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Expanding our testing in San Francisco
- ArkanExplorer 6y ago23% of people don't feel safe getting around San Francisco -- wowza.
- thatfrenchguy 6y agoThat's around the number of people who've lived all their lives before moving to SF in suburbs I would say ? Coming from any other big city, San Francisco doesn't feel more unsafe.
- viklove 6y agoComing from Chicago, SF felt a lot less safe to me. Would not even consider living there even though I've lived in a big city for 5+ years. Chicago has a homeless population, but it's nowhere near as large or as emboldened as SF's.
- cam0 6y agoIt's a different world if you just avoid the eastern half of the city.
- ghaff 6y agoI think a lot of people, especially in the tech industry, get a somewhat distorted view by the cesspool near the Moscone and Market Street. Not that there aren't problems elsewhere but the area that conventioneers are exposed to is especially awful.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- eindiran 6y agoHaving lived in Chicago and SF, one big difference is how the problem areas are distributed geographically. In Chicago, the high foot-traffic areas (eg the Loop, Logan Square, Wicker Park) where tourists are likely to end up are very nice; you only end up in problem territory if you go wandering off into the Westside or Southside. In SF, the problem areas are the high foot-traffic areas where tourists are generally going: Union Square, anywhere touching Market, etc. In the past, I probably would have still felt safer walking around eg the Tenderloin than some areas of Chicago's South/Westside. But beginning a few months after the pandemic began, the streets in SOMA/FiDi/Union Square emptied out (no more tourists or commuters) and SF has started to feel much, much less safe in those areas. In the last few months, my partner has been attacked on the street twice, and I narrowly avoided being mugged with a screwdriver in Union Square itself. That is much worse than anything I ever experienced in the Southside of Chicago.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nelsondev 6y agoComing from NYC, San Francisco feels much more unsafe. I’ve been randomly attacked by a deranged stranger on a busy street (16th and Guerrero in the Mission). I never felt so paranoid when walking around NYC.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> Coming from any other big city, San Francisco doesn't feel more unsafe. Speaking from years of living in Shanghai, that didn't come close to passing the laugh test.
- taylorlapeyre 6y agoWorth nothing that the article clarifies that this is in reference to driving — as in "nearly a quarter didn't feel safe on San Francisco's roads at all"
- ghaff 6y agoOne would need to know how this compared to other cities. As someone who used to visit SF a lot (though rarely drove much in the city),I'm not sure how it's notably bad. Sure there are the hills. But with an automatic transmission, that doesn't really make a big difference. And it's mostly grid-ish. It's not a particularly easy city to drive in but compared to NYC, Boston, DC, Seattle, etc., I'm not sure how it's especially awful.
- caturopath 6y agoI love how "on the roads" is taken to mean the same thing as "driving a car", rather than the vulnerable road users outside of cars who are hurt and killed the most on SF streets.
- dmode 6y agoIs that traffic safety or other safety ? I honestly go to SF all the time, and it doesn't feel unsafe at all, unless I am in TL and some parts of SOMA. Places like Marina, Crissy Field, North Beach, Valencia, Noe, Richmond, Sunset just feels like beautiful suburbia with nice retail corridors, with a ton of people out and about.
- throwawaysea 6y agoI have to assume it is about general safety on the streets. Traffic-wise I've never felt unsafe there, but the article's claim about safety is ambiguously worded. It says "Worryingly, nearly a quarter didn't feel safe on San Francisco’s roads at all." But if you look at the question they asked in their infographic, I think people would have answered with general safety in mind more so than just road safety. As for feeling safe - I used to also feel that most of the neighborhoods are 'fine' (although they seem to increasingly have trash and tents). But then I was physically attacked by a drug addict unexpectedly in broad daylight. And then had friends held up at gunpoint. And now if I ever have to visit SF, I am on high alert and can't turn off being on guard. I feel sad because I used to love SF but now I try to avoid it, both for personal and business tasks.
- taylorlapeyre 6y agoIt says in the article that these questions were specifically in reference to driving around San Francisco in a car.
- buzzert 6y agoI wonder what subset of that is folks who are afraid of the virus and “don’t feel safe” taking public transportation or human driver-based ridesharing.
- DSingularity 6y agoIs the waymo approach as economically in feasible as people claim?
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoThey built the most expensive solution (significant dependence on LIDAR) that scales the poorest (requires centimeter-precision 3D mapping of every street it drives on). Google Maps cars would need to do significantly more than they already do today on an even wider scale, and to be profitable it'd likely have to inundate you with ads on top of being the most expensive service. ...Meanwhile, the ADAS in many new consumer cars can pretty much drive itself already. Waymo has to convince you their way is the "only" way to do self-driving cars, because nobody in their right mind would chose their solution otherwise.
- ra7 6y ago> ...Meanwhile, the ADAS in many new consumer cars can pretty much drive itself already. Yeah, not really. "Pretty much" drives itself isn't a thing. It either drives itself or it doesn't. Which ADAS system allows me to sit in the back seat while it drives itself fully? > Waymo has to convince you their way is the "only" way to do self-driving cars, because nobody in their right mind would chose their solution otherwise. Considering every self driving car company except Tesla (maybe MobileEye but even they have backup LIDAR systems) uses the exact same approach as Waymo, this is way off the mark.
- rumham 6y agoConvince me the customer? Why would I care how they do it as long as it works?
- mupuff1234 6y agoThere's no inherit reason why lidar can't be cheap afaik (and it's already getting there - prices are dropping pretty rapidly).
- cobookman 6y ago
- fotta 6y agotldr > We’ve now started limited rider testing in San Francisco with Waymo employee volunteers to gather feedback and continue to improve our technology. We’re conducting this testing with enhanced COVID-19 protocols to ensure the safety of everyone involved.
- zuhayeer 6y agoFinding parking seems to be the biggest problem by far, and for good reason
- syntaxing 6y agoFinding parking is half the challenge. Hoping you windows aren't smashed when you get back to the car is the other half.
- jedberg 6y agoThis is why I always try to take the crappier of my two cars when I go to SF.
- triceratops 6y agoMy car's never been broken into when I'm in SF. I just realized my car might be crappy.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- whimsicalism 6y agoJust don't lock your car
- tshaddox 6y agoThat works during the day, but overnight you have to worry about people using your car for various things and leaving various potentially dangerous substances and items in your car.
- whimsicalism 6y agoCould they not still do that if they broke your window? FWIW I have heard of many people having their window broken, I have not met anyone who had any of the concerns that people have about leaving their car unlocked actually happen to them.
- mikeyouse 6y agoAs a small data point - the streets of the Sunset are being inundated by self-driving cars. They're well behaved and mostly pretty effective from what I can see, but I'll see literally 10 or 15 of them most times that I walk my dog (and they're out all night too). Primarily Waymo's vans and Cruise's Bolts but a number of others too. It's striking since overall traffic volume is down so much but there are just a ton of these guys collecting data. (Edit; My word choice made it sound like I'm complaining, but it's all good with me. Would rather have these looking for me at intersections than the typical distracted driver.)
- jedberg 6y agoIt's the perfect time to test. Less civilians to hit, winter weather, still good data to use.
- whimsicalism 6y ago"winter weather" is a stretch
- jedberg 6y agoHeh I mean SF winter. So you know, slightly cloudy with a bit of water on the ground sometimes.
- jgalt212 6y agoThe coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.
- yuy910616 6y agoIt seems like a very logical move. Compare to Gilbert, AZ, SF is more challenging. And of course, there will be way more media coverage. Excited to see full deployment!
- ketamine__ 6y agoFrom watching Tesla FSD videos on YT it's clear that they aren't competetive with companies like Waymo that use lidar. Edit: This comment once had 3 upvotes lol
- natch 6y agoWaymo drives on (vastly more) restricted routes, so comparing as if they are the same thing is questionable. The problem is several orders of magnitude more simple.
- ra7 6y agoSimple? They are operating fully driverless. They don’t need a driver with hands on the wheel like Tesla. In that, you’re right that it’s not the same thing at all. What Tesla is doing is nothing more than glorified driver assistance.
- natch 6y agoSince you’re ok with limited routes and impressed by that, Tesla also doesn’t need a driver on limited routes. Doesn’t even need a passenger. I don’t know how you call it driver assistance when there is no human anywhere near the car, inside or out.
- ra7 6y agoTesla requires a driver. It constantly nags if you don’t keep your hands on the wheel. I can’t sit in the back seat and let it drive all by itself. That’s why it’s driver assistance.
- natch 6y agoNot for sentry mode. You’re impressed by limited routes, so if you’re going to give Waymo credit for their cargo cult self driving, give Tesla credit too. You can totally sit in the back seat for sentry mode. Or up to 200 feet away.
- renewiltord 6y agoOh boy! I can't wait for this to start actually operating. Hopefully it's ready in time for us to exit the COVID-19 situation since the only reason I use these ridehail things is when I'm going to be drunk or on drugs or both.
- ketamine__ 6y agoHell yeah!
- SCUSKU 6y agoAppropriate username.
- axguscbklp 6y agoThey seem very convinced, or at least are pretending to be convinced, that they can build FSD without human-level AI. I'm not convinced of that at all, though.
- tantalor 6y agoAs a human with a driver's license, I'd say the job of driving a car demands ~1% of my mental system features. Here's a few skills of my brain not needed for driving, - compose poetry and alternate lyrics to "baby shark" - recognize emotions on faces - form opinions about music, movies, video games, etc. - have a conversation - remember that time I embarrassed myself in sixth grade - contemplate my own existence - divide other people into friend/enemy groups - etc...
- naebother 6y ago> recognize emotions on faces I'd argue this is a required skill occasionally, at least when you find yourself in a 4-way stop deadlock.
- macintux 6y agoI find it depressing that cars aren't already talking to each other. I drive on a lot of winding, rural roads with zero visibility around the bend; I'd love to know that there's a car coming the other direction, even with no driving assist technologies at play.
- naebother 6y agoDon't even need two way communication for that I think. A radar should do the trick (although the example video only shows it from a stationary vehicle) https://engineering.princeton.edu/news/2020/06/24/new-radar-lets-cars-spot-hazards-around-corners https://engineering.princeton.edu/news/2020/06/24/new-radar-...
- NoodleIncident 6y agoYou still might need a functioning "vertical slice" of human-level AI to implement FSD, though. Leaving out irrelevant tasks doesn't make the one remaining task any easier.
- da_big_ghey 6y agoOh well, I guess we can all get ready for a future of every car constantly capturing all of our actions and shipping the data off to be immortalized in a Big G datacenter. Having some semblance of anonymity in public was fun while it lasted; I'm glad I got to enjoy some of the last years before it is gone entirely.
- jjcm 6y agoMeta comment: one thing I find particularly interesting here is the 4th point on their infographic - 23% of people don't feel safe getting around SF. What amazes me is how SF responds to the endemic issues that are slowly destroying the city. Not be fixing the core issue, but by making it a startup opportunity. Cars getting broken into and muggings happening when you're on foot? Lower the barrier of entry to car transport without ownership, advertise the safety aspect of it. It's mildly surreal.
- ZephyrBlu 6y agoWhen you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
- LegitShady 6y ago> Meta comment: one thing I find particularly interesting here is the 4th point on their infographic - 23% of people don't feel safe getting around SF. Be very careful when considering 'facts' like these. It's very easy to shape the response of a survey by asking particular questions in a certain order. Don't assume anything like this is actually true.
- genericone 6y agoNot good enough for San Francisco, car property theft even happens now while the cars are being driven by people: https://abc7.com/car-robbery-traffic-thief-jumps-out-of-robs-driver-caught-on-camera/10318760/ https://abc7.com/car-robbery-traffic-thief-jumps-out-of-robs...
- Lammy 6y agoPeople need to stop believing in Hanlon's Razor.
- caturopath 6y agoTragically, people are injured and killed in muggings, but this is actually fairly rare, although it's a terrible experience to get mugged even if there's no injury. Hopefully we can work on building a world where no one is that desperate. Even more tragic - because it isn't rare - is getting mowed down by cars. People get killed or injured by the dozen in car crashes in SF. It's insane that anyone with a license can just show up and drive in the Mission/Tenderloin/Downtown.
- travisporter 6y agoDoes one really refer to people living in SF as San Franciscans?
- schoen 6y agoI think so! Some of the first DuckDuckGo results were from out-of-town media, but here is a very, very local source (KQED): https://www.kqed.org/coronavirusliveupdates/news/11856076/heres-where-san-franciscans-can-sign-up-to-receive-vaccine-eligibility-notification https://www.kqed.org/coronavirusliveupdates/news/11856076/he...
- nwienert 6y agoI believe it’s Sans Franciscan.
- dane-pgp 6y agoRight, it pluralizes just like Attorneys Helvetica.
- cam0 6y agoYes. New Yorkers, Chicagoans, Bostonians, San Franciscans... pretty common thing.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoWhy is "New Yorkers" in your list?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- electrondood 6y agoFriscoians.
- skyyler 6y agoNo. Not that one.
- almost_usual 6y agoWhen these go driverless there is going to be a lot of graffiti on them. Etch bath on windows isn’t cheap to fix.
- electrondood 6y agoAnd human drivers, who habitually drive at least 5mph over the speed limit, are going to experience some major frustration when these habitually drive 1mph under the speed limit. I don't think people are ready for this part of it. I foresee dedicated lanes.
- elil17 6y agoOr maybe human drivers will finally start following speed limits
- akira2501 6y agoIt's been shown that if you redesign the street, you can change human behavior on that street including lowering the average speed that drivers choose to drive at. Designing a wide-open 4 lane boulevard then slapping a 30 mph speed limit on it is a terrible plan, yet how often we do exactly that in our cities.
- readams 6y agoThe secret is to design terrifying, narrow roads with poor visibility! What an idea.
- sethhochberg 6y agoLook up "traffic calming". There are plenty of well-studied techniques for discouraging excessive speed that don't involve terrifying the drivers or limiting visibility, and make things safer for pretty much everybody involved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming
- MAGZine 6y agoI'm staying near a main throughway in the mission, and I see Waymo vehicles CONSTANTLY. That said, I really noticed that they picked up the pace about a year ago. Soon the streets will just be self driving cars driving around each other. Not the best data set.
- Clewza313 6y agoIf (when) self-driving goes mainstream, most traffic will be self-driving cars driving around each other.
- andyxor 6y agolawd have mercy
- waymon 6y agoI've never liked this company.
- sprayk 6y agoyour username is waymo near to theirs than any other I've seen, so I can understand why
- thethethethe 6y ago> Autonomous vehicles promise to change this, revolutionizing our cities by making transport safer, cheaper, and easier to access. But deploying autonomous driving technology to get there – perhaps one of the greatest engineering problems of our time – isn’t possible without developing a deep understanding of the nature of the challenges it must master. Uh this problem has been solved for over one hundred years, its called public transit. This is just the most expensive, most complicated solution for a problem that has already been solved in many places many times. Its like using globally distributed micro services to serve your blog which could just be hosted on medium. Yes, driverless cars will be useful for things at some point, but we don't need them in a dense city! I want fewer cars, not driverless ones
- chrisseaton 6y ago> This is just the most expensive, most complicated solution for a problem that has already been solved in many places many times. Can you estimate how 'expensive' and 'complicated' it would be to retrofit San Francisco with a public transit system? I would guess tens of billions of dollars and tens of decades, and that's if it would ever get approved in the first place. London has spent $20 billion and twenty years adding one new rail line. In a city starting out as already famously enthusiastic about public transit. What should we do in the half-century before this possible transit system turns up in San Francisco? Don't let perfect be the enemy of better.
- jeffbee 6y agoIndeed, do not let perfect be the enemy of better. The best way to improve transportation in SF is to tell everyone in a car to fuck right off, and run a bus both ways down every street every 3 minutes. No rails required.
- chrisseaton 6y agoI do also support completely closing all cities to private cars (reasonable exceptions for genuine requirements.) I don't understand why almost anyone needs, let alone wants, to try to drive a car into a city in the first place. Relcaim the streets for people. But again... how 'complicated' do you think it would be to achieve this legislation? I would guess impossibly complicated, so it's no more than a dream. So what do we do about it now? And what can a private company like Waymo do?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- supernova87a 6y agoIt would help if they said more clearly what 23% of people not feeling "safe" meant. Does that refer to driving safety and hitting other vehicles or people? Does it mean personal safety while sitting in a taxi / Uber? Safety while riding Muni? It makes kind of a lot of difference if that number is being used to justify whatever specific thing that addresses "safety" they're planning to do, doesn't it?
- taylorlapeyre 6y agoIn the article they make it fairly clear that the survey was about people’s experiences driving in San Francisco, not general living etc.
- hammock 6y ago>Does that refer to driving safety and hitting other vehicles or people? Does it mean personal safety while sitting in a taxi / Uber? Safety while riding Muni? You forgot lidar in your eyes.
- chairmanwow1 6y agoI took a road trip through AZ in January and took a detour to Chandler to try out a fully autonomous Waymo ride. I worked on self-driving at Lyft and I have a comma two devkit installed in my car. I have to say it was actually pretty magical having a robot car glide up to me in the Walmart parking lot and then take me for a drive. It's one thing to read about the launch and a wholly other thing entirely to see a fully empty car slink up to you in a parking lot. The ride is most likely being monitored remotely. I changed my destination back to the start location after traveling about 20 minutes and an attendant's voice came over the speaker and asked if everything was alright. I said it was fine, but was interested that they had a live team monitoring and able to step in for customer service like that. I did have to wait 17 minutes for the Waymo to actually show up. This success was after 3 or 4 failed attempts to request a car, so if I actually lived in the area I would probably not even open the app to check the ETA. This point is largely moot, as it's pretty clear that strategically AZ is a testing ground rather than something Waymo expects to make any money doing. I can't wait for the autonomous future. Best of luck to all the entrants in the competition. I just hope you are able to turn a profit before investor money dries up. We've been waiting on promises of this elusive future for nearly a decade now ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
- agumonkey 6y agoDo you think that SDV is a bit (just a bit) in a kind of skeumorphic zone where mobility was defined by human driven charriot and thus computers are having to replicate all the complex human perception and control.. while, in urban settings, we could pave the roads with markers and beacons so that moving objects could move around without all the sensing technology ?
- adammunich 6y agoAbsolutely. In the same way that we add street lights for humans, we will add waypoints for cars so they make less mistakes.
- adrianN 6y agoYou can't pave roads with markers and beacons to do self-driving without simultaneously banning all non-AI traffic participants, including pedestrians.
- kevincox 6y agoThese pie charts are awful: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HVdEnOjie4E/YC1KNXm4XgI/AAAAAAAAE6s/Pt74f83JaHgDAGKGcGTIDW5rBXiequWWgCNcBGAsYHQ/s16000/Survey_SF.png https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HVdEnOjie4E/YC1KNXm4XgI/AAAAAAAAE... There is no way to tell which colour is "active" without reading the number and mapping it back. Why not just skip the pie chart, it isn't like they draw much attention in the design anyways.
- carapace 6y agoThe grim joke among cyclists is, "If you want to get away with killing someone just be sure they are riding a bike and you're driving a car." Paraphrasing, if you want to get away with killing someone with your massive, high-velocity robots just be sure to make them look like cars (and maybe put a human "test driver" in there as a kind of moral "crumple zone" to deflect blame. They don't even have to be good at their job. In fact, it works out better if they're watching TV on their phone when your robot kills someone.) Automotive death and mayhem was normalized in the USA by a deliberate campaign of domestic propaganda: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxopfjXkArM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxopfjXkArM Since then cars have killed more Americans than all the wars we've fought. A self-driving golf cart that cannot go fast enough to hurt people could be built and deployed safely today. Fast heavy car-shaped robots are a fetish. Please, snap out of it before your robots kill. Again. (Also, can we please call self-driving cars auto-autos? Please?)
- barry27 6y agoI used to love the idea of autonomous vehicles in cities. Now I dread the effect I think they will have on the freedoms of pedestrians. It's going to be jaywalking 2.0, with tech involved. Awful.