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Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

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Re: Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

#251

Post by SoftTalker »

adventured wrote: post #126
SirFatty wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It must be interesting being an Uber driver right now and literally watching the robots that will replace you driving around with you." You mean the way taxi drivers had to watch as Uber and Lyft replaced them?

I imagine most traditional taxi drivers converted into Uber and Lyft drivers. Unique regulatory circumstances in places like NYC might have delayed that process some of course (eg trying to pay off a medallion). Uber and Lyft drivers are taxi drivers.

Drivers rarely owned the medallion. They leased the cab for 8-12 hours and drove it on behalf of the medallion owner.

Re: Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

#252

Post by toast0 »

asadm wrote: post #80
toast0 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Waymo was a better experience in every single way. One of the Lyfts i was in drove on the shoulder for a while like it was a lane. These sentances conflict. I recently took a taxi from JFK to Manhattan during rush hour, and I estimate if the driver didn't use all of the paved surface, it would have taken at least 10 more minutes to arrive. (And it wouldn't have been an authentic NYC experience) It's ok if you prefe…

couldn't you have arrived 10 minutes later or was endangering life worth it?

I certainly could have arrived 10 minutes later, but I wouldn't say that arriving 10 minutes later would result in a better experience in every way. It might result in a hypothetically safer experience (in the instance, there were no collisions so safety was achieved) or a morally better experience (according to the HN consensus morals that deem me a psychopath for either taking a cab at all or because I did not intervene and let the cab driver drive as he saw fit). Up to you what criteria you judge the overall trip on, I'm just pointing out that if the trip time is longer, the trip is not better in every way; at least absent an unusual requirement such as if you wanted to see the sights on the way, a shorter but less scenic trip would be a negative; or if you had a timing constraint that you must not arrive before a certain time, a shorter trip might infringe that constraint and would be a negative --- no such constraint was mentioned.

I don't know that any life was endangered either. I would accept an argument that property was endangered, certainly the margin between vehicles was very close, but at speeds where a collision would not have been injurious.

Re: Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

#253

Post by bluGill »

ang_cire wrote: post #205
nradov wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo cars are also more likely to be properly maintained. I've noticed that a lot of Uber / Lyft cars have some kind of warning light on the dashboard: check engine, low tire pressure, overdue for service.

Waymo cars are new. Wait until their fleets are 10+ years old. They'll have all the same bad maintenance issues that airplanes, semis, rental cars, and any other company-owned vehicles have.

I expect that Waymo will have standards. In theory Uber does as well, but since the drivers own their own cars they can't enforce them. A 15 year old car that has been well maintained is still safe to have on the road (within the limits of the safety systems on board), while a 6 year old car with a lot of miles that hasn't been maintained can be deadly.

Re: Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

#254

Post by SoftTalker »

nradov wrote: post #238
ang_cire wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how "exploit workers worse (medallions) and worse (rideshares) until we can fully cut them out" has played out in such a perfect microcosm, and yet somehow people here don't seem to register that it was never the workers' own fault. Taxis didn't lose because rideshares played the game better, they lost because rideshare companies used investor money to leapfrog their apps, ignored actual commercial transpo…

Taxis lost at least partly because the workers were assholes. Refusing to take credit card payments (the card reader is "broken") or not picking up members of certain ethnic groups or not driving to certain areas. Sure some cabbies were nice, honest people with good customer service skills but those were the exception in many cities. There was nothing stopping taxi companies from raising investor capital to build bet…

> some cabbies were nice, honest people

Most were, in fact. You just remember the assholes a lot more.

Re: Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

#255

Post by bluGill »

Tade0 wrote: post #161
daemonologist wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it always wigs me out going through those super narrow "55 mph" construction zones on US highways. I'm not in a hurry and want to slow down, but if I did I'd have semis blowing past at 75 which feels even more unsafe. Honestly I think they should put up speed cameras.

In my corner of the world it was the workers who demanded section control limiting speed to 70kmph in a segment of highway that was being renovated. Authorities later said that they only went after 30% of the worst offenders, because otherwise the sheer number of tickets would be to high to process in a reasonable timespan. Once word got out that the limit was actually enforced, speeds dropped. Now we have section co…

What do you mean by "section control"? A did a quick search and founds lots of possibilities but none that seem to apply to construction zone speed control.

Re: Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

#256

Post by bluGill »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #114
LZ_Khan wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo is overly conservative last time I checked. Driving the speed limit basically means getting to your destination twice as slow.

"Twice as slow" is not even slightly accurate. If you're driving 45 in a 40, that may sound like 12% faster, but once you add traffic, lights, stop signs, turns, etc - you'll find that the 12% all but evaporates. Even if you're really pushing it and going 15 over, at most speeds and for most typical commutes, it saves very little. Most of the time speeding ends up saving on the order of seconds on ~30 minutes or shor…

In the real world 45 in a 40 will often enough get through lights just before they turn to red often enough that your real speed is more than twice as fast! Unless the city has timed their lights correctly - which sounds easy but on a grid is almost impossible for all streets. It all depends on how the red lights are timed.

Re: Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

#257

Post by jjfoooo4 »

robocat wrote: post #162
iteria wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on where you are. There was a protest in in Atlanta about the speed limit. What did they do? They got in every. Single. Lane. As did the speed limit. This backed up traffic for miles. It stopped commercial delivery and had ramifications for entire area. The protesters were arrested. For going the legal limit. The speed limit did not change, but there is a reason why it's never enforced. I've lived in a cou…

I'd really love to see some good statistics on the risks of speeding on motorways. I often wonder about laws that are ostensibly there to prevent dangerous actions, about whether they actually help prevent dangerous driving. This guy analyses tailgating: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6n_lR09sjoU Awesome software although he seems biased (e.g. no mention of pedestrians), but he does say that tailgating is much more da…

I mean, isn't the most common reason people tailgate is that they're frustrated that a slow driver is in a lane they want to use to drive fast in?

Re: Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

#258

Post by proee »

mmmlinux wrote: post #28

I was in SF a few weekend ago and rode both Waymo and normal Lyft style taxi cars. the Waymo was a better experience in every single way. One of the Lyfts i was in drove on the shoulder for a while like it was a lane. The Waymos were just smooth consistent driving. No aggressive driving to get you dumped off so they can get to the next fair.

So it might come down to how many "9s" you're comfortable with. The experience is really good 99.999% of the time until it's not, and that "not" could be catastrophic. I suppose the data engineers are quite confident in the 9s.

Re: Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

#259

Post by richardubright »

embedding-shape wrote: post #22
NullHypothesist wrote: post #2

This is a huge sign of confidence that they think they can do this safely and at scale... Freeways might appear "easy" on the surface, but there are all sorts of long tail edge-cases that make them insanely tricky to do confidently without a driver. This will unlock a lot for them with all of the smaller US cities (where highways are essential) they've announced plans for over the next year or so.

> Freeways might appear "easy" on the surface, but there are all sorts of long tail edge-cases that make them insanely tricky to do confidently without a driver Maybe my memory is failing me, but I seem to remember people saying the exact opposite here on HN when Tesla first announced/showed off their "self-driving but not really self-driving" features, saying it'll be very easy to get working on the highways, but th…

I think the key is, it's easy to get "self-driving" where the car will hand off to the driver working on highways. "Follow the lines, go forward, don't get hit". But having it DRIVERLESS is a different beast, and the failure states are very different than those in surface street driving.

Re: Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

#260

Post by Tade0 »

bluGill wrote: post #255
Tade0 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my corner of the world it was the workers who demanded section control limiting speed to 70kmph in a segment of highway that was being renovated. Authorities later said that they only went after 30% of the worst offenders, because otherwise the sheer number of tickets would be to high to process in a reasonable timespan. Once word got out that the limit was actually enforced, speeds dropped. Now we have section co…

What do you mean by "section control"? A did a quick search and founds lots of possibilities but none that seem to apply to construction zone speed control.

Average speed camera. "Section control" is how they were named in Austria where I've first encountered them and the term translates to something similar in my language, so I assumed that was the English term, but it appears to be a case of Önglish.
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