I wonder how many horse & buggy riders hated the automobile.
Well, that actually was a transition away from self-driving cars.
Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars
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Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars
#32In other news, old people hate new things.
Not so much because it’s new, but because it’s safer
Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars
#33When i honk at another car it is always to correct bad behavior of some sort, normally when someone doesnt notice when a light turns green. But can these cars learn from being honked at? If they are doing 50 in a 90[1] clearly because they missed a sign, is there anything we can do to communicate to them that they are making a mistake?
Still wondering if they are capable of handling a police stop. Can they know that the cop wants them to pull over? can they know that the firetruck wants them to drive through a red light to let them by?
[1] Just had to honk at someone for this. Highway drops from 90 to 50 for road work but he missed the "resume speed" sign.
Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars
#34The worst type of drivers are the ones who go 20 under the posted speed and are overly cautious.
It sounds odd but one driver who is too cautious may be OK for them but it makes everyone around them go out of their minds.
Go with the flow.
Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars
#35US desperately needs self-driving cars. Desperately. I don't think most people realize how much. Because they've never seen a city with good public transport where most people don't own or care about cars. But achieving good public transport in US is impossible for cultural reasons. So there's no public transport so most expensive areas will fight to the death to keep population density low. Because more people means…
> achieving good public transport in US is impossible for cultural reasons
Self-driving cars are not going to solve congestion - quite the opposite. Personal transport will remain extremely inefficient in space and fuel compared to public transport.
Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars
#36Glad to know that road rage is reserved exclusively for humans.
Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars
#37I don't think I've ever heard anyone say they like conservative driving. "I would have risked that left turn, so you should have too. The person with the green light would have slowed down to avoid an accident, probably, and I would have gotten to the next red light 10 seconds sooner!" You will also hear this when talking about less-capable drivers ("get off the road, grandma!") or less-capable vehicles ("I hate havi…
"Anyone driving slower than you is a moron, and anyone driving faster is a maniac."
Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars
#38I don't think I've ever heard anyone say they like conservative driving. "I would have risked that left turn, so you should have too. The person with the green light would have slowed down to avoid an accident, probably, and I would have gotten to the next red light 10 seconds sooner!" You will also hear this when talking about less-capable drivers ("get off the road, grandma!") or less-capable vehicles ("I hate havi…
> As a result, traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for people from 8-24.
"As a result" is a pretty big stretch. Traffic accidents result from unexpected situations. People who drive a lot learn to read the environment and the drivers around them and anticipate what will happen next.
When those anticipations are violated, it runs the risk of creating a surprise that can't be managed. That is just as true for a violation in the conservative direction as in the aggressive direction.
Learning to drive is an empirical process based on observed behavior, not a deductive process from the rules of the road. So I'm not surprised that self-driving cars are disliked. They don't drive like people, and thus violate the heuristics that human drivers have built up to predict traffic behavior.
And perhaps more importantly, they look different, so they can feed into confirmation bias about how annoying they are. If it was impossible to distinguish self-driving cars (if they exhibited the same visual diversity as cars in general), it would be harder for people to build mental associations about them.
Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars
#39I don't think I've ever heard anyone say they like conservative driving. "I would have risked that left turn, so you should have too. The person with the green light would have slowed down to avoid an accident, probably, and I would have gotten to the next red light 10 seconds sooner!" You will also hear this when talking about less-capable drivers ("get off the road, grandma!") or less-capable vehicles ("I hate havi…
> As a result, traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for people from 8-24. "As a result" is a pretty big stretch. Traffic accidents result from unexpected situations. People who drive a lot learn to read the environment and the drivers around them and anticipate what will happen next. When those anticipations are violated, it runs the risk of creating a surprise that can't be managed. That is just as true…
> That is just as true for a violation in the conservative direction as in the aggressive direction.
I've been caught by surprise before when a conservative driver slammed on their brakes when the light turned yellow even though there was ample time for both of us to coast through the light. Instead, I nearly rear-ended them.
Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars
#40Do these cars ever go at the speed of traffic even if it's above the speed limit? Practically if everyone is driving 5-10mph above the speed limit then it actually seems more dangerous if the Waymo car is driving at the exact speed limit here?