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Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

techcrunch.com

491–498 of 498 posts

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you suggesting every DL holder knows all the driving conditions? In my country at least: Yes. Hydroplaning and driving on ice is part of the compulsory training, including driving on simulated ice on a special course.

That's great. Would you your country's test covers 100% of the situations a driver might encounter? Even without knowing the details, I can confidently tell you they don't. Does it teach you how to recover the car when the tires blow out? How about it is raining? How to react when a car is coming straight at you in the wrong way? How about when a dog jumps out?

Does Waymo know how to handle itself if the tires blow out?

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#492
post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have done a lot of testing in Pittsburgh which has some of the craziest roads and intersections anywhere, so I'd assume yes

Medieval italian towns?

haha you got me there, can hardly even consider those as roads!

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe also that cars with a LIDAR rig on the roof are appallingly ugly. Tesla wants to make EVs that look like normal cars (Cybertruck being the oddball here, admittedly).

If I recall correctly, Elon chose to avoid LIDAR (in favour of cameras) due to cost, not cosmetics. Am I wrong?

It is not about the look. There are small solid state lidars that Tesla could have used.

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#494
post #427
post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they not bolt the house to the slab in Florida? This is a main part of the inspection in Texas

They do. One req is continuous tension using approved connectors from roof down to slab.

Ahh,nice. Never heard of that

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#495
post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah maybe we should just stop doing that and invest in public transit infrastructure instead.

Who is "we?" The cost to develop self driving cars is not exactly being felt by society at large. It certainly isn't stopping anyone from improving public transit, but it seems like you believe it's this and not any one of a bajillion actual factors to blame.

This is not true. If a king has all the money, then whatever the king wants is what society builds. The use of resources by tech companies to build self-driving cars uses resources for things that might otherwise have gone to some other approach.

Google's use of resources does not occur in a vacuum. Moreover, if cities decided to pass laws that would slowly transition all road infra away from private vehicles to shared public transit, then Google would lobby against that.

For public transit to function well (i.e. competitively with private vehicles), traffic needs to be much reduced (e.g., imagine no traffic lights and no traffic). Google's private cars on the roads do not move us in that direction. There is no doubt that they are technologically impressive, but they do not provide greater utility than investing in shared infrastructure would.

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah maybe we should just stop doing that and invest in public transit infrastructure instead.

if you want people to use public transit, you need to make it not be a mobile homeless shelter. otherwise everyone who can afford to will insist on a private transport

Public transit and public places will continue to decline in cleanliness and quality for as long as the rich suck resources out of local municipalities.

They do the same things with public schools (pulling educated teachers to teach in private institutions) and with medical care (pulling physicians into private concierge practice).

If all the rich people had to take public transit and send their kids to public schools, they'd start investing money and (human) energy / capital in making the public infra better.

The investment of resources by rich people into their own private enclaves is entirely rational and can be solved only by wealth taxes that preclude such action (by making it impossible).

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah maybe we should just stop doing that and invest in public transit infrastructure instead.

These are companies. They can invest where they please. Call your government reps.

By law, the English king could do what he pleased to. Somehow most folks still think the American Revolution was just.

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My ex moved to ATL from Seattle, and it was just WILD watching her go… “you guys have RAIN, here… like it comes down HARD” So it makes sense to first rollout to a place with frequent, lighter rain - no? As an outsider, Waymo's approach seems to be solving challenges step-by-step, and the criticism in this thread is asking why it hasn't already solved the hardest cases. > The data was there but it wouldn’t surprise…

You don't understand! Google is trying to do something difficult, and because they haven't solved all possible theoretical problems with it, they should just give up and go home and never try anything difficult ever.

This is a common retort used to cut cost and push things out the door in tech during mvp. However, given most of the world doesn’t look like the west coast, maybe having human drivers would’ve been a good idea until a couple of seasons had passed.

Also they could’ve tested this in other places too?

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