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Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

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Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#591

Post by [deleted] »

C14L wrote: post #544
dheera wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People would rather pay 10x to sit in their own luxury bubble in traffic I think it has a lot less to do with the bubble factor than the fact that public transportation in the US just sucks, period. My 3-mile commute from Menlo Park to Palo Alto would take - bus: 58 minutes (2 minute walk from home to bus stop + 12 minutes average wait for ECR bus + 10 minutes on ECR + 12 minutes average wait in Palo Alto Transit C…

Why wait for a train or bus? Install an app that tells you when you need to leave your place to get to the station just in time.

[deleted]

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#592

Post by dheera »

endless1234 wrote: post #540
dheera wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People would rather pay 10x to sit in their own luxury bubble in traffic I think it has a lot less to do with the bubble factor than the fact that public transportation in the US just sucks, period. My 3-mile commute from Menlo Park to Palo Alto would take - bus: 58 minutes (2 minute walk from home to bus stop + 12 minutes average wait for ECR bus + 10 minutes on ECR + 12 minutes average wait in Palo Alto Transit C…

>train: 51 minutes (4 minutes walking from home to station + 30 minutes average wait till next train + 5 minute train ride + 12 minutes walking to work). Do the trains really not go on a timetable there, instead arriving completely randomly?

They do, but:

- The signs about which train is actually arriving are frequently wrong, resulting in boarding the wrong train

- The time I need to be at various destinations is fairly uniformly distributed. with a bike I can just leave for work exactly 20 minutes before my first meeting, allowing 5 minutes to freshen up.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#593

Post by no_wave »

stijnstijn wrote: post #555
zimpenfish wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That implies 1) the train or bus arrives and leaves at the station exactly according to the timetable and 2) you get from home to the station exactly according to the estimate. In my limited sample group of one (1), these are rarely true.

The train usually doesn't arrive exactly on time where I live, but delays aren't so bad that I have to wait 30 minutes on average. And if it's a 4-12 minute walk to the station, as OP says, I'm sure they don't need a huge buffer to get there on time. Personally, I just make sure I have a five-minute leeway and I'm good. There certainly must be places in the world where trains are so unpredictable that the average del…

But without baking in a 30 minute wait on a train platform how would the parent have been able to make their point?

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#594

Post by greglindahl »

Animats wrote: post #588
gok wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla's approach may really have fundamental problems, but it's impossible to compare the results from a driver assist system used by untrained consumers with an autonomous driving system that's only being used with professional safety drivers in conditions for which is expected to function properly.

It's quite possible to compare them. Google has never done anything like this.[1] This is a Tesla vehicle on "autopilot" crashing into a street sweeper without even slowing down. It's on an expressway, where Tesla's "autopilot" is supposed to work. The street sweeper is big, partly blocking the lane. The driver trusted Tesla's "autopilot" to do something reasonable. It didn't. The driver was killed. That blood is on…

This is incorrect, and you know it's incorrect. You're talking about it like it was a Level 3 system, but it's Level 2.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#595

Post by adrianN »

mcny wrote: post #533
adrianN wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could build small self driving busses.

Someone said a few weeks ago that buses that run very often on the same route is just a very expensive train. I think for self driving to realy work well, we have to ban humans from driving (and perhaps make it a felony to interfere with a self driving bus the same way we cover assault on a bus driver). I thought it would be easier to implement self driving trains than to implement self driving cars. Who is working o…

Having worked with trains I'd guess that frequently running busses are actually very cheap trains. Rail infrastructure is incredibly expensive.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#596

Post by cardiffspaceman »

chiefofgxbxl wrote: post #410
landryraccoon wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Car usage will go up by an order of magnitude because a major cost of driving isn't the dollars, but the time. This is why I think self driving cars will make traffic worse, not better. The more comfortable it is to be inside a car and the less people mind long car rides, the more people will drive (self driving or otherwise). If road infrastructure is the same, that necessarily means a much higher density of cars…

To detail one particular addition of traffic to the roads: students - with self-driving cars, students from K-12 may much rather want to have the independence to hop in a car rather than ride a "stinky school bus". Parents may end up loving it, especially those who already drive their kids to school. And I'm sure the school districts would love self-driving cars, because it means they can pass the travel expenses ont…

I live near an elementary school and I seldom see school buses on the road in the morning, even if I drive in front of the school. I do see fleets of SUVs. The question is, are these cars dropping off kids because the kids like it or because the parents like it? Is it because of class/status or stranger danger? If it is stranger danger, is the parent going to entrust their kids to multi-passenger Lyfts? Or even to single-passenger Lyfts?

If it is class/status, what is the view of a public conveyence like Lyft vs the personal car?

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#597

Post by marssaxman »

criddell wrote: post #543
jodrellblank wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All you need next is to build A near B and you can take the person out of the car entirely. They can walk to their destination, and the car can be made out of aerogel and powered by fairy dust and the ride sharing software is simpler, the logistics are easier to manage, wear and tear is reduced, and the companies can have a valuation into the stratosphere. > I could see taxis serving city centers that are more like a…

> All you need next is to build A near B That will never happen. When my car can drive itself, I'm moving further out of the city.

Maybe you'll do that, but the net effect would still be a greater migration into the city, because people would be able to have all the benefits of urban living and all the benefits of car mobility, without having to cover the high monthly cost of a downtown parking space.

Just leave your car parked out in the suburbs somewhere, program it to move to another parking space at least once every 72 hours so it doesn't get towed, then call it to come in and pick you up whenever you want to use it.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#598

Post by fps »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #576
beojan wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People bought each server box for $5000 and server capacity used is only at 15% So why do they need 2 servers? Also, I'm pretty sure VPSes and shared hosting were available in 2000.

VPSes did not exist as a commercial product in 2000. Back then you likely purchased and colo'd your hardware or leased from a provider. You could get shared hosting with CGI access but that was about it.

Shared hosting (with PHP, mod_perl and SSI) was available from thousands of providers for between $5 and $25/month. SSL required a dedicated IP, because SNI wasn't a thing yet, and so if you wanted an SSL enabled site, you were looking at closer to $100/month. But that was for managed, shared hosting, typically with access to a database and automated backup. Good enough for most businesses small-ish web presences.

Rackspace offered dedicated servers for $150/month and up. Smaller providers would rent you a server in their datacenter for around $60/month. I used a company called sagonet in the early 2000s that is still in business and still offering a similar service for about $30/month: http://www.synergyisp.com/dedicated-servers/

Most larger companies at the time contracted with a colocation provider and purchased servers for between $1000 and $4000 each, and paid in the neighborhood of $1000/month for a rack, or $500/month for a half rack, including power and network.

This was monumentally cheaper than the AWS based stack we have these days, though - no company with any complexity to their website has a $40/month AWS bill. A company with a similar SAAS offering to what I ran in 2001 for $40K up front and $500/month is probably looking at a $5000/month AWS bill at today's rates.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#599

Post by cardiffspaceman »

sangnoir wrote: post #299
notahacker wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been on long distance buses with large, comfortable reclining seats and convenient pickup/dropoff points for 8 hour plus journeys more than most sane people I assure you it's not the human driver which means that most people strongly prefer other methods of transport.

A closer analogy (rather than a bus) would be human-driven limousine: not bunched up with strangers, door-to-door service (not just "convenient" location). Even that considered, I am yet to encounter a limousine designed for long-distance travel (but that might just be because I'm not rich). Also, the human driver and the associated control interfaces takes up interior space which would have been put to other uses. I…

Not being rich, I believe from folklore that the rich have this in the form of custom luxury buses. The furnishings seem to be about the same level as those of an RV or yacht but there is more space and a professional driver.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#600

Post by cardiffspaceman »

madengr wrote: post #417
geomark wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who gets car sick when reading or using a computer in a car? Everyone keeps talking about working while on a long commute in a self-driving vehicle. Doing more than 30 minutes of it is not really an option for me.

No. Me too. Can’t even read in a plane, or watch a video. Won’t even think about getting on a boat.

I think there's going to be a spectrum of motion sickness.

Would happen to me as a teen when we were going down well-made freeways to go to the beach, I had to just watch the scenery go by and ruminate about the lives of the residents of the various districts. Never happened to me as an adult in a plane, even reading tiny low-res screen of netbook. Can't imagine reading on a sailboat, I've got a job to do, or I'm drinking and socializing. No problem reading or walking around on the one cruise ship I've used.

Of course there are individuals out there who can't read or even sit quietly in any of those scenarios without motion sickness.

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