8 ms·

The link at the bottom of that article is pointing to another Medium post with details of the launch: https://medium.com/waymo/riding-with-waymo-one-today-9ac81

• jbob2000 8y ago
  Mark these words, "At the start", because we'll be hearing them for the next 10 years until Waymo closes up shop. That they are going to market with drivers in the car means that the business has pivoted from "can we do driverless taxi" to "can we make money as uber-but-with-employees". The next announcement from Waymo will be that they are cutting staff "mostly from R&D". The announcement after that will be that they are opening up the Waymo app for anyone to be a driver. The announcement after that will be that they are closing up shop or being sold to Uber.
  • TotempaaltJ 8y ago
    You realize those drivers won't actually be driving most of the time, right?
    • jbob2000 8y ago
      Doesn't matter, it's not self-driving if you need a driver. And when that driver takes control of the vehicle away from the AI, it's going to be at a startling and dangerous moment when the AI makes a really bad decision, like directing the car towards a barrier or a stopped bus.
      • GeorgeO84 8y ago
        If the driver has large uneventful periods of time where he/she has nothing to do. He/she will not react in time for an emergency.
        • dsfyu404ed 8y ago
          If the software driver is bad enough that the safety driver will feel compelled to pay attention at all times but not quite take control unless the car does something actually warranting it. It'll be like teaching a 16yo to drive but without them actually getting better (because the software will need to be tuned to keep the driver on edge). Doing it that way is kind of a backhanded approach but it would force the backup driver to pay attention.
          • lolc 8y ago
            Worst of both worlds!
  • pliny 8y ago
    That's a prediction, but why do you think that's how it'll turn out?
    • jbob2000 8y ago
      The news would be different. This news item is focused around the driver and safety. They are slowly changing their messaging from being about self-driving to being about safe-driving. They can't come out right away and say "guys we failed at self driving, it doesn't work", that would tank the personal careers of everyone important in the company. They have to slowly move the needle away from self driving, and then they'll give us the bomb drop, "we could only build better safety systems, not self-driving systems" and nobody will care because they are happy with safe-driving. If they truly had self-driving tech, they'd be doubling down on that with their messaging. Not only to let everyone know there's a new sheriff in town (bye Uber!), but also to let their competitor's know to start their death clocks.
      • yholio 8y ago
        > They can't come out right away and say "guys we failed at self driving, it doesn't work", that would tank the personal careers of everyone important in the company. That's exactly what would happen if a newly developed product killed some people. A human assisted rollout is a cautious strategy that allows them to learn in the real world without exposing their massive R&D investment to the fate of Uber's.
      • malcolmwhite 8y ago
        Waymo used "self-driving" in the article's title and twice in its first sentence, literally doubling down with that messaging.
        • jbob2000 8y ago
          No, that's part of the strategy of shifting the messaging: Use both phrases together so people associate them, and then slowly drop the phrase that you want to go away.
  • bryanlarsen 8y ago
    Mark these words. In 10 years time we'll still be hearing the same comments about Waymo & their competitors because there still will be certain combinations of passenger, route & conditions that Waymo will refuse to take without a safety driver along. But since Waymo will handle the vast majority of rides we'll just tune out those comments. Handling all rides & conditions is a very hard problem and it'll take decades to solve. But scaling from "a few" to "most" is a much easier problem and one that I have confidence that Waymo will achieve. And "most" can be very useful & profitable.
    • TomMarius 8y ago
      I assume we're talking about city driving. I'm not sure about the USA, but being in Europe, the average speed my car says I go is 28.5 km/h. Do you think we could not solve traffic for 10 years if we slowed cars down to 30 km/h? With assumption being that a city-wide driverless system would easily 'swim' through the city without encountering red lights or slowdowns due to unpredictiveness of other drivers. We could even tolerate a little bit more errors because accidents would not be harmful too much.
      • bryanlarsen 8y ago
        I'm a big fan of Sweden's Project Zero, one leg of which is setting and enforcing a speed limit of 30 km/h on any road or street without fully separated pedestrian & cycle infrastructure. I don't know if self-driving will help accomplish this everywhere, but I'd be ecstatic if it did. > We could even tolerate a little bit more errors because accidents would not be harmful too much. instead of "harmful too much" you can simply use "fatal". 30km/h is a pretty magic value: below that speed pedestrian collisions are very rarely fatal. Serious perhaps, but not fatal. Above that speed they are often fatal.
        • njarboe 8y ago
          About the speed of a sprinting human, unsurprisingly.
  • Isamu 8y ago
    >until Waymo closes up shop Maybe if this was Microsoft, and Waymo was the Zune. Alphabet has given it some 9 years just to get to this soft launch, I think they have the patience to see it through. There is enough money and interest in this space internationally that I'd give it some time.
• TotempaaltJ 8y ago
  From what I can tell, they won't actually be driving most of the time.
• Fricken 8y ago
  The milestone to mark is the day when you or I can, at least theoretically, download the the fricken app and request a ride in an autonomous vehicle that has no safety driver.
  • anticensor 8y ago
    That car would probably be called Windows Car (not to be confused with your car's windows), stop irregularly at weird places to allow for mandatory updates, and report your height and weight to Microsoft.
    • GeorgeO84 8y ago
      Critical Update. You have 2 minutes to close all the windows and leave the car.
      • c2h5oh 8y ago
        More like "critical update is being installed" signaled by the car hitting the breaks hard until full stop in the middle of a highway.
        • deleted 8y ago
          [deleted]
        • beamatronic 8y ago
          You would be sailing along at highway speeds and the steering would stop responding for a few minutes.
          • anticensor 8y ago
            I also thought of that, but it is a very dangerous failure mode for a car. EDIT: -silly \r\n +dangerous
          • GeorgeO84 8y ago
            Wait! After several users complains (the ones that survived), they've "fixed" it. Now you can "choose" a "12 hour range" where this can happen.
• dzhiurgis 8y ago
  They are not even taking new customers either. They are just going to start charging existing 400 users. That's the only difference of this "launch".