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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

#281

Post by meagher »

xnx wrote: post #232
meagher wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> heavy electric vehicles have a lot more tire dust It would be interesting to know the fleet-level statistics for this. Driven by humans, EV might wear tires faster because of fast starts and the extra weight during stops. It's possible that the Waymo Driver accelerates and decelerates more smoothly, resulting in less tire wear than a human-driven ICE vehicle.

That would be great! Even if EV pollution is zero, cars still take up a lot of space in a city where space is very limited.

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

#282

Post by nickpinkston »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #22
nickpinkston wrote: post #12

Is this the first time Waymo is doing winter / snow testing at scale? I think some of the Pittsburgh-based self-driving firms may have tried this, but unaware how far they got.

We'll see what happens when there is snow in the forecast. They might just call them all back for the storm.

Yea, that's what I figured, but I also wonder how well anyone is driving in the slush and if the LIDAR / cameras are that disrupted by snow / ice / salt.

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

#283

Post by Dylan16807 »

meagher wrote: post #186
Workaccount2 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you mean that in the sense of "anyone getting killed is unacceptable" or the sense of "we need complete separation between cars and pedestrians/bikers, somehow"?

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

#284

Post by nostrademons »

bananalychee wrote: post #180
nutjob2 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a level 2 system, it can't be operated unattended. Your friends are risking thier lives as several people (now dead) have found out.

Wikipedia lists two fatal crashes involving Tesla FSD and one involving Waymo.

Wikipedia lists at least 28 fatal crashes involving Tesla FSD:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tesla_Autopilot_crashe...

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

#285

Post by renewiltord »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #158
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…

In many places outside the USA they just use cameras for box blocking, stop sign rolling, speeding...and there is a system for honking also. But many in the states think automation here is too Orwellian.

A sound solution in general, but the majority of police and firefighters and government employees with a connection to law enforcement cover their license plates with magnetic 'leaves' and so on. It's an undocumented perk for government employees.

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

#286

Post by soupfordummies »

HiroshiSan wrote: post #279
gibolt wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real issue is all the current bad drivers. A requirement to start re-testing normal people in addition to the elderly would be a large benefit to society.

Yeah the mindset is essentially drive to spec in the test and then skirting the law from then on.

I think a lot about this (bad drivers) and I’m not really sure how to fix it since I think it’s really a problem of underlying selfishness and perceived-exceptionalism mixed with overestimation of skill.

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

#287

Post by guywithahat »

lvl155 wrote: post #65

No chance Waymo can operate in many parts of NYC. Good luck getting through double parked cars in Astoria and elsewhere.

There's a great YC saying which approximately says "you should get the easiest customers first". They even made a video about it, saying tech startups sometimes try to go for the hardest customers to "prove themselves" and it just hurts their business.

I sort of wonder if that's happening here. SF, Austin, LA, etc, are all great cities to build autonomous vehicle startups in. There are many more major cities which don't get snow, have minimal rain, and are well thought out in terms of driving layout. NYC seems like the most difficult city to operate in, and while I believe it's a lucrative market it seems like a mistake.

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

#288

Post by cellis »

astrange wrote: post #124
Zigurd wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An autonomous vehicle's hivemind knows the exact duration of all yellow lights, even ones that vary based on traffic flow.

Not if they change the timing.

I'm sure "timing of yellow" is only a few parameters in its network at this point. And it's continuously training, it can probably one-shot the timing changes ( one taxi ride through maybe 3 lights ).

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

#289

Post by soupfordummies »

setgree wrote: post #28
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…

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…

Ultimately I wouldn’t support this level of snitching (especially in our current political env) but I’ve had the idea of:

A bounty program to submit dash cam video of egregious driving crimes. It gets reviewed, maybe even by AI initially and then gets escalated to formal ticket if legit. Once ticket is paid, the snitch gets a percentage.

Again, I am fundamentally against something like this though, especially now.

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

#290

Post by dgfitz »

soupfordummies wrote: post #286
HiroshiSan wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the mindset is essentially drive to spec in the test and then skirting the law from then on.

I think a lot about this (bad drivers) and I’m not really sure how to fix it since I think it’s really a problem of underlying selfishness and perceived-exceptionalism mixed with overestimation of skill.

Nailed it.

Mostly the selfishness part. The whole idea of being courteous with other people on the road just doesn’t exist.

Sadly, this also extends to bicyclists. Entitled instead of courteous.

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