4 ms·

Given the hours of operation, I wonder what happens when your self-driving car shows up with puke in the upholstery from a previous rider

bennyg 5y ago
I'm sure they have a process for "car unsafe" arrivals.
asdff 5y ago
Ironic how by 'saving money' without the human driving the car, they end up probably spending a mountain more on engineers debugging this software constantly along with cleaning staff and maintenance for the entire fleet, legal staff for regulatory issues, and no doubt a huge insurance bill to pay. Sunk cost is a strong fallacy to see past I guess.
- cromka 5y ago
  I don’t think you grasp the scale of this change. You think that this “mountain of engineers“ will equal to the (eventual) number of taxi drivers displaced? WORLDWIDE? Also, you think those engineers, capable of creating an autonomous car, somehow will find it too difficult to install liquid detectors all over the car and combine them with cameras inside to would allow for instantaneous, remote inspection of the car and imposing the penalties/taking the car offline – all of which are possible with existing technology?
  - asdff 5y ago
    All I'm saying is that when you look at other sectors with low cost labor, smart money like mcdonalds had the tech stack to replace their burger flippers with robots just like the auto industry in the 1970s, so there's probably a good reason why they still have human burger flippers today.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      Robots that can flip burgers are expensive. Robots that can drive us around already exists and so affordable that we see billions of them on the roads, they are called cars. All the road robots need is a better steering system, we don't need to invent tricky machinery. The burger flipping robots however would need tons of different new movable parts to be invented, mass produced and shipped all over etc. That would be expensive.
- bagels 5y ago
  One driver, one car. One engineer, thousands of cars?
joe463369 5y ago
Open up your app. Hit 'Cancel ride', hit 'Unsanitary', wait for the replacement taxi. Really, it's the same problem Amazon had with delivering high value goods when people weren't in. If something goes wrong, assume the customer is telling the truth and try to make it right, but if they're at it, ban them from your service.
TulliusCicero 5y ago
You hit a button in the app and they send you a different car, while the dirty one goes to a cleaning station. Possibly they give you a small credit for the trouble, and maybe ding the previous rider somehow.
- marmshallow 5y ago
  Sounds about right. No real difference from a human-driven Uber
- somehnacct3757 5y ago
  Not that I think this problem is unsolvable, but I do think it's harder than you make it. And a problem only autonomous (really, unchaperoned) cars have. A car with a spill in it, bodily or otherwise, is probably out of commission for the night. Depending on the type of stain and time before treatment, it could take the car out of the fleet for a few days. Eventually self-driving cars have bus seats? idk. No problem, we can make the rider accountable. We have cameras in the car. First issue here is you can't trust users alone to provide accountability. Say I put my leftovers on the floor. You get in next and don't notice. The next rider however complains of a strong fish smell in the car. The car is taken out of service and your reputation is dinged since you were the last person in the car. That's no good, so we'll need humans to review video and find culprits. Spinning up such a team will require software, managers, and oversight. Being alone with your date in a self-driving car is _exciting_ so you definitely don't want your employees to freely copy or share private videos of riders. Like I said, this stuff is all solvable with centralized teams, but it cuts into the profit fantasy a bit. And it simply didn't exist when every car in your fleet came with a chaperone incentivized to take care of your/their car.
  - b9a2cab5 5y ago
    You're way overcomplicating things. Uber already handles this kind of stuff. Driver gets paid on the person who threw up's dime ($50-200), driver is responsible for cleaning it up. It'll just be a centralized maintenance hub instead of the driver. You won't get dinged unless you consistently get reported, because Waymo (like Uber) will follow the Amazon model of customer-is-always-right. These are all solved problems.

bennyg 5y ago

I'm sure they have a process for "car unsafe" arrivals.

asdff 5y ago

Ironic how by 'saving money' without the human driving the car, they end up probably spending a mountain more on engineers debugging this software constantly along with cleaning staff and maintenance for the entire fleet, legal staff for regulatory issues, and no doubt a huge insurance bill to pay. Sunk cost is a strong fallacy to see past I guess.

cromka 5y ago
I don’t think you grasp the scale of this change. You think that this “mountain of engineers“ will equal to the (eventual) number of taxi drivers displaced? WORLDWIDE? Also, you think those engineers, capable of creating an autonomous car, somehow will find it too difficult to install liquid detectors all over the car and combine them with cameras inside to would allow for instantaneous, remote inspection of the car and imposing the penalties/taking the car offline – all of which are possible with existing technology?
- asdff 5y ago
  All I'm saying is that when you look at other sectors with low cost labor, smart money like mcdonalds had the tech stack to replace their burger flippers with robots just like the auto industry in the 1970s, so there's probably a good reason why they still have human burger flippers today.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    Robots that can flip burgers are expensive. Robots that can drive us around already exists and so affordable that we see billions of them on the roads, they are called cars. All the road robots need is a better steering system, we don't need to invent tricky machinery. The burger flipping robots however would need tons of different new movable parts to be invented, mass produced and shipped all over etc. That would be expensive.
bagels 5y ago
One driver, one car. One engineer, thousands of cars?

joe463369 5y ago

Open up your app. Hit 'Cancel ride', hit 'Unsanitary', wait for the replacement taxi. Really, it's the same problem Amazon had with delivering high value goods when people weren't in. If something goes wrong, assume the customer is telling the truth and try to make it right, but if they're at it, ban them from your service.

TulliusCicero 5y ago

You hit a button in the app and they send you a different car, while the dirty one goes to a cleaning station. Possibly they give you a small credit for the trouble, and maybe ding the previous rider somehow.

marmshallow 5y ago
Sounds about right. No real difference from a human-driven Uber
somehnacct3757 5y ago
Not that I think this problem is unsolvable, but I do think it's harder than you make it. And a problem only autonomous (really, unchaperoned) cars have. A car with a spill in it, bodily or otherwise, is probably out of commission for the night. Depending on the type of stain and time before treatment, it could take the car out of the fleet for a few days. Eventually self-driving cars have bus seats? idk. No problem, we can make the rider accountable. We have cameras in the car. First issue here is you can't trust users alone to provide accountability. Say I put my leftovers on the floor. You get in next and don't notice. The next rider however complains of a strong fish smell in the car. The car is taken out of service and your reputation is dinged since you were the last person in the car. That's no good, so we'll need humans to review video and find culprits. Spinning up such a team will require software, managers, and oversight. Being alone with your date in a self-driving car is _exciting_ so you definitely don't want your employees to freely copy or share private videos of riders. Like I said, this stuff is all solvable with centralized teams, but it cuts into the profit fantasy a bit. And it simply didn't exist when every car in your fleet came with a chaperone incentivized to take care of your/their car.
- b9a2cab5 5y ago
  You're way overcomplicating things. Uber already handles this kind of stuff. Driver gets paid on the person who threw up's dime ($50-200), driver is responsible for cleaning it up. It'll just be a centralized maintenance hub instead of the driver. You won't get dinged unless you consistently get reported, because Waymo (like Uber) will follow the Amazon model of customer-is-always-right. These are all solved problems.