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Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

road.cc

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Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#231

Post by amluto »

gambiting wrote: post #166
amluto wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many cities would stop functioning if everyone followed traffic laws — the whole system is built around drivers ignoring many rules. Businesses need deliveries to be unloaded and delivered. Customers need to get where they are going. And many cities do not actually leave space for loading and unloading. There’s a related issue that will become apparent as more cars drive themselves and take responsibility for their a…

Yes, but I hope we can both agree that if Waymo stops where it's not allowed, it's waymo's fault, not anyone elses, and definitely not the fault of traffic enforcement or lack of. Like you said - if traffic engineers wanted people to stop there they wouldn't have made it a bike lane.

> Yes, but I hope we can both agree that if Waymo stops where it's not allowed, it's waymo's fault, not anyone elses

I don’t really agree, at least not in a broad sense. If Waymo refused to stop and circled the block many times instead, and if Amazon trucks did the same thing, and taxis and such did the same thing, and the big trucks that deliver restaurant supplies did the same thing, etc, then bikes would be able to use their lanes freely but no one else would get much done.

We live in a world where many useful things require people to break rules. Is it the fault of the rule breakers or of the rules?

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#232

Post by scoofy »

jrowen wrote: post #182
scoofy wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ADA is enforced by lawsuits — not inspectors — exactly because businesses can’t be trusted to follow the rules that most of their customers don’t like.

I mean, if it comes to a lawsuit, sure, but the system is designed so that permitting and inspectors catch most of it. If you're trying to build your bathroom under the radar without a permit that's an entirely different analogy. But either way, it is the responsibility of the regulatory body to enforce. As other people have noted, this is not a Waymo problem, they're just following the status quo.

Again… it most definitely is a Waymo problem.

Exactly the case with the ADA. Since GOOGL is responsible for Waymo behavior, they will be liable in a class action suit where they willfully violated the law, putting others in danger, in selling their product.

There is not any way around it. You can avoid this issue like Lyft does, by having divers make that decision and by them being not worth suing, but GOOGL is worth suing, and you can’t intentionally violate the law and put folks in danger without it giving you massive amounts of liability.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#233

Post by mcmSEA »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #96
spankalee wrote: post #59

Cities that want to keep cars out of bike lanes should keep all cars out of them, autonomous or not, by ticketing them. But they don't, so taxis and delivery drivers stop in them. That's traffic enforcement's fault. Given that human drivers stop in bike lanes, Waymo then has a tradeoff: 1) Be the only ones to follow the letter of the law, break a lot of people's expectations, and catch backlash for disrupting traffic…

Cities who want to keep cars out of bike lanes should stop offering “mom says we have bike lanes at home” repainting of streets. Create a curb and raise the bike lanes. It’s the only safe solution. I understand this is not realistic in a lot of scenarios but it is basically the only way you can achieve actual safety short of cement separators at the road level, which is basically a curb anyway. There’s just no realit…

Agree with this.

The concrete barriers being added in Seattle help a lot.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#234

Post by wy35 »

Saline9515 wrote: post #208
jlebar wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Most) cyclists are rude and act like they own the road. I would bet you an arbitrary sum of money that 51% of cyclists are not rude and don't act like they own the road. (Same for drivers.) https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/salience-bias

Given the sheer amount of cyclist who think that cars should be banned with no consideration for anything else, I think that this is a common observation. Where I live, the pro-cyclist mayor (whose husband owns a bike rental shop, by pure coincidence) closed a road for cars without consultation, now the firemen along with residents are protesting because emergency and delivery vehicles can't access a large part of th…

Which town is this? I find it hard to believe that the mayor did not add an exception for emergency and commercial vehicles.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#235

Post by t0mas88 »

I'm not sure how this works in the UK, but over here in the Netherlands we have cyclists everywhere and a lot less drama. Here it's OK to stop on a bike lane and to merge onto it when turning right, but not to park on it. Merging means you give way to bikes first, then drive between them. And the other way around, if the bike lane is blocked, bikes merge into the car lane and cars drive behind them.

Consider it a two lane road, where you give way when you merge into the other lane and you slow down behind slower traffic that's in your lane. Except that when both lanes are available each type of traffic prefers "their" lane due to the speed difference.

That speed difference is decreasing in the bigger cities recently. Ebikes drive 25 km/h and many shared streets are reducing from 50 to 30 km/h for cars. It probably helps that a lot of the bigger streets aren't shared, there are many separated bike lanes here.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#236

Post by guelo »

twoodfin wrote: post #165

Waymo didn’t “say” this. Or at least the article this article references doesn’t claim they did. It’s a now third-hand paraphrase from an SF bike advocate who says he heard it from some unnamed representative of Waymo. If someone has something more direct, happy to read it, since this seems to be clickbait napalm at the moment.

Well we have to take whatever scraps of info we can get from these secretive PR managed companies with huge public impact.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#237

Post by bartwr »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #96
spankalee wrote: post #59

Cities that want to keep cars out of bike lanes should keep all cars out of them, autonomous or not, by ticketing them. But they don't, so taxis and delivery drivers stop in them. That's traffic enforcement's fault. Given that human drivers stop in bike lanes, Waymo then has a tradeoff: 1) Be the only ones to follow the letter of the law, break a lot of people's expectations, and catch backlash for disrupting traffic…

Cities who want to keep cars out of bike lanes should stop offering “mom says we have bike lanes at home” repainting of streets. Create a curb and raise the bike lanes. It’s the only safe solution. I understand this is not realistic in a lot of scenarios but it is basically the only way you can achieve actual safety short of cement separators at the road level, which is basically a curb anyway. There’s just no realit…

My experience cycling regularly in NYC: bike lanes separated by curb, stoppers, or poles are more dangerous as cars stop at their entrances/exits and I am literally trapped or cannot enter them before/after an intersection. I'm not against them in principle, but without extremely strict enforcent of laws (let's say a ticket 5% of someone's annual income and a loss of DL on a repeated offense - this stuff endangers people's lives), they are sadly counterproductive. :(

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#238

Post by jona-f »

rolph wrote: post #151
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the fines in the world won’t save you from getting mowed down by a distracted driver on their phone. Drinking and driving has heavy fine deterrents, yet people still do it anyway. You know what stops a drunk or distracted driver from killing someone? A cement barrier

add to that, a class of drivers that believe two wheel vehicles have no place on public thoroughfares, openly hostile to non cars.

And police that is sympathetic to those drivers.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#239

Post by throw_a_grenade »

danny_codes wrote: post #162
slibhb wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your analysis but I just want to point out that, as a general rule, cyclists do not follow traffic laws. They don't stop at stop signs/red lights. They weave in and out of traffic. They often bike the wrong way down one-way bike paths.

That seems irrelevant, we’re talking about cars. Also, of course bikers don’t follow car rules. Those rules are nonsensical for cyclists.

How is that when car drivers decide the rules are nonsensical it's bad, but when bicycle drivers decide the rules (that, please note, apply to everyone on the street, car or not), it's somehow A-ok?

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#240

Post by tmnvix »

jlebar wrote: post #187
Slow_Hand wrote: post #83

As a cyclist and a driver it’s not immediately apparent which Waymo behavior I prefer for passenger dropoffs/pickups. While it’s annoying in the moment to pedal around a parked car, I’m fine with it. However, having a Waymo dropping off clear of the bike lane sounds good, until the exiting passenger accidentally doors a cyclist who isn’t prepared for that possibility. I suppose I’d rather suffer the inconvenience of…

> having a Waymo dropping off clear of the bike lane sounds good, until the exiting passenger accidentally doors a cyclist who isn’t prepared for that possibility. Note that Waymos will alert you if a cyclist is approaching so you don't door them. Not saying it's perfect, you can still open the door if you want, but they are very consistent about this.

Except for the example in the article where the warning failed and an exiting passenger doored a cyclist resulting in brain injury.
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