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Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

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Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#341

Post by seanmcdirmid »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #301
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charging for street parking is a good step, but American neighborhoods still don’t have great transit and most people still have cars even if they are living in a house/apartment without parking. We aren’t like Japan where car owners have to prove that they have ample parking for their cars.

I would guess that there are very few houses and apartments without parking in the US.

(statistically, you are probably right if you are talking about the entire population of America, but we are really only concerned with a few dense cities and parking minimums have been on the out for a couple of decades now)

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#342

Post by vlovich123 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #26
vlovich123 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) I see no evidence this is creating death or misery. Autonomous still seems safer. B) even if in this one aspect they remain status quo, overall it would still be an improvement.

The source article describes an incident where a cyclist was seriously injured after Waymo's cyclist detection system failed while it was parked in a bike lane, allowing the passenger to hit her with the door. I don't think this represents some terrible sin where Waymo executives should all go to prison, but I do think we can reasonably expect and if necessary demand that Waymo take action to prevent similar incident…

It’s easy to skew perception with anecdotes when you don’t include anecdotes about the accepted status who.

What I’m hearing is that the system that creates a higher safety bar failed and the result was the same as you’d get with a human driver. It’s fun to lie with anecdotes when you don’t include stories and statistics of uber passengers dooring bicyclists. See how easy it is to draw the wrong conclusion?

It’s a big enough problem that personal injury industry actively seeks plaintiffs because there’s so many:

https://www.personalinjurysandiego.org/practice-areas/ridesh...

https://saslawgroup.com/hit-by-an-uber-pedestrian-and-cyclis...

https://www.bicyclelaw.com/about-bicycle-accidents-involving...

From the last one:

> As ride share vehicles have skyrocketed in popularity, we are increasingly seeing bicycle crashes involving ride share vehicles

The conclusion itself is biased and wrong claiming that uber lacks the markings of cabs without actually presenting any evidence that cabs are involved in fewer such incidents per passenger driven. They’re also doing the same thing you’re doing but at least it’s likely a website by cab drivers looking to actively paint Uber in a bad light. Oh, and Waymo taxis are actually branded clearly as taxis thus by that argument already they outperform ride shares.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#343

Post by seanmcdirmid »

gpm wrote: post #304
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not even close to how dense cities work. Even if you have street parking, it’s often saturated, this is like saying delivery drivers should just deliver in the middle of the night or something. Or really should go with small delivery drones.

In dense cities deliveries to front doors shouldn't be done by cars, yes. They take up too much space and cause too much inconvenience. For dense-deliveries (e.g. mail) park legally and walk some sort of cart along the sidewalk for blocks. For sparse-deliveries (e.g. food) ebikes work great. For medium density (e.g. puroloator) cargo-ebikes at least greatly increase the number of out of the way spots you can park. La…

This is pretty idealistic. What winds up happening around me is the amazon guy parks their car in the middle of the road AND also has a cart to hit multiple houses at the same time in that region. Furniture deliveries or even moving trucks can block our street for 30 minutes at a time. It is almost as bad as garbage day (ya, you aren't getting through our street on Tuesday morning if you time it wrong).

This would all be solved if we just had delivery parking spaces and got rid of on street parking for everyone else. Really, just that part is just where everything falls apart quickly. This is why traffic seems so much better in Europe (at least where I've lived, like in Switzerland), deliveries work, cars are not parked on the street except at a few very expensive parking spaces.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#344

Post by seanmcdirmid »

petre wrote: post #338
dualvariable wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One question the city probably can't answer is what disabled persons in the taxi are supposed to do. If you strictly enforce bike lanes the result is probably the rider needing to walk a few blocks. If the rider is disabled, that could actually be a huge burden. Since I've got an 80+ year old disabled parent with a walker this is an issue for me that does compete pretty aggressively with my support for bikes.

Designated drop off points with disabled person priority is the answer. How do you dropp off a disabled person in a lane with clogged street side paking? Shouldn't you be against street side parking by the same logic?

Would that be like LA where all the on street parking near UCLA is taken up by Luxury vehicles with handicapped placards?

Drop off/pickup points are the answer, disabled drop off/pickup might be redundant but could make sense in certain high capacity situations.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#345

Post by gpm »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #343
gpm wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In dense cities deliveries to front doors shouldn't be done by cars, yes. They take up too much space and cause too much inconvenience. For dense-deliveries (e.g. mail) park legally and walk some sort of cart along the sidewalk for blocks. For sparse-deliveries (e.g. food) ebikes work great. For medium density (e.g. puroloator) cargo-ebikes at least greatly increase the number of out of the way spots you can park. La…

This is pretty idealistic. What winds up happening around me is the amazon guy parks their car in the middle of the road AND also has a cart to hit multiple houses at the same time in that region. Furniture deliveries or even moving trucks can block our street for 30 minutes at a time. It is almost as bad as garbage day (ya, you aren't getting through our street on Tuesday morning if you time it wrong). This would al…

I was basically describing how most deliveries happen where I live. Not all, and we could do with forcing the remainder to less disruptive means, but the significant majority.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#346

Post by Gud »

doug_durham wrote: post #186
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities who want to keep cars out of bike lanes should stop offering “mom says we have bike lanes at home” repainting of streets. Create a curb and raise the bike lanes. It’s the only safe solution. I understand this is not realistic in a lot of scenarios but it is basically the only way you can achieve actual safety short of cement separators at the road level, which is basically a curb anyway. There’s just no realit…

Bike lanes with curbs aren’t great. On garbage days trash cans often get parked in the bike lane and cyclists have no way of going around since the curb block their way. I’m perfectly comfortable with just lines for bike lanes.

Only in dysfunctional societies.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#347

Post by gambiting »

amluto wrote: post #231
gambiting wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but I hope we can both agree that if Waymo stops where it's not allowed, it's waymo's fault, not anyone elses, and definitely not the fault of traffic enforcement or lack of. Like you said - if traffic engineers wanted people to stop there they wouldn't have made it a bike lane.

> Yes, but I hope we can both agree that if Waymo stops where it's not allowed, it's waymo's fault, not anyone elses I don’t really agree, at least not in a broad sense. If Waymo refused to stop and circled the block many times instead, and if Amazon trucks did the same thing, and taxis and such did the same thing, and the big trucks that deliver restaurant supplies did the same thing, etc, then bikes would be able t…

The rule breakers are responsible for breaking the rules. I thought that's a very simple uncontroversial statement.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#348

Post by llbeansandrice »

slibhb wrote: post #160
spankalee wrote: post #59

Cities that want to keep cars out of bike lanes should keep all cars out of them, autonomous or not, by ticketing them. But they don't, so taxis and delivery drivers stop in them. That's traffic enforcement's fault. Given that human drivers stop in bike lanes, Waymo then has a tradeoff: 1) Be the only ones to follow the letter of the law, break a lot of people's expectations, and catch backlash for disrupting traffic…

I agree with your analysis but I just want to point out that, as a general rule, cyclists do not follow traffic laws. They don't stop at stop signs/red lights. They weave in and out of traffic. They often bike the wrong way down one-way bike paths.

First, in many states cyclists explicitly do not have to stop at stop signs, it’s called an “Idaho stop” and it’s legal in my state. This is much safer for cyclists since most crashes occur in intersections and allowing cyclists to move thru faster is much much safer.

You’re also assuming equity of consequence. Someone not obeying the law on a bike is significantly different than not obeying the law when operating a multi-ton vehicle.

Finally, every single group of people breaks the law. There is no demographic of reasonable size that does not break the law. This argument is silly and pointless. What is your goal with pointing this out? Literally everyone breaks the law, this grandstanding is stupid.

Have you tried driving the speed limit recently? You know, the maximum speed you are legally allowed to drive? Do you always come to a full stop at every stop sign?

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#349

Post by llbeansandrice »

pandaman wrote: post #313
kelnos wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to agree with that (as a pedestrian and driver only), but as I've started cycling, I've begun to realize that many rules of the road, intended for cars, just don't make much sense for bicycles.

Like what? I hear people claim that not stopping at STOP sign is somehow making it safer than stopping but when asked about the mechanism of the safety in such a maneuver they either disappear or proclaim that Idaho where this is allowed is in top half of safest states for cyclists so it must work somehow. I cycle myself and see no rules that somehow don't make sense for bikes. In fact, since bikes are much less mane…

Idaho stops are legal for cyclists in some form in a dozen states.

There are tons of cycling specific laws that are separate or different from cars.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#350

Post by HDThoreaun »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #96
spankalee wrote: post #59

Cities that want to keep cars out of bike lanes should keep all cars out of them, autonomous or not, by ticketing them. But they don't, so taxis and delivery drivers stop in them. That's traffic enforcement's fault. Given that human drivers stop in bike lanes, Waymo then has a tradeoff: 1) Be the only ones to follow the letter of the law, break a lot of people's expectations, and catch backlash for disrupting traffic…

Cities who want to keep cars out of bike lanes should stop offering “mom says we have bike lanes at home” repainting of streets. Create a curb and raise the bike lanes. It’s the only safe solution. I understand this is not realistic in a lot of scenarios but it is basically the only way you can achieve actual safety short of cement separators at the road level, which is basically a curb anyway. There’s just no realit…

Curbed bike lanes create a huge hazard when cars going the same direction turn right. Neither the bike nor the car has good visibility of the other, very likely the car turns into the bike or the bike doesn’t stop and rides into the turning car.
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