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Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

cnbc.com

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Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#261

Post by ithkuil »

hammock wrote: post #212
9dev wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems only like a temporary problem until people get used to actually stopping at red lights, as they are supposed to. After the initial acceptance phase, it should minimise accidents over the longer term.

Unless there is a warning of how long is left on the yellow light, it’s an unsolvable problem because there is an asymmetric risk of stopping vs accelerating

The lights should be designed so that if you don't have enough space to stop with a mild deceleration you should just go through. If a mild deceleration get you rear ended then of course that's an unsolvable problem

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#262

Post by bradleyjg »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #158
setgree wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semi-related, but just once in my life, I want to hear a mayoral candidate say: “I endorse broken windows theory, but for drivers. You honk when there’s no emergency, block the box, roll through a stop sign — buddy that’s a ticket. Do it enough and we’ll impound your car.” Who knows, maybe we’ll start taking our cues from our polite new robot driver friends…

In many places outside the USA they just use cameras for box blocking, stop sign rolling, speeding...and there is a system for honking also. But many in the states think automation here is too Orwellian.

They do that in NY too. The worst offenders inevitably have fake/defaced/covered/no license plates. That should be cracked down on very hard but the police and prosecutors are strangely reluctant.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#263

Post by thfuran »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #225
thfuran wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to think bigger. Once we have separate lanes just for the waymos, we don't need them to be regular roadways. We can scale up the waymo even more and size the lane exactly to the vehicle, maybe even radically redesign the road surface for lower rolling resistance. What a future it will be.

By forming those waymos like aerodynamic bullets, they could reach ridiculously high speeds on those special lanes. Something like 200 mph should be possible. Maybe the waymos could be powered by overhead wires?

I'm having a hard time even picturing such a thing, but I have no doubt that Waymo could manage to operate them in cities across the nation, with sufficient re-training.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#264

Post by aprilthird2021 »

bsimpson wrote: post #11

It's insane that they need permits for 8 cars that have humans driving them in 2025, when they're already fully automated in SF. > We’re a tech-friendly administration Clearly not.

It's not insane for cities to permit autonomous vehicle technology. They permit almost every other type of heavy machinery. Even manually driven cars are permitted! (Driver's license test, registration fees, etc.)

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#265

Post by rurp »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #87
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife and I took a road trip that included time in SF last year and seeing a Waymo was pretty neat. To save some money, we stayed in downtown Oakland and took the BART into San Francisco. After getting ice cream at the Ghirardelli Chocolate shop, we were headed to Pier 39. My wife has a bad ankle and can't walk very far before needing a break to sit, and we could have taken another bus, we decided to take a Waymo f…

Why does tesla pretend to be autonomous? My friends with tesla fsd use it fully autonomously. It even finds a spot and parks for them.

The company selling the car is adamant that none of their cars are fully autonomous in every single legal or regularity context. Any accident caused by the car is 100% the fault of the driver. But the company markets their cars as fully autonomous. That's pretty much the definition of pretending to be autonomous.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#266

Post by Dylan16807 »

boppo1 wrote: post #223
nutjob2 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a level 2 system, it can't be operated unattended. Your friends are risking thier lives as several people (now dead) have found out.

Sources? Havent heard of deaths except total idiots sleepping at 80mph.

Are you trying to draw a distinction between sleeping versus looking away from the road and not paying attention to it? I expect both situations to have similar results with similar levels of danger in a Tesla, and the latter is the bare minimum for autonomous/unattended.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#267

Post by gibolt »

afcool83 wrote: post #239

I live in one of the areas they are actively testing/training in. Their cars consistently behave better and more safely than most human drivers that I’m forced to share the road with. As semi-autonomous and autonomous cars become the norm, I would adore to see obtaining a drivers license ratchet up in difficulty in order to remove dangerous human drivers from the road.

The real issue is all the current bad drivers. A requirement to start re-testing normal people in addition to the elderly would be a large benefit to society.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#268

Post by huhkerrf »

bytemut wrote: post #82
testfrequency wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Waymo is very reliable in LA and SF, you will be just fine in NYC. Your grid system is far less of a challenge than the amount of hills, twists, narrow streets and low visibility back streets in California. I genuinely think the most complicated challenge for Waymo in NYC will be…winter snow and ice.

NYC is a new set of challenges. As you already mentioned snow and ice is new. But also missing the high density of people and cars per square area. Behavior of drivers and pedestrians are different and much less polite. I can see it working in NYC but "just fine" is a bit of an over confidence... at least not for the first few years before they learn to deal with these issues that they don't face yet in LA and SF.

Don't forget the unique NYC challenge of people waiting to cross the street not on the sidewalk but just into the street itself.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#269

Post by chrisweekly »

groggo wrote: post #244
pradn wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Random sampling over time is substantially as effective as having someone enforce the law 100% of the time. It's something like how randomized algorithms can be faster than their purely-deterministic counterparts, or how sampling a population is quite effective at finding population statistics.

It feels less fair though. When everyone is driving x mph over the limit but only you get pulled over, it sucks. So I agree for efficiency of enforcement, but I'd rather see 100% enforcement (automated if possible), with more warnings and lower penalties.

It doesn't just "feel" less fair, it often is -- bc it's not truly random, it's selective enforcement which leads to things like "driving while black".

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#270

Post by crazygringo »

enricozb wrote: post #193

NYC is so dense it could be a bikers' paradise in the US. Why are we supporting even more car infrastructure :/

Because half the year it's freezing cold or blistering hot?

With CitiBike and so many bike lanes it basically already is a biker's paradise. Obviously there could be lots more improvements, but the people who want to bike already do.

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