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If your premise is "robotaxis are so much better than human drivers" then this is almost a disaster. This is only the 10th city they've deployed to, all in th

If your premise is "robotaxis are so much better than human drivers" then this is almost a disaster. This is only the 10th city they've deployed to, all in the south, and nowhere there's significantly inclement weather. It does not bode well for their expansion plans.

skybrian 5mo ago
It's a delay. The question is how long? Doesn't seem unfixable.
- themafia 5mo ago
  I would assume that after the very first instance you would start moving to fix it. To be in a position where you have to roll back your plans doesn't seem like a simple "delay." The question is: why haven't you fixed this already?
  - overfeed 5mo ago
    > The question is: why haven't you fixed this already? Since you're of the opinion that this is taking too long, what do you think is a reasonable time for a fix, and why? I'm assuming Waymo didn't have a team of flood-detection experts twiddling their thumbs waiting to be prompted into action.
Retric 5mo ago
Better is an arbitrary statement. By number of jobs robots lose, by number of sexual assaults by taxi drivers they win. Pick the wights for very factors and you can select anything as the best in category. Safer, cheaper, etc are less arbitrary.
overfeed 5mo ago
> This is only the 10th city they've deployed to, all in the south, and nowhere there's significantly inclement weather You may be relieved to hear Waymo is rolling out to Portland, Oregon. It's not in the south, and with over 150 rainy days per year, it ranks among the rainiest US cities.
- autoexec 5mo ago
  I'll be relieved when I hear that they did it without killing anyone. Considering they didn't bother to work out how to handle floods before they put people's lives at risk everywhere else, it's not all that reassuring that they're now going to YOLO it in Portland
  - WorkerBee28474 5mo ago
    Nobody has ever been killed by a Waymo. You're being dramatic.
  - NiloCK 5mo ago
    Over a given driving distance, compared to humans, Waymos produce a 90% reduction in serious injury, 90% reduction in pedestrian strikes, 83% reduction in airbag deployments, 85% reduction in cyclist strikes [1]. We currently sit in the ballpark of 300,000 pedestrian deaths per year worldwide [2]. You should be relieved every time they deploy to a new city. [1] - https://waymo.com/safety/impact/ https://waymo.com/safety/impact/ [2] - https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/more-than-a-million-people-die-from-road-injuries-every-year https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/more-than-a-million...
- kibwen 5mo ago
  Rain is one thing, but despite the rain Oregon is almost dead-last among all the states in terms of flood risk. It gets constant drizzles, not sporadic deluges.
  - happyPersonR 5mo ago
    This guy knows what he’s talking about. Born and raised in GA, it wasn’t until I moved to CA, the bay specifically, after college that I realized things like flood warnings multiple times a month and, flooded out roads during the summer weren’t just part of life lolll My ex moved to ATL from Seattle, and it was just WILD watching her go… “you guys have RAIN, here… like it comes down HARD” When Waymo came here and also when Tesla started doing self driving (I drive a Tesla with FSD ) majority of the time, I was constantly seeing things that were GA specific that these systems were just clearly not trained to handle. The data was there but it wouldn’t surprise me if the folks building these ADAS systems had just no clue what to do to handle cases like “ice storm caused all the roads to be iced over and now there’s no lane markings” and “flash flood comes out of no where” and “it’s so dark there no street lights for a couple of miles”
mixdup 5mo ago
I'm not sure why you would say there's no significant inclement weather in Atlanta. The flooding this week was not super common, but also not unheard of. It rains here a LOT in the summer
- burnte 5mo ago
  Agreed, this happens here every year, it's why we built O4W park the way it is, and built many other drainage structures similarly. We have a real runoff problem. Waymo picked a great city to train the cars on weird weather and weirder roads. :D
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- xienze 5mo ago
  The part of that people aren't considering is that it's very common to get brief, intense thunderstorms that dump a lot of rain quickly. They won't flood the whole city obviously but there's _always_ pockets that have very short-lived, localized flooding on the roads. So it's not a "oh what are the odds of that happening" kind of thing.
bluGill 5mo ago
Human drivers are very very bad. Being better than humans is a low bar with plenty of room to be bad as well.
- MagicMoonlight 5mo ago
  No they aren’t. Billions drive around every day with minimal collisions. Far more people get raped than hit by cars.
- __m 5mo ago
  It still seems to be a high bar to achieve
  - bluGill 5mo ago
    How high the bar is isn't worth arguing about. The question is do self driving cars clear it? Those who work on self driving cars say they have cleared it - but they have an obvious bias. Nobody independent has done a full study of this, so we have no particular reason to believe them, but we also shouldn't completely discount them (when the truth is in their favor everyone with a bias will tell it, and some people are even able to overcome their bias when the truth is against them)
ranger207 5mo ago
Well, only one Waymo got stuck in that flood, while at least two human-driven cars did, so by pure counting metrics they are better lol. But in my experience driving around them Waymos are much much better than most Atlanta drivers, not that that's a high bar
- toofy 5mo ago
  the real question if you’re attempting to imply what i think you’re implying should be: how many human driven cars decided not to drive through vs how many waymo’s decided the same?

skybrian 5mo ago

It's a delay. The question is how long? Doesn't seem unfixable.

themafia 5mo ago
I would assume that after the very first instance you would start moving to fix it. To be in a position where you have to roll back your plans doesn't seem like a simple "delay." The question is: why haven't you fixed this already?
- overfeed 5mo ago
  > The question is: why haven't you fixed this already? Since you're of the opinion that this is taking too long, what do you think is a reasonable time for a fix, and why? I'm assuming Waymo didn't have a team of flood-detection experts twiddling their thumbs waiting to be prompted into action.

Retric 5mo ago

Better is an arbitrary statement. By number of jobs robots lose, by number of sexual assaults by taxi drivers they win. Pick the wights for very factors and you can select anything as the best in category. Safer, cheaper, etc are less arbitrary.

overfeed 5mo ago

> This is only the 10th city they've deployed to, all in the south, and nowhere there's significantly inclement weather You may be relieved to hear Waymo is rolling out to Portland, Oregon. It's not in the south, and with over 150 rainy days per year, it ranks among the rainiest US cities.

autoexec 5mo ago
I'll be relieved when I hear that they did it without killing anyone. Considering they didn't bother to work out how to handle floods before they put people's lives at risk everywhere else, it's not all that reassuring that they're now going to YOLO it in Portland
- WorkerBee28474 5mo ago
  Nobody has ever been killed by a Waymo. You're being dramatic.
- NiloCK 5mo ago
  Over a given driving distance, compared to humans, Waymos produce a 90% reduction in serious injury, 90% reduction in pedestrian strikes, 83% reduction in airbag deployments, 85% reduction in cyclist strikes [1]. We currently sit in the ballpark of 300,000 pedestrian deaths per year worldwide [2]. You should be relieved every time they deploy to a new city. [1] - https://waymo.com/safety/impact/ https://waymo.com/safety/impact/ [2] - https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/more-than-a-million-people-die-from-road-injuries-every-year https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/more-than-a-million...
kibwen 5mo ago
Rain is one thing, but despite the rain Oregon is almost dead-last among all the states in terms of flood risk. It gets constant drizzles, not sporadic deluges.
- happyPersonR 5mo ago
  This guy knows what he’s talking about. Born and raised in GA, it wasn’t until I moved to CA, the bay specifically, after college that I realized things like flood warnings multiple times a month and, flooded out roads during the summer weren’t just part of life lolll My ex moved to ATL from Seattle, and it was just WILD watching her go… “you guys have RAIN, here… like it comes down HARD” When Waymo came here and also when Tesla started doing self driving (I drive a Tesla with FSD ) majority of the time, I was constantly seeing things that were GA specific that these systems were just clearly not trained to handle. The data was there but it wouldn’t surprise me if the folks building these ADAS systems had just no clue what to do to handle cases like “ice storm caused all the roads to be iced over and now there’s no lane markings” and “flash flood comes out of no where” and “it’s so dark there no street lights for a couple of miles”

mixdup 5mo ago

I'm not sure why you would say there's no significant inclement weather in Atlanta. The flooding this week was not super common, but also not unheard of. It rains here a LOT in the summer

burnte 5mo ago
Agreed, this happens here every year, it's why we built O4W park the way it is, and built many other drainage structures similarly. We have a real runoff problem. Waymo picked a great city to train the cars on weird weather and weirder roads. :D
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
xienze 5mo ago
The part of that people aren't considering is that it's very common to get brief, intense thunderstorms that dump a lot of rain quickly. They won't flood the whole city obviously but there's _always_ pockets that have very short-lived, localized flooding on the roads. So it's not a "oh what are the odds of that happening" kind of thing.

bluGill 5mo ago

Human drivers are very very bad. Being better than humans is a low bar with plenty of room to be bad as well.

MagicMoonlight 5mo ago
No they aren’t. Billions drive around every day with minimal collisions. Far more people get raped than hit by cars.
__m 5mo ago
It still seems to be a high bar to achieve
- bluGill 5mo ago
  How high the bar is isn't worth arguing about. The question is do self driving cars clear it? Those who work on self driving cars say they have cleared it - but they have an obvious bias. Nobody independent has done a full study of this, so we have no particular reason to believe them, but we also shouldn't completely discount them (when the truth is in their favor everyone with a bias will tell it, and some people are even able to overcome their bias when the truth is against them)

ranger207 5mo ago

Well, only one Waymo got stuck in that flood, while at least two human-driven cars did, so by pure counting metrics they are better lol. But in my experience driving around them Waymos are much much better than most Atlanta drivers, not that that's a high bar

toofy 5mo ago
the real question if you’re attempting to imply what i think you’re implying should be: how many human driven cars decided not to drive through vs how many waymo’s decided the same?