131–140 of 642 posts
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Imagine if we had dedicated lanes for giant Waymos, that could hold dozens of people. The future of transport.
This already exists outside of America and is abundant and cheap. It's called public transit.
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> "Why does having launched in other cities matter if the new city brings up things that none of the other launched cities do?" New requirements come up all the time in technology. The existence of a new requirement isn't in and of itself justification for skepticism - is there a particular reason to believe that Waymo is not capable of solving for the new requirement? The answer may be yes, but simply "ahah! It woul…
The interesting snow & ice problem for me is that humans will drive in winter conditions that are unsafe -- for example white-out blizzards. Robocars won't be able to drive in a white-out blizzard, so they'll likely refuse to do so. Humans should also refuse to drive, but people drive anyways. NYC doesn't generally get white-out blizzards, so refusing to drive in them is quite feasible.
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This always astounds me about cities who have a reputation for people breaking certain traffic laws. In St. Louis, people run red lights for 5+ seconds after it turns red, and no one seems to care to solve it, but if they'd just station police at some worst-offender lights for a couple months to write tickets, people would catch on pretty quickly that it's not worth the risk. I have similar thoughts on people using t…
Try driving anywhere in the world that's not Western Europe or The USA and you'll quickly see how advanced even our worst cities are when it comes to traffic. Last time I was in China drivers simply go through four way intersections at top speed from all directions simultaneously. If you are a pedestrian I hope you're good at frogger because there is a 0% chance anyone will stop for you. I really wonder how self driv…
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Since Waymo is very reliable in LA and SF, you will be just fine in NYC. Your grid system is far less of a challenge than the amount of hills, twists, narrow streets and low visibility back streets in California. I genuinely think the most complicated challenge for Waymo in NYC will be…winter snow and ice.
NYC is a new set of challenges. As you already mentioned snow and ice is new. But also missing the high density of people and cars per square area. Behavior of drivers and pedestrians are different and much less polite. I can see it working in NYC but "just fine" is a bit of an over confidence... at least not for the first few years before they learn to deal with these issues that they don't face yet in LA and SF.
Why do so many NYC people think there’s comically no cars in LA or neighborhood streets?
Also, I can assure you LA drivers are a tad bit more aggressive than NYC drivers (less honking and flicking off though, LA people are more a drive you off the road or into the shoulder sort of passive aggressive).
I was born and raised in NYC and have lived in LA for quite some time, still going home often for family. I’m really struggling with reading these “NYC is unique” comments regarding Waymo traffic.
I'm cautiously optimistic about this self-driving thing. Waymo at least seems to have figured out a lot of it. Would it be way better to make walkable neighborhoods, mixed-use developments, and reliable and frequent public transit? Yes. Yes it would. But, in lieu of that, self-driving has a lot of advantages in the long run, even if the technology isn't 100% perfect right now.
This x10000
It's fascinating seeing all the comments elsewhere anytime Waymo starts testing in another city along the lines of, "ah, but how will they handle X, Y, and Z here?? Checkmate, robots!" despite having already launched service in several other cities. Granted, NYC is the biggest city in the US, so maybe that sort of reaction is more reasonable there than when people in Dallas or Boston do it.
Since Waymo is very reliable in LA and SF, you will be just fine in NYC. Your grid system is far less of a challenge than the amount of hills, twists, narrow streets and low visibility back streets in California. I genuinely think the most complicated challenge for Waymo in NYC will be…winter snow and ice.
Nah, I'm betting it'll be the locals. They'll get pissed off at it remaining stopped when it shouldn't and do shit like start ramming into it. I've had it happen on the island when I stopped at a yellow. NYC is a lot more chaotic than any other US city I've driven.
It's fascinating seeing all the comments elsewhere anytime Waymo starts testing in another city along the lines of, "ah, but how will they handle X, Y, and Z here?? Checkmate, robots!" despite having already launched service in several other cities. Granted, NYC is the biggest city in the US, so maybe that sort of reaction is more reasonable there than when people in Dallas or Boston do it.
Since Waymo is very reliable in LA and SF, you will be just fine in NYC. Your grid system is far less of a challenge than the amount of hills, twists, narrow streets and low visibility back streets in California. I genuinely think the most complicated challenge for Waymo in NYC will be…winter snow and ice.
It's insane that they need permits for 8 cars that have humans driving them in 2025, when they're already fully automated in SF. > We’re a tech-friendly administration Clearly not.
I don't thin it's fair to say they are fully automated. There's a large remote operations team for remote assistance to help them get out of tricky situations. The cars can be nudged to perform certain actions.
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This always astounds me about cities who have a reputation for people breaking certain traffic laws. In St. Louis, people run red lights for 5+ seconds after it turns red, and no one seems to care to solve it, but if they'd just station police at some worst-offender lights for a couple months to write tickets, people would catch on pretty quickly that it's not worth the risk. I have similar thoughts on people using t…
In europe we use traffic cameras for this. Going through red light? A bill is in your mailbox automatically. No need for a whole police station.