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

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

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 456 posts

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

#261

Post by bluGill »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #53
terminalshort wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freeways are easier than surface streets. The reason they held off allowing highways is because Waymo wants to minimize the probability of death for PR purposes. They figure they can get away with a lot of wrecks as long as they don't kill people.

It sounds like you are saying freeways are easier than surface streets if you don’t care about killing a reasonably small number of people during testing. Really it’s a common difficulty with utilitarianism. Tesla says “we will kill a small number of people with our self driving beta, but it is impossible to develop a self driving car without killing a few people in accidents, because cars crash, and overall the prog…

The more important question is how many people are killed by non-autonomous cars in the same situation. It is inevitable that someone will be killed by a self driving car sometime - but we already know lots of people are killed by cars. If you kill less people getting autonomous rolled out fast than human drivers would that is good, but if you are killing more people in the short term that is bad (even if you eventually get better)

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

#262

Post by SoftTalker »

nradov wrote: post #224
ang_cire wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Really? I fly a lot and Part 121 commercial airliners seem to be pretty well maintained.

Very few airliners depart in perfect working order. There is a "MEL" (minimum equipment list) that details which systems can be inop and still operate the flight.

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

#263

Post by bluGill »

jordanb wrote: post #5
terminalshort wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freeways are easier than surface streets. The reason they held off allowing highways is because Waymo wants to minimize the probability of death for PR purposes. They figure they can get away with a lot of wrecks as long as they don't kill people.

There's also the risk of a phantom breaking event causing a big pileup. The PR of a Waymo causing a large cascading accident would be horrible.

Only because most drivers are tailgating and so if someone touches the brakes everyone needs to do a panic stop just in case. If people maintained a safe following distance at all times there would be space to see the lights and determine that no action is needed (or more likely you just take your foot off the gas but don't flash your brakes thus not cascading).

Of course the above needs about 6 times as many lanes as any city has. When you realize those massive freeways in Houston are what Des Moines needs you start to see how badly cars scale in cities.

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

#264

Post by treis »

panarky wrote: post #219
Night_Thastus wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

93% of American drivers think they're better drivers than the median driver [0]. This overconfidence causes humans to take unnecessary risks that not only endanger themselves, but everyone else on the road. After taking several dozen Waymo rides and watching them negotiate complex and ambiguous driving scenarios, including many situations where overconfident drivers are driving dangerously, I realize that Waymo is a…

Eh this doesn't mean much. The quality of drivers is pretty bimodal.

You have the group that's really bad and does things like drive drunk, weave in and out of traffic, do their makeup and so on.

The other group generally pays attention and tries to drive safely. This is larger than the first group and realistically there's not all that much difference within the group.

If you're in group two you will think you're above average because the comparison is to the crap drivers in group one.

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

#265

Post by timerol »

proee wrote: post #258
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.

This also applies to getting in a car with a human driver, or to driving yourself. Or to any other way of getting from point A to point B

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

#266

Post by AceJohnny2 »

proee wrote: post #258
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.

> and that "not" could be catastrophic

Any different than with a human taxi driver?

It's not about absolute reliability, it's about how well it compares to the alternative, which is human taxi drivers. And the thing is, you don't hear about human car accidents because it's so common that it's not worth making the news.

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

#267

Post by AceJohnny2 »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #266
proee wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> and that "not" could be catastrophic Any different than with a human taxi driver? It's not about absolute reliability, it's about how well it compares to the alternative, which is human taxi drivers. And the thing is, you don't hear about human car accidents because it's so common that it's not worth making the news.

> you don't hear about human car accidents because it's so common that it's not worth making the news.

Another very interesting thing about robotaxis is agency and blame. Taxi driver had an accident? Just that driver is suspect. Robotaxi had an accident? They're all suspect.

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

#268

Post by boulos »

s1mon wrote: post #10

How will Waymos handle speed limits on highways? In the city, they seem to stick to the rules. A large percentage of drivers in the bay area, including non-emergency police, drive well above the legal limit regularly. Unless Waymo sticks to the slow lane, it's going to be a weird issue.

We comply with the posted speed limits. Definitely on 101 near San Francisco where there are 55 mph zones (and maybe even 50 mph?) it's pretty noticeable. But we do hug the right lanes.

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

#269

Post by bluGill »

jjfoooo4 wrote: post #257
robocat wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not a slow driver in most cases, many slow drivers - all who want to go faster but cannot. There is just so much traffic that you can't go faster, and neither can the person in front of you.

I used to drive 20 under all the time (I achieved 57mpg once doing that) - but since this was an empty rural highway the few cars that were around saw me well in advance and moved over and passed without a problem.

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

#270

Post by boulos »

next_xibalba wrote: post #64

Road in a Waymo last weekend in Austin. Amazing experience. I was surprised at how mundane it felt. I had to keep looking at the empty driver's seat to remind myself that I was experiencing science fiction becoming reality. I will say, I was surprised that the interior of the car was kind of dirty. I would imagine this is going to be a growing issue these FSD taxi fleets are going to have deal with. Lots of people wi…

Sorry about that. Please file in-app feedback (now under Help > Leave Feedback) any time you experience something like that. There's a dedicated "Car Condition" tag.
Post reply on HN