17 ms·

NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

banana_giraffe 3y ago
Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/technology/waymo-driverless-cars-san-francisco.html?unlocked_article_code=GgyTpYvmbsq-m6EtivT6rxN79l5sqGbDt-n2yGjh3FirTe9r1rZMFlHQBpNimm1pNtI6M4KMyOlqVnSizX5ONZMbmHuhmSvBnuHvRd6SBa44rnk44xuMePbiKM0VYCduUThwulcg_zMleJKsnWdy07Z2u4smyosX_ZlqpotRBrZRsdRViJSCaJD6Lb7exyDplrjGbJ5r7zH9l6c-T3to7tsOVWB6RG2VTgCiT7N3kDPO82fy-zyOXGHAJEprwFPZTfzZBIeOa-sszw7HKF7yE8x30aoU5mkA1la38gB5hgWnxjjEmDh6fYqxA7FTtuhAwozrgJ7kqRTY4vPT8yCRtxlZyFLSS9nX0me3pqwOZB8&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/technology/waymo-driverle...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
b8 3y ago
Paywall bypass: https://archive.is/vMBom https://archive.is/vMBom
jwr 3y ago
As a programmer, I won't put myself into that thing. I'm also not happy to be an unwilling participant in this experiment. Given the state of technology and our capabilities to write bug-free software (Seriously, we can't even get things like buying airline tickets correct), I think it's way too early to approve those vehicles on city streets.
- skybrian 3y ago
  Clearly you're unwilling, but if you got in, wouldn't that make you willing? :-)
  - xwdv 3y ago
    If you share the road with a self driving vehicle you’re part of the experiment.
    - natch 3y ago
      If you are alive you are part of many experiments. Among them being human driving, which hasn’t panned out well.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- nwiswell 3y ago
  It's significantly more absurd to permit highly distractable, slow-reacting meatbags to operate the multi-ton high-velocity death barges in the close vicinity of pedestrians and other meatbags-cum-death-barge-pilots.
  - paulcole 3y ago
    Why? We have what, like 50+ years of certainty as to how dangerous people are as drivers? They’re a known quantity and we know we can keep making cars safer to reduce the danger to drivers and passengers. Instead we’re going to YOLO a half-baked tech-bro fantasy onto the roads and hope for the best? Also “meatbags” has the same tone as “sportsball” imo.
    - nwiswell 3y ago
      > We have what, like 50+ years of certainty as to how dangerous people are as drivers Yes, the answer is "very". Over one percent (1 in 93, National Safety Council, 2021[1]) of Americans will die in a car crash. That is insane. The data so far is clear that autonomous vehicles are safer, and it isn't close. > Also “meatbags” has the same tone as “sportsball” imo. We're comparing humans to computers. Sue me. [1]: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-overview/odds-of-dying/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-o...
      - notahacker 3y ago
        > The data so far is clear that autonomous vehicles are safer, and it isn't close. The data so far on fatality rates is near nonexistent. There' a fatality every 75 million miles in the US with a human at the wheel, with significant proportions of those fatalities considered to be humans operating so far below the threshold for acceptable human driving we jail them for it. Waymo hit 1m autonomous miles this year.
        bitsage 3y ago
        I’ve seen many people in this thread insinuate driverless cars are as safe as human drivers despite the vehicles being subjected to a subset of conditions the average US driver is. I’m surprised to see such disingenuous statements on here.
- renewiltord 3y ago
  I'm a software engineer and I put myself into that thing. Didn't die. AMA But last week, a block from home, this old lady killed a 4 year old in this city. Perhaps the little girl was a consenting participant to this, but I am quite doubtful.
- r0fl 3y ago
  You trust a drunk driver more? a distracted teenager more? a parent with a car full of loud kids more?
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Do you avoid flying too?
  - Vecr 3y ago
    In GA, yeah. On commercial passenger jets with a couple well-trained pilots and a multiple-times lower fatality rate per hour than cars, there's no safer place to be if you need to cross the continental US. I doubt a self driving car is anywhere near as safe as that, especially considering how unlikely violent crime is to get anywhere on a US domestic flight, for obvious reasons.
- drcode 3y ago
  It seems pretty clear to me (if you've been to SF recently) that autonomous cars react to pedestrians quicker and are much more careful around pedestrians than human drivers. You can certainly take the attitude "I will only agree with having autonomous cars on the street once they are provably 100000000x safer than a human" but I don't think that matches most people's view on what constitutes safety. Also, that goes pretty strongly against the American ethos, where we let people make their own decisions in terms of what kind of things they buy, within reason. We already know that SUVs are more dangerous for pedestrians, but I think most of us agree that making SUVs illegal for this reason would not be a good idea, and is against the American ethos.
  - LeanderK 3y ago
    > We already know that SUVs are more dangerous for pedestrians, but I think most of us agree that making SUVs illegal for this reason would not be a good idea, and is against the American ethos. As a non-american that doesn't own a car it's not that unreasonable for me :) At least banning SUVs that are excessively unsafe for pedestrians in a collision. Or maybe just ban it in cities where some walkability is expected. I just don't want to die by getting hit by a car
    - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
      > I just don't want to die by getting hit by a car Most Americans couldn't care less about pedestrians. All they care about is where to park their car.
- dekhn 3y ago
  Nobody expects self-driving cars to be bug-free-- why would we? All that matters is, statistically, that the cars are better than humans at driving. And that's something that will eventually be achieved through a combination of software engineering, hardware engineering, and spending lots of money to build trust. Some number of people will still die in accidents even if the entire fleet is self-driving. You might, if you do not already, find a like-minded crowd on the Risks mailing list, where they argue about 0.0000001% risks like "streetlights that turn green automatically when emergency response vehicles approach the intersection, fail at some rate because the designer didn't anticipate two emergency vehicles approaching the intersection at right angles" (which very very rarely causes an accident).
- GreymanTheGrey 3y ago
  As another programmer, and one with decades of experience building software running critical infrastructure, I have a very different view. You seem to be expecting perfection, or a reasonable facsimile of it, but that's not the bar that's being set by the existing solution (people). Using your example of even a pedestrian task such as buying airline tickets, humans generally have a worse error rate than a computer doing it. Source: I live in the Philippines where manual handling is still de rigeur for everything from buying ferry tickets, to immigration paperwork, to car registration and driving licenses. The error rate is far, far higher than the automated systems that do these things in other countries. Similarly, humans (in aggregate) are really not very good at driving cars safely. Software on the other hand, is only getting better at it as time goes on. It's perhaps debatable whether computers are currently better (again, in aggregate) than humans, but with the current state of the art my view is that they are. I'd welcome these things with open arms in the Philippines compared to the average driver on the road. Or equally so in my home country of Australia, or the US, or anywhere where humans kill each other every day in fast-moving steel cages.
- mandevil 3y ago
  15 years ago I worked on robot tanks for the US Army, I currently am in machine learning and I live in Phoenix, so I was very interested in this and have taken several rides on Waymo (never been in a Cruise). The Waymo felt very safe- and is definitely trying to convince you of that fact. Most seats have a screen that shows the cars current situational awareness of all obstacles around it- you can even see pedestrians, parked cars, etc., and when you come up to a stop light it will display a little icon with the correct light so you know that it is reading the red/yellow/green correctly. It plans routes such that it rarely takes an unprotected left turn (though the current generation of vehicles seem to be more willing to do that- on the old Pacifica minivans I don't think I ever had one do that, the iJag's have done it occasionally though not often). They are clearly thinking about trying to make it feel safer, and convince riders of that safety. Now, I will note that the Phoenix area is by far the easiest driving I have ever encountered in 25 years of having a license. Wide roads, little traffic, few pedestrians (I moved here from NYC!), little weather, and I don't see them out as much at night. They crucially also completely avoid the most unpredictable driving in the area, for example Sky Harbor Airport, and near construction sites (there is construction in our kids school parking lot, and the Waymo won't go in- they will only drop us off next door and make us walk). But this too builds my confidence in the system- the people who are operating it seem to understand that it has limitations, which suggests to me that they are wearing their engineers hats and not management or, God forbid, salesmen hats. Is it perfect, I'm certain not. But I definitely prefer it to Uber or anything like that- no tip, no worry about the driver doing something concerning, just gets me where I want to go.
- jojobas 3y ago
  Are you happy to put yourself in a human-driven cab? Human drivers are not bug-free either. It's plausible that this robot, albeit not bug-free, would drive safer than an average human driver.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  What does it matter being a programmer? This thing has a statistical safety rate. Which is either worse or better than your average Uber/Lyft/taxi driver. But if it's better, it's better. And if you'd rather keep getting in vehicles with human drivers then they're statistically more dangerous, well that'll be your choice.
- etothepii 3y ago
  Buying airline tickets usually works fine, but I'm going to visit a client in upstate New York and a business class ticket BDA->LAX->SYR was cheaper than BDA->PHL.
- bastawhiz 3y ago
  I ride a motorcycle. I'll trust a machine to check its mirrors. I won't trust a person. I'll ride ten miles and see twenty people on their phones, holding a cup of coffee, turning around to look at their kids, whatever. I get cut off by people who don't look both ways. I get cut off by people who do look both ways and think they will be out of my way before I get close to them. I get cut off by people making turns that aren't in a lane that allows turns. I'm not afraid of self driving cars because I know that even if they're not perfect, they will still be far better than the overwhelming majority of drivers on the road.
  - Eric_WVGG 3y ago
    Bicyclist here. The biggest danger to me are trucks and buses that swing around corners without visible signals. Electrics can slap more cameras and enforce blind spots. But the biggest of all — which this article repeatedly notes — is enforced speed limits. We could have that on “human cars” of course with GPS speed limiters, but that is of course politically impossible despite there not even being a coherent argument for why cars that can move faster than 75mph are legal to sell. Drivers can pick and choose which laws to abide (see that incident just last week where David Simon made the case that speeding in school zones is just find); ultimately, a computer can be forced to do what it’s told. https://hellgatenyc.com/david-simon-got-a-speeding-ticket-in-nyc https://hellgatenyc.com/david-simon-got-a-speeding-ticket-in...
- ericksoa 3y ago
  By this logic, we should go back to manual deploys since CD lets... aghast... computers deploy our most important software to prod
- nprateem 3y ago
  I'm with you. That's why, as a house builder, I'll never get into an aeroplane. I mean bricks are way too heavy to fly, the concrete will crack at the first sign of turbulence and how far can they really go before the mains power cables get cut? It makes no sense. At least, unless they're doing things differently.
regnarg 3y ago
Thank you! :)
_acco 3y ago
> My ride was so smooth, the novelty began to wear off, turning a trip to the future into just another journey across town. This is the only nod in the article to how futuristic and revelatory this innovation. The journalists sound so bored. I wonder if this is a function of how “around the corner” this tech has felt for so long? Have we somehow become jaded to this innovation before it has even arrived? Were journalists covering advent of passenger flights dedicating the first half of articles to safety and political concerns before accounting for the experience of a “first in a lifetime” ride?
- Fatnino 3y ago
  My first driverless ride in a Cruise vehicle was like "oh this is neat, no driver!" and then I put on my seat belt and it was immediately just another ride in a car, no big deal. Not even a lingering thought in the back of my mind. They drive just like a human would 99% of the time.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  It took just two moon landings for people to get bored. I don’t think you need a technology to be fully functional for people to tire of it. It just has to be in the news for enough years.
  - mc32 3y ago
    It's true for most people, but you also have fans who never get bored --and in the case of rockets to the moon would witness every launch, if they could --just as some people love watching planes take off and land.
  - austinl 3y ago
    Reminds me that SpaceX has now landed rocket boosters successfully over 200 times. Landing just a single rocket was huge news a few years ago. The US is launching things into space about 20 times as frequently compared to 10 years ago [1]. Now, most rocket launches don't make mainstream news—I only keep up with things by subscribing to a niche newsletter [2]. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-launched-into-outer-space https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-... [2] https://orbitalindex.com https://orbitalindex.com
smlavine 3y ago
> The Waymo rides were affordable, ranging from $18 to $21 Goes to show you what world these journalists are living on that think that's totally acceptable for a five mile ride. I'll stick with public transit.
- azernik 3y ago
  Compared to Lyft or Uber, that's a fine price. Those are its real competition.
- systemvoltage 3y ago
  [flagged]
- justrealist 3y ago
  Do you have any concept how long it takes to go five miles on SF public transit? If both your stops aren't on a MUNI rail line, you've easily burned an hour.
- dekhn 3y ago
  Have you ridden in the Bay Area? Public transport in SF is slow outside of a few routes. A MUNI ticket is $2.50 for 120 minutes. I would gladly pay 10X that for 30 minutes if my train was timely, clean, and safe-feeling.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  A five mile trip in a SF taxi is $24.30 before tip [1]. So for five miles, this is notably a bit cheaper. And it's obvious that "affordable" here means relative to other car services. Not relative to public transit. [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/S-F-taxi-meter-rates-have-increased-for-the-17607578.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/S-F-taxi-meter-rates-...
- throwawaylinux 3y ago
  I'm the first to call journalists out of touch, but in this case it's you. There's a reason that cars and private-public transport like taxis and uber are so popular all around the world, even in cities with much better public transport than SF. A reason why quite poor people will often spend a lot of money to own cars. Look at London or cities in the Netherlands or Japan. Car ownership rates around 50% per household, and use of taxi services from time to time would be far higher. It's because even very good busses and trains don't offer the freedom and convenience of a car. And it doesn't require an outlandish value of a person's time for that $18 to $21 to look at lot more cost competitive with the public transport option.
ctoth 3y ago
It's like this paragraph is obligatory: > Waymo has had fewer headline-worthy troubles. In May, one of its cars struck and killed a small dog. A few years ago, a driverless Waymo car with a human safety driver operating the wheel hit a pedestrian who needed to be taken to the hospital. After reading that reporters were explicitly instructed to go after tech[0], I just can't not see stuff like this. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33456708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33456708
- comex 3y ago
  Of course it’s obligatory in such an article to mention the ongoing controversies surrounding self-driving cars. They’re relevant context. But if anything, that paragraph makes Waymo look good, given that it comes after a paragraph listing a series of more-significant incidents involving Cruise, and explicitly says Waymo has had “fewer troubles”.
  - ctoth 3y ago
    Sure, that makes sense. Except how is it an "ongoing controversy" that one of the cars hit someone, while being driven by a safety driver? There's providing context, then there's digging for anything that might stick to make them look bad. This, to me, reads as the latter.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
barbariangrunge 3y ago
But… why couldn’t we just build more and better trains?
- flappyeagle 3y ago
  [flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- soligern 3y ago
  [flagged]
- zdragnar 3y ago
  Trains aren't a panacea for transportation. They work well in some areas, less well in others, and not at all in many. You still have to get to and from the stations themselves, and the dependability of transportation arriving on time and proximity to your destination plays a big factor. The metro area I went to college in had a light rail train that ran from downtown to a popular tourist destination. To get there, though, you needed to catch a connecting bus ride. It is a 15 minute trip by car, but an hour by bus+train. If the bus ran late, it would actually be faster to ride a bicycle all 13 miles. The metro area cities want to add more trains because it is the progressive thing to do, but ridership on one of the lines is abysmal, and the other lines aren't utilized as much as they could be because people feel unsafe on them and are disgusting- smoking cigarettes, drinking hard alcohol, food all over the floor, loud music, the occasional gang posturing or aggressive pan handling were all cited by locals in a survey as to why they chose to drive instead.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Back during my first trip to China, a bunch of retired military guys would hang out at subway stations offering rides from the station to your house for 5 jiao or one Kuai in a gas powered tuktuk. I imagine electric ride share bikes could do the same thing today if they weren’t being abused all the time.
  - 3y ago
quickthrower2 3y ago
A concept I look forward to is not just a driverless car, but driverless "various size vehicles" from a 1-person car to a 100-person bus. In this future we could get the advantages of public transport and car-free living into rural and suburban areas, while in the city these systems could adjust and use AI to find optimal routes that are a lot less slower than current buses (or even trains that require 2 or 3 connections). All the while using electric and reducing energy per passenger and knocking over fewer cyclists :-).
- fastball 3y ago
  I just want a driverless RV that will drive me between all the National Parks in the US while I work remotely from the back via a Starlink dish mounted to the roof.
  - soligern 3y ago
    What a dream that would be for myself as well. Electric too so I can charge it up at night and then essentially get free travel during the day even if it only 100-300 miles a day.
  - ttul 3y ago
    The solution to homelessness too! No need to find a parking spot. Just drive all night. Could it drive very slowly and charge the batteries using solar? Hmmm
    - quickthrower2 3y ago
      This is the solution to NIMBYness. A homelessness solution would let you stay in one place :-)
    - bergie 3y ago
      We saw an electric motorboat this summer, made out of an old archipelago fisher boat. Cabin top and bimini full of solar. Owner estimated that on a sunny day you can motor at 3kt without depleting batteries.
abhayhegde 3y ago
> Though there’s no driver, each ride is supported by staff at a Waymo site that can be summoned if a car runs into trouble. Unless they have multiple rides looked after by a staff, what are they planning to save by not offering a driver? Also, is there any path to profitability given how many billions were poured into the technology? Not that I care so much though, Alphabet has enough profitable ventures to recoup otherwise.
- pengaru 3y ago
  I think it goes without saying that the remote observer likely sits at something resembling a trading desk with a wall of LCD panels, monitoring heaps of vehicles like a glorified security guard. It'd be interesting to know what the permissible overcommit ratio is though, if there even is a limit codified by the state/city somewhere.
- jsnell 3y ago
  Of course there's not one on-duty staffer per car. You'd only need that many people if all rides required human support at exactly the same time. But in reality, most rides wouldn't require it at all. Even if there's likely to be some correlation between support requests, it'd be all cars on one street or block needing help at the same time, not all cars in the same city. > Also, is there any path to profitability given how many billions were poured into the technology? Sure, let's do it back of the envelope. First, the unit economies. Let's assume that a taxi is driven for 16 hours per day (two 8 hour shifts), and the average wage for a driver is $15 / hour. That works out to 16 hours / day * $15 / hour * 365 days/year = $87600/year. This is how much less it costs to operate a self-driving car is than one driven by a human. Since human-operated taxis won't be running at a loss, this means a self-driving taxi would make a minimum of ~$90k/year profit if it got as many drives as a human. Would they get as many drives? Would people prefer a self-driving taxi over a human-driven one? At least if the self-driving taxi is cheaper, I don't see why not. It'd be easy for the self-driving taxis to undercut human drivers on price, while still remaining very profitable. The big challenge is the service area, where self-driving cars currently have no flexibility. The unit economies seem to check out. Is the market big enough to run this as a proper business, or is it depending on unrealistic growth? The numbers I'm finding aren't super consistent, but it seems that the taxi + ride-sharing business is something like $50B-$100B / year just in the US. The addressable market is definitely sufficiently large to pay for billions in R&D. So really it's just a question of how fast they can scale it up, and how quickly the competition catches up.
jwagenet 3y ago
Can’t speak for Waymo, but took a Cruise starting in the Tenderloin the other evening. Most people complain about these cars obstructing traffic in some type of way, but not much discussion about rider experience. First, these cars are susceptible to harassment by malicious pedestrians (someone walking around and bumping the car), halting operation. Second, surprisingly, the cars do not always stop for pickup at the specified location (they can get stuck before making a final turn due to an obstruction and still be obstructed when attempting to depart). This doesn’t deter me from using these cars, but some things the service should consider and riders should be aware of when picking routes.
nightshadetrie 3y ago
Waymo has been, for the longest, the king in the AV industry. These are the vehicles I would trust my family to drive in.
neonate 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20230821230643/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/technology/waymo-driverless-cars-san-francisco.html https://web.archive.org/web/20230821230643/https://www.nytim...
jfoster 3y ago
> we tried to duplicate the experience a tourist might have bopping around the city in a driverless taxi. Tourists are probably going to be the last cohort to get access to Waymo.
- clsec 3y ago
  Why is that? It's a fully public taxi service that will probably be heavily marketed in Fisherman's Wharf/Pier 39.
  - jfoster 3y ago
    They're only opening it up to residents bit by bit. They've shown no interest in opening it up to tourists. Presumably it will only be available for tourists once it's available to absolutely anyone.
    - clsec 3y ago
      I know I'm late on this, but.. "That means residents and visitors to San Francisco will be able to pay a fare to ride in a driverless taxi, ushering in new automated competition to cab and ridehail drivers." [1] [1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/11/tech/robotaxi-vote-san-francisco/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/11/tech/robotaxi-vote-san-franci... btw - are they going to check ID's??
jfoster 3y ago
> I wondered what would happen if I touched the wheel, so I grabbed it as the Waymo merged from one lane to another. The car ignored me and drove on. Surprised they admit to this, considering earlier in the article they mention being instructed not to touch the wheel.
- stu2b50 3y ago
  It’s a good thing to test as a reporter. There are too many people for at least one person not to do something dumb, or fall onto while doing something dumb, so it’s good to know nothing would happen.
  - arbuge 3y ago
    Disagreed. They were clearly told not to do that and didn't follow their directions. It sounds like a potential safety hazard to me. They could just have reported what you said - they were told not to touch the wheel, and are concerned that in reality this could be a problem because there are too many people for at least one person not to do something dumb, or fall onto while doing something dumb etc.
    - stuartjohnson12 3y ago
      If there are self driving cars on the road with a "press here to instantly cause an accident" widget fixed to the dash it's a problem regardless. Testing involves trying out exceptional inputs to find out how the system responds.
      - jfoster 3y ago
        And if that were the case and someone did it, journalists would get plenty of opportunity to get in on that story. They don't have to be the first to trigger every failure mode.
      - mlyle 3y ago
        If you dive over the seat in a Lyft to grab the wheel and yank it on the freeway, it's going to get pretty interesting, too. It's an already-extent but not frequent threat. The main difference is a change in the amount of social pressure to not do this. That change probably makes it worth exploring a little. If Waymo chooses, those steering actuators have enough oomph to always win.
orzig 3y ago
What took them so long? Is “new“ a core concept of “news“, and hasn’t this been possible (in select cities) for many months?
- stu2b50 3y ago
  It only recently went from “closed beta for free” to “charges anyone who wants to get on”. SF just cleared them to take fares.
  - clsec 3y ago
    No, the California Public Utilities Commission just approved them to take fares. Unfortunately San Franciscans have had very little, if anything, to say in any of this.
Diffusion3166 3y ago
Am I the only one finding it hard to be excited for this? It seems like automated taxis: 0. Encourage the use of cars in cities rather than public transit & walkability. 1. Centralize wealth by replacing payments to many drivers with payments to one large company. 2. Allow for further surveillance of individuates. It seems likely that Google will eventually create ad inventory by adding screens to the cars and incorporate travel history into peoples marketing profiles.
- lr4444lr 3y ago
  My wife lost 2 close relatives to accidental vehicular death. She's thrilled.
  - zemvpferreira 3y ago
    Hear hear. Anything that replaces humans at the wheel is a fantastic thing in my book. Road traffic injuries kill close to 1.5 million people every year. The sooner we can have robocars and robobikes replace all driving, the better. I don't care how much privacy that erodes in the short term.
    - harambae 3y ago
      >and robobikes Is anyone currently doing this? I’ve seen proof of concepts for racing in motogp or something, but didn’t realized autonomous motorcycles was a thing outside the racetrack.
- belligeront 3y ago
  I also believe they will increase congestion in cities since when occupants switch from drivers to riders, they are less affected by the costs of road congestion (congested roads may mean riders get to their destinations slower, but because they are no longer driving, people may make extra trips where previously they would say "I don't want to make that trip now because driving during rush hour is too stressful"). But the public will face negative externalities of greater congestion (noise, pollution, slower travel times for busses & walking). Without congestion pricing and right of ways for bikes, walking, and transit, automated taxis seem like a way to double down on a space inefficient mode of travel.
FredPret 3y ago
So many things that were the preserve of the ultra-rich made it's way to the masses thanks to technology finding ways to make it cheaper. - music in your house - new clothes that fit you at least sort-of-well - ice in your kitchen - travel - communication at speed and over large distances - access to a lots of literature - and now, chauffeur-driven cars
habosa 3y ago
The technology is pretty amazing, but does anyone else feel like we (the public) got duped? What I wanted was for my own car to drive itself so I could relax and make better use of car time. I also wanted some new novel ways of interacting with cars to make them feel more like public transit that would be enabled by driverless technology. What we got was ... SciFi Uber. We are not going to be allowed to own the cars, and hiring them for trips will not be any cheaper or easier than Uber. And most will be owned by big companies with motives besides transportation. The driverless future was so exciting in 2013. Now it's just ... there.
- kalleboo 3y ago
  This is why Tesla was valued beyond the top 10 car companies combined - the idea was to kill the idea of people just buying their cars and make it an overpriced subscription
  - samstave 3y ago
    Dont we call those "leases"
- browningstreet 3y ago
  It’s not actually here yet so economies haven’t actually been employed. It’s still a tech beta, though I’m not sure our Teslas will ever really do the thing.
  - sixQuarks 3y ago
    Are you not aware of how FSD beta performs in SF? There are several videos where Tesla FSD beats cruise and Waymo in getting to random destinations, with no interventions.
    - browningstreet 3y ago
      FSD Beta still runs on the old fork of the Tesla software, and nothing "good" has been merged into the newer branch that I'm running (the one that supports Apple Music), and on long road trips, the phantom braking (which I've surmised happens mostly on undulations on a rising or falling road) is still a huge bother/risk... and the fact that Tesla hasn't back-ported whatever fixes they claim exist for phantom braking with AutoPilot means.. it doesn't exist yet. And it's been a problem for years and years now. Also, my Tesla on AutoPilot freaks the f*ck out in large suburban intersections where the roads all go very straight -- it'll jump from lane 1 to lane 2 in the middle of the intersection. Not sure if SF has big intersections of the sort I'm talking about, but Sacramento, Reno, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and LA certainly do. Again, something they could fix if the fix was real, and for all the drivers out there smacking their stalk and AutoPiloting. And lastly, on the highway, where the right lanes expand and contract with onboarding and exiting lanes the car tracks to the right solid line and not the un-moving dotted line to the left of the car. So the car is constantly jumping left and right as the "center" of the lane changes (because the width of the lane is changing), when the lane expands to allow for merge-lane traffic from those entering and exiting the freeway. Two of these examples are on highways, which are ostensibly easier challenges than city streets. Where's the rapid evolution of the tech? Not in product scope of the features people with Teslas are using day to day.
lopkeny12ko 3y ago
The article says that the general public in SF can use Waymo starting this week, but is this actually true? My Waymo One app just says I'm on a waitlist and SF is invite-only.
tristanb 3y ago
These things should not be allowed to drive as is. I had one ignore a crosswalk and just drive at our family. Alternating between aggressively accelerating towards us and braking. As opposed to the normal behavior of waiting behind the line at the prior junction.

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/technology/waymo-driverless-cars-san-francisco.html?unlocked_article_code=GgyTpYvmbsq-m6EtivT6rxN79l5sqGbDt-n2yGjh3FirTe9r1rZMFlHQBpNimm1pNtI6M4KMyOlqVnSizX5ONZMbmHuhmSvBnuHvRd6SBa44rnk44xuMePbiKM0VYCduUThwulcg_zMleJKsnWdy07Z2u4smyosX_ZlqpotRBrZRsdRViJSCaJD6Lb7exyDplrjGbJ5r7zH9l6c-T3to7tsOVWB6RG2VTgCiT7N3kDPO82fy-zyOXGHAJEprwFPZTfzZBIeOa-sszw7HKF7yE8x30aoU5mkA1la38gB5hgWnxjjEmDh6fYqxA7FTtuhAwozrgJ7kqRTY4vPT8yCRtxlZyFLSS9nX0me3pqwOZB8&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/technology/waymo-driverle...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

b8 3y ago

Paywall bypass: https://archive.is/vMBom https://archive.is/vMBom

jwr 3y ago

As a programmer, I won't put myself into that thing. I'm also not happy to be an unwilling participant in this experiment. Given the state of technology and our capabilities to write bug-free software (Seriously, we can't even get things like buying airline tickets correct), I think it's way too early to approve those vehicles on city streets.

skybrian 3y ago
Clearly you're unwilling, but if you got in, wouldn't that make you willing? :-)
- xwdv 3y ago
  If you share the road with a self driving vehicle you’re part of the experiment.
  - natch 3y ago
    If you are alive you are part of many experiments. Among them being human driving, which hasn’t panned out well.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
nwiswell 3y ago
It's significantly more absurd to permit highly distractable, slow-reacting meatbags to operate the multi-ton high-velocity death barges in the close vicinity of pedestrians and other meatbags-cum-death-barge-pilots.
- paulcole 3y ago
  Why? We have what, like 50+ years of certainty as to how dangerous people are as drivers? They’re a known quantity and we know we can keep making cars safer to reduce the danger to drivers and passengers. Instead we’re going to YOLO a half-baked tech-bro fantasy onto the roads and hope for the best? Also “meatbags” has the same tone as “sportsball” imo.
  - nwiswell 3y ago
    > We have what, like 50+ years of certainty as to how dangerous people are as drivers Yes, the answer is "very". Over one percent (1 in 93, National Safety Council, 2021[1]) of Americans will die in a car crash. That is insane. The data so far is clear that autonomous vehicles are safer, and it isn't close. > Also “meatbags” has the same tone as “sportsball” imo. We're comparing humans to computers. Sue me. [1]: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-overview/odds-of-dying/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-o...
    - notahacker 3y ago
      > The data so far is clear that autonomous vehicles are safer, and it isn't close. The data so far on fatality rates is near nonexistent. There' a fatality every 75 million miles in the US with a human at the wheel, with significant proportions of those fatalities considered to be humans operating so far below the threshold for acceptable human driving we jail them for it. Waymo hit 1m autonomous miles this year.
      - bitsage 3y ago
        I’ve seen many people in this thread insinuate driverless cars are as safe as human drivers despite the vehicles being subjected to a subset of conditions the average US driver is. I’m surprised to see such disingenuous statements on here.
renewiltord 3y ago
I'm a software engineer and I put myself into that thing. Didn't die. AMA But last week, a block from home, this old lady killed a 4 year old in this city. Perhaps the little girl was a consenting participant to this, but I am quite doubtful.
r0fl 3y ago
You trust a drunk driver more? a distracted teenager more? a parent with a car full of loud kids more?
quickthrower2 3y ago
Do you avoid flying too?
- Vecr 3y ago
  In GA, yeah. On commercial passenger jets with a couple well-trained pilots and a multiple-times lower fatality rate per hour than cars, there's no safer place to be if you need to cross the continental US. I doubt a self driving car is anywhere near as safe as that, especially considering how unlikely violent crime is to get anywhere on a US domestic flight, for obvious reasons.
drcode 3y ago
It seems pretty clear to me (if you've been to SF recently) that autonomous cars react to pedestrians quicker and are much more careful around pedestrians than human drivers. You can certainly take the attitude "I will only agree with having autonomous cars on the street once they are provably 100000000x safer than a human" but I don't think that matches most people's view on what constitutes safety. Also, that goes pretty strongly against the American ethos, where we let people make their own decisions in terms of what kind of things they buy, within reason. We already know that SUVs are more dangerous for pedestrians, but I think most of us agree that making SUVs illegal for this reason would not be a good idea, and is against the American ethos.
- LeanderK 3y ago
  > We already know that SUVs are more dangerous for pedestrians, but I think most of us agree that making SUVs illegal for this reason would not be a good idea, and is against the American ethos. As a non-american that doesn't own a car it's not that unreasonable for me :) At least banning SUVs that are excessively unsafe for pedestrians in a collision. Or maybe just ban it in cities where some walkability is expected. I just don't want to die by getting hit by a car
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    > I just don't want to die by getting hit by a car Most Americans couldn't care less about pedestrians. All they care about is where to park their car.
dekhn 3y ago
Nobody expects self-driving cars to be bug-free-- why would we? All that matters is, statistically, that the cars are better than humans at driving. And that's something that will eventually be achieved through a combination of software engineering, hardware engineering, and spending lots of money to build trust. Some number of people will still die in accidents even if the entire fleet is self-driving. You might, if you do not already, find a like-minded crowd on the Risks mailing list, where they argue about 0.0000001% risks like "streetlights that turn green automatically when emergency response vehicles approach the intersection, fail at some rate because the designer didn't anticipate two emergency vehicles approaching the intersection at right angles" (which very very rarely causes an accident).
GreymanTheGrey 3y ago
As another programmer, and one with decades of experience building software running critical infrastructure, I have a very different view. You seem to be expecting perfection, or a reasonable facsimile of it, but that's not the bar that's being set by the existing solution (people). Using your example of even a pedestrian task such as buying airline tickets, humans generally have a worse error rate than a computer doing it. Source: I live in the Philippines where manual handling is still de rigeur for everything from buying ferry tickets, to immigration paperwork, to car registration and driving licenses. The error rate is far, far higher than the automated systems that do these things in other countries. Similarly, humans (in aggregate) are really not very good at driving cars safely. Software on the other hand, is only getting better at it as time goes on. It's perhaps debatable whether computers are currently better (again, in aggregate) than humans, but with the current state of the art my view is that they are. I'd welcome these things with open arms in the Philippines compared to the average driver on the road. Or equally so in my home country of Australia, or the US, or anywhere where humans kill each other every day in fast-moving steel cages.
mandevil 3y ago
15 years ago I worked on robot tanks for the US Army, I currently am in machine learning and I live in Phoenix, so I was very interested in this and have taken several rides on Waymo (never been in a Cruise). The Waymo felt very safe- and is definitely trying to convince you of that fact. Most seats have a screen that shows the cars current situational awareness of all obstacles around it- you can even see pedestrians, parked cars, etc., and when you come up to a stop light it will display a little icon with the correct light so you know that it is reading the red/yellow/green correctly. It plans routes such that it rarely takes an unprotected left turn (though the current generation of vehicles seem to be more willing to do that- on the old Pacifica minivans I don't think I ever had one do that, the iJag's have done it occasionally though not often). They are clearly thinking about trying to make it feel safer, and convince riders of that safety. Now, I will note that the Phoenix area is by far the easiest driving I have ever encountered in 25 years of having a license. Wide roads, little traffic, few pedestrians (I moved here from NYC!), little weather, and I don't see them out as much at night. They crucially also completely avoid the most unpredictable driving in the area, for example Sky Harbor Airport, and near construction sites (there is construction in our kids school parking lot, and the Waymo won't go in- they will only drop us off next door and make us walk). But this too builds my confidence in the system- the people who are operating it seem to understand that it has limitations, which suggests to me that they are wearing their engineers hats and not management or, God forbid, salesmen hats. Is it perfect, I'm certain not. But I definitely prefer it to Uber or anything like that- no tip, no worry about the driver doing something concerning, just gets me where I want to go.
jojobas 3y ago
Are you happy to put yourself in a human-driven cab? Human drivers are not bug-free either. It's plausible that this robot, albeit not bug-free, would drive safer than an average human driver.
crazygringo 3y ago
What does it matter being a programmer? This thing has a statistical safety rate. Which is either worse or better than your average Uber/Lyft/taxi driver. But if it's better, it's better. And if you'd rather keep getting in vehicles with human drivers then they're statistically more dangerous, well that'll be your choice.
etothepii 3y ago
Buying airline tickets usually works fine, but I'm going to visit a client in upstate New York and a business class ticket BDA->LAX->SYR was cheaper than BDA->PHL.
bastawhiz 3y ago
I ride a motorcycle. I'll trust a machine to check its mirrors. I won't trust a person. I'll ride ten miles and see twenty people on their phones, holding a cup of coffee, turning around to look at their kids, whatever. I get cut off by people who don't look both ways. I get cut off by people who do look both ways and think they will be out of my way before I get close to them. I get cut off by people making turns that aren't in a lane that allows turns. I'm not afraid of self driving cars because I know that even if they're not perfect, they will still be far better than the overwhelming majority of drivers on the road.
- Eric_WVGG 3y ago
  Bicyclist here. The biggest danger to me are trucks and buses that swing around corners without visible signals. Electrics can slap more cameras and enforce blind spots. But the biggest of all — which this article repeatedly notes — is enforced speed limits. We could have that on “human cars” of course with GPS speed limiters, but that is of course politically impossible despite there not even being a coherent argument for why cars that can move faster than 75mph are legal to sell. Drivers can pick and choose which laws to abide (see that incident just last week where David Simon made the case that speeding in school zones is just find); ultimately, a computer can be forced to do what it’s told. https://hellgatenyc.com/david-simon-got-a-speeding-ticket-in-nyc https://hellgatenyc.com/david-simon-got-a-speeding-ticket-in...
ericksoa 3y ago
By this logic, we should go back to manual deploys since CD lets... aghast... computers deploy our most important software to prod
nprateem 3y ago
I'm with you. That's why, as a house builder, I'll never get into an aeroplane. I mean bricks are way too heavy to fly, the concrete will crack at the first sign of turbulence and how far can they really go before the mains power cables get cut? It makes no sense. At least, unless they're doing things differently.

regnarg 3y ago

Thank you! :)

_acco 3y ago

> My ride was so smooth, the novelty began to wear off, turning a trip to the future into just another journey across town. This is the only nod in the article to how futuristic and revelatory this innovation. The journalists sound so bored. I wonder if this is a function of how “around the corner” this tech has felt for so long? Have we somehow become jaded to this innovation before it has even arrived? Were journalists covering advent of passenger flights dedicating the first half of articles to safety and political concerns before accounting for the experience of a “first in a lifetime” ride?

Fatnino 3y ago
My first driverless ride in a Cruise vehicle was like "oh this is neat, no driver!" and then I put on my seat belt and it was immediately just another ride in a car, no big deal. Not even a lingering thought in the back of my mind. They drive just like a human would 99% of the time.
Waterluvian 3y ago
It took just two moon landings for people to get bored. I don’t think you need a technology to be fully functional for people to tire of it. It just has to be in the news for enough years.
- mc32 3y ago
  It's true for most people, but you also have fans who never get bored --and in the case of rockets to the moon would witness every launch, if they could --just as some people love watching planes take off and land.
- austinl 3y ago
  Reminds me that SpaceX has now landed rocket boosters successfully over 200 times. Landing just a single rocket was huge news a few years ago. The US is launching things into space about 20 times as frequently compared to 10 years ago [1]. Now, most rocket launches don't make mainstream news—I only keep up with things by subscribing to a niche newsletter [2]. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-launched-into-outer-space https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-... [2] https://orbitalindex.com https://orbitalindex.com

smlavine 3y ago

> The Waymo rides were affordable, ranging from $18 to $21 Goes to show you what world these journalists are living on that think that's totally acceptable for a five mile ride. I'll stick with public transit.

azernik 3y ago
Compared to Lyft or Uber, that's a fine price. Those are its real competition.
systemvoltage 3y ago
[flagged]
justrealist 3y ago
Do you have any concept how long it takes to go five miles on SF public transit? If both your stops aren't on a MUNI rail line, you've easily burned an hour.
dekhn 3y ago
Have you ridden in the Bay Area? Public transport in SF is slow outside of a few routes. A MUNI ticket is $2.50 for 120 minutes. I would gladly pay 10X that for 30 minutes if my train was timely, clean, and safe-feeling.
crazygringo 3y ago
A five mile trip in a SF taxi is $24.30 before tip [1]. So for five miles, this is notably a bit cheaper. And it's obvious that "affordable" here means relative to other car services. Not relative to public transit. [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/S-F-taxi-meter-rates-have-increased-for-the-17607578.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/S-F-taxi-meter-rates-...
throwawaylinux 3y ago
I'm the first to call journalists out of touch, but in this case it's you. There's a reason that cars and private-public transport like taxis and uber are so popular all around the world, even in cities with much better public transport than SF. A reason why quite poor people will often spend a lot of money to own cars. Look at London or cities in the Netherlands or Japan. Car ownership rates around 50% per household, and use of taxi services from time to time would be far higher. It's because even very good busses and trains don't offer the freedom and convenience of a car. And it doesn't require an outlandish value of a person's time for that $18 to $21 to look at lot more cost competitive with the public transport option.

ctoth 3y ago

It's like this paragraph is obligatory: > Waymo has had fewer headline-worthy troubles. In May, one of its cars struck and killed a small dog. A few years ago, a driverless Waymo car with a human safety driver operating the wheel hit a pedestrian who needed to be taken to the hospital. After reading that reporters were explicitly instructed to go after tech[0], I just can't not see stuff like this. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33456708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33456708

comex 3y ago
Of course it’s obligatory in such an article to mention the ongoing controversies surrounding self-driving cars. They’re relevant context. But if anything, that paragraph makes Waymo look good, given that it comes after a paragraph listing a series of more-significant incidents involving Cruise, and explicitly says Waymo has had “fewer troubles”.
- ctoth 3y ago
  Sure, that makes sense. Except how is it an "ongoing controversy" that one of the cars hit someone, while being driven by a safety driver? There's providing context, then there's digging for anything that might stick to make them look bad. This, to me, reads as the latter.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

barbariangrunge 3y ago

But… why couldn’t we just build more and better trains?

flappyeagle 3y ago
[flagged]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
soligern 3y ago
[flagged]
zdragnar 3y ago
Trains aren't a panacea for transportation. They work well in some areas, less well in others, and not at all in many. You still have to get to and from the stations themselves, and the dependability of transportation arriving on time and proximity to your destination plays a big factor. The metro area I went to college in had a light rail train that ran from downtown to a popular tourist destination. To get there, though, you needed to catch a connecting bus ride. It is a 15 minute trip by car, but an hour by bus+train. If the bus ran late, it would actually be faster to ride a bicycle all 13 miles. The metro area cities want to add more trains because it is the progressive thing to do, but ridership on one of the lines is abysmal, and the other lines aren't utilized as much as they could be because people feel unsafe on them and are disgusting- smoking cigarettes, drinking hard alcohol, food all over the floor, loud music, the occasional gang posturing or aggressive pan handling were all cited by locals in a survey as to why they chose to drive instead.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Back during my first trip to China, a bunch of retired military guys would hang out at subway stations offering rides from the station to your house for 5 jiao or one Kuai in a gas powered tuktuk. I imagine electric ride share bikes could do the same thing today if they weren’t being abused all the time.
- 3y ago

quickthrower2 3y ago

A concept I look forward to is not just a driverless car, but driverless "various size vehicles" from a 1-person car to a 100-person bus. In this future we could get the advantages of public transport and car-free living into rural and suburban areas, while in the city these systems could adjust and use AI to find optimal routes that are a lot less slower than current buses (or even trains that require 2 or 3 connections). All the while using electric and reducing energy per passenger and knocking over fewer cyclists :-).

fastball 3y ago
I just want a driverless RV that will drive me between all the National Parks in the US while I work remotely from the back via a Starlink dish mounted to the roof.
- soligern 3y ago
  What a dream that would be for myself as well. Electric too so I can charge it up at night and then essentially get free travel during the day even if it only 100-300 miles a day.
- ttul 3y ago
  The solution to homelessness too! No need to find a parking spot. Just drive all night. Could it drive very slowly and charge the batteries using solar? Hmmm
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    This is the solution to NIMBYness. A homelessness solution would let you stay in one place :-)
  - bergie 3y ago
    We saw an electric motorboat this summer, made out of an old archipelago fisher boat. Cabin top and bimini full of solar. Owner estimated that on a sunny day you can motor at 3kt without depleting batteries.

abhayhegde 3y ago

> Though there’s no driver, each ride is supported by staff at a Waymo site that can be summoned if a car runs into trouble. Unless they have multiple rides looked after by a staff, what are they planning to save by not offering a driver? Also, is there any path to profitability given how many billions were poured into the technology? Not that I care so much though, Alphabet has enough profitable ventures to recoup otherwise.

pengaru 3y ago
I think it goes without saying that the remote observer likely sits at something resembling a trading desk with a wall of LCD panels, monitoring heaps of vehicles like a glorified security guard. It'd be interesting to know what the permissible overcommit ratio is though, if there even is a limit codified by the state/city somewhere.
jsnell 3y ago
Of course there's not one on-duty staffer per car. You'd only need that many people if all rides required human support at exactly the same time. But in reality, most rides wouldn't require it at all. Even if there's likely to be some correlation between support requests, it'd be all cars on one street or block needing help at the same time, not all cars in the same city. > Also, is there any path to profitability given how many billions were poured into the technology? Sure, let's do it back of the envelope. First, the unit economies. Let's assume that a taxi is driven for 16 hours per day (two 8 hour shifts), and the average wage for a driver is $15 / hour. That works out to 16 hours / day * $15 / hour * 365 days/year = $87600/year. This is how much less it costs to operate a self-driving car is than one driven by a human. Since human-operated taxis won't be running at a loss, this means a self-driving taxi would make a minimum of ~$90k/year profit if it got as many drives as a human. Would they get as many drives? Would people prefer a self-driving taxi over a human-driven one? At least if the self-driving taxi is cheaper, I don't see why not. It'd be easy for the self-driving taxis to undercut human drivers on price, while still remaining very profitable. The big challenge is the service area, where self-driving cars currently have no flexibility. The unit economies seem to check out. Is the market big enough to run this as a proper business, or is it depending on unrealistic growth? The numbers I'm finding aren't super consistent, but it seems that the taxi + ride-sharing business is something like $50B-$100B / year just in the US. The addressable market is definitely sufficiently large to pay for billions in R&D. So really it's just a question of how fast they can scale it up, and how quickly the competition catches up.

jwagenet 3y ago

Can’t speak for Waymo, but took a Cruise starting in the Tenderloin the other evening. Most people complain about these cars obstructing traffic in some type of way, but not much discussion about rider experience. First, these cars are susceptible to harassment by malicious pedestrians (someone walking around and bumping the car), halting operation. Second, surprisingly, the cars do not always stop for pickup at the specified location (they can get stuck before making a final turn due to an obstruction and still be obstructed when attempting to depart). This doesn’t deter me from using these cars, but some things the service should consider and riders should be aware of when picking routes.

nightshadetrie 3y ago

Waymo has been, for the longest, the king in the AV industry. These are the vehicles I would trust my family to drive in.

neonate 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20230821230643/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/technology/waymo-driverless-cars-san-francisco.html https://web.archive.org/web/20230821230643/https://www.nytim...

jfoster 3y ago

> we tried to duplicate the experience a tourist might have bopping around the city in a driverless taxi. Tourists are probably going to be the last cohort to get access to Waymo.

clsec 3y ago
Why is that? It's a fully public taxi service that will probably be heavily marketed in Fisherman's Wharf/Pier 39.
- jfoster 3y ago
  They're only opening it up to residents bit by bit. They've shown no interest in opening it up to tourists. Presumably it will only be available for tourists once it's available to absolutely anyone.
  - clsec 3y ago
    I know I'm late on this, but.. "That means residents and visitors to San Francisco will be able to pay a fare to ride in a driverless taxi, ushering in new automated competition to cab and ridehail drivers." [1] [1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/11/tech/robotaxi-vote-san-francisco/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/11/tech/robotaxi-vote-san-franci... btw - are they going to check ID's??

jfoster 3y ago

> I wondered what would happen if I touched the wheel, so I grabbed it as the Waymo merged from one lane to another. The car ignored me and drove on. Surprised they admit to this, considering earlier in the article they mention being instructed not to touch the wheel.

stu2b50 3y ago
It’s a good thing to test as a reporter. There are too many people for at least one person not to do something dumb, or fall onto while doing something dumb, so it’s good to know nothing would happen.
- arbuge 3y ago
  Disagreed. They were clearly told not to do that and didn't follow their directions. It sounds like a potential safety hazard to me. They could just have reported what you said - they were told not to touch the wheel, and are concerned that in reality this could be a problem because there are too many people for at least one person not to do something dumb, or fall onto while doing something dumb etc.
  - stuartjohnson12 3y ago
    If there are self driving cars on the road with a "press here to instantly cause an accident" widget fixed to the dash it's a problem regardless. Testing involves trying out exceptional inputs to find out how the system responds.
    - jfoster 3y ago
      And if that were the case and someone did it, journalists would get plenty of opportunity to get in on that story. They don't have to be the first to trigger every failure mode.
    - mlyle 3y ago
      If you dive over the seat in a Lyft to grab the wheel and yank it on the freeway, it's going to get pretty interesting, too. It's an already-extent but not frequent threat. The main difference is a change in the amount of social pressure to not do this. That change probably makes it worth exploring a little. If Waymo chooses, those steering actuators have enough oomph to always win.

orzig 3y ago

What took them so long? Is “new“ a core concept of “news“, and hasn’t this been possible (in select cities) for many months?

stu2b50 3y ago
It only recently went from “closed beta for free” to “charges anyone who wants to get on”. SF just cleared them to take fares.
- clsec 3y ago
  No, the California Public Utilities Commission just approved them to take fares. Unfortunately San Franciscans have had very little, if anything, to say in any of this.

Diffusion3166 3y ago

Am I the only one finding it hard to be excited for this? It seems like automated taxis: 0. Encourage the use of cars in cities rather than public transit & walkability. 1. Centralize wealth by replacing payments to many drivers with payments to one large company. 2. Allow for further surveillance of individuates. It seems likely that Google will eventually create ad inventory by adding screens to the cars and incorporate travel history into peoples marketing profiles.

lr4444lr 3y ago
My wife lost 2 close relatives to accidental vehicular death. She's thrilled.
- zemvpferreira 3y ago
  Hear hear. Anything that replaces humans at the wheel is a fantastic thing in my book. Road traffic injuries kill close to 1.5 million people every year. The sooner we can have robocars and robobikes replace all driving, the better. I don't care how much privacy that erodes in the short term.
  - harambae 3y ago
    >and robobikes Is anyone currently doing this? I’ve seen proof of concepts for racing in motogp or something, but didn’t realized autonomous motorcycles was a thing outside the racetrack.
belligeront 3y ago
I also believe they will increase congestion in cities since when occupants switch from drivers to riders, they are less affected by the costs of road congestion (congested roads may mean riders get to their destinations slower, but because they are no longer driving, people may make extra trips where previously they would say "I don't want to make that trip now because driving during rush hour is too stressful"). But the public will face negative externalities of greater congestion (noise, pollution, slower travel times for busses & walking). Without congestion pricing and right of ways for bikes, walking, and transit, automated taxis seem like a way to double down on a space inefficient mode of travel.

FredPret 3y ago

So many things that were the preserve of the ultra-rich made it's way to the masses thanks to technology finding ways to make it cheaper. - music in your house - new clothes that fit you at least sort-of-well - ice in your kitchen - travel - communication at speed and over large distances - access to a lots of literature - and now, chauffeur-driven cars

habosa 3y ago

The technology is pretty amazing, but does anyone else feel like we (the public) got duped? What I wanted was for my own car to drive itself so I could relax and make better use of car time. I also wanted some new novel ways of interacting with cars to make them feel more like public transit that would be enabled by driverless technology. What we got was ... SciFi Uber. We are not going to be allowed to own the cars, and hiring them for trips will not be any cheaper or easier than Uber. And most will be owned by big companies with motives besides transportation. The driverless future was so exciting in 2013. Now it's just ... there.

kalleboo 3y ago
This is why Tesla was valued beyond the top 10 car companies combined - the idea was to kill the idea of people just buying their cars and make it an overpriced subscription
- samstave 3y ago
  Dont we call those "leases"
browningstreet 3y ago
It’s not actually here yet so economies haven’t actually been employed. It’s still a tech beta, though I’m not sure our Teslas will ever really do the thing.
- sixQuarks 3y ago
  Are you not aware of how FSD beta performs in SF? There are several videos where Tesla FSD beats cruise and Waymo in getting to random destinations, with no interventions.
  - browningstreet 3y ago
    FSD Beta still runs on the old fork of the Tesla software, and nothing "good" has been merged into the newer branch that I'm running (the one that supports Apple Music), and on long road trips, the phantom braking (which I've surmised happens mostly on undulations on a rising or falling road) is still a huge bother/risk... and the fact that Tesla hasn't back-ported whatever fixes they claim exist for phantom braking with AutoPilot means.. it doesn't exist yet. And it's been a problem for years and years now. Also, my Tesla on AutoPilot freaks the f*ck out in large suburban intersections where the roads all go very straight -- it'll jump from lane 1 to lane 2 in the middle of the intersection. Not sure if SF has big intersections of the sort I'm talking about, but Sacramento, Reno, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and LA certainly do. Again, something they could fix if the fix was real, and for all the drivers out there smacking their stalk and AutoPiloting. And lastly, on the highway, where the right lanes expand and contract with onboarding and exiting lanes the car tracks to the right solid line and not the un-moving dotted line to the left of the car. So the car is constantly jumping left and right as the "center" of the lane changes (because the width of the lane is changing), when the lane expands to allow for merge-lane traffic from those entering and exiting the freeway. Two of these examples are on highways, which are ostensibly easier challenges than city streets. Where's the rapid evolution of the tech? Not in product scope of the features people with Teslas are using day to day.

lopkeny12ko 3y ago

The article says that the general public in SF can use Waymo starting this week, but is this actually true? My Waymo One app just says I'm on a waitlist and SF is invite-only.

tristanb 3y ago

These things should not be allowed to drive as is. I had one ignore a crosswalk and just drive at our family. Alternating between aggressively accelerating towards us and braking. As opposed to the normal behavior of waiting behind the line at the prior junction.