Nice, looking forward to all the, ahem, creative protest to be done on the robocars if they ever do show up here. heh
Waymo in Portland
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Re: Waymo in Portland
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#24I feel like this post and most (if not all these comments) are an ad.
My personal enthusiasm can come off this way, but I'm excited for it as a cyclist, someone whose brother was killed by a driver, and general cutting edge technology hobbyist.
Re: Waymo in Portland
#25So, these streets are so tiny and pedestrians are used to just walking out on crosswalks because most people stop at crosswalks
Re: Waymo in Portland
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Baltimore soon. Seen them testing around the city.
Wouldn't Baltimore be the first Waymo market that actually gets snow? I don't think they've cracked driving in a real Midwest/northeast winter.
They're in Detroit, Denver, Minneapolis, and D.C.
Re: Waymo in Portland
#27A Waymo was recently stuck on some light rail tracks in Phoenix this year [1]. Portland has a rather diverse bunch of streetcars and trams concentrated in its downtown core. Hopefully they don't get stuck on the tracks or block the trams. [1] https://www.azfamily.com/2026/01/08/waymo-passenger-flees-af...
Definitely a big concern, but given the number of times in my lifespan that I've seen pictures or video of human-driven vehicles that have got stuck on railroad crossings (or just straight up drunk people trying to drive linearly down a railroad track)...
I would be curious to compare stats of 100,000 hours of human drivers getting stuck on grade crossings or doing something dumb, such as trying to drive around crossing barrier arms, vs 100,000 hours of automated driving. I would bet the automated driver does a lot better.
I recently saw a video from (I think not Phoenix) of 3 waymos that were next to each other blocking traffic in an intersection, refusing to move, because they were facing a traffic signal intersection where the signals had reverted to blinking red mode. Humans who paid attention when learning to drive will understand this means the intersection has reverted to a 4-way-stop due to the traffic signal failure.
The problem is that multiple red lights were blinking in view of the waymos not in sequence with each other, so the waymos interpreted it as a alternating-blinking red railroad signal crossing, and all of them refused to proceed, even when it was their "turn" in a 4-way-stop arrangement.
Re: Waymo in Portland
#28A Waymo was recently stuck on some light rail tracks in Phoenix this year [1]. Portland has a rather diverse bunch of streetcars and trams concentrated in its downtown core. Hopefully they don't get stuck on the tracks or block the trams. [1] https://www.azfamily.com/2026/01/08/waymo-passenger-flees-af...
Well, that's the hope, but the bar is pretty low. Portlanders constantly block streetcars, usually by doing a shite job of parallel parking.
Re: Waymo in Portland
#29A population with more spirit to resist than SF. I wonder if they bring out the traffic cones.
What will they tell the unemployed drivers? "Coal miners need to code" doesn't work any more. Become a data thief/labeler perhaps?
Re: Waymo in Portland
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Baltimore soon. Seen them testing around the city.
Wouldn't Baltimore be the first Waymo market that actually gets snow? I don't think they've cracked driving in a real Midwest/northeast winter.
We do get ice and snow in Portland, along with flooding and landslides. No, it's not the same as Midwest, but we do get a few days every other year or so that you just don't drive out in. The black ice around a couple curvy sections of i-5 are notoriously bad at night in winters. (Terwilliger)