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It's totally irrational but living near the Mountain View location of Waymo makes me hate having the self driving car development process. They add to the traff

It's totally irrational but living near the Mountain View location of Waymo makes me hate having the self driving car development process. They add to the traffic in a very congested area (making left turns on Rengstorff I assume to regression test, but this stops traffic for extended periods), then show up in low traffic suburban areas that would otherwise be quiet and clear of traffic ( for some reason they love to use through streets in Los Altos for training and my 300 yard long street at all hours including at night - I can recognize the whine of those cars now), and when behind one, a driver notices how carefully the self driving car has to consider the possibilities and how slowly it acts on decisions - like a 90 year old person reaction time, and giving pedestrians far away from the crosswalks the benefit of the doubt - they could run out into the street and the self driving cars I've been behind seem to assume this is going to happen every time - I can at least look at the person's body language and head and where they are looking. Of course this is only anecdotal from driving errands around Mountain View and cycling around Palo Alto/Los Altos.

brokensegue 7y ago
it used to be way worse when waymo had they had those tiny electric cars driving similar routes but below 30mph
- williamscales 7y ago
  At least those were adorable, they were like local wildlife.
jessriedel 7y ago
A very conservative lower bound is that every day we don't have self-driving cars costs the country $1 billion in lost value. Every single day.
- vageli 7y ago
  > A very conservative lower bound is that every day we don't have self-driving cars costs the country $1 billion in lost value. Every single day. And every day we don't have solar cells are 2000% more efficient than current technology costs us tens of billions in lost value. What exactly is your point?
  - jessriedel 7y ago
    The point is that the inconveniences being described by stevenwoo are utterly trivial. It's like listening to someone who lived in Cape Canaveral during the '60s complain that they dislike the whole Apollo program because one of the engineers once left a 5% tip in a local restaurant. Acknowledging that this feeling is irrational doesn't make it a useful HN comment.
    - vageli 7y ago
      I see your point. I'm left wondering if there aren't real impacts to testing this technology in the real world though. Like if there have been any deaths due to emergency responders being stuck behind these vehicles or something similar.
  - brokensegue 7y ago
    well there is a known upper bound on solar cells efficiency. and even then we are pouring all the moneys into improving solar cell efficiency
- skywhopper 7y ago
  It's even higher for the cold fusion we're missing, and teleportation technology.
  - jessriedel 7y ago
    If you think those three techs have comparable likelihood of existing in our lifetimes, I'd quite seriously like to make a bet with you.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- DrScump 7y ago
  Source?
skywhopper 7y ago
Your reaction is not irrational at all. This sort of abuse of public space to test technology that is nowhere close to being ready should make you angry. They are trying to progress more rapidly by externalizing the costs of experimentation onto the public. They've hit a plateau and don't have a clue how to get beyond it, but they've got billions of dollars of pressure on the backs of promises they made, so they can't admit their fundamental approach is unsuitable to reach what is actually a questionable end-goal in the first place--namely, self-driving taxis. Why is that the first problem they are trying to tackle? That's the hardest problem to solve. I think it all goes back to Uber struggling to defend its business model. To justify their nine- and ten- figure quarterly losses, they had to promise a world where the labor costs would go away (how driverless Ubers could ever pay back all the money they've lost, I have no idea--if they replace contract labor with their own capital and the maintenance involved... how is this a profitable company?). They convinced their investors it was possible. And then everyone else assumed it was possible and bought into that same fantasy. I hope we're finally waking up. But those billions have left a major hangover and no one is thinking clearly quite yet.

brokensegue 7y ago

it used to be way worse when waymo had they had those tiny electric cars driving similar routes but below 30mph

williamscales 7y ago
At least those were adorable, they were like local wildlife.

jessriedel 7y ago

A very conservative lower bound is that every day we don't have self-driving cars costs the country $1 billion in lost value. Every single day.

vageli 7y ago
> A very conservative lower bound is that every day we don't have self-driving cars costs the country $1 billion in lost value. Every single day. And every day we don't have solar cells are 2000% more efficient than current technology costs us tens of billions in lost value. What exactly is your point?
- jessriedel 7y ago
  The point is that the inconveniences being described by stevenwoo are utterly trivial. It's like listening to someone who lived in Cape Canaveral during the '60s complain that they dislike the whole Apollo program because one of the engineers once left a 5% tip in a local restaurant. Acknowledging that this feeling is irrational doesn't make it a useful HN comment.
  - vageli 7y ago
    I see your point. I'm left wondering if there aren't real impacts to testing this technology in the real world though. Like if there have been any deaths due to emergency responders being stuck behind these vehicles or something similar.
- brokensegue 7y ago
  well there is a known upper bound on solar cells efficiency. and even then we are pouring all the moneys into improving solar cell efficiency
skywhopper 7y ago
It's even higher for the cold fusion we're missing, and teleportation technology.
- jessriedel 7y ago
  If you think those three techs have comparable likelihood of existing in our lifetimes, I'd quite seriously like to make a bet with you.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
DrScump 7y ago
Source?

skywhopper 7y ago

Your reaction is not irrational at all. This sort of abuse of public space to test technology that is nowhere close to being ready should make you angry. They are trying to progress more rapidly by externalizing the costs of experimentation onto the public. They've hit a plateau and don't have a clue how to get beyond it, but they've got billions of dollars of pressure on the backs of promises they made, so they can't admit their fundamental approach is unsuitable to reach what is actually a questionable end-goal in the first place--namely, self-driving taxis. Why is that the first problem they are trying to tackle? That's the hardest problem to solve. I think it all goes back to Uber struggling to defend its business model. To justify their nine- and ten- figure quarterly losses, they had to promise a world where the labor costs would go away (how driverless Ubers could ever pay back all the money they've lost, I have no idea--if they replace contract labor with their own capital and the maintenance involved... how is this a profitable company?). They convinced their investors it was possible. And then everyone else assumed it was possible and bought into that same fantasy. I hope we're finally waking up. But those billions have left a major hangover and no one is thinking clearly quite yet.