301–310 of 449 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Anecdotally they can be 10-25% slower than the rest of traffic I don't know anything about USA, but my understanding of other humans tells me that "Waymo is 10-25% slower than the rest of traffic" actually means "Waymo drives at the legal speed limit for that location, without surpassing it".
So it's a bad driver then, because matching flow of traffic is more important and safer than stubbornly following the exact speed limit
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Waymo is 10-25% slower than the rest of traffic" actually means "Waymo drives at the legal speed limit for that location... Probably 100% safer too Speed is the most dangerous aspect of motor vehicles
There is approximately 0% chance that the speed limit decreed by faceless bureaucrats is the optimal speed for the current circumstances on a given road.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just humans, but Uber/Lyft drivers. It is very common for an Uber driver to perform unsafe and illegal maneuvers while driving me. I don't report them because I don't want to get them fired. Usually I don't even remark on it, unless I think they did it in a way that was especially unsafe.
Uber/Lyft drivers won't improve their behavior on their own without feedback from the system, so please for everyone's safety please do report it.
Basically anything negative is rolled up into one signal no matter what the safety aspect is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the aspect that makes me most excited about Waymo and the like –the prospect of no longer having to tolerate terrible driving because removing someone's license is akin to an economic death sentence. Fully commercialized, self-driving should provide an economic alternative to humans driving themselves. And we should be able to leverage that to stop the worst drivers ever getting behind the wheel again.
So instead of penalizing unsafe drivers, we'll penalize all drivers by replacing them with robots? I'm actually a Waymo fan but this particular argument doesn't really hold water.
The only motivation I see that drives self-driving taxi development is reduced labor costs. But that isn't different than what has happened since the industrial revolution.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Initially, automation is always more expensive than cheap labor. That’s why we don’t automate things until human labor becomes more expensive than the ease of automation.
To some extent this is true, but most of the automation I've witnessed in my lifetime led with direct cost savings. My main conclusion is that waymo's customers are more likely to be scared by other humans than they are to be price sensitive.
Direct cost savings to the business or to the customer?
Waymo has been operating at an incredible loss for a very long time. They now have a product that people are willing to pay for and, in fact, find to be more comfortable—from OP's description it's basically a luxury Uber. Further, they expect to not be the only autonomous taxi system forever, competitors will eventually catch up.
Given that, I think it's only rational for them to operate at very high margins for as long as they can before competition drives the prices down. They probably won't come anywhere close to recouping the loss in that interval, but they'll get a head start on it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The mental hoops drivers go through to justify their unsafe behaviour...
Oh please. Let's assume people are going at a speed that the road is designed to handle, since that's usually the case. In that situation, the behavior you're calling out as unsafe is simply "going faster". Now, in a technical sense that's true, but it's always true. Going faster reduces safety when you're above the speed limit. Going faster reduces safety when you're at the speed limit. Going faster reduces safety w…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're the one calling them faceless bureaucrats. Most speed limits are set in place by a mix of safety boards and urban planners, who do take these limits into account. Explain to me what makes them faceless and detached from the situation?
> Explain to me what makes them faceless and detached from the situation? The fact that they’re not there. The idea that the same speed is appropriate at 9am when kids are crossing the street going to school and 2am when there’s noone there and no cars parked on the side of the road, is insane beyond belief. Speed limits are generally repressive and mostly just a tax collection scheme (though I strongly support most…
Don't we already have school zones which are 20mph when kids are around and higher otherwise?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
10% slower on a 30-minute journey is 3 minutes. if i'm in the back of a taxi, i'm on my phone or reading a book or something. getting there 10% slower really just doesn't matter. humans drive fast becuase when they're late it makes them feel like they're doing something to solve their problem, but the time savings are almost always inconsequential.
Hard disagree. Time savings from speeding comes from discontinuities like beating traffic lights. Also 3 minutes is huge if you’re almost late to a 30 minute private lesson.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The downvotes are because your suspicions are entirely wrong. There’s no remote “driving” or “take over”. They wrote a blog post on how it works just a few weeks ago: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/
So I've learned but it's not reassuring because the safer option would be to give a remote operator the ability to take over