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Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

cnbc.com

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Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#181

Post by Workaccount2 »

meagher wrote: post #170

This is great long term for having cars that follow traffic laws since human drivers in NYC are awful (kill/injure pedestrians, bikers, and other street users all the time). Not so great for getting cars out of NYC and pedestrianizing more of the city/moving towards more “low traffic neighborhoods” as I imagine Waymo and other similar companies are going to fight against these efforts. Edit: Lots of people talking ab…

Believe it or not, NYC is actually the safest city in the country for pedestrians and bicyclists.[1]

[1]https://www.wagnerreese.com/most-dangerous-cities-cyclists-p...

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#182

Post by seanmcdirmid »

meagher wrote: post #170

This is great long term for having cars that follow traffic laws since human drivers in NYC are awful (kill/injure pedestrians, bikers, and other street users all the time). Not so great for getting cars out of NYC and pedestrianizing more of the city/moving towards more “low traffic neighborhoods” as I imagine Waymo and other similar companies are going to fight against these efforts. Edit: Lots of people talking ab…

I'm not sure why you think waymo would fight against that. People getting rid of their own cars for daily use will increase how often a service like waymo is used for occasional usage. In the long run it would be a win for waymo. Not many people are taking taxis on a daily basis in New York for normal driving, they buy a car if they need to do that because even with the parking bill they will still come out ahead. And once they have their own car they feel like they need to get some use out of it.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#183

Post by liasejrt »

chrisshroba wrote: post #44
setgree wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semi-related, but just once in my life, I want to hear a mayoral candidate say: “I endorse broken windows theory, but for drivers. You honk when there’s no emergency, block the box, roll through a stop sign — buddy that’s a ticket. Do it enough and we’ll impound your car.” Who knows, maybe we’ll start taking our cues from our polite new robot driver friends…

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…

I think (or at least I hope) St Louis is primarily focused on reducing their sky-high murder rates. But who knows.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#184

Post by 9dev »

sowbug wrote: post #128
QuantumSeed wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in a Waymo in SF last weekend riding from the Richmond district to SOMA, and the car actually surprised me by accelerating through two yellow lights. It was exactly what I would have done. So it seems the cars are able to dial up the assertiveness when appropriate.

When red-light cameras are installed at an intersection, the number of rear-end accidents typically increases as drivers unexpectedly slow down instead of speeding up at yellow lights. The cost of these accidents is borne by just about everyone, except the authority profitably operating the red lights. (To be fair, some statistics also show a decrease in right-angle collisions, which is kinda the point of the red-lig…

That seems only like a temporary problem until people get used to actually stopping at red lights, as they are supposed to. After the initial acceptance phase, it should minimise accidents over the longer term.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#185

Post by xnx »

meagher wrote: post #170

This is great long term for having cars that follow traffic laws since human drivers in NYC are awful (kill/injure pedestrians, bikers, and other street users all the time). Not so great for getting cars out of NYC and pedestrianizing more of the city/moving towards more “low traffic neighborhoods” as I imagine Waymo and other similar companies are going to fight against these efforts. Edit: Lots of people talking ab…

> pedestrianizing more of the city

Replacing dangerous, dirty, noisy cars with safe, clean, and quiet ones seems like a huge pedestrianizing step.

What's a "low traffic neighborhood"? Does that allow busses or deliveries?

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#186

Post by meagher »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #181
meagher wrote: post #170

This is great long term for having cars that follow traffic laws since human drivers in NYC are awful (kill/injure pedestrians, bikers, and other street users all the time). Not so great for getting cars out of NYC and pedestrianizing more of the city/moving towards more “low traffic neighborhoods” as I imagine Waymo and other similar companies are going to fight against these efforts. Edit: Lots of people talking ab…

Believe it or not, NYC is actually the safest city in the country for pedestrians and bicyclists.[1] [1] https://www.wagnerreese.com/most-dangerous-cities-cyclists-p...

I’d believe it, but the fact that any pedestrians/bikers are killed/injured by cars in NYC is unacceptable.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#187

Post by Scoundreller »

0_____0 wrote: post #140
rahkiin wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In Massachusetts, USA, red light cameras were illegal until very recently, due to a 70s era law specifying that a live policeman had to issue a citation for something like that. From well before traffic cameras were common.

Before they were common, yes, but they existed in active use back in the 1960s in the Netherlands: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_enforcement_camera

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#188

Post by cowthulhu »

mothballed wrote: post #146
rahkiin wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In most the USA, or at least Arizona, you have to serve someone. Just dropping something in a mail box doesn't mean dick. The very people that invented the traffic cameras up in Scottsdale were caught dodging the process servers from triggers from their own camera. Another words, you have to spend hundreds of dollars chasing someone down, by the time you add that on to how easy it is to jam up the ticket in court by…

In CO we have automatic traffic cameras, and to my knowledge they just mail you the ticket, which is usually only a fine (and no license points). Its one of those “automatic plea” tickets where if you fight it, you fight (and risk conviction on) the actual offense, while if you just pay the ticket it will automatically get downgraded to a less serious offense (IE parking outside the lines).

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#189

Post by cj »

Grazester wrote: post #76
kingkawn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF traffic is but a single speck of nyc

Traffic? The issue half the time in NYC is the drivers. I can't compare it to SF since I haven't been there in a while but I still thought it was not as congested to compared to NYC. NYC has a greater population and also has a greater number of registered cars compare to SF however.

As a comparison, I feel safe riding a motorcycle in SF. I don’t think I would ever ride a motorcycle in NYC.

Riding safely requires predicting what the cars around you are about to do. I find it an order of magnitude harder to predict driver behavior in NYC.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#190

Post by xnx »

testfrequency wrote: post #134
bytemut wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We do have narrow streets in LA with double parked cars, cars parked in the street only allowing one car through the middle at a time, and plenty of construction closures and obstacles. 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 driv…

There's a weird thing where people like to brag(?) that their city has the craziest, worst, drivers/roads.
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