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

NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–348 of 348 posts

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#341

Post by harambae »

zemvpferreira wrote: post #216
lr4444lr wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife lost 2 close relatives to accidental vehicular death. She's thrilled.

Hear hear. Anything that replaces humans at the wheel is a fantastic thing in my book. Road traffic injuries kill close to 1.5 million people every year. The sooner we can have robocars and robobikes replace all driving, the better. I don't care how much privacy that erodes in the short term.

>and robobikes

Is anyone currently doing this? I’ve seen proof of concepts for racing in motogp or something, but didn’t realized autonomous motorcycles was a thing outside the racetrack.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#342

Post by Fatnino »

_acco wrote: post #14

> My ride was so smooth, the novelty began to wear off, turning a trip to the future into just another journey across town. This is the only nod in the article to how futuristic and revelatory this innovation. The journalists sound so bored. I wonder if this is a function of how “around the corner” this tech has felt for so long? Have we somehow become jaded to this innovation before it has even arrived? Were journal…

My first driverless ride in a Cruise vehicle was like "oh this is neat, no driver!" and then I put on my seat belt and it was immediately just another ride in a car, no big deal. Not even a lingering thought in the back of my mind.

They drive just like a human would 99% of the time.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#343

Post by browningstreet »

sixQuarks wrote: post #267
browningstreet wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not actually here yet so economies haven’t actually been employed. It’s still a tech beta, though I’m not sure our Teslas will ever really do the thing.

Are you not aware of how FSD beta performs in SF? There are several videos where Tesla FSD beats cruise and Waymo in getting to random destinations, with no interventions.

FSD Beta still runs on the old fork of the Tesla software, and nothing "good" has been merged into the newer branch that I'm running (the one that supports Apple Music), and on long road trips, the phantom braking (which I've surmised happens mostly on undulations on a rising or falling road) is still a huge bother/risk... and the fact that Tesla hasn't back-ported whatever fixes they claim exist for phantom braking with AutoPilot means.. it doesn't exist yet. And it's been a problem for years and years now.

Also, my Tesla on AutoPilot freaks the f*ck out in large suburban intersections where the roads all go very straight -- it'll jump from lane 1 to lane 2 in the middle of the intersection. Not sure if SF has big intersections of the sort I'm talking about, but Sacramento, Reno, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and LA certainly do. Again, something they could fix if the fix was real, and for all the drivers out there smacking their stalk and AutoPiloting.

And lastly, on the highway, where the right lanes expand and contract with onboarding and exiting lanes the car tracks to the right solid line and not the un-moving dotted line to the left of the car. So the car is constantly jumping left and right as the "center" of the lane changes (because the width of the lane is changing), when the lane expands to allow for merge-lane traffic from those entering and exiting the freeway.

Two of these examples are on highways, which are ostensibly easier challenges than city streets.

Where's the rapid evolution of the tech? Not in product scope of the features people with Teslas are using day to day.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#344

Post by DanBC »

enoch_r wrote: post #273
checkyoursudo wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree that we live in a relatively good time right now, but I do wonder if this is the best it has ever been in the history of humanity. We have more pollution (air, water, noise, light), more cancer, more heart disease, more obesity, more addiction, more suicide, much worse environmental impact, and so on (though these are the worst that I can think of off the top of my head). Your points about safety, vi…

I think you have your rose-colored glasses on when looking at the past. Air pollution: down since the 1990s. [1][2][3] Water pollution: down since the 1990s. [4][5] Noise/light pollution: definitely up since the 1990s, agreed there. Cancer: US deaths are way down since the 1990s, though it's cheating a bit since that was the top of the smoking-related spike in lung cancer. Still, other cancer deaths are way down sinc…

> Cancer: US deaths are way down since the 1990s, though it's cheating a bit since that was the top of the smoking-related spike in lung cancer. Still, other cancer deaths are way down since then too. [6][7] (Edit: worldwide this looks worse and things have increased lately, see: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-people-with-can..." rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-people-with-can...)

> Heart disease: can't find long term stats on this quickly, but cardiovascular mortality is way down. [8]

And these two are linked. If most people get their cancer in their 70s, but they're dying of heart attacks in their 50s, anything that stops people dying of heart attacks is going to increase the number of people getting cancer.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#345

Post by gmadsen »

sofixa wrote: post #224
pirate787 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your Luddite take is profoundly wrong, and has been consistently proven wrong at every single technological turn in history. We have more robots than even today, and yet a labor SHORTAGE. Eliminating the tedious and dangerous task of driving is an enormous benefit to humanity that will save 30,000+ lives a year in the US alone. We will end the misery caused to millions from injury and tragedy, and the billions of dol…

> We can rethink our cities and move parking to the periphery Just moving parking to the periphery won't make American cities better or more walkable. > Eliminating the tedious and dangerous task of driving is an enormous benefit to humanity that will save 30,000+ lives a year in the US alone If you're assuming that self-driving cars will be perfect and segregated, conditions will always be perfect (e.g. no pedestria…

the vast majority of collisions are human error. it doesn't need to reduce 100% to be useful

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#346

Post by checkyoursudo »

enoch_r wrote: post #273
checkyoursudo wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree that we live in a relatively good time right now, but I do wonder if this is the best it has ever been in the history of humanity. We have more pollution (air, water, noise, light), more cancer, more heart disease, more obesity, more addiction, more suicide, much worse environmental impact, and so on (though these are the worst that I can think of off the top of my head). Your points about safety, vi…

I think you have your rose-colored glasses on when looking at the past. Air pollution: down since the 1990s. [1][2][3] Water pollution: down since the 1990s. [4][5] Noise/light pollution: definitely up since the 1990s, agreed there. Cancer: US deaths are way down since the 1990s, though it's cheating a bit since that was the top of the smoking-related spike in lung cancer. Still, other cancer deaths are way down sinc…

I don't have any quibble with your stats. Thanks for supplying them.

I was kidding about the 1990s. :)

Have you seen the maps that show where PFAS are? (Nearly everywhere.) Micro and macro plastics? (Pretty much everywhere.) Pollution (air and water) is absolutely up from pre-industrial levels.

Look, I am really not saying that now is worse than any time in the past. I think things are pretty good right now, except for a few real tragic issues and localities. All I am saying is that I am not 100% sure that now is undeniably better than at any time in the past of human history.

I think your stats make a pretty compelling case that the story is a bit mixed at the moment, especially depending on how someone might define what the best time to be alive would entail.

(Really, the 90s thing was just a joke.)

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#347

Post by bookofjoe »

sofixa wrote: post #224
pirate787 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your Luddite take is profoundly wrong, and has been consistently proven wrong at every single technological turn in history. We have more robots than even today, and yet a labor SHORTAGE. Eliminating the tedious and dangerous task of driving is an enormous benefit to humanity that will save 30,000+ lives a year in the US alone. We will end the misery caused to millions from injury and tragedy, and the billions of dol…

> We can rethink our cities and move parking to the periphery Just moving parking to the periphery won't make American cities better or more walkable. > Eliminating the tedious and dangerous task of driving is an enormous benefit to humanity that will save 30,000+ lives a year in the US alone If you're assuming that self-driving cars will be perfect and segregated, conditions will always be perfect (e.g. no pedestria…

I've noted this here before, it's worth repeating:

We will continue to accept our current 42,000 human-driven-car-related deaths/per year (2022) in the U.S. rather than 420 self-driving-car-related deaths annually for many years.

Autonomy is a fierce thing that humans can't bear to part with.

>The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has released its latest projections for traffic fatalities in 2022, estimating that 42,795 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes. This represents a small decrease of about 0.3% as compared to 42,939 fatalities reported for 2021.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/traffic-crash-death-est.... Apr 20, 2023

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#348

Post by clsec »

jfoster wrote: post #318
clsec wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that? It's a fully public taxi service that will probably be heavily marketed in Fisherman's Wharf/Pier 39.

They're only opening it up to residents bit by bit. They've shown no interest in opening it up to tourists. Presumably it will only be available for tourists once it's available to absolutely anyone.

I know I'm late on this, but..

"That means residents and visitors to San Francisco will be able to pay a fare to ride in a driverless taxi, ushering in new automated competition to cab and ridehail drivers." [1]

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/11/tech/robotaxi-vote-san-franci...

btw - are they going to check ID's??

Post reply on HN