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I don't understand the point of comments like this, and I see them all the time when it comes to autonomous vehicles. First, as all the other respondents have

I don't understand the point of comments like this, and I see them all the time when it comes to autonomous vehicles. First, as all the other respondents have pointed out, your characterization of San Francisco as "straight lines and 365 days of sun" is way, way off. But more importantly, as a consumer, I'd be thrilled to own an autonomous vehicle even if it didn't work in bad weather. There's easily enough data to have a car say "there is a storm coming in your area, can't drive autonomously" long before it would become a safety issue. And, of course, wouldn't one expect an autonomous vehicle to start in places with better conditions vs yolo'ing it in a blizzard whiteout?

unregistereddev 3y ago
It is not just bad weather. Here in the midwest it's common for the road lines to be worn and barely visible. There are many more potholes and other problems with the pavement. My 2023 car with cameras and radar usually cannot activate lane centering - even in good weather - because it cannot tell where the lanes are. Having driven in both San Francisco and throughout the midwest, I agree with the parent commenter that San Francisco is a much easier environment for self-driving cars.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  I don't really disagree, but again, I don't understand the point about complaining about "Pfft, Waymo can only operate in good conditions". I mean, it wasn't that long ago when Google's autonomous vehicle tech was first announced and everyone thought it looked like magic. More and more I believe in Louis CK's bit about "everything is amazing and nobody's happy": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdFB7q89_3U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdFB7q89_3U
  - Spivak 3y ago
    Because there's two things going on. There's the autonomous driving technology which is god damn amazing and a huge technical achievement even if it only works in ideal conditions. Then there's the sheisters trying to sell that technology and convince governments that "for safety" people should be required to buy their product. Poking holes in the technology is people's natural response to the very real fear that their ability to operate a vehicle that isn't literally controlled by a huge corporation will be taken away. The technology is amazing, humans suck. You see the same thing with EVs, rather than it being a purely positive thing that the market has more options for people with different driving patterns you have governments committing to banning the sale of new ICE cars when the deployment is literally in its infancy
    - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
      > Then there's the sheisters trying to sell that technology and convince governments that "for safety" people should be required to buy their product. That feels like a massive straw man. I'm not aware of anyone at this point, or with any plans, to require the use of autonomous vehicles. > You see the same thing with EVs, rather than it being a purely positive thing that the market has more options for people with different driving patterns you have governments committing to banning the sale of new ICE cars when the deployment is literally in its infancy That also doesn't make sense to me. Governments don't want to push to EVs because the tech is some nirvana or something, but continued use of ICE vehicles is a large contributor to climate change and we have very limited time to address that.
      - jeffbee 3y ago
        You have to recognize these as the right-wing dogwhistles that they are. The idea that autonomous driving and vehicle electrification are control strategies by an oppressive deep state are constantly pushed on far-right social media.
        porkbeer 3y ago
        Why does it matter what people push that idea if there is some truth to it?
        rajup 3y ago
        > autonomous driving and vehicle electrification are control strategies by an oppressive deep state Wait.. what? That’s definitely a new one to me…
        jeffbee 3y ago
        Starter pack: https://www.tiktok.com/find/real-agenda-behind-electric-cars https://www.tiktok.com/find/real-agenda-behind-electric-cars
        Spivak 3y ago
  - runnr_az 3y ago
    It still looks like magic when I see cars without drivers here in PHX. We'll have them on the freeway soon enough - potentially a game changer for our city
    - camgunz 3y ago
      > potentially a game changer for our city My bet is you'll be amazed by how little changes. Sure you won't spend any time at gas stations/car dealerships and you'll be able to watch YouTube on your commute, but that's how millions of New Yorkers live and, well, it's fine. That is to say, we could have just built subways/mass transit and gotten all of the benefits. There is a major downside though, and it's that we'll be doubling down on cars. That means all the mining we have to do for all the components, all the road/vehicle maintenance we have to do, all the waste we have to manage, all the pollution from tires, all the space taken up by roads, garages, parking spaces, all the batteries we have to build/maintain/recycle, all the sprawl and isolation we suffer will increase.
      - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
        > My bet is you'll be amazed by how little changes. Sure you won't spend any time at gas stations/car dealerships and you'll be able to watch YouTube on your commute, but that's how millions of New Yorkers live and, well, it's fine. That is to say, we could have just built subways/mass transit and gotten all of the benefits. I'm a big fan of public transportation, and I think it's sad that so many cities have underinvested. But it doesn't help your point to pretend that commuting on a bus or subway is the same thing as commuting in an autonomous personal vehicle, and these kinds of false equivalencies only serve to discredit mass transit advocates.
        camgunz 3y ago
        Oh I'm not at all pretending there's an equivalence between a personal coach that delivers you anywhere you want to go and a coarse, generic mass transit system that's relatively indifferent to your destination. I'm saying that no one at all is saying that every American (let alone anyone in the world) will have such service. This stuff is 100% marketed to upper class people. Waymo is entirely an Uber-class service, meaning that only the top 3% of people worldwide can even conceive of ever experiencing it, let alone having it be their daily experience. And for what, not having to take a bus and walk a little after taking a train? I'm trying really hard to come up with something more bourgeoisie than that, and I'm coming up with nothing.
Barrin92 3y ago
> I don't understand the point of comments like this, I mean the point is pretty straight forward. A study like this is tautological. "self driving cars are safe on exactly the fraction of hand selected roads where self driving companies are willing to put them" doesn't tell us anything. It's a fluff piece. If you want to make an actual assessment about the safety you need data from randomized, representative roads, not 0.x% of the streets in America. Which itself is a very generous country to pick. Put these things into peak traffic in Rome for an hour
- mdorazio 3y ago
  No, you don’t. This study is very clearly comparing to human drivers on the same streets and time period. Thus, you definitely can say that the human drivers are worse. Tautological puff pieces are what Tesla does with many of its cherry-picked stats, but this data is much more definitive.
  - Barrin92 3y ago
    >you definitely can say that the human drivers are worse No, you can't. You can say the drivers are worse only on the segments where Waymo was willing to test it, and that is worthless. It literally is cherry picking. What does it matter to people driving in Boston, Chicago, New York, Paris or Berlin if cars can drive safely on a suburban grid in Arizona? If you get to pick the sample you get to pick the outcome. We could literally put these cars on the worst 1% of roads and get the opposite result. In fact we could put them on the worst 90% of roads and get the opposite result. Even the average American consumer gets no meaningful info out of this.
    - shkkmo 3y ago
      Huh? Waymo is doing a level 4 rollout to specific areas where they are confident they can operate them safely. This study shows they are doing a good job with that. People in these markets get access to safer transportation once they can scale. Indeed, the majority of the US population lives in areas that are roughly comparable in driving complexity to either SF for Pheonix. The real question is if these safety rates can be maintained while reducing the operational costs to the point where this can be scaled.

unregistereddev 3y ago

It is not just bad weather. Here in the midwest it's common for the road lines to be worn and barely visible. There are many more potholes and other problems with the pavement. My 2023 car with cameras and radar usually cannot activate lane centering - even in good weather - because it cannot tell where the lanes are. Having driven in both San Francisco and throughout the midwest, I agree with the parent commenter that San Francisco is a much easier environment for self-driving cars.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
I don't really disagree, but again, I don't understand the point about complaining about "Pfft, Waymo can only operate in good conditions". I mean, it wasn't that long ago when Google's autonomous vehicle tech was first announced and everyone thought it looked like magic. More and more I believe in Louis CK's bit about "everything is amazing and nobody's happy": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdFB7q89_3U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdFB7q89_3U
- Spivak 3y ago
  Because there's two things going on. There's the autonomous driving technology which is god damn amazing and a huge technical achievement even if it only works in ideal conditions. Then there's the sheisters trying to sell that technology and convince governments that "for safety" people should be required to buy their product. Poking holes in the technology is people's natural response to the very real fear that their ability to operate a vehicle that isn't literally controlled by a huge corporation will be taken away. The technology is amazing, humans suck. You see the same thing with EVs, rather than it being a purely positive thing that the market has more options for people with different driving patterns you have governments committing to banning the sale of new ICE cars when the deployment is literally in its infancy
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    > Then there's the sheisters trying to sell that technology and convince governments that "for safety" people should be required to buy their product. That feels like a massive straw man. I'm not aware of anyone at this point, or with any plans, to require the use of autonomous vehicles. > You see the same thing with EVs, rather than it being a purely positive thing that the market has more options for people with different driving patterns you have governments committing to banning the sale of new ICE cars when the deployment is literally in its infancy That also doesn't make sense to me. Governments don't want to push to EVs because the tech is some nirvana or something, but continued use of ICE vehicles is a large contributor to climate change and we have very limited time to address that.
    - jeffbee 3y ago
      You have to recognize these as the right-wing dogwhistles that they are. The idea that autonomous driving and vehicle electrification are control strategies by an oppressive deep state are constantly pushed on far-right social media.
      - porkbeer 3y ago
        Why does it matter what people push that idea if there is some truth to it?
      - rajup 3y ago
        > autonomous driving and vehicle electrification are control strategies by an oppressive deep state Wait.. what? That’s definitely a new one to me…
        jeffbee 3y ago
        Starter pack: https://www.tiktok.com/find/real-agenda-behind-electric-cars https://www.tiktok.com/find/real-agenda-behind-electric-cars
      - Spivak 3y ago
- runnr_az 3y ago
  It still looks like magic when I see cars without drivers here in PHX. We'll have them on the freeway soon enough - potentially a game changer for our city
  - camgunz 3y ago
    > potentially a game changer for our city My bet is you'll be amazed by how little changes. Sure you won't spend any time at gas stations/car dealerships and you'll be able to watch YouTube on your commute, but that's how millions of New Yorkers live and, well, it's fine. That is to say, we could have just built subways/mass transit and gotten all of the benefits. There is a major downside though, and it's that we'll be doubling down on cars. That means all the mining we have to do for all the components, all the road/vehicle maintenance we have to do, all the waste we have to manage, all the pollution from tires, all the space taken up by roads, garages, parking spaces, all the batteries we have to build/maintain/recycle, all the sprawl and isolation we suffer will increase.
    - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
      > My bet is you'll be amazed by how little changes. Sure you won't spend any time at gas stations/car dealerships and you'll be able to watch YouTube on your commute, but that's how millions of New Yorkers live and, well, it's fine. That is to say, we could have just built subways/mass transit and gotten all of the benefits. I'm a big fan of public transportation, and I think it's sad that so many cities have underinvested. But it doesn't help your point to pretend that commuting on a bus or subway is the same thing as commuting in an autonomous personal vehicle, and these kinds of false equivalencies only serve to discredit mass transit advocates.
      - camgunz 3y ago
        Oh I'm not at all pretending there's an equivalence between a personal coach that delivers you anywhere you want to go and a coarse, generic mass transit system that's relatively indifferent to your destination. I'm saying that no one at all is saying that every American (let alone anyone in the world) will have such service. This stuff is 100% marketed to upper class people. Waymo is entirely an Uber-class service, meaning that only the top 3% of people worldwide can even conceive of ever experiencing it, let alone having it be their daily experience. And for what, not having to take a bus and walk a little after taking a train? I'm trying really hard to come up with something more bourgeoisie than that, and I'm coming up with nothing.

Barrin92 3y ago

> I don't understand the point of comments like this, I mean the point is pretty straight forward. A study like this is tautological. "self driving cars are safe on exactly the fraction of hand selected roads where self driving companies are willing to put them" doesn't tell us anything. It's a fluff piece. If you want to make an actual assessment about the safety you need data from randomized, representative roads, not 0.x% of the streets in America. Which itself is a very generous country to pick. Put these things into peak traffic in Rome for an hour

mdorazio 3y ago
No, you don’t. This study is very clearly comparing to human drivers on the same streets and time period. Thus, you definitely can say that the human drivers are worse. Tautological puff pieces are what Tesla does with many of its cherry-picked stats, but this data is much more definitive.
- Barrin92 3y ago
  >you definitely can say that the human drivers are worse No, you can't. You can say the drivers are worse only on the segments where Waymo was willing to test it, and that is worthless. It literally is cherry picking. What does it matter to people driving in Boston, Chicago, New York, Paris or Berlin if cars can drive safely on a suburban grid in Arizona? If you get to pick the sample you get to pick the outcome. We could literally put these cars on the worst 1% of roads and get the opposite result. In fact we could put them on the worst 90% of roads and get the opposite result. Even the average American consumer gets no meaningful info out of this.
  - shkkmo 3y ago
    Huh? Waymo is doing a level 4 rollout to specific areas where they are confident they can operate them safely. This study shows they are doing a good job with that. People in these markets get access to safer transportation once they can scale. Indeed, the majority of the US population lives in areas that are roughly comparable in driving complexity to either SF for Pheonix. The real question is if these safety rates can be maintained while reducing the operational costs to the point where this can be scaled.