[HN Gopher] In a patch of Arizona, everyone knows Waymo, but few...
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In a patch of Arizona, everyone knows Waymo, but few use it
Author : nojito
Score : 67 points
Date : 2021-08-28 13:20 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.morningbrew.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.morningbrew.com)
| onelovetwo wrote:
| Who would've thought no one wants to be recorded or be monitored
| while driving
| perl4ever wrote:
| I have no idea, but this makes me think of something I forget
| the word for.
|
| It's when you have a reason for doing or not doing something,
| and you assume you're the only one, but really, everybody else
| has the same reason.
|
| As a result, everybody is passive and doesn't act like they
| would if they knew everyone agreed.
|
| It's the opposite of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consensus_effect
|
| Ah, this is it:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance
|
| The nice thing about a "false consensus", of course, is that
| someone who believes in it can tell others they are victims of
| "pluralistic ignorance" and once enough people are brainwashed,
| it's a _true_ consensus!
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure what the story is here. I'm as skeptical of Waymo as
| anyone but a _lot_ of people basically don 't take
| Uber/Lyft/taxis on anything like a regular basis.
|
| I realize a fair number of readers here probably live in cities
| and maybe don't have cars. But, in my case, I live outside a
| major city and, while in normal times, I do take reserved cars
| back and forth to the airport, I haven't taken a taxi/Uber/Lyft
| around where I live for many years. I do take them maybe a dozen
| times a year but that's when I'm traveling.
|
| So the fact that there's relatively little use of Waymo in the
| Phoenix suburban sprawl where it operates doesn't seem especially
| noteworthy.
| typon wrote:
| You don't think $3.5 Billion spent on a project with little
| customers is noteworthy?
| vikramkr wrote:
| It's still an R&D effort- once they've spent that much on
| manufacturing and marketing, if they still have few customers
| then thats something else
| avg_dev wrote:
| Once it works properly, you won't need to spend anything at
| all on marketing... people will flock to it in droves.
|
| Trucking will be up-ended. Freight will change. People will
| in a short period of time stop owning cars and call them as
| needed.
|
| I'm just not sure we'll ever get there.
| nytesky wrote:
| Not owning a car seems hard for anyone with a life more
| complicated than single office drone. I often need to
| stash kids equipment in the car for later pickup; we keep
| medicine and books in the car used often, strollers,
| umbrellas, not to mention car seats. That's a lot of
| stuff to lug between Uber to Uber. People who play sports
| after work, sales folks traveling with merchandise, etc.
| cars are a home away from home in our lifestyles.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Lots of middle class folks from across the world have
| families and don't have cars. There are ways of life
| other than living in a SFH on a quarter acre an hour
| commute from work.
|
| It is quite possible and even more convenient to live in
| a place with walkable areas and good public transit.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Waymo might end up replacing the second car, or get
| someone to travel the last miles to public transportation
| for the daily commute.
| ghaff wrote:
| The combination of ride-share, Zipcar, and traditional
| rentals (plus scattered improvements in public transit
| and bike infrastructure in some places) has already done
| that to some degree. It's not about the person who needs
| to get in a car every time they go somewhere from their
| house. It's about replacing the car that maybe gets
| driven once or twice a week.
| upbeat_general wrote:
| All these problems apply to anyone without a car
| anywhere. People in major cities with good transit
| systems figure it out, I don't see how this is any
| different. In fact, it's certainly preferable to a
| train/bike in terms of space to transport things.
| ghaff wrote:
| Also cars equipped with boat racks, bike racks--often
| fairly specialized for specific equipment. Loading up
| cars the night before for a trip. Could definitely make a
| difference at the margins in cities but you already have
| Uber.
|
| This might cut price in half? A lot of people seem to
| assume that this makes taxi rides almost too cheap to
| meter relative to owning a car or taking an Uber. And I'm
| pretty sure that's not true. You don't pay yourself to
| drive and the US IRS deduction for mileage is something
| like 50 cents per mile. That's probably a pretty good
| floor for a robo-taxi including the mileage it takes to
| get to you.
| Closi wrote:
| IMO Society will adapt and people will find different
| solutions for these things. Take for instance two
| scenarios:
|
| * London - I used to live there and commute on the tube.
| Not everyone uses a car on a regular basis, except maybe
| to go to the supermarket. I didn't find it particularly
| hard to bring my sportswear in a bag and put a kindle in
| my jacket pocket. I assume New York is the same!
|
| * Amsterdam and The Hague - I used to travel to these
| cities often, and these societies exist almost entirely
| on bike.
|
| I have a car, but also manage to walk into work and not
| bring everything with me everywhere. It just seems like
| the assumption is "it will only work if it can support me
| doing exactly what I do now", but this sort of technology
| has the potential to completely change the way people
| work and live.
| novok wrote:
| TBH I think there are all solutions to that when you have
| a big enough fleet. Rent a cargo van, rent a car for the
| day for storage, more storage options at places, rent a
| car with car seats for several years and sport equipment
| racks. When family is over, automatically scale with 3 or
| 4 cars, etc.
|
| You could make specialized cars that would be way more
| convenient than the typical suv, but no person would keep
| as their permanent car configuration. I could see vans
| with roll in bike racks for example, which is more
| convenient than latching it on top of the typical suv
| sports rack for example. Groceries and other retail
| shopping I could see you just drop in the little cart
| drone and it gets to your house before you do, already in
| the pantry, etc. Grocery drones will be well insulated
| coolers, which is better than your typical suburban
| shopping trip freshness wise. No more melted ice cream
| anxiety when you remember something.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Trucking and highway driving are so much easier. And will
| probably be solved far sooner by other people, and Waymo
| will have missed an obvious stepping stone, business
| scaler, revenue stream.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm pretty sure we'll see this on certain highways in
| certain weather conditions--which would actually be a
| killer feature for a lot of us. But it doesn't
| fundamentally change car ownership and use--and may or
| may not change trucking.
| nytesky wrote:
| Yeah, the actual driving part is just part of the job.
| You would need personnel at every stop along the route to
| handle refueling or changing trailers. As well security
| concerns to an unmanned vehicle laden with goods. I mean
| an automated cruise control would allow night driving and
| such some savings there.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Eh, imagine two drivers for eight trucks... Takes care of
| the security problem, so long as the US doesn't devolve
| into road banditry, and the humans can handle refueling,
| and the trucks can drive without the usual restrictions
| on human fatigue.
| kc0bfv wrote:
| "Once it works properly, you won't need to spend anything
| at all on marketing... people will flock to it in
| droves."
|
| I agree.
|
| However this really remains to be seen. If Waymo got
| everything working as right as they could it might still
| fail. This is a culture shift you're talking about, and
| even when past tech has required less to shift some has
| failed.
| ghaff wrote:
| Personally I'm not convinced that Waymo isn't continuing to
| flush a whole lot of money down the toilet. But this is a
| test/prototype in an area where I assume most households own
| cars and rarely take taxis and ride shares around the local
| area. So the fact that not a lot of people are taking a Waymo
| except maybe for the novelty is utterly unsurprising.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| But their Arizona test is just that, a test. They are (or at
| least they state that they're) polishing the experience of
| using the service. What better place to do that than in a
| place where demand isn't going to be especially high, with
| ideal weather and lots of well-kept roads? Surely nobody
| thinks the Arizona service is Waymo's best stab at a
| productionalized offering.
| stefan_ wrote:
| They opened up a pork shop in a muslim area and we're not
| supposed to question that? These are the people supposed to
| make cars autonomous and they are utterly ignorant to all these
| things? Is it designed to fail or are they stuck in the
| suburban sprawl because that's the only place where the thing
| will not practically fail and kill someone?
| ghaff wrote:
| It might be safe to assume that Waymo management has given
| more than a passing thought to their test location.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Waymo's test location was driven by Arizona's friendly
| legal environment.
| [deleted]
| bobthepanda wrote:
| these suburban sprawl places were also very gung ho about
| rolling out the regulatory equivalent of a red carpet. I'm
| not aware of any major city that has nearly as permissive
| autonomous regulations in their central area, probably
| because of concerns about reliability.
|
| then the question becomes chicken and egg.
| gumby wrote:
| There were two interesting nuggets in here:
|
| > Waymo has also partnered with organizations--most recently, the
| Southern Christian Leadership Conference
|
| This is odd to me. I don't see the connection. What am I missing?
|
| > Waymo walked away from the term "self-driving" this January in
| favor of a more precise, multisyllabic "fully autonomous driving
| tech."
|
| I assume this is because Tesla marketing had polluted the term?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| >> Waymo has also partnered with organizations--most recently,
| the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
|
| >This is odd to me. I don't see the connection. What am I
| missing?
|
| The SCLC is a civil rights organization that advocates for
| social justice. Waymo partnering with them is a signal they
| want to make sure the Waymo cars don't avoid poor parts of
| town, are too cost prohibitive, etc.
|
| The SCLC also has a strong "get voters to the polls" effort. I
| can see Waymo volunteering rides to people's polling stations.
| b9a2cab5 wrote:
| Hah, the moment those Waymo cars go into poor areas they're
| going to get ransacked. I used to live in a poor area and got
| daily notifications of catalytic converters being stolen.
| There's tens of thousands of dollars of tech on that car and
| you can stop it by just standing in front of it. Cameras
| haven't exactly stopped thieves from doing what they do in
| the past.
| hamburgerwah wrote:
| I really don't understand the pervasive idea that we are going to
| hold robot cars to so much of a higher standard than human
| drivers. I'll take 1.2x . Human drivers kill a lot of people
| every year in what are largely preventable accidents. Lets use
| robot cars in places that it makes sense to do so and save some
| lives and they'll get better over time.
| fma wrote:
| It's usually the optics/media that will torpedo the effort.
| "Big scary robot car was in an accident".
|
| Proof? 13 American soldiers died in Afghanistan in a combat
| zone and people are up in arms. 1800 Americans died yesterday
| from covid while going about their daily lives and it's pretty
| mum.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Self-driving cars are nowhere as safe as humans per mile.
| People touting self-driving cars like to talk about human
| accidents but people are remarkably safe per mile. Self-driving
| cars don't have that many accidents attributed to them but they
| haven't driven very much compared to humans.
| novok wrote:
| I think the issue is the kind of accidents will be very
| different from humans, uncomfortable and very fatal. You also
| have to compare against sober and awake drivers, not 'the
| typical driver', because you have a choice to be sober and
| awake if you're more safety minded, while you don't really have
| those choices with AI driving.
|
| Like tesla cars going straight into concrete barriers on
| highway exits instead of down the 2 lane options on autopilot
| mode.
| newobj wrote:
| Wut? Phoenix metro area is not the bay or Seattle or NY. Everyone
| out there has cars. It's hot as hell and things are spread out.
| Spend any time there: there are only cars. Anyone on a bus is
| down on their luck. Same with bicyclists, either that or they are
| bike maniacs biking for political or health reasons. tldr anyone
| not using a car is already not in Waymos target audience because
| they can't afford a taxi or are just really determined to ride a
| bike.
|
| Downtown Phoenix, or ASU (students), or downtown Scottsdale
| (drunk night life) would have been the better test locations.
|
| Chandler? Wow
| crazygringo wrote:
| I'm curious who _is_ taking the Waymos then.
|
| Senior citizens who aren't comfortable driving anymore? When
| other family members have taken all the cars but you still need
| to get somewhere? When your car's being repaired?
| ghaff wrote:
| Those seem like valid use cases. From the numbers I saw this
| is only about 0.01% of the population per day.
| ghaff wrote:
| I think you've answered your own question. They don't want
| drunk nightlife for these early tests. They want as predictable
| and car centric as possible.
| mchusma wrote:
| Which is fine, but if you can't use it as a designated
| driver, to the airport, or to most locations near you, it
| just isn't much of a taxi service.
|
| I think the real answer here is they clearly don't really
| want people to use it yet. They just want to say they are the
| first robotaxi.
| ghaff wrote:
| They presumably mostly care about running a proof of
| concept at limited scale in as safe and boring an
| environment as they can without making it totally
| artificial. They also presumably don't really care about it
| being a generally useful taxi service as long as they can
| get some riders, which they seem to be doing.
| shadilay wrote:
| There's also an enormous amount of work to be done figuring
| out autonomous fleet operations and optimizing that.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Very true. Waymos are held in considerable contempt in Chandler.
| Local HATE them (we have a plant in Chandler).
|
| But more broadly, the "learning territory" is bizarrely and truly
| inapplicable to 99% of the rest of roadways in the USA.
|
| Chandler roads are:
|
| * Unusually flat * Unusually broad * Unusually straight *
| Unusually well-lit at high sun angles (no shadows) * Unusually
| good weather most of the time (ignoring Haboob sand storms and
| monsoon downpours that happen for a few weeks in the summer) *
| Unusually light traffic (compared to any urban center)
|
| Honestly they are a MINIMUM of 20-50 year away from "any road in
| the USA" and that still presumes radical and unknown improvements
| in the technology arriving in a timely fashion!
|
| I'm not holding my breath on this technology! I'm OK if someone
| wants to blow through some serious cash - that's their choice.
| But it's not going to pay off any time soon. Fools may believe
| otherwise but fools and their money are quickly parted and that's
| on the fools.
| porb121 wrote:
| 50 years? That's like... the entire history of modern
| computing.
| novok wrote:
| Why do they hate them?
| teruakohatu wrote:
| > Local HATE them... truly inapplicable to 99% of the rest of
| roadways in the USA.
|
| Have you considered they might be training the vehicles on you,
| not the roads? At some point roads become a solved problem and
| understanding/anticipating other drivers becomes thr hard
| problem.
| upbeat_general wrote:
| Yeah this is definitely most of it. Bad weather certainly
| doesn't help and can be a problem but people are the main
| issue.
| Matrixik wrote:
| That's why they are now expanding to San Francisco:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/05/real-robotaxi-service-g...
| Animats wrote:
| That's encouraging. It's hard, and there's a market. If and
| when they can eliminate the "safety driver", it's real.
|
| DMV has three levels of license for self-driving vehicles.
|
| - "Testing with a driver". This has about the same
| restrictions as a learner's permit - must have a licensed
| driver onboard, no vehicles over 10,000 lbs, no carrying
| passengers for hire. Over 50 companies have that license.
| Uber flunked this and had their license to drive autonomously
| revoked in 2016. So Uber went to Arizona and killed a
| pedestrian. Then Arizona suspended their license and Uber
| stopped.
|
| - "Testing without a driver". This is tougher to get. There
| are specific technical requirements. There are communications
| requirements. A "law enforcement interaction plan" ("How do
| we stop this thing?") SAE Level 4 or 5 is required; 3 is not
| good enough. Operation may be restricted to certain types of
| roads (freeway, campus) and limited in speed. Eight companies
| have this license now, which is encouraging.
|
| - "Deployment". Only one company has qualified: Nuro, which
| makes slow-speed shuttle buses. This is the Commercial
| Drivers License level for self-driving vehicles.
|
| DMV has a staged approach. It seems to work. Companies can
| test, and failures get reported and publicized. Complaints
| about the California DMV being too restrictive about testing
| have subsided. Most of the companies that couldn't meet the
| requirements are gone.
|
| There's slow, steady progress. Alphabet/Waymo and GM/Cruise
| are getting close to deployable systems.
| viscanti wrote:
| It's a PR stunt and an attempt to continue to show "progress"
| so they can keep getting funding. Their current design
| requires up-to-date ultra high definition 3d mapping, perfect
| weather conditions, and a minimal amount of traffic
| weirdness. Maybe 5g gives them a way to keep up to date 3d
| maps onboard, but even if that works out the data costs and
| cost to continually re-map the streets makes it so the unit
| economics don't work. It's not like they just need a few more
| miles of "learning", the foundation of their entire strategy
| is flawed and can't scale.
| Matrixik wrote:
| It's not in this article but I read it in other on ars that
| they go to SF because it turns out that they was on too
| easy roads.
| amacneil wrote:
| Weather and traffic - fair criticisms.
|
| HD Maps - really aren't as difficult as you're making them
| out to be. Most AV companies can update their maps using
| sensor data from their own fleet. And the cars need to
| recharge/service at a facility every few hours anyway. So
| there certainly isn't any need for 5g or expensive cell
| data to make HD maps scale.
| novok wrote:
| I think waymo's best customers in suburban america would be the
| old and young people who cannot drive themselves and cannot walk
| to their destinations. Waymo to shuttle your 10 year old
| unsupervised to school and back, your 70 year old grandma who a
| cannot drive anymore and disabled people who cannot drive would
| be amazing in those communities, but in both cases, they are
| either not allowed, or are too old to use a smartphone
| effectively too. I wonder if waymo has human phone dispatchers,
| which is something I could see the old people being more into, if
| it would result in way more usage by that segment.
| gfodor wrote:
| Ultimately if robocars work, the little anecdotes you hear about
| people trusting them after the first ride seems to me to confirm
| we shouldn't expect human factors to kill them.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Do people not trust that the cars won't kill them, or do they
| not trust them because they are part of a panopticon?
| brainwad wrote:
| From the article, it sounds like they mostly don't trust the
| car to not get confused and shut down in the middle of a
| trip.
| rmason wrote:
| I've got a question on Waymo. Say you're an old person who takes
| quite a bit of time to exit the vehicle. Is there a button
| outside to indicate you're clear of the vehicle? Or are you 3/4
| out when it gets another ride, slams the van door on you and
| takes off at 45 mph with you hanging out.
|
| I have seen many descriptions of the tech, some of it at a pretty
| high level on how it navigates but never anything how it ensures
| that the passenger has had a successful exit.
| rkalla wrote:
| They have specifically strengthened the motors in the sliding
| door to cut the average adult person in half if they take
| longer than 30 seconds to exit. (lol I like your example
| scenario)
| upbeat_general wrote:
| I don't have any 1st person experience with this (or work at
| Waymo) but there are probably several easy ways they avoid
| this.
|
| The car will probably never drive with the door open and all
| modern cars have sensors to detect this.
|
| Second, their cars (and any competent self-driving car) needs
| to have a very accurate awareness of its surroundings. True it
| might be difficult to get a clear view of a person just barely
| outside the car but I'd bet that they have cameras/radar/lidar
| positioned to see if at least something is there.
|
| Lastly, they have internal passenger cameras that can detect
| whether a person is inside the car.
| lindseymysse wrote:
| That is why Los Angeles Metro's model of a hailable microbus is
| the correct business model here.
|
| Uber showed us what we can do with an app, now the job is to
| adapt our mass transit systems to these new ways of reasoning
| about traffic.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Singapore (a city I love, an awesome place) started a fairly
| large test of self driving taxis in 2016. I just looked for
| recent news about this service but couldn't find any. Anyone know
| if this is still a thing?
| 1023bytes wrote:
| The author also mentioned some key points in a tweet [1]. If it's
| more expensive and slower, of course it can't compete.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/Ryandoofy/status/1410253369420226560
| bastawhiz wrote:
| I wonder why the cost is high. Maybe to discourage folks who
| want a service competitive with a human driver?
| ghaff wrote:
| Pure speculation but if it is indeed more expensive, it may
| be to avoid the perception that they're competing with human
| ride-share drivers.
| novok wrote:
| I think that is very wise to avoid that political minefield
| by making it a little bit more expensive until it's
| actually production ready.
| crazysim wrote:
| I wonder if it's also possible Uber and Lyft dropped their
| prices in the area. Also to be fair, you don't feel any
| pressure to tip in Waymo either.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| I read somewhere that each vehicle cost $250k because of all
| the hardware
| bastawhiz wrote:
| Surely, though, the cost of operation has little to do with
| the cost of rides? Google has poured billions into the
| project. A few dollars per ride isn't helping their
| accountants sleep any better.
| shadilay wrote:
| Hardware costs are dropping pretty fast. Lidar is already
| an order of magnitude cheaper and compute benefits from
| Moore's Law.
| jmpman wrote:
| It doesn't service the major bar area of downtown Chandler, much
| less Old Town Scottsdale, Tempe or Downtown Phoenix. Although it
| does service Chandler Fashion Center (one of the main malls in
| the south east valley), you can't use it to send your 15 year old
| to the mall/theater, as you must be 18 to use the service alone.
| Intel's Ocotillo campus appears to be in their service area, so
| if an Intel employee lived in the 40 square mile area, they might
| be able to commute with it. It doesn't service either of the
| airports. The trial area effectively requires a vehicle for any
| practical lifestyle, and any of the use cases that I'd normally
| take a Lyft/Uber for, just aren't serviced by Waymo.
| crazysim wrote:
| I don't think campus is covered. At least, you could never be
| dropped off on campus if the system is in no-autonomous-
| specialist mode.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > you can't use it to send your 15 year old to the
| mall/theater, as you must be 18 to use the service alone.
|
| They could honestly relax that constrain.
|
| > The trial area effectively requires a vehicle for any
| practical lifestyle, and any of the use cases that I'd normally
| take a Lyft/Uber for, just aren't serviced by Waymo.
|
| The trial area seems constrained because in case something goes
| wrong they still have to dispatch a human. That doesn't really
| scale.
| Cilvic wrote:
| >They could honestly relax that constrain.
|
| If I were waymo I'd keep that as long as i can because the
| downside of "child killed by freak accident in waymo car"
| probably is probably something I'd like to avoid.
| draw_down wrote:
| The piece is about what is today, not what could be
| ghaff wrote:
| >They could honestly relax that constrain.
|
| I don't know what legal constraints/tradeoffs they're
| operating under but I was flying in planes by myself (as an
| adult) by the time I was 15. So it doesn't seem unreasonable.
| postingawayonhn wrote:
| But you weren't by yourself. There were airline employees
| there the whole time.
| ghaff wrote:
| Are you suggesting that stepping in an autonomous vehicle
| at home to be delivered to a museum and returning the
| same way is somehow more challenging than flying to a
| different state, taking public transportation, going to
| work at a McDonalds, or walking around a city--all of
| which are things that teens do? I assume these autonomous
| vehicles are monitored by humans at, at least, some
| level.
| jseliger wrote:
| _It doesn't service the major bar area of downtown Chandler,
| much less Old Town Scottsdale, Tempe or Downtown Phoenix_
|
| I live in Arizona and was going to say exactly this: Waymo
| doesn't go to many useful places right now. If it even expanded
| to cover Tempe (where ASU is located) and a good chunk of
| Scottsdale, it would be a lot more useful. Anyone on the margin
| of keeping a car or selling it, or not buying it in the first
| place, is unlikely to be heavily persuaded by Waymo
| availability because the area covered is so small.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Anyone on the margin of keeping a car or selling it, or
| not buying it in the first place, is unlikely to be heavily
| persuaded by Waymo_
|
| I visit Arizona frequently and I don't drive. Waymo's current
| service area is useless. It's in an area with a uniformly
| rectilinear road layout, low population density and lower
| incomes than its surrounding. It was picked for research
| ease. Not product-market fit.
| notatoad wrote:
| It seems _really_ unlikely that waymo wasn 't aware of all
| these limitations when they selected the area they were going
| to trial the service in, and more like they selected the trial
| area to purposefully minimize demand.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| The question isn't whether it's used much but whether it's at
| full capacity.
|
| Waymo might as well use it in the suburbs where there are less
| corner case situations if it's at full capacity. The article
| suggests it is not used at full capacity, but isn't clear.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Another issue is I just never think about Waymo. I was without a
| car for maybe a couple of months? Didn't think about using Waymo
| once. Just grabbed an Uber.
| tyingq wrote:
| Most of what's said there does little to support the headline.
|
| This is interesting though...
|
| _" Waymo says it provides hundreds of rides a week"_
|
| Which almost certainly means less than 100 rides per day. Typical
| Uber drivers do 4-6 trips in a 4 hour shift.
| chiph wrote:
| I've been impressed with Waymo from watching JJRicks videos. In
| this video the Waymo vehicle gets cut-off by a driver changing
| lanes in front of them, and it handled it correctly.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO3DxyTxdUU
|
| I don't see why more people aren't taking advantage of it.
| breckenedge wrote:
| The white 4runner? My read of that driver's behavior is that
| lane change was predictable. The 4runner gives up a huge gap to
| let a space open up, generally indicative of a lane change, but
| the van wants to keep a constant distance from the car ahead of
| it. And the van seems to never leave the right-most lane, so
| I'd expect these events happen pretty often.
| jseliger wrote:
| _I don 't see why more people aren't taking advantage of it._
|
| This commenter covers it:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28338580
| specialist wrote:
| Wonder if they considered Sun City. Moving seniors around might
| be a worthy market segment.
| oakfr wrote:
| A bunch of robo taxi startups are going after this market
| which, while being quite real, is minuscule compared to Waymo's
| ambition.
| nostromo wrote:
| Waymo is unbearably slow.
|
| It's basically Uber, but the driver is your grandma that is fine
| waiting several minutes to make a left turn "just to be safe."
| 37ef_ced3 wrote:
| What is the benefit of self driving taxis versus human taxi
| drivers with safety assist (collision mitigation braking, and
| forward-collision warning, etc.)?
|
| Is the benefit of self-driving taxis purely cost reduction?
|
| You can pay less and have an artificial intelligence drive you,
| or pay more and have a human (non-artificial intelligence)
| drive you?
|
| How much cheaper will the self-driving taxis be?
| 37ef_ced3 wrote:
| Why not answer my question, instead of voting me down?
|
| If you can't answer my question, maybe the Emperor isn't
| wearing any clothes.
| Animats wrote:
| Tesla just did it again.[1]
|
| _" FHP Orlando @FHPOrlando * 10h Happening now: Orange County.
| Trooper stopped to help a disabled motorist on I-4. When Tesla
| driving on "auto" mode struck the patrol car. Trooper was outside
| of car and extremely lucky to have not been struck. #moveover. WB
| lanes of I-4 remain block as scene is being cleared."_
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/FHPOrlando/status/1431565185899171840
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