4 ms·

Waymo fully mapped the entire area, so they know where it's safe to drive.

by lima 9y ago

falcolas 9y ago
I don’t disagree with your premise, but the word safe doesn’t apply to even mapped roads. “Safe” changes on a daily, even hourly, basis. An unrelated accident changes the Safety of a particular route. A rainstorm can surface oils from the road, making it unreasonably slick for a short period of time. A crew working on the sewers can change the routing of a road onto the shoulders, which will have different grip characteristics than the road itself. Even Arizona can see snow.
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  > Even Arizona can see snow. I’d sure hope so considering there’s ski resorts there (Flagstaff). Summer time highs in Flagstaff peak out in the 80s usually too.
wpietri 9y ago
I can believe they have claimed that, but as we see in the link I posted, having an area fully mapped does not equal 100% knowledge of where it's safe to drive.
cm2187 9y ago
But you often have to go outside of the public roads in the real world. Dirt roads, private parkways, underground car parks, private tunnel going into the lobby of a hotel, etc. Would be curious if it can handle that.
- manigandham 9y ago
  There's likely plenty of people who wouldn't mind a discount just to get off as close as possible on the mapped road assuming it's a few 100ft away at most.
  - JetSpiegel 9y ago
    Might as well take a bigger discount and use BART.
    - civilitty 9y ago
      You can't live anywhere near a BART station, let alone a few hundred feet, without losing any sort of discount with mass transit... Not to mention the vast majority of the metropolitan Bay Area is miles away from BART.
    - manigandham 9y ago
      There's a big difference between 100ft to the nearest road vs 5 miles to the BART station. Last mile transportation is important, even if constrained to fully mapped roads.
    - galdosdi 9y ago
      This does bring up an interesting question though -- does self driving doom mass transit? The answer is no -- the real ultimate benefit of mass transit that taxis can never replicate is _thoroughput_ in a dense area. Articulated buses or light or heavy rail are the only way you could ever service an area like Manhattan, because even with high occupancy, using just sedans would require the building of like, literally 50 more highways. A single lane of train/bus can do the work of dozens of car lanes and nothing can change that physical law. Self driving buses will reduce the price slightly though. And importantly, people today often drive because of the "last mile" problem. Driverless taxi on the other hand, may make it much easier to connect to mass transit seamlessly. You could even connect more than once. I could get from suburban Queens to the suburbs of Philadelphia by taking a taxi to the train station, a train that is faster than cars due to traffic, then another taxi on the other end, seamlessly. Actually I can do that today, it will just be cheaper, that's all. So more people will do it.
      - rifung 9y ago
        > the real ultimate benefit of mass transit that taxis can never replicate is _thoroughput_ in a dense area But what if in the far future people stop owning cars and so everyone is hailing a self driving car? Perhaps then there would be enough people that you would almost always carpool? Would buses still be necessary then? I'm sure they'd still make sense in some cases but I can also see some bus stops being replaced

Waymo fully mapped the entire area, so they know where it's safe to drive.

by lima 9y ago

Waymo fully mapped the entire area, so they know where it's safe to drive.

I don’t disagree with your premise, but the word safe doesn’t apply to even mapped roads. “Safe” changes on a daily, even hourly, basis. An unrelated accident changes the Safety of a particular route. A rainstorm can surface oils from the road, making it unreasonably slick for a short period of time. A crew working on the sewers can change the routing of a road onto the shoulders, which will have different grip characteristics than the road itself. Even Arizona can see snow.

jsjohnst 9y ago
> Even Arizona can see snow. I’d sure hope so considering there’s ski resorts there (Flagstaff). Summer time highs in Flagstaff peak out in the 80s usually too.

wpietri 9y ago

I can believe they have claimed that, but as we see in the link I posted, having an area fully mapped does not equal 100% knowledge of where it's safe to drive.

cm2187 9y ago

But you often have to go outside of the public roads in the real world. Dirt roads, private parkways, underground car parks, private tunnel going into the lobby of a hotel, etc. Would be curious if it can handle that.

manigandham 9y ago
There's likely plenty of people who wouldn't mind a discount just to get off as close as possible on the mapped road assuming it's a few 100ft away at most.
- JetSpiegel 9y ago
  Might as well take a bigger discount and use BART.
  - civilitty 9y ago
    You can't live anywhere near a BART station, let alone a few hundred feet, without losing any sort of discount with mass transit... Not to mention the vast majority of the metropolitan Bay Area is miles away from BART.
  - manigandham 9y ago
    There's a big difference between 100ft to the nearest road vs 5 miles to the BART station. Last mile transportation is important, even if constrained to fully mapped roads.
  - galdosdi 9y ago
    This does bring up an interesting question though -- does self driving doom mass transit? The answer is no -- the real ultimate benefit of mass transit that taxis can never replicate is _thoroughput_ in a dense area. Articulated buses or light or heavy rail are the only way you could ever service an area like Manhattan, because even with high occupancy, using just sedans would require the building of like, literally 50 more highways. A single lane of train/bus can do the work of dozens of car lanes and nothing can change that physical law. Self driving buses will reduce the price slightly though. And importantly, people today often drive because of the "last mile" problem. Driverless taxi on the other hand, may make it much easier to connect to mass transit seamlessly. You could even connect more than once. I could get from suburban Queens to the suburbs of Philadelphia by taking a taxi to the train station, a train that is faster than cars due to traffic, then another taxi on the other end, seamlessly. Actually I can do that today, it will just be cheaper, that's all. So more people will do it.
    - rifung 9y ago
      > the real ultimate benefit of mass transit that taxis can never replicate is _thoroughput_ in a dense area But what if in the far future people stop owning cars and so everyone is hailing a self driving car? Perhaps then there would be enough people that you would almost always carpool? Would buses still be necessary then? I'm sure they'd still make sense in some cases but I can also see some bus stops being replaced