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If Waymo Premier includes an [EVASIVE MANEUVERS] button on the infotainment screen I'm in. I had a Uber driver block my Waymo at an intersection in SF some mon
by jacobgold 4mo ago
If Waymo Premier includes an [EVASIVE MANEUVERS] button on the infotainment screen I'm in.
I had a Uber driver block my Waymo at an intersection in SF some months ago just to be an asshole. Apparently some other people have been attacked and robbed while in a Waymo.
Waymo should treat it like a security flaw that anyone can stop your car and there's nothing you can do about it.
- wahnfrieden 4mo agoWhen under attack, Waymo responds by stopping the car.
- saghm 4mo agoAs always, relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1958/ https://xkcd.com/1958/
- spprashant 4mo agoWe do have people with real incentive to not allow self-driving cars to succeed.
- saghm 4mo agoAt the cost of a traffic violation though?
- sterlind 4mo agoI hope they succeed, for the sake of my mom who's legally blind and has dreamed about them for decades. but I'd be significantly more excited about self-driving if you could buy level-4 AVs that you can actually own.
- cogogo 4mo agoMe too but this feels like a step in a progression to being able to rent/share them.
- paulryanrogers 4mo agoAre cars really the best option? Could other public transit serve the same purpose? (I was once legally blind, still not a fan of cars myself. Though I understand the appeal when externalities are out of the picture.)
- michaelt 4mo agoCars aren't the best option, but you can drop self-driving cars into an existing car-centric society one car at a time, with the car buyers paying for themselves. Making a car-centric society meaningfully less car-centric requires the enthusiastic support of that society, along with competent political leadership, and probably a fair chunk of taxpayer cash too. Suburbs with huge lots make for long walks to the transit stop - but densifying those suburbs is not easy. I don't own a car; I travel everywhere by bicycle and public transport - but the public transport I use was all built in the 1850s. Some time between then and now my society reorganised into a form that has a lot of difficulty delivering public transport projects.
- runarberg 4mo agoThis is a false alternative, because robocars do not exist, while public transit does exist but simply hasn’t been adequately implemented everywhere. Politicians (and grifters alike) like to point to a future technology to solve an existing problem only to delay existing solutions which they don’t want to implement, most often for political reasons.
- laurencerowe 4mo agoRobocars most certainly exist. They’re probably about 5% of car traffic in San Francisco. I’ve not taken one yet (taxis/ubers/Waymos are mostly impractical with a young kid in the US as you must use a car seat unlike in most European countries) but as a pedestrian they seem mostly a safer than other drivers. As a driver I expect they will eventually induce gridlock but the city can always create more bus lanes.
- 4mo ago
- runarberg 4mo agoCan I ask why you prefer that some future technology will solve her problem when actual solutions (such as access vans; public transit; etc.) already exist? And before anyone points this out, if your local government does not offer these solutions that is a political choice of your local politicians. Plenty of local governments all over the world (even in dictatorships) are able to provide these, and changing the policy of your local government should in theory be easier then to roll out technology that does not exist.
- ctoth 4mo agoI'm blind. I wish to hop in a robocar and drive from Denver to go visit my folks back home in Florida. Is the Denver Access-A-Ride going to take me? Which public transit is available?
- runarberg 4mo agoI preemptively addressed this. Not providing access is a political choice. The airports/train stations/bus stations in both Denver and Florida should have assistants ready to guide you to your flight/train/bus and the Colorado government could have an agreement with Florida to share services with residents of either state. If they don‘t, there was a political choice not to, which can be changed. If there is no public transit available... well... neither are robocars, but only the former is a political choice.
- ctoth 4mo agoFlight? I want to drive. I want to bring my cat and bring some stuff back from my dad's house. My parents just drove up here to visit me, I would like to do the same. Not take a train. Not take a plane. I want to hop in a robocar and drive to Florida. The same thing that every other person with a car can do whenever they want to. Freedom.
- runarberg 4mo agoI have a hard time imagining how driving a car is freedom but hopping on a bus is not. In my mind a car is a liability in ways the bus is not. You have to insure your car, find parking, get a license, you cannot drive drunk, your license plate is tracked, etc. etc. vs. a bus which you can just hop in (as drunk as you want) fall a sleep or whatever and when you arrive the bus just drives away and you don’t have to think about it ever again in your life. For me that is true freedom.
- dzonga 4mo agothat xkcd is always funny - but there's a white lie in it e.g on motorcycles in areas where you are allowed to ride median. there's instances of drivers actively tryin' to kill you by swerving onto the median when they see you comin'.
- nsvd2 4mo agoIt surprises me that any municipality would make that legal, seems dangerous.
- HNisCIS 4mo agoIt's actually safer-ish. First: terms. Filtering is good, involves moving slowly through stopped traffic between the cars, usually under 20mph differential. Splitting is less good, that involves weaving between cars at speed and is actually dangerous. Some of the worst accidents are rear endings where drivers (not paying attention) just run you over while stopped in traffic. This is offset by accidents where people do the stuff you're worried about but when it's practiced correctly that's not as big of a risk and generally leads to less catastrophic accidents than rear endings. It's also just kinda dumb to force a class of vehicle that can get out of traffic jams to instead sit in them
- ang_cire 4mo agoI started riding in AZ, which does not allow splitting. I now live in CA, which does. The actual justification for it is valid, but mostly outdated: Older and less powerful motorcycles often have air-cooled engines, and if you sit idling in them in e.g. a traffic jam, they will absolutely overheat and die (at best). Newer and more powerful bikes are liquid-cooled, and do not have this issue (though the driver overheating is another very real issue). My personal take is that most riders who use bikes to commute are too reckless, and lane split at speed rather than doing so more safely. 25 mph or below, in fully-stopped traffic, is relatively safe. Ditto for <=35 in a 10-20 mph flow. Each of those gives you a relative stopping distance of about 50 feet, which is 3 or fewer car lengths, which is easy to account for. 60 in a 25mph flow OTOH isn't lane splitting, it's just weaving through traffic recklessly, hoping to God that no one in the next 20 cars lengths merges or drifts at all.
- culi 4mo agoWaymo was a target during the anti-ICE protests because of Google's collaboration with ICE. In addition, Waymo is seen as a symbol of the gentrification problem. Agree or disagree with it, my point is that that xkcd doesn't take into account political motivations
- seanmcdirmid 4mo agoProtesters block human cars as well as the only difference is that the Waymo driver doesn’t get frustrated and are pretty patient. So protesters need to physically damage the car to make their point, which is a tricky proposition with all the cameras it has (but face masks are common on both sides these days).
- culi 4mo agoExcept in this case, damaging cars belonging to Google—a collaborator with ICE—is the point. It's more comparable to people who were damaging Tesla vehicles or the Tyre Extinguishers in the UK than the very common tactic of halting traffic/economic activity to threaten "business as usual"
- seanmcdirmid 4mo agoProperty damage is just hooliganism, thugs make an excuse for it no matter if that’s what they feel like doing. The eventual result of America falling into chaos will be countries like China having nice stuff like self driving cars (because they don’t tolerate thugs) while the us doesnt.
- defrost 4mo agoPerhaps sometimes a simplistic take like this is true - people destroying just for the sake of destruction and indifferent to the target. However when destruction is targeted toward specific brands or toward infrastructure being used for specific purposes such takes can no longer be true.
- fatata123 4mo ago[dead]
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- tjoff 4mo agoI kind of assumed the car would be locked (from the outside)? Like most regular cars have the option to.
- postalrat 4mo agoDo you think sitting inside you will be protected if someone has a gun?
- smlacy 4mo agoSo you're implying that someone in a locked Waymo was assaulted at gunpoint from outside the vehicle? These are rolling surveillance machines (in a good way?) and virtually every aspect of this would be caught on probably a dozen cameras. I'd be surprised if this hypothetical scenario has ever happened, and if it has, I'd love to see the evidence.
- BoorishBears 4mo agoYou're laying on enough qualifiers that even a recent robbery of a Waymo is precluded, because (if we really want to victim blame) their window was down which is asking for it. But overall, not sure why the tone of these replies: then Venn diagram of "wants to rob people" and "cares Google's AV will record it" doesn't include as much overlap as you're implying. A Waymo has even been used as a getaway vehicle a few times now, once even successfully
- vamos_davai 4mo agoCameras aren't going to stop a crime in progress.
- jfoster 4mo agoBut they might stop it from happening again if the perpetrators are imprisoned as a result of the footage.
- freediddy 4mo ago
- CamperBob2 4mo agoWaymo should treat it like a security flaw that anyone can stop your car and there's nothing you can do about it. What are they supposed to do? Go full Mad Max? That doesn't go over well on Reddit. Seriously, what can they do besides stop the car?
- askar_yu 4mo agoI've had a few similar cases, often teenagers on bikes coming dangerously close (e.g. forcing waymo to sudden break) and last one one bicyclist just blocking me for 5-10 minutes in SF (also just to be an asshole), with a street full of cars behind all blocked. I called the "connect to support" button and they could not anything. This is the only negative experience I had with Waymo; and I am hope something is done to be able to swiftly respond to such cases (e.g. remote driver take over, or at least capture their video and work with police to punish them later) in order to deter them in the long term.
- nradov 4mo agoYou've got to be kidding. SF police and prosecutors barely do anything about real crimes, never mind blocking a road for a few minutes.
- rsingel 4mo agoActually blocking a road in SF can get you a felony conspiracy count with this DA, especially if they don't like your message San Francisco’s Case Against Pro-Palestinian Activists Who Blocked Bridge Heads to Jury | KQED https://share.google/4RstsRSYbqY2lEdhn https://share.google/4RstsRSYbqY2lEdhn
- freediddy 4mo agoThey blocked the Golden Gate Bridge which included ambulances, other emergency vehicles and thousands of people trying to get to work. I'm happy that the DA is throwing the book at them, I hope they bankrupt themselves trying to defend themselves and then spend a lot of time in jail.
- trhway 4mo agoWhile politically i'm on the opposite side of those guys, i do think that such severe prosecution is unwarranted and politically motivated (and may be intended to create chilling effect on all future protests no matter the cause) - blocking a road is a well established traditional form of protest which traditionally is expected to end with (if the judge is in a bad mood) something like disorderly conduct citation/fine, not anywhere close to felony.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- themafia 4mo ago> Waymo should treat it like a security flaw that anyone can stop your car and there's nothing you can do about it. And accept liability for obvious and potentially devistating problems? I wouldn't hold my breath.
- KptMarchewa 4mo agoThis is an US problem, not a Waymo problem.