Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Waymo in Dallas

waymo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 751 posts

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#191

Post by varenc »

massysett wrote: post #153

How do the cars do when breaking a rule is necessary? For instance, a car is broken down in the one forward lane of a two-lane road, requiring the waymo to cross the double-yellow line to get around it. Or, a signal is red for so long that obviously its car detector isn’t working.

It handles these circumstances. Definitely seen it cross to the other side with oncoming traffic to get around a truck blocking a lane. For the signal light, never experienced that, but I imagine after awhile it'd figure it out. Possibly with the assistance of a remote human telling it.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#192

Post by staplor »

elianaive wrote: post #23

Keeps on being rolled out in red states while being delayed in blue states, quite unfortunate.

It is unfortunate, but we're still in the early days of AV's. I think that more cities and states will be amenable to them once they have proven themselves as indispensable.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#193

Post by waterhouse »

heaney-555 wrote: post #172
alex1138 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And if anything, I'd expect machines to have faster reflexes than humans. The Medium article is walled off, but I found another source[1]:

"The child reported minor injuries and did not require transportation to a hospital. ... Waymo said at the time that the child ran into the street from behind a double-parked SUV and that the vehicle braked hard before contact, reducing speed significantly before impact."

Edit: Waymo's blog[2] says it "reduc[ed] speed from approximately 17 mph to under 6 mph before contact was made", and that "our peer-reviewed model[3] shows that a fully attentive human driver in this same situation would have made contact with the pedestrian at approximately 14 mph".

[1] https://ktla.com/news/local-news/new-details-released-in-way...

[2] https://waymo.com/blog/2026/01/a-commitment-to-transparency-...

[3] https://waymo.com/blog/2022/09/benchmarking-av-safety/

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#194

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

phoghed wrote: post #185
dymk wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit cards are not free money lmao

They mean the rewards. You can get some % cash back with no annual fee. Effectively my credit card costs me nothing, comes from the same bank as my checking and savings, and gives me cash back.

the other end of this is that all of those rewards are paid for through merchant fees, which lead to higher prices at the register. it's not free money. it's a fraction of a percentage of the profit credit card companies receive in fees paid by the places you shop. i would not be surprised to learn that even with rewards points we spend more money now that those programs are commonplace.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#195

Post by padolsey »

arjie wrote: post #58

Surprisingly low hype for a company running perhaps the most advanced consumer-interactive robots. I’m quite fond of these machines and will periodically rescue them when someone has misused them (door not closed, most commonly). Hope they do well. Very good road participants.

People seem so used to it now. I love them, I think they're probably one of the most exciting tech I've used in the last ten years. They're also like magical little rescue pods when socially overwhelmed in a busy city.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#196

Post by pm90 »

DFW is amongst the top 5 metroplexes in the US and is extremely low density, high sprawl with few public transit options and a car heavy culture. This is a a welcome change.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#197

Post by fragmede »

JLO64 wrote: post #121
matthavener wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One admirable part of Waymo's service area in Dallas is it serves areas previously devalued by racist redlining. This is in contrast to Uber's Avride and Tesla's Robotaxi offerings, which stick only to the richer, whiter areas of Dallas https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/03/uber-and-avride-launch-rob... https://dallasinnovates.com/tesla-launches-robotaxis-in-dall...

This is somewhat similar to the situation here in LA where they service and very often drive through Westlake/MacArthur-Park which undoubtedly low income. I think it’s for practical reasons though, as they’re not allowed to use the freeways here yet. So for people going from rich areas (Bel-Air/Beverly Hills) to DTLA they need to cross/drive through there anyways. Even so, I’ve encountered plenty of people who live i…

Ish. The problem with Waymos is there's no human driver, so they'll adjust pick up and drop off in a way that could be dangerous for the passenger. A human driver isn't going let a passenger off into a dangerous situation. They'll block traffic to drop the passenger off at their destination instead of a few blocks away in a dangerous neighborhood.

Waymo's got the legal go ahead to use freeways, but they're working on some of the subtleties of self-driving on the freeway vs city streets before enabling it for everybody. (Specifically, California car culture is you merge left early instead of staying in the right lane until you have to. Apparently the Waymo driver was staying in the right lane.)

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#198

Post by jackp96 »

slg wrote: post #180
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...

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.

I'm under the impression (worth a check) that we do have verifiable safety statistics and that Waymos are significantly safer than Teslas at this point?

That's not to say that Tesla's autopilot isn't safer than the average human driver—it might be—but I thought it was settled territory that Waymos are better on safety.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#199

Post by fragmede »

powersurge360 wrote: post #124
epolanski wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can that be anywhere near financially sustainable.

If you are curious about this, I recommend There’s No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America. It covers how some folks, with no credit, are forced to live in extended stay hotels (where they take cash up front and don’t run credit) which can cost multiple times what rent can cost. If you put the author, Brian Goldstone, into YouTube, you can find some recent news coverage of some of the folks from the book and…

The most evil thing I heard was companies like Doordash and Uber buying up data on who has credit card debt, so they know which driver is more desperate for cash, so they can low-ball them and give them a worse offer because they're more likely to take it because they're desperate for it.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#200

Post by inigyou »

arjie wrote: post #58

Surprisingly low hype for a company running perhaps the most advanced consumer-interactive robots. I’m quite fond of these machines and will periodically rescue them when someone has misused them (door not closed, most commonly). Hope they do well. Very good road participants.

They're also covered in cameras the police have access to, which have been used to track down legal protestors in the past. That's why there was a spate of people setting them on fire a few months ago. Basically, every Waymo car is a Flock camera.
Post reply on HN