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Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

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Re: Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

#421

Post by xnx »

onemoresoop wrote: post #310
HPsquared wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking forward to when they get rid of traffic lights and the networked cars just whiz through and avoid hitting each other. They'll also seamlessly zip lanes together on the highway, and traffic waves will be a thing of the past. Maybe China will do it first.

No thoughts on pedestrians? With no traffic lights it'd be a total nightmare to be a pedestrian

More likely that Waymo's will make it a paradise for pedestrians. It should be possible to cross any road at any point without so much as looking either way.

Re: Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

#422

Post by xnx »

lacker wrote: post #393
mmmlinux wrote: post #28

I was in SF a few weekend ago and rode both Waymo and normal Lyft style taxi cars. the Waymo was a better experience in every single way. One of the Lyfts i was in drove on the shoulder for a while like it was a lane. The Waymos were just smooth consistent driving. No aggressive driving to get you dumped off so they can get to the next fair.

I was riding in a Waymo recently and it suddenly braked for no reason at an intersection where it didn't have a stop sign. I was like, what the heck, this Waymo is broken, it didn't see that the stop sign is only two way. Then a little kid on a bike riding along the sidewalk at an angle where I hadn't seen them just barely braked to a halt before riding into the street in front of the Waymo. These things must be savi…

Clip shared by Waymo of it preventing what would have almost certainly been death/serious injury for a human driver: https://x.com/dmitri_dolgov/status/1868778679868047545

Re: Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

#424

Post by NoGravitas »

Isamu wrote: post #363
jvanderbot wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a stupid process. It bothers me that farmers rarely own the land too. We can't shake our tendency to let wealth turn us into tiny little kings that live off the rent. (not so tiny in the case of farms, but you get it).

>It bothers me that farmers rarely own the land too You will be glad to learn that most farmland is farmer owned: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/land-use-land-v...

This depends a fair bit on how you define "farmer", of course.

Re: Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

#425

Post by datadrivenangel »

daemonologist wrote: post #148
vjerancrnjak wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was doing this a lot in US whenever I’d see construction work speed limits and had similar experience. Realized no one cares about these custom signs.

Yeah it always wigs me out going through those super narrow "55 mph" construction zones on US highways. I'm not in a hurry and want to slow down, but if I did I'd have semis blowing past at 75 which feels even more unsafe. Honestly I think they should put up speed cameras.

In many US states they've started adding speed cameras to work zones!

Re: Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

#426

Post by xnx »

GloamingNiblets wrote: post #198
embedding-shape wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I can confidently say [...] you're likely looking at >500ms That sounds outrageous if true. Very strange to acknowledge you don't actually have any specific knowledge about this thing before doing a grand claim, not just "confidently", but also label it as such. They've been publishing some stuff around latency ( https://waymo.com/search?q=latency ) but I'm not finding any concrete numbers, but I'd be very surp…

My experience is from another prominent AV company; I do not have Waymo insider knowledge.

> My experience is from another prominent AV company;

Better technology is one of the reasons that Waymo has an active autonomous ride service and no one else does.

Re: Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

#427

Post by xnx »

jfim wrote: post #124
embedding-shape wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Freeways might appear "easy" on the surface, but there are all sorts of long tail edge-cases that make them insanely tricky to do confidently without a driver Maybe my memory is failing me, but I seem to remember people saying the exact opposite here on HN when Tesla first announced/showed off their "self-driving but not really self-driving" features, saying it'll be very easy to get working on the highways, but th…

It's easier to get from zero to something that works on divided highways, since there's only lanes, other vehicles, and a few signs to care about. No cross traffic, cyclists, pedestrians, parked cars, etc. One thing that's hard with highways is the fact that vehicles move faster, so in a tenth of a second at 65 mph, a car has moved 9.5 feet. So if say a big rock fell off a truck onto the highway, to detect it early a…

> No cross traffic, cyclists, pedestrians, parked cars, etc.

These are all present, but less common, on divided highways. If you're driving as many miles as Waymo, you'll encounter these situations every day.

Re: Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

#428

Post by AtlasBarfed »

donut_rider wrote: post #315
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh great! Doing life-threatening activities is now verified by anecdotal evidence. I get there. Basically isn't any laws for corporations anymore, is there any way I can see anything in regards to the safety of this at a statistical level? Where is NHTSA? Oh right, no federal agencies exist anymore except for those that maintain the oligarchy. And I don't give a crap if Uber has really good statistics and studies and…

You could, you know, just Google it: https://waymo.com/safety/impact/ . TLDR ~90% reduction of serious injury compared with human drivers. Now, before you say this peer-reviewed paper is corporate propaganda, all self-driving companies are required by law to disclose accidents they are involved in, whether liable or not, in CA. You could access each raw accident report published by the CA DMV periodically and come up…

Is it from NHTSA with a NHTSA or an auto industry group diving deep into the software and testing its edge cases? No?

Yes, it is corporate propaganda. "Peer reviewed" doesn't mean anything if it is SPONSORED BY THE COMPANY. There is peer reviewed studies to kingdom come that are industry sponsored and have plagued our society for at least a century.

I AM NOT THE PERSON that should be doing this research. A FEDERAL AGENCY TASKED WITH HIGHWAY SAFETY should be doing it, barring that, the auto insurance industry groups should be doing it. Not a corporate sponsored shill paper.

Re: Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

#429

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Moomoomoo309 wrote: post #417
HPsquared wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could still have pedestrian crossings with buttons etc which signal the cars to stop, just the same logic as we have now. Maybe even physical lights for redundancy. Pedestrians are pretty rare in most places though so this shouldn't slow things down too much.

And if the button doesn't work, what should pedestrians do?

Walk? Waymo already stops at crosswalks (marked or unmarked) if a pedestrian looks like they are crossing or starting to cross. That is more than I can say for human drivers. I’m confused why you don’t think this is just a win for pedestrians given how messed up things are now.

Re: Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

#430

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

asadm wrote: post #186
whimsicalism wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

high on what?

mj likely? which should be illegal.

is there any place on earth where it's not expressly illegal to be under the influence of cannabis while operating a motor vehicle?
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