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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

#341

Post by segmondy »

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.

be careful what you wish for, you are giving up your freedom to movement in the name of security. you might make the argument that you can hail a cab. that's more expensive than owning your own car and with self driving cabs you will lose your privacy when you use them. any movement between 2 points will always be recorded with at least video and as you are moving, someone else other than you can pinpoint your exact location. with your own vehicle, you could unplug your phone and car GPS/tracking device and have some privacy.

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

#342

Post by bryanlarsen »

guywithahat wrote: post #287
lvl155 wrote: post #65

No chance Waymo can operate in many parts of NYC. Good luck getting through double parked cars in Astoria and elsewhere.

There's a great YC saying which approximately says "you should get the easiest customers first". They even made a video about it, saying tech startups sometimes try to go for the hardest customers to "prove themselves" and it just hurts their business. I sort of wonder if that's happening here. SF, Austin, LA, etc, are all great cities to build autonomous vehicle startups in. There are many more major cities which do…

That's why Waymo started in Phoenix. They're well past that phase.

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

#343

Post by jonahx »

ilamont wrote: post #313
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.

Traffic enforcement, which used to correct some bad driving, has basically evaporated in many parts of the U.S. This has been a long-term trend. A friend who's a cop told me that only when their department got specific state grants would they set up stings of drivers driving in a pedestrian walkway while someone was crossing the street. Here's an example of one such grant program, which is actually funded by the fede…

In Miami, there is very little enforcement and reckless driving flourishes. I used to regularly see cars doing 90, weaving, pass cops who did nothing. I've also talked to multiple cops who confirmed that they rarely enforce unless specifically doing traffic duty. Which never made sense to me, since it's a revenue stream. But however the incentives are set up, they motivate cops to do nothing, and drivers know it.

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

#344

Post by Fricken »

bananalychee wrote: post #296
nostrademons wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia lists at least 28 fatal crashes involving Tesla FSD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tesla_Autopilot_crashe...

FSD is not Autopilot despite the names being conflated today, but even if you want to count all 28, it's not enough to compare raw numbers of fatal incidents without considering the difference in scale. That's not to justify taking your eyes off the road when enabling FSD on a Tesla, but the OP did not suggest that either anyway.

If Waymo were operating at 1000 times the scale then I suppose their total fatalities would be somewhere in the ballpark of 0 x 1000.

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

#345

Post by lenerdenator »

ilamont wrote: post #313
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.

Traffic enforcement, which used to correct some bad driving, has basically evaporated in many parts of the U.S. This has been a long-term trend. A friend who's a cop told me that only when their department got specific state grants would they set up stings of drivers driving in a pedestrian walkway while someone was crossing the street. Here's an example of one such grant program, which is actually funded by the fede…

> The U.S. and other countries need to use automated methods of detecting and applying penalties. Some busy intersections have cameras for this, but it seems to be very limited, maybe because of cost.

Ultimately, someone still has to send in a check, and if they don't, you go back to the same problem, which is having police officers interact with random drivers, this time with a no-show warrant.

This isn't as much of a problem in NYC, but here in KC, unfortunately, neither the traffic stop nor the warrant are trivially safe tasks.

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

#346

Post by pavel_lishin »

Antoniocl wrote: post #321
rs186 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complete unrelated, I just wish every driver on the road re-learn that cyclists have the same rights of being on city roads like cars.

How this issue skews probably depends on where you live, but in the area I live, I have the opposite complaint: that bicyclists should re-learn that they are legally required (in my city) to ride on roads, rather than barrelling down sidewalks. That said, this is coming from me as a pedestrian, so maybe someone who was primarily a driver would have a completely different take from both of us.

Where I live, there are definitely places where I end up cycling on the sidewalk, because it would be nigh-suicidal to actually take my bike on the road.

But I don't go barreling past pedestrians, and make sure I give them the right of way.

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

#347

Post by kotaKat »

ilamont wrote: post #313
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.

Traffic enforcement, which used to correct some bad driving, has basically evaporated in many parts of the U.S. This has been a long-term trend. A friend who's a cop told me that only when their department got specific state grants would they set up stings of drivers driving in a pedestrian walkway while someone was crossing the street. Here's an example of one such grant program, which is actually funded by the fede…

> Years ago New York used to calculate if you were speeding the NY State Thruway based on the time between toll booths. They cancelled this program for some reason.

Did they? The only thing I knew they nailed people for was speeding through the EZPass lanes too fast.

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

#348

Post by tialaramex »

gibolt wrote: post #267
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.

I think the US at least does sight tests periodically? The UK still doesn't do that, you're required to have decent vision to drive, but the license renewals are just paperwork, pay the money and click a web form.

There is talk in the UK of requiring sight tests for the elderly. Historically UK licenses required frequent renewal, when they were centralised for convenience they ceased to have a renewal step, and it was kinda-sorta reintroduced much later once they had photographs because of course a 40 year photo is unrecognisable. But because of the focus on photographs the renewal step is integrated to passports, and is a chain-of-likeness documentation process. If I look a big greyer than last time in the photo I upload, pay, wait a few days, OK, some mix of humans and machines says that's the same guy as the other photo except older, replace image, print new ID.

Since it's aligned with passports (which also care about image similarity) there's no room in that step for like "Do your eyes still work?" let alone "Do you know what this fucking sign means?" or anything resembling mandatory continuing education.

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

#349

Post by pavel_lishin »

kenhwang wrote: post #309
huhkerrf wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

People in LA wait to jaywalk on the street or even in the suicide lane all the time. The Waymos handle it fine; generally by asserting it has right of way unless collision is obviously imminent. They'll even happily swerve around you if you're too far out.

What is a "suicide lane"?

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

#350

Post by hombre_fatal »

jonahx wrote: post #343
ilamont wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traffic enforcement, which used to correct some bad driving, has basically evaporated in many parts of the U.S. This has been a long-term trend. A friend who's a cop told me that only when their department got specific state grants would they set up stings of drivers driving in a pedestrian walkway while someone was crossing the street. Here's an example of one such grant program, which is actually funded by the fede…

In Miami, there is very little enforcement and reckless driving flourishes. I used to regularly see cars doing 90, weaving, pass cops who did nothing. I've also talked to multiple cops who confirmed that they rarely enforce unless specifically doing traffic duty. Which never made sense to me, since it's a revenue stream. But however the incentives are set up, they motivate cops to do nothing, and drivers know it.

Maybe it's only one part of an overall trend in cultural rot around rule enforcement.

A woman had her dog in the cart at Costco that kept barking at people.

I joked with an employee during check-out "So anyone can bring their dog to the store these days?" and she said they stopped confronting these people because it's not worth it and makes things worse. Worse for who?

Man, I thought that was the exact type of person worth confronting in civilized society. If we can't police minor antisocial behavior, what can we confront? We wait until it's so bad that we have no choice?

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