3 ms·
Still needs to be trained on the final boss: dense cities with narrow streets.
by mgaunard 9mo ago
Still needs to be trained on the final boss: dense cities with narrow streets.
- xnx 9mo agoWhat would be an example city? Waymo just announced they're ramping up in Boston: https://waymo.com/blog/?modal=short-back-to-boston https://waymo.com/blog/?modal=short-back-to-boston "we’re excited to continue effectively adapting to Boston’s cobblestones, narrow alleyways, roundabouts and turnpikes."
- ginko 9mo agoNot grandparent but I was rather thinking of medieval city centers in Italy or Spain. edit: Case in point: https://maps.app.goo.gl/xxYQWHrzSMES8HPL8 https://maps.app.goo.gl/xxYQWHrzSMES8HPL8 This is an alley in Coimbra, Portugal. A couple years ago I stayed at a hotel in this very street and took a cab from the train station. The driver could have stopped in the praça below and told me to walk 15m up. Instead the guy went all the way up then curved through 5-10 alleys like that to drop me off right right in front of my place. At a significant speed as well. It was one of the craziest car rides I've ever experienced.
- stackedinserter 9mo agoDo we really need FSD cars (any cars, actually) in medieval city centers?
- pants2 9mo agoAny small city in Italy is going to be 10X more challenging than Boston
- threetonesun 9mo agoDepends, which is harder: a narrow street or a three lane one with no obvious lane markers with people double parking?
- micromacrofoot 9mo agoand the failure mode for some of them are steep drops off of cliffs
- chasd00 9mo agothe absolute chaos of Paris would also be challenging.
- zhengyi13 9mo agoVarious European cities come to mind: Narrow streets are something of a trope in certain movies/genres.
- jkaptur 9mo agoTo be fair, many of those films do not portray human drivers in the best light.
- reluctant_dev 9mo agoSan Francisco isn't uniformly dense and narrow, but it does have both, and it's run remarkably well so far.
- elliotec 9mo agoAnother comment mentioned the Philippines as the manifest frontier. SF is not on the same plane of reality in terms of density or narrow streets as PH, I would argue in comparison it does not have both.
- fragmede 9mo agoOn that specific count, not really. There's a skate park north end of the Mission, and Stevenson St is a two way road that borders it, but it's narrow enough that you need to drive up on the curb to get two vehicles side by side on the street. Waymo's can't handle that on a regular basis. Being San Francisco and not London, you can just skip that road, but if you find yourself in a Waymo on that street and are unlucky to have other traffic on it, the Waymo will just have to back up the entire street. Hope there's no one behind you as well as in front of you! Anyway, we'll see how the London rollout goes, but I get the impression London's got a lot more of those kinds of roads.
- rootusrootus 9mo ago> Stevenson St is a two way road That is extremely narrow, I wonder why the city has not designated it as a one-way street? They've done that for other similarly narrow sections of the same street farther north.
- mgaunard 9mo agoI live in London. Most residential streets are two-way but there is only space for one car, and driving on the curb is not really an option. The trick to UK streets is that parking actually happens on the street itself, and when driving you must find a spot when people are not parking to make way for people coming the other way.
- smallmancontrov 9mo ago
- breckinloggins 9mo agoI live in such an area. The route to my house involves steep topography via small windy streets that are very narrow and effectively one-way due to parked cars. Human drivers routinely do worse than Waymo, which I take 2 or 3 times a week. Is it perfect? No. Does it handle the situation better than most Lyft or Uber drivers? Yes. As a bonus: unlike some of those drivers the Waymo doesn't get palpably angry at me for driving the route.
- dandaka 9mo agoYes, something like Ho Chi Minh or Mumbai in a peak hour! With lots of bike riders, pedestrians, and livestock at the same roundabout.
- seydor 9mo agoNapoli
- pja 9mo agoWaymo cars are driving around London right now. Not taking paying passengers yet though!
- throwaway_20357 9mo agoLike London? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvctCbVEvwQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvctCbVEvwQ
- renewiltord 9mo agoDoes it, though? Maybe Dhaka will never get Waymo. The same way you can’t get advanced gene therapy there.
- kylehotchkiss 9mo agoOld Delhi is the the final boss.
- chpatrick 9mo agoThey're being trialled in London right now.