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

Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

waymo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 651 posts

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#441

Post by kortilla »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #435
iknowstuff wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s legal to enter an intersection on yellow and exit on red in CA. Thats why. Human drivers speed up to avoid red, and yay you avoided red but the suddenly higher speed is far more dangerous for everyone around.

Why would it be illegal to enter on yellow? I thought that's the entire point of yellow. Otherwise we'd just have red and green, and hopefully you can imagine how that would work out.

In some states you are supposed to attempt to stop on yellow unless it’s unsafe to do so: https://axleaddict.com/safety/The-Meaning-of-the-Yellow-Traf...

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#442

Post by Anotheroneagain »

ModernMech wrote: post #377
hilbertseries wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxis have basically no recourse if you just ditch. Waymo has a video of you, your full name, your billing address and your credit card on file.

So do hotels, I guess that’s why no hotel room has ever been trashed.

I guess that's why no hotel lets you pay cash.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#443

Post by qingcharles »

gumby wrote: post #359
Dr_Birdbrain wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the cleanliness will be maintained over time? Presumably this requires humans to physically clean periodically, and it seems like this would suffer when the company starts to squeeze costs to improve margins.

I think eventually they’ll just make a car (like Zooks is) without all the messy crud (steering wheel etc) and with fixed, waterproof seats and such. It will be designed for automatic cleaned by driving into a depot and being hosed down. Think of those self-cleaning toilets.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1dolh8l/ve...

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#444

Post by solardev »

zooq_ai wrote: post #385
shkkmo wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is still stuck at Level 3 while Waymo has been operating at level 4 for years. If Tesla does manag to jump straight from level 3 to level 5, they have a chance to compete, but that seems unlikely. They also might move to level 4 and be able to expand level 4 coverage faster, but that still remains to be seen. Waymo has years of experience with the other hard part of self driving taxis: actually picking up and d…

A fan-boy would never call Musk a narcisstic a*hole. Technology progress is non-linear. Yes, Tesla is at L3 and Waymo at L4. But, you completely missed the point of rate-of-innovation, which was why I made that as first point. My GOOG holdings are 4x than TSLA. But in terms of who will deliver FSD at better margins, it's hands down TSLA. It's simple Math and Elon's obsession about cutting material costs & process to…

What good is being able to produce cheaper vehicles at scale if they're not capable of providing the same service? Tesla has had years to catch up but still hasn't, and there is no proof that they can.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#445

Post by gpm »

nytesky wrote: post #434
itsoktocry wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how we've gone from "Taxis are gross and dirty, that's why I love Uber!" to "Ubers are gross and dirty, that's why I love Waymo!" in the span of 5 years. What do you think comes next? These cars are literally unsupervised.

Uber started as off duty black car drivers doing gig work. Those were the default right? The random guy with a car gig was rolled out as uberx later? But I'm completely with you on the unsupervised part. People doing all sorts of things back there that an ML might not identify. Now if they hire an army remotely to monitor, I guess that could scale because of wage disparities.

Not just wage disparities. You can probably watch the typical video of an individual sitting calmly scrolling on their phone back at 32x speed. More complex scenarios with multiple people at 16-4x. Even assuming they pay 'car monitors' as much as drivers (which you're right, they probably don't) the cost for the monitors is still probably less than 10% the cost for equivalent drivers.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#446

Post by IanCal »

gpm wrote: post #445
nytesky wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber started as off duty black car drivers doing gig work. Those were the default right? The random guy with a car gig was rolled out as uberx later? But I'm completely with you on the unsupervised part. People doing all sorts of things back there that an ML might not identify. Now if they hire an army remotely to monitor, I guess that could scale because of wage disparities.

Not just wage disparities. You can probably watch the typical video of an individual sitting calmly scrolling on their phone back at 32x speed. More complex scenarios with multiple people at 16-4x. Even assuming they pay 'car monitors' as much as drivers (which you're right, they probably don't) the cost for the monitors is still probably less than 10% the cost for equivalent drivers.

You probably only need to do that when something is reported as well.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#447

Post by bushbaba »

0max wrote: post #282
tmpz22 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These cars are literally unsupervised. Unsupervised in what sense? There's internal cameras that are periodically checked. Weight and seatbelt sensors that give alerts if a passenger is or puts objects in the drivers seat, or if too many individuals get in the car. I'd be shocked if a similar or greater level of observability doesn't also exist outside the car.

I've had a dude with a Tagalog accent take over the speakers in my car and asked me and the folks I was inside with to leave because I decided to clown car it with friends visiting from out of state. With that said, there for sure is someone monitoring, but it's similar to how checkout at Amazon Go stores went. I'd be curious to know how this monitoring scales over time.

I’ll be curious how this is profitable long term.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#448

Post by ithkuil »

lynx23 wrote: post #413
prasoonds wrote: post #14

I highly recommend everyone try it out if you're in SF. It's an incredibly smooth and sure ride. The cars are really nice too (Jaguar I-Pace electric cars), clean and spacious. The first time you ride in one, it feels truly sci-fi. But within 5 minutes, you're almost bored of it - that's how good it is. If I had to choose between an Uber of questionable cleanliness and driver temperament and a Waymo with a slightly l…

I will prefer a human driver (for several reasons) for a long time to come. I would even pay more for a a human driver.

Because of safety concerns or because you like the idea that in principle humans should be driving?

In other words, what kind of safety metrics do you think would be necessary to change your mind?

If in N years 90% of your peers use self-driving cars, and the only accidents you hear about are in the news about people you don't know, would that change your feelings about safety?

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#449

Post by jwr »

prasoonds wrote: post #14

I highly recommend everyone try it out if you're in SF. It's an incredibly smooth and sure ride. The cars are really nice too (Jaguar I-Pace electric cars), clean and spacious. The first time you ride in one, it feels truly sci-fi. But within 5 minutes, you're almost bored of it - that's how good it is. If I had to choose between an Uber of questionable cleanliness and driver temperament and a Waymo with a slightly l…

I definitely would not want to be a beta tester of this software. I know too well how the sausage is made, I guess.

We are way too aggressive with allowing self-driving cars on our roads. Companies are incapable of building a toaster without bugs, our banking apps are a burning garbage dumpster fire, and yet we somehow think it will be different this time?

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#450

Post by DANmode »

itsoktocry wrote: post #215
prasoonds wrote: post #14

I highly recommend everyone try it out if you're in SF. It's an incredibly smooth and sure ride. The cars are really nice too (Jaguar I-Pace electric cars), clean and spacious. The first time you ride in one, it feels truly sci-fi. But within 5 minutes, you're almost bored of it - that's how good it is. If I had to choose between an Uber of questionable cleanliness and driver temperament and a Waymo with a slightly l…

I love how we've gone from "Taxis are gross and dirty, that's why I love Uber!" to "Ubers are gross and dirty, that's why I love Waymo!" in the span of 5 years. What do you think comes next? These cars are literally unsupervised.

Might actually cut down on the contingent who leave trash or other debris because they believe a person will be cleaning after them.

I know, I know. We can dream.

Post reply on HN