost all goes unpunished.

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