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Waymo in Dallas

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Re: Waymo in Dallas

#171

Post by xnx »

sudokatsu wrote: post #159
xnx wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawyers are salivating at the possibility of suing Waymo if they ever make a mistake. Much better to be hit by a Waymo (or a Tesla Robotaxi) than the typical uninsured, "judgement proof", human driver.

Any stats to back up that the _typical_ driver is uninsured?

An exaggeration on my part. About 16% of all drivers are uninsured (https://insurance-research.org/node/130), but "accident probability of uninsured drivers is 34 percentage points higher" (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19439962.2018.1...).

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#172

Post by heaney-555 »

alex1138 wrote: post #169
WarmWash wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and cause WAY fewer traffic incidents than human drivers. Ironically the best way to verify this is that when they do cause traffic issues, it becomes national news. Imagine breaking down and blocking an intersection in Edgewood Georgia, and then getting a call that night from your Uncle in Oregon saying he saw your breakdown on the news...

There was a story here about it hitting a child (I think) but it was determined to be much less serious than if a human driver was involved

https://medium.com/the-generator/a-waymo-vehicle-hit-a-kid-b...

"As the Waymo approached the double-parked SUV, a child ran out from behind the SUV and into the roadway, directly in front of the Waymo."

Waymo cannae change the laws of physics. Braking distances exist for AI-driven vehicles just as much as human-driven ones.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#173

Post by alex1138 »

pyaamb wrote: post #141

Elon may have been technically correct about 'if humans can do it with vision only then theres no reason why vision-only cannot work' but turned out to be the wrong strategy for learning how to get there. lidar gives you a constant stream of data to check your vision yourself against and interatively learn. Once trained you turn it off. whereas teslas strategy ended up having to rely on human drivers for error feedba…

Elon annoys me. Waymo has AFAICT simply a better safety record than Tesla. And he runs SpaceX...?

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#174

Post by echelon »

WarmWash wrote: post #118
cortesoft wrote: post #60

I live very close to LAX, and we have hundreds of Waymos in our area. At first i was a little weary, and kinda weirded out by all of them. They have become completely normal, and cause WAY fewer traffic incidents than human drivers. They are very predictable, and will always let you pull in front of them when changing lanes (unlike a lot of other LA drivers). I have seen a few incidents where they seem 'stuck', and i…

>and cause WAY fewer traffic incidents than human drivers. Ironically the best way to verify this is that when they do cause traffic issues, it becomes national news. Imagine breaking down and blocking an intersection in Edgewood Georgia, and then getting a call that night from your Uncle in Oregon saying he saw your breakdown on the news...

> Edgewood Georgia,

I love when HN mentions my state or city, but that's the road and neighborhood one block down from me. I feel seen.

To add something more substantive to this thread, apparently Google's deal with Uber for distribution has become incredibly adversarial in our state. Uber won't explicitly let you book a Waymo or let you know if you're in the Waymo range.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#175

Post by sgustard »

xnx wrote: post #151
sudokatsu wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t tolerate machine incidents because who is liable if an accident occurs? A company with a $4.6 trillion market cap? They’re not a legal opponent any of us really want to take on.

Lawyers are salivating at the possibility of suing Waymo if they ever make a mistake. Much better to be hit by a Waymo (or a Tesla Robotaxi) than the typical uninsured, "judgement proof", human driver.

Exactly, imagine the huge sums of liability insurance Google is carrying to make payouts when the worst-case scenario happens. That financial burden is a prime driver of their operational safety record.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#176

Post by fragmede »

jerlam wrote: post #114
twosdai wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought about this as well. The dsytopian world I think will exist in the future where the Waymo is priced higher and people will want to take it more, over a cheaper Uber. Precisely because the human driver is removed from the equation. So yes, I think they will be able to turn a profit by charging more for the experience. Which is a humanless car.

At least in my area, Waymos are always more expensive than Ubers.

So, uh, you don't really tip your Uber drivers much then do you?

Right now, Tuesday 3pm, Waymo will cost me 13.76 cross town. UberX 10.95, Lyft 11.95. If I don't tip Lyft/Uber they'll be cheaper but I definitely don't tip the Waymo.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#177

Post by ericmay »

stefan_ wrote: post #161
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> humans are more likely to make emotional mistakes, but self driving is probably more likely to make perceptual mistakes or fail to respond to novel situations Humans fail chaotically. AVs, at least Waymos, fail safely. In urban environments, there is a case to be made within a few years for banning (or making it massively cumbersome) to manually pilot a private vehicle.

That's an odd claim. Human failures are uncorrelated, but the Waymos all running the same software must be expected to fail in the same way, in the situations in which they fail. Which is why they often make the news; one Waymo stuck soon sees many of its brethren join it.

Don't humans fail in the same way too, broadly speaking? Wouldn't it depend on how you categorize failure?

If a Waymo failed because it missed a stop sign, and then another Waymo failed because it was confused about some strange markings on the road, is that not failing "the same way" in the same sense that a person failing to yield or driving drunk?

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#178

Post by porphyra »

klaff wrote: post #168
porphyra wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla Cybercab has about three or four times the efficiency and like a fifth of the price by having smaller, two person vehicles. Indeed, the vast majority of trips are taken by single people and it's ridiculous to have a giant machine for them. It would also be okay to have a handful of larger, Model Y-sized vehicles for the multi-person trips. To actually answer your question: Part of the reason why the Waymo cars…

I have one of the most inefficient EVs and it's only 2.4x hungrier than the cybercab. It can comfortably carry 6 adults. I've been in Tesla 3s as Ubers before. They only need 31% more energy than the cybercab. If the cybercab was 1/5 the price it would be $14k. It won't be $14k.

The Waymo I-Pace is much less efficient than the regular roadgoing I-Pace. One X user posted a pic of the dashboard of a Waymo with 111,000 miles on the odometer, and it averaged 1.0 kWh per mile [1][2]. This is about 2.5x worse than the EPA rating of a normal Jaguar I-Pace. Probably the difference is because the Waymo has tons of compute and the sensors have a surprisingly large impact on aerodynamic efficiency. I was being generous to the Waymo in my original comment. If we compare the actual rating of the Cybercab at 165 Wh per mile, it would be 6x as efficient.

Also, whereas the stock Jaguar I-Pace was $70k, the Waymo one with all its sensors and compute have estimates ranging from $150k to $200k. In a comment made in late 2024, Waymo CEO Dmitri Dolgov mentions that the sensors and compute themselves cost $100k [3].

> The equipment on Waymo’s fifth-generation robot taxis — electric Jaguar I-Pace vehicles — costs as much as $100,000, Dmitri Dolgov, Waymo’s co-chief executive, said on a podcast in February.

That is the same generation as the current I-Pace fleet that makes up the majority of Waymos.

[1] https://eletric-vehicles.com/waymo/waymos-retrofitted-robota...

[2] https://x.com/niccruzpatane/status/2073967445509882286?s=20

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/04/technology/waymo-expansio...

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#179

Post by munk-a »

epolanski wrote: post #89
cortesoft wrote: post #60

I live very close to LAX, and we have hundreds of Waymos in our area. At first i was a little weary, and kinda weirded out by all of them. They have become completely normal, and cause WAY fewer traffic incidents than human drivers. They are very predictable, and will always let you pull in front of them when changing lanes (unlike a lot of other LA drivers). I have seen a few incidents where they seem 'stuck', and i…

It's very interesting, because on one side we have clear data showing that autonomous cars at the Waymo level are safer than humans. On the other hand we don't give technology the same pass we give to humans, meaning that we don't tolerate machine incidents the same way we tolerate human ones. Which means that self-driving cars need to be a magnitude of order safer than humans. And even though a self-driving car will…

> or use the car as a weapon on christmas markets

On the contrary, autonomous vehicles (especially if something like automated package delivery becomes an offered service) allow car bombs without the suicide bomber inside. Instead you just place an explosive in the device and send it to the intended destination - as an organization the primary concern then becomes whether the ride is traceable back to you which might be do-able given how "frictionless" rideapps are as long as you get a burner phone, prepaid credit card and are very careful about making sure the device is clean and can't be tied to your person.

Right now the tech is limited to places where carbombings aren't commonplace, but I think driverless cars open a huge potential issue in other markets. I absolutely agree they're safer than drivers are, but let's not be hyperbolic.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#180

Post by slg »

WarmWash wrote: post #118
cortesoft wrote: post #60

I live very close to LAX, and we have hundreds of Waymos in our area. At first i was a little weary, and kinda weirded out by all of them. They have become completely normal, and cause WAY fewer traffic incidents than human drivers. They are very predictable, and will always let you pull in front of them when changing lanes (unlike a lot of other LA drivers). I have seen a few incidents where they seem 'stuck', and i…

>and cause WAY fewer traffic incidents than human drivers. Ironically the best way to verify this is that when they do cause traffic issues, it becomes national news. Imagine breaking down and blocking an intersection in Edgewood Georgia, and then getting a call that night from your Uncle in Oregon saying he saw your breakdown on the news...

Would we apply this same logic to Tesla Autopilot?

As a disclaimer, this is neither an anti-Waymo comment or a pro-Tesla comment, I just find in interesting how these small sample size incidents are both covered and perceived in the absence of actual verifiable safety statistics.

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