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Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

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

#201

Post by meagher »

xnx wrote: post #185
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?

It’s a step in the right direction, but they still pollute (heavy electric vehicles have a lot more tire dust) and take up a lot space (could close roads and build housing or just have more space for the millions of city residents that don’t have/use cars).

LTN still allow buses, emergency vehicles, deliveries, etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Traffic_Neighbourhood

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

#202

Post by xnx »

dazc wrote: post #141
k__ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they don't get any feedback, they might not get anything from it anymore.

You are on to something here. I have started driving a small car in the UK (Ford Fiesta) and have discovered it's a magnet for the road rage people (around 50% of drivers here). Firstly, I never back down and will come to a complete stop if slowing down doesn't work. Secondly, I have noticed these drivers feed off any reaction and that avoiding eye contact works very effectively, even if they pull beside you to have…

"Don't engage" are words to live by on the roads

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

#203

Post by bc569a80a344f9c »

dboreham wrote: post #113
bryanlarsen wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That all sounds like something that should be easier for a robot to do than the typical human. If programmed for how to drive in heavy snow, a robot should be able to switch driving modes much easier than the typical human brain. Waymo has been trained in Buffalo NY for winter conditions, unlike most NYC drivers.

Is it possible to train a machine to drive in snow? Yes. But consider that humans are trained to do so by means of things like: actually crashing, observing others crashing, talking to people who crashed, and all of the above is highly localized. Where I live there are many days in winter when someone not from the immediate area should not drive at all. But I might if there was a good reason because I have 25 years e…

> talking to people who crashed

A reasonable counterargument is that autonomous vehicles can actually do that to a degree that is much, much more effective than humans. You might have 25 years of experience, but at 8 hours a day for 365 days of those 25 years we'd only need 8 cars driving for a year to match that. After all, training data and event logs generated by cars can be shared, and models can be upgraded all around. And of course that scales to more than 8 vehicles rather easily.

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

#204

Post by Scoundreller »

Zigurd wrote: post #63
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…

If you look into the fleet size serving Waymo service areas, it's remarkably small. But because they work 24/7 they serve up a lot of rides, punching way above their weight in terms of market share in ride hailing. Their effect on traffic and how drivers behave will be similarly amplified. It could turn out to be disastrous for Waymo. But I suspect that low speed limits in New York will work to Waymo's favor.]

Real question for waymo will be snow and ice, or do they just get parked in that situation when demand is highest?

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

#205

Post by pradn »

Aurornis wrote: post #156
chrisshroba wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s amazing how effective even a slight amount of random law enforcement can be. Several of the hiking trails I frequent allow dogs but only on leash. Over time the number of dogs running around off leash grows until it’s nearly every dog you see. When the city starts putting someone at the trailhead at random times to write tickets for people coming down the trail with off-leash dogs suddenly most dogs are back on…

Random sampling over time is substantially as effective as having someone enforce the law 100% of the time. It's something like how randomized algorithms can be faster than their purely-deterministic counterparts, or how sampling a population is quite effective at finding population statistics.

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

#206

Post by NewJazz »

meagher wrote: post #201
xnx wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

It’s a step in the right direction, but they still pollute (heavy electric vehicles have a lot more tire dust) and take up a lot space (could close roads and build housing or just have more space for the millions of city residents that don’t have/use cars). LTN still allow buses, emergency vehicles, deliveries, etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Traffic_Neighbourhood

EVs usually produce much less brake dust, not more, than combustion vehicles.

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

#207

Post by mckn1ght »

reddit_clone wrote: post #167
sowbug wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>speeding up at yellow lights I remember reading somewhere accelerating at orange light is actually a ticket-able offense?

My memory may be outdated or only local to my jurisdiction but my understanding is that yellow means “do not enter the intersection” where “intersection” begins before the box, usually with some alternate street indicator, like broken white lines turning to solid, at a braking distance that accounts for posted speed limit and yellow light duration.

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

#208

Post by paffdragon »

whyenot wrote: post #84
vinkelhake wrote: post #25

I live in the bay and occasionally ride Waymo in SF and I pretty much always have a good time. I visited NYC a few weeks ago and was instantly reminded of how much the traffic fucking sucks :) While I was there I actually thought of Waymo and how they'd have to turn up the "aggression" slider up to 11 to get anything done there. I mean, could you imagine the audacity of actually not driving into an intersection when…

Each Waymo is equipped with multiple cameras (potentially LPR), LIDAR, etc. The car knows when the vehicles around it are breaking traffic laws and can provide photographic/video evidence of it. Imagine if Waymo cars started reporting violators to the police, and if the police started accepting those reports. Someday they might.

Isn't it too dystopian to have cars follow you around and report you to authorities? I can easily imagine some bad scenarios.

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

#209

Post by nkozyra »

vinkelhake wrote: post #25

I live in the bay and occasionally ride Waymo in SF and I pretty much always have a good time. I visited NYC a few weeks ago and was instantly reminded of how much the traffic fucking sucks :) While I was there I actually thought of Waymo and how they'd have to turn up the "aggression" slider up to 11 to get anything done there. I mean, could you imagine the audacity of actually not driving into an intersection when…

Driving in most of the city isn't that bad. Even most of Manhattan is fairly regular driving compared to most of the country. It really isn't until you're near midtown that the insanity kicks up.

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

#210

Post by setgree »

jakogut wrote: post #130
chrisshroba wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

People are risking their lives and the lives of others, and a fine is supposed to be the thing that finally gets them to comply?

You've got me: I believe that people respond to financial incentives. I don't think this is a radical position.
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