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A rarely discussed negative to Waymo is that they drive slower than human drivers. Anecdotally they can be 10-25% slower than the rest of traffic, and it's not

• IamLoading 2y ago
  it boggles my mind. why this isnt talked more.
• tanvach 2y ago
  That's quite true, but still surprisingly human like to me when compared to, say, Tesla FSD. It will also take longer to call one due to less supply. If we want nice, relaxing ride with no time pressure then we call a Waymo. Uber is still our go to if we are in a rush.
• Karrot_Kream 2y ago
  Honestly as a cyclist who takes Waymo, all the Waymos I've seen are much nicer to cyclists than any human driver. Most human drivers in SF either buzz past the 3 ft legal limit going 15 mph over (good luck when their mirror taps you at 40 mph) to try and overtake the cyclist or they'll just edge the cyclist out any time there's space to merge into the lane. Waymos usually give cyclists the whole lane comfortably and take time to merge out properly. (I've read comments that if you're on a skateboard this isn't true but I've never used a skateboard in SF so I don't know much about the experience.) Sometimes I wish I could load my bike into a Waymo. I hit a flat yesterday and left my replacement tube at home and it would have been so much nicer if I could have loaded my bike into the car and gotten a ride home.
  • ssl-3 2y ago
    I used to work with a guy who liked cycling, and liked doing it light and in open, fairly rural areas near a city. He didn't carry tools or spare parts. He'd just summon an appropriate Uber to his location and get a ride home home with his bike if he had an issue.
  • drozycki 2y ago
    You probably can (although I haven’t tried). The trunk is accessible and you can flip down the seats and ride in the front.
  • kjkjadksj 2y ago
    What I found is a hack for cycling on LA streets is just taking the entire lane. It makes it feel like there are actually bike lanes everywhere. It forces the drivers to pass by merging vs squeezing you out. They honk and cuss no matter what you do so you might as well do what makes you most safe and visible to other traffic.
• rainsford 2y ago
  Is that a negative of Waymo or a negative of the aggressive/illegal way many humans drive? My assumption is the anecdotal speed difference you notice is Waymos actually following the speed limit, and I imagine Waymo isn't really looking to program their cars to break the law while they're trying to expand their ability to operate.
  • babyshake 2y ago
    Not just humans, but Uber/Lyft drivers. It is very common for an Uber driver to perform unsafe and illegal maneuvers while driving me. I don't report them because I don't want to get them fired. Usually I don't even remark on it, unless I think they did it in a way that was especially unsafe.
    • dpe82 2y ago
      Uber/Lyft drivers won't improve their behavior on their own without feedback from the system, so please for everyone's safety please do report it.
      • throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
        You're not wrong but I do feel a bit guilty every time I give less than 5 stars. The rating system is so bad that you can't give any small feedback without serious negative financial consequences for the drivers. Basically anything negative is rolled up into one signal no matter what the safety aspect is.
    • toomanyrichies 2y ago
      This is a far-too-infrequently discussed benefit of self-driving cars. Right or wrong, I (and many others) have qualms about narc’ing on a human driver. I have no such qualms about doing so with a robot.
    • KennyBlanken 2y ago
      If you don't hold people accountable for dangerous driving, 1)more people will drive dangerously while doing lyft/uber and 2)you are indirectly endangering vulnerable road users (people on foot and on bike, motorcycles, etc.) Trust me, you'd feel very differently if you were on a bike regularly in the city. The lyft/uber drivers are the most dangerous drivers in the city. Have been since almost the very beginning of this ride "share" app crap. Any time a driver did something dangerous with me in the car, they got reported and a one star rating with a comment explaining exactly why. If they did something particularly dangerous around a pedestrian or cyclist, I'd tell them the ride was over and to let me off immediately, and then call uber/lyft to report it to an agent instead of just clicking the "unsafe" button in the app. You don't have a right to drive for a living. If you do, you damn well should act like it is your living and be safe about it. The whole fucking reason we have a massive problem with traffic safety in the US is because police and courts and legislators act like it's so necessary that we must endlessly tolerate people endangering others with their cars, and people get "hardship" exceptions where they're allowed to keep driving even after proving themselves to be a complete fucking menace, because "they need to get to their job" instead of "you knew you needed to be able to drive to get to your job and you still drove the wrong way down that street and hit someone? Sucks to be you."
• lacker 2y ago
  If they're really safer than human drivers, like the Google-funded studies claim they are, then this seems like a positive rather than a negative. Perhaps we humans should be slowing down and driving more carefully? But I'm not sure if we can trust these studies. I'd really like to see a completely independent evaluation, of how the safety of Waymo cars compares to human drivers, and to the safety other companies like Zoox.
  • Karrot_Kream 2y ago
    I agree that an independent study would be very useful to get a better idea of what's actually happening. That said, human drivers in the US are bad. We have the highest traffic crash rate among all developed countries by far. Pedestrian and cyclist crash rates have been increasing in the US, one of the only developed countries in the world that this is happening in. Much of the US remains opposed to automated traffic enforcement or speed governors of any kind. Privacy advocates use privacy as an excuse but given how much Americans care about their privacy in other aspects of their life, I'm doubtful. And anecdotally it's common for friends to talk about driving 10-15 mph over the speed limit, and we know speed is the leading predictor for severity of a crash. Most US drivers, especially of higher income classes, are probably well aware that they speed and break plenty of other traffic laws on a regular basis and don't want to reckon with that fact.
    • psunavy03 2y ago
      > And anecdotally it's common for friends to talk about driving 10-15 mph over the speed limit, and we know speed is the leading predictor for severity of a crash. Most US drivers, especially of higher income classes, are probably well aware that they speed and break plenty of other traffic laws on a regular basis and don't want to reckon with that fact. Because 99 44/100 percent of the time, this is not a factor. The true threat is not someone going 10 over on the highway, it's the loons you see zooming ahead of everyone else going 20+ over, weaving like they're in a video game. Equally unsafe are the self-appointed speed police camping in the left lane doing 2 under (looking at you, Greater Seattle). This forces people to pass on the right to keep up the flow of traffic, which is much less predictable. The correct answer is to keep right except to pass, keep your speed within reason (<10 over max in good weather), keep a decent following distance, and let the cops take care of anyone driving recklessly. If speed was so dangerous by itself, Germany would not have Autobahns.
• quectophoton 2y ago
  > Anecdotally they can be 10-25% slower than the rest of traffic I don't know anything about USA, but my understanding of other humans tells me that "Waymo is 10-25% slower than the rest of traffic" actually means "Waymo drives at the legal speed limit for that location, without surpassing it".
  • quickthrowman 2y ago
    The legal speed limit has nothing to do with how fast traffic moves on a road. Roads can be designed to slow down traffic, but slapping a 25 mph speed limit sign up on an 80-100’ wide 4-lane road does not slow down traffic. A road near me was reconfigured with a center turn lane and two lanes from four lanes and traffic slowed from 40 mph to 30 mph, the speed limit for this particular road. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/8/6/the-key-to-slowing-traffic-is-street-design-not-speed-limits https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/8/6/the-key-to-slow... https://www.smatstraffic.com/2021/08/30/traffic-calming/ https://www.smatstraffic.com/2021/08/30/traffic-calming/
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  • worik 2y ago
    > "Waymo is 10-25% slower than the rest of traffic" actually means "Waymo drives at the legal speed limit for that location... Probably 100% safer too Speed is the most dangerous aspect of motor vehicles
    • josephcsible 2y ago
      > Speed is the most dangerous aspect of motor vehicles Not in the way you think. If you're going 55 because it's the speed limit, but everyone else is going 70, you're the most likely driver to cause a collision. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_curve
      • 2y ago
• josephcsible 2y ago
  This is evidence that most speed limits are too low. The proper speed limit on any given road is the 85th percentile of what drivers actually do.
  • mike_d 2y ago
    Speed limits in California are capped at 65 mph by state law (or 55 mph for undivided roads). Any agency wanting to set a lower speed limit has to conduct a speed study and cannot set the limit lower than the 85th percentile of measured traffic speeds. Of course they can skip the speed study, or not repeat it every 5 years as required, but then tickets are effectively unenforceable on that road.
    • hypothesis 2y ago
      They can also increase the speed limit: > Department of Transportation, with the approval of the Department of the California Highway Patrol, may declare a higher maximum speed of 70 miles per hour https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=VEH&sectionNum=22356 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....
    • manquer 2y ago
      While most roads are indeed capped at 65, stretches of I-5 are set to 70 , there is a process for this I believe.
    • kjkjadksj 2y ago
      Highways like the 101 are 55mph in some parts. Whats most dangerous about californian freeways are the people with ten feet of metal scrap in the truck bed going 40mph in the middle lane.
  • KennyBlanken 2y ago
    No, the proper speed limit is one that is decided based on traffic engineering safety factors such as sight distances, and who else uses that road. Cities aren't dropping their speed limits to 25 mph for shits and giggles. They're doing it because the odds of a person on foot or bike surviving being hit by a car goes up dramatically when speed drops from 30 to 25. Fatalities drop to nearly zero at 20mph, which is why many dense residential side-streets are 20mph. It also has the nice side effect of discouraging people Waze-slaloming their way through neighborhoods instead of using major routes. https://nacto.org/publication/city-limits/the-need/designed-to-fail/ https://nacto.org/publication/city-limits/the-need/designed-... The whole "make the speed limit what most people are doing" was just auto industry bullshit that helped make our roads even more dangerous to people not in a car or truck.
• 6gvONxR4sf7o 2y ago
  Human ride shares drive so wildly they make me sick like half the time. Never happened in a waymo. Yeah it's a bit slower, but everyone always overestimates the gains from driving so fast. We all have to stop at the same red lights, or get in the same lines for the stop sign, even if you get to the line way faster. I'm happy to get there 30s later for a smooth ride.
• notatoad 2y ago
  10% slower on a 30-minute journey is 3 minutes. if i'm in the back of a taxi, i'm on my phone or reading a book or something. getting there 10% slower really just doesn't matter. humans drive fast becuase when they're late it makes them feel like they're doing something to solve their problem, but the time savings are almost always inconsequential.
  • drivebyhooting 2y ago
    Hard disagree. Time savings from speeding comes from discontinuities like beating traffic lights. Also 3 minutes is huge if you’re almost late to a 30 minute private lesson.
    • dazc 2y ago
      If you arrive on time you're already late. I think a lot of problems arise from people trying to optimise their journey time so they can leave at the last minute. Any small inconvenience then leads to road rage.
    • amanda99 2y ago
      > discontinuities like beating traffic lights Sometimes you beat them, sometimes you don't. It's not always in your favor, it averages out.
      • drivebyhooting 2y ago
        The average of gain and neutral should still be a gain.
      • aeonik 2y ago
        This is only true if they are random, which they aren't. You can also pay attention to them, and learn the cycle lengths, timing patterns, and pedestrian patterns.
    • scotty79 2y ago
      If you are almost late and driving then you are late. Do better next time.
• xnx 2y ago
  Waymo has mounting evidence from millions of driven miles that the presence of their vehicles makes the roads overall safer.
• Zigurd 2y ago
  Marked NOTABUG. One reason to like AVs is that they follow the rules, and a critical mass of AVs, even as a minority of vehicles, will impose a "phase change" on traffic.