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NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

nytimes.com

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Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#61

Post by crazygringo »

smlavine wrote: post #17

> The Waymo rides were affordable, ranging from $18 to $21 Goes to show you what world these journalists are living on that think that's totally acceptable for a five mile ride. I'll stick with public transit.

A five mile trip in a SF taxi is $24.30 before tip [1]. So for five miles, this is notably a bit cheaper.

And it's obvious that "affordable" here means relative to other car services. Not relative to public transit.

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/S-F-taxi-meter-rates-...

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#62

Post by paulcole »

emceestork wrote: post #59
paulcole wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? We have what, like 50+ years of certainty as to how dangerous people are as drivers? They’re a known quantity and we know we can keep making cars safer to reduce the danger to drivers and passengers. Instead we’re going to YOLO a half-baked tech-bro fantasy onto the roads and hope for the best? Also “meatbags” has the same tone as “sportsball” imo.

I don't agree with your characterization of what's happening as "YOLO" and "half-baked". It's taken many many people many years to get to where we are now. It's pretty easy to do a miles driven and accidents caused comparison. Self driving cars appear to be wildly safer thus far. What would make you happy with a self-driving safety record? Why not be excited about the future? I understand when some folks think that t…

> Why not be excited about the future?

Gestures broadly at the world

I mean I guess you have a point. Go nuts with the driverless cars.

And yes, this money would be better spent on a huge number of things — public transit among them.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#63

Post by throwawaylinux »

smlavine wrote: post #17

> The Waymo rides were affordable, ranging from $18 to $21 Goes to show you what world these journalists are living on that think that's totally acceptable for a five mile ride. I'll stick with public transit.

I'm the first to call journalists out of touch, but in this case it's you.

There's a reason that cars and private-public transport like taxis and uber are so popular all around the world, even in cities with much better public transport than SF. A reason why quite poor people will often spend a lot of money to own cars.

Look at London or cities in the Netherlands or Japan. Car ownership rates around 50% per household, and use of taxi services from time to time would be far higher.

It's because even very good busses and trains don't offer the freedom and convenience of a car. And it doesn't require an outlandish value of a person's time for that $18 to $21 to look at lot more cost competitive with the public transport option.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#64

Post by keenmaster »

dekhn wrote: post #29
ianlevesque wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, the safety bar set by human drivers is on the floor (and being run over by a "light truck").

Is it? """The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has released its latest projections for traffic fatalities in 2022, estimating that 42,795 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes. """ """The number of vehicle-miles traveled on all roads in the United States decreased by some 1.55 percent to approximately 3.17 trillion in 2022. " Ignoring some important details, that means americans drive 75 million…

If a couple drives 10,000 miles each for 50 years, that’s 1 million miles. In a neighborhood with 75 houses, each inhabited by such a couple, 1 person will die from driving in those 50 years. And when they die, they usually had many more years to live otherwise. That’s to say nothing of injuries.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#65

Post by crazygringo »

jwr wrote: post #5

As a programmer, I won't put myself into that thing. I'm also not happy to be an unwilling participant in this experiment. Given the state of technology and our capabilities to write bug-free software (Seriously, we can't even get things like buying airline tickets correct), I think it's way too early to approve those vehicles on city streets.

What does it matter being a programmer?

This thing has a statistical safety rate. Which is either worse or better than your average Uber/Lyft/taxi driver.

But if it's better, it's better. And if you'd rather keep getting in vehicles with human drivers then they're statistically more dangerous, well that'll be your choice.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#67

Post by austinl »

Waterluvian wrote: post #18
_acco wrote: post #14

> My ride was so smooth, the novelty began to wear off, turning a trip to the future into just another journey across town. This is the only nod in the article to how futuristic and revelatory this innovation. The journalists sound so bored. I wonder if this is a function of how “around the corner” this tech has felt for so long? Have we somehow become jaded to this innovation before it has even arrived? Were journal…

It took just two moon landings for people to get bored. I don’t think you need a technology to be fully functional for people to tire of it. It just has to be in the news for enough years.

Reminds me that SpaceX has now landed rocket boosters successfully over 200 times. Landing just a single rocket was huge news a few years ago.

The US is launching things into space about 20 times as frequently compared to 10 years ago [1]. Now, most rocket launches don't make mainstream news—I only keep up with things by subscribing to a niche newsletter [2].

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-...

[2] https://orbitalindex.com

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#68

Post by ctoth »

comex wrote: post #51
ctoth wrote: post #20

It's like this paragraph is obligatory: > Waymo has had fewer headline-worthy troubles. In May, one of its cars struck and killed a small dog. A few years ago, a driverless Waymo car with a human safety driver operating the wheel hit a pedestrian who needed to be taken to the hospital. After reading that reporters were explicitly instructed to go after tech[0], I just can't not see stuff like this. [0]: https://news.…

Of course it’s obligatory in such an article to mention the ongoing controversies surrounding self-driving cars. They’re relevant context. But if anything, that paragraph makes Waymo look good, given that it comes after a paragraph listing a series of more-significant incidents involving Cruise, and explicitly says Waymo has had “fewer troubles”.

Sure, that makes sense. Except how is it an "ongoing controversy" that one of the cars hit someone, while being driven by a safety driver? There's providing context, then there's digging for anything that might stick to make them look bad. This, to me, reads as the latter.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#69

Post by etothepii »

jwr wrote: post #5

As a programmer, I won't put myself into that thing. I'm also not happy to be an unwilling participant in this experiment. Given the state of technology and our capabilities to write bug-free software (Seriously, we can't even get things like buying airline tickets correct), I think it's way too early to approve those vehicles on city streets.

Buying airline tickets usually works fine, but I'm going to visit a client in upstate New York and a business class ticket BDA->LAX->SYR was cheaper than BDA->PHL.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#70

Post by fragmede »

paulcole wrote: post #12
nwiswell wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's significantly more absurd to permit highly distractable, slow-reacting meatbags to operate the multi-ton high-velocity death barges in the close vicinity of pedestrians and other meatbags-cum-death-barge-pilots.

Why? We have what, like 50+ years of certainty as to how dangerous people are as drivers? They’re a known quantity and we know we can keep making cars safer to reduce the danger to drivers and passengers. Instead we’re going to YOLO a half-baked tech-bro fantasy onto the roads and hope for the best? Also “meatbags” has the same tone as “sportsball” imo.

They're a known quantity of death though. Human drivers are going to drive drunk, sleepy and distracted. We've been at this since 2005 with the DARPA Grand Challenge. it's not half-baked, it's not a "tech bro fantasy", and hope is not a strategy. It was, a decade and eight years ago when the shit barely made it across the finish line (and many did not), but in those 18 years, theres been some development work and some money invested in making it work. In those 18 years, some 180k people have been killed by drunk drivers.

There are growing pains, absolutely, but at 2:15 am, crossing the street next to the bars, which driver with a red light are you going to step out in front of, crossing the street.

I know which one I'd choose.

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