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Waymo Safety Impact

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Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#181

Post by rootusrootus »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #79
Toutouxc wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this something that I’m too European to understand? How do you get “stuck” behind someone doing the speed limit?

> How do you get “stuck” behind someone doing the speed limit? "Only 46.5 percent of U.S. drivers consider going more than 15 miles per hour over the speed limit on the freeway to be "extremely" or "very" dangerous — with 40.6 percent openly admitting to doing it at least "a few times" in the last 30 days" [1]. [1] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2023/11/30/why-so-many-u-s-drive...

We have a lot of freeway speed limits that are holdovers from the last oil crisis decades ago. Cars have gotten quieter, smoother, more capable, to the point where 55 mph is kind of hilariously slow. When the legal speed limit does not reflect what most drivers think is reasonable, then we can stamp our feet and insist that the law must be right, or we could redesign the road or adjust the speed limit to more closely reflect conventional wisdom.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#182

Post by gambiting »

spankalee wrote: post #83
_p1l9 wrote: post #80

Blaming the kid here is absurd. The kid lives in a system where pedestrians are second class citizens in a world dictated by the auto-petro industrial complex. An industry that has co-opted unelected traffic "engineer" in the US and completely changed the way we live for the last 70 years and have made Americans fatter and less connected. If the child lived in a neighborhood where cars went slower (it was a 25mph zon…

Good thing no one blamed the kid.

>> it was because the child jumped in front of the car.

Did you miss this sentence? How can you read it in any other way?

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#183

Post by sublinear »

0x3f wrote: post #125
dbt00 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like keeping your kids inside in case something bad happens to them. If your kids never leave the house, something bad definitely happens to them, they stay kids.

Is there some benefit to talking to weird Uber drivers I've yet to discover that's comparable with 'going outside at all'?

Yes. "Weird" people are somewhat rare opportunity to build certain social skills.

I enjoy the challenge of finding creative ways to guide the discussion and understand their headspace for a little while. I am not even trying to control the level of weirdness, but just keep them talking and comfortable.

Unfortunately, most of the time they're not even weird people and it was just a weird first impression. They vent for like 3 minutes and then it gets boring again.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#184

Post by jjmarr »

casta wrote: post #131
ElijahLynn wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How ironic that an Alphabet company, Waymo, only works with a competitor streaming music service, Spotify, and not their own, YouTube Music. I guess that shows how separate they are.

In January YouTube music worked fine when I took Waymo in Menlo Park.

This was in September, so I'm happy to see the change!

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#185

Post by The_President »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #103
jjav wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens at 76mph?

Same thing that happens at 77mph :) I think 75 is memorable and roughly in the region where the tradeoff between increased kinetic energy and decreased time to arrival per additional unit of velocity becomes untenable.

> the tradeoff between increased kinetic energy and decreased time to arrival per additional unit of velocity becomes untenable

Sounds like a warning page out of the back of a 94 Geo Metro owner's manual.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#186

Post by FL410 »

1shooner wrote: post #98
Toutouxc wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this something that I’m too European to understand? How do you get “stuck” behind someone doing the speed limit?

On most US highways (i.e. multi-lane limited access roads), it's customary to leave a path in the left 'passing lane' for any traffic that wants/needs to go faster than you. If cars match speeds across lanes, it impedes faster traffic. The speed limit itself is a separate convention and regulation. In some places you can be cited for obstructing traffic by going the speed limit in the passing lane if you are matching…

>it's customary to leave a path in the left 'passing lane' for any traffic that wants/needs to go faster than you

It's not just customary in many (most?) states, it's the law. People who sit in the left lane are the problem.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#187

Post by epolanski »

flipbrad wrote: post #47
leovander wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make sure to never be in a hurry to get anywhere because you might then get stuck behind a fleet of them going exactly the speed limit, grid locking you in.

Isn't the correct answer to this, lobbying for higher speed limits? Rather than chastizing obedience to current rules.

In Italy several cities lowered the maximum speed from 50 to 30 km/h.

There was a huge fight over it, car drivers in those cities were mad. Plenty of politicians opposed it.

One year later stats were super clear: streets got way safer and the number of fatal accidents dropped to near 0. Time to traverse cities didn't change much, as it was already limited mostly by traffic and lights.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#189

Post by [deleted] »

ok_dad wrote: post #132
Analemma_ wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of those comments that made me laugh nervously. It's straight out of Ubik or another PKD novel, which probably means it's less than 5 years away from being real.

If there’s a torment nexus to be built they’ll build it.

[deleted]

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#190

Post by jjmarr »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #142
jjmarr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo saved my life in LA. When I visited LA, I rode in a Waymo going the speed limit in the right lane on a very busy street. The Waymo approached an intersection where it had the right of way, when suddenly a car ignored its stop sign and drove into the road. In less than a second, the Waymo moved into the left lane and kept going. I didn't even realize what was happening until after it was over. Most human drivers…

I think you're over-playing how decisively a Waymo will move and under-playing how decent the average human is. I've ridden in Waymos. They don't exactly slap on the blinker and move at the limit of traction like someone about to miss their exit. If cut off they absolutely will go full brake rather than perform any sort of spicy lane change or turn.

> If cut off they absolutely will go full brake rather than perform any sort of spicy lane change or turn.

Essentially, a meat driver was waiting at a stop sign to make a turn onto the main road. I was in a Waymo driving on the main road and did not have a stop sign.

When we were 10 meters away from the intersection, the meat driver suddenly started to enter the intersection. I have no idea why.

Full brake would've hit the other car in the driver's side door at 40 km/h.

> under-playing how decent the average human is.

I got to SMFC in CSGO which means I'm in the top 3% of players in clicking on heads within 500 ms of them appearing on my screen. I have never reacted as fast as that Waymo did.

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