[HN Gopher] How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-ta...
___________________________________________________________________
How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real
business
Author : webel0
Score : 186 points
Date : 2024-05-29 20:19 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (fortune.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (fortune.com)
| webel0 wrote:
| Waymo is currently under investigation for multiple incidents,
| not all of which it had previously disclosed to the NHTSA [0].
| The recent light pole incident also doesn't help [1].
|
| If they are doing 50k rides a day, then they would appear to have
| a remarkable safety record.
|
| It will be interesting to see if these investigations lead to a
| repeat of the Cruise debacle or if this will become the price of
| doing business.
|
| [0] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-
| saf...
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAZP-RNSr0s
| jseliger wrote:
| The overall safety record is amazingly good:
| https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/12/human-drivers-crash-a-l...
| dexwiz wrote:
| Anecdata, but watching the Waymo cars compared to Cruise
| (preban) was night and day. Before Cruise was banned in SF, I
| would often see them violate traffic laws and fail to navigate
| basic intersections. Waymo isn't perfect, but its better than
| Cruise and the average SF driver, which is good enough for me.
| not-my-account wrote:
| Anecdata 2, I bike through SF almost daily, and much prefer a
| Waymo driving near me as opposed to your average SF driver.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| that's cool. until it's not. it's very easy to release an
| upgrade of stopping less on stop signs and see data
| increasing profit and not increasing accidents. same with
| code updates that will make cyclist life worse, unless
| there's actual change in a kpi they track. you're not
| really their main concern, specially after they ipo and get
| acquired by Apollo or billionaire du jour
| threeseed wrote:
| Waymo is a subsidiary of Alphabet.
|
| And not sure why you think running stop signs or any anti
| safety measures would increase profits.
| bigfudge wrote:
| Because once the current safety scrutiny has passed you
| might get more trips done by setting the ai to be more
| aggressive in traffic. Then you are into VW style
| software updates with a profit motive and no mechanism to
| hold them accountable?
| krisoft wrote:
| > no mechanism to hold them accountable
|
| Like banning them altogether following a public outcry?
| That is the mechanism to hold them accountable.
|
| Also in individual cases it will be very easy to sue them
| for accidents they caused or contributed to. Already is.
|
| Where does this "no mechanism to hold them accountable"
| comes from?
| simion314 wrote:
| >And not sure why you think running stop signs or any
| anti safety measures would increase profits.
|
| Because this big companies like Google are actually evil.
| As an example the mobile YouTube app does not let you use
| it if you turn off the screen. So Google decided that
| wasting energy and killing batteries is an acceptable
| thing to do, this is pure evil - I would accept they
| adding more advertising or whatever but killing the life
| span of a device and wasting energy is truly evil shit.
| greiskul wrote:
| That's just being a cynic for cynicism sake. They are
| already owned by a billionaire company, so there is no
| ipo. And they still have at least a couple of decades
| where the game they need to play is get riders and
| legislators to trust them, so they are incentived to make
| their car very safeful so they can roll out to more
| cities and countries. It takes one bad accident to get
| the public to turn against them, and there is no
| technological edge that can save you if the government
| decides to make your entire business illegal.
| pquki4 wrote:
| What does that even mean?
|
| If Waymo hits a cyclist which leads to death, and Waymo
| is found to be at fault, that's definitely going to make
| headlines and potentially lead to a pause of the entire
| operation.
| nl wrote:
| We've already seen regulators are willing to take strong
| actions against dangerous operators.
|
| These regulators should be supported and kept clear of
| regulatory capture. Other countries can do this, so
| should the US.
| asoneth wrote:
| In the United States there are few legal repercussions
| when a human driver kills someone as long as they are
| sober and utter the phrase "I didn't see them".
| Therefore, biking on US roads means trusting in the
| inherent goodness (and attentiveness) of the drivers
| around you.
|
| Driverless cars run by a company protecting itself from
| reputational and legal risk seems less dystopian than the
| status quo.
| twoWhlsGud wrote:
| Yes, I don't understand how anybody who's ever ridden a
| bike in a major American city isn't super excited about
| high-quality self driving vehicles. The crazy stuff I see
| on a daily basis while out biking in Seattle (and
| statistically we are one of the best places to bike in
| the US) means I can't wait until these things take over
| :-)
| choppaface wrote:
| Waymo has notably escaped any investigation of the "Prius vs
| Camry" crash induced during unsafe testing done in pursuit of a
| demo https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-
| steal...
|
| > The car went onto a freeway, where it travelled past an on-
| ramp. According to people with knowledge of events that day,
| the Prius accidentally boxed in another vehicle, a Camry. A
| human driver could easily have handled the situation by slowing
| down and letting the Camry merge into traffic, but Google's
| software wasn't prepared for this scenario. The cars continued
| speeding down the freeway side by side. The Camry's driver
| jerked his car onto the right shoulder. Then, apparently trying
| to avoid a guardrail, he veered to the left; the Camry
| pinwheeled across the freeway and into the median. Levandowski,
| who was acting as the safety driver, swerved hard to avoid
| colliding with the Camry, causing Taylor to injure his spine so
| severely that he eventually required multiple surgeries.
|
| > Levandowski and Taylor didn't know how badly damaged the
| Camry was. They didn't go back to check on the other driver or
| to see if anyone else had been hurt. Neither they nor other
| Google executives made inquiries with the authorities. The
| police were not informed that a self-driving algorithm had
| contributed to the accident.
|
| > According to former Google executives, in Project Chauffeur's
| early years there were more than a dozen accidents, at least
| three of which were serious. One of Google's first test cars,
| nicknamed kitt, was rear-ended by a pickup truck after it
| braked suddenly, because it couldn't distinguish between a
| yellow and a red traffic light. Two of the Google employees who
| were in the car later sought medical treatment.
|
| It was a long time ago, but Larry Page was well aware of it,
| and imagine if that incident received fair coverage and
| investigation.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I am having trouble imagining this scenario in a way that
| makes Waymo look as bad as you imply. It sounds like the
| human-driven vehicle if it was "boxed in" on an on-ramp
| needed to slow and merge, rather than racing to pass on the
| right, running off the road, and causing a spectacular
| single-vehicle wreck. The way it's described in that
| paragraph seems to be ironclad proof of the need to promptly
| relieve humans of driving tasks.
| drdec wrote:
| I don't understand the downvotes of the parent post.
|
| I am unfamiliar with the details of this incident and my
| reading based on the facts presented is similar.
|
| Could someone provide more information?
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| threads on hn brings people from the mentioned company.
| all root comments saying bad things will always get
| downvotes.
| upwardbound wrote:
| It doesn't make the tech look bad, but to me it makes the
| safety driver & the other executive look callous and
| uncaring.
|
| > They didn't go back to check on the other driver or to
| see if anyone else had been hurt
|
| They should have made sure the driver was okay.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> It doesn 't make the tech look bad, but to me it makes
| the safety driver & the other executive look callous and
| uncaring._
|
| The safety driver was Anthony Levandowski, who left
| Google for Uber, taking with him a bunch of stolen IP, at
| Uber ran a cowboy self-driving car division that got
| pedestrians killed, Levandowski got sued by Google, ended
| up in prison and Uber laid off the entire division. Later
| he was pardoned by Trump.
|
| So good news - the callous and uncaring safety driver has
| been fired, sued, and imprisoned.
| choppaface wrote:
| Larry Page knew about the crash and tried to retain him
| xnx wrote:
| Levandowski stole Waymo trade secrets, and only escaped the
| full consequences of his actions because of a Trump pardon.
| He is not representative of anything about Waymo in 2024.
| choppaface wrote:
| Larry Page was an ardent supporter of Levandowski and this
| evidence illustrates Waymo's core safety culture: that
| they're above regulation and above the law. Same mindset
| illustrated in Google's anti-trust trials.
| jseliger wrote:
| I just left a version of this in another thread--I live in
| Phoenix and now take Waymo regularly, and it seems like we're
| close to a world in which most people take self-driving cars most
| of the time, crash rates plummet, and these kinds of articles
| come to resemble articles from 1910 about horse-related problems.
|
| Humans suck at driving: https://jakeseliger.com/2019/12/16/maybe-
| cars-are-just-reall...
|
| Waymos avoid many of the Uber challenges: foul-smelling "air
| fresheners," dubious music / talk radio choices, etc.
| titanomachy wrote:
| In the same vein, I don't ride uber often but when I do I often
| find that drivers leave their windows closed and car's air
| circulation turned off completely. When I ask for "a bit of
| airflow" they apparently hear it as "I'm too hot", so they turn
| AC to maximum power.
|
| I'm not sure whether this reflects their own preferences, what
| they think customers want, or if they are just completely
| oblivious.
| okdood64 wrote:
| I have never had trouble cracking open the window on my own.
| Do you not try?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The child safety disable is often turned on for backseat
| windows.
| nullc wrote:
| Don't be too timid to tell them what you want. If they turn
| out the AC to max instead, just say "Sorry, I'm not hot I
| just want some fresh air."
| harmmonica wrote:
| I've said this on HN before as well, but I've turned into a
| full-on Waymo evangelist (Los Angeles user here). Couple of
| things to add to Jake's comment...
|
| The driving experience itself is on par with the "best" drivers
| I've ever ridden with (things like stopping at actual stop
| signs, for instance, and not racing from one traffic light to
| the next, and being courteous to bikes and pedestrians), not to
| mention just the peace and tranquility of being in a car solo
| when you're not having to drive (I know, I know, mass transit
| _is_ better for countless reasons and this is actually doubling
| down on human isolation which is probably not great long term).
| Anyway, I have zero interest in getting into an Uber at this
| point. I 'd wait longer and pay more for a Waymo if given the
| choice. And I'm fully aware people will, if this works more
| broadly, lose jobs bc of it. I'm not insensitive to that, but I
| don't think the genie is going back in the bottle barring
| catastrophic incidents by Waymo et al that cause regulators to
| kill self-driving cars altogether. Note that I did witness an
| incident where on a road with no lane markings the Waymo
| straddled a left turn "lane" and a straight-travel lane. It's
| an intersection I transit often and normal drivers have great
| trouble with and frankly makes me uneasy every time I turn left
| there as well. The Waymo was definitely perplexed by it.
|
| For those who talk about how Phoenix's roads are straight and
| wide... This is not true in Los Angeles (nor in SF though SF is
| more of a compact grid than LA). For those of you unfamiliar, a
| lot of the streets in LA where Waymo operates today are very
| narrow, with cars parked on both sides and so there's
| inadequate room for two cars to go down them without waiting
| for another car to pass. These same streets have zero lane
| markings on them. I've experienced this several times in Waymo
| to date where the car just "gets it," though it's almost too
| cautious when it needs to get over to let another car pass when
| there's not enough space for both. And if you read all of that
| and say "what about the weather?" It's obviously an issue and I
| fully agree it will delay the rollout "everywhere."
|
| All that said, I cannot wait until I can jump in one of these
| things, from Waymo or any other company, and safely go up to
| the mountains or some other road-trip destination. The
| economics of longer trips, particularly to rural areas, are
| likely tricky bc of the inability to count on a return fare,
| but, man, I do think self-driving cars are a radically
| important technology that will vastly change how we transit
| and, really, how we live. That is, if they don't fuck up too
| much en route to getting there.
| ianstormtaylor wrote:
| Honest question out of curiosity, since you seem genuine and
| open to discussion...
|
| I agree with all of your points about Waymo vs. Uber-like
| ridesharing--the average Uber ride is so much less safe that
| it's hard to argue for.
|
| But I also agree with your aside about the growing isolation
| of society--the longer term implications of every event,
| meal, and errand being separated by autonomous journeys are
| staggering.
|
| So the question is, how do the societal isolation factors
| play into your decision making? (Honest question, not a
| gotcha, I'm curious how others think about these tradeoffs.)
| echoangle wrote:
| How is that different than if you were driving yourself?
| ianstormtaylor wrote:
| Well, I'd say it's different in a similar way that Uber's
| are different from driving yourself. For physical trips
| it's similar, but lower barrier to entry, so you do it
| more. And for deliveries it's a much lower barrier
| because you don't drive at all.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| Uber sometimes offers a service called UberPool where you
| share the car with another passenger in order to save money
| right? Couldn't Waymo do the same?
| ianstormtaylor wrote:
| They could in theory yeah. I'm not sure if Uber still
| offers it, but I think its uptake is so low (anecdotally
| from people I know) that it's effectively not a solution
| to societal isolation, because it doesn't end up being
| used.
| upbeat_general wrote:
| I thought it was pretty well used pre-covid, especially
| when the rides were sometimes 50% of a regular ride.
|
| At least I personally used it a lot, and knew several
| people that did.
| _carbyau_ wrote:
| Didn't Uber start branded as a "ride sharing" app where
| the app helped you find someone to car pool into work
| with?
|
| I suspect an underlying issue with socialising is faith
| in humanity. It's hard to have faith in humanity in the
| modern world when every front appears to be telling you
| otherwise. If you don't have faith in humanity, then
| you're limited to only interacting with those: "you have
| to" and "are vetted".
| sgerenser wrote:
| That was Lyft. Uber started as an easier/cheaper way to
| call for a ride in a "black car".
| harmmonica wrote:
| I'm not sure if you mean about Waymo/self-driving cars or
| more broadly, but I'll assume you mean cars. Let me first
| say I'd love to create a list of all of the long-term pros
| and cons of self-driving cars because I'd be far better-
| equipped to answer, but my off-the-cuff thought: this
| technology, if it survives, will make it easier, safer,
| less stressful and less costly for people to transit, and
| will also make almost every place more livable (the impacts
| will be more profound in urban areas than rural, but both
| will benefit). That sounds like a great way to increase
| interactivity, not lessen it.
| BillyTheKing wrote:
| I can spend more times at my friend's place, maybe have a
| beer or two without having to worry about driving back - so
| I think it encourages socialisation
| standardUser wrote:
| If you're already inclined towards isolation, like I am
| sometimes, driverless taxies will help with that. But if
| you're inclined towards going out and doing things, which I
| also am sometimes, there are few incentives more alluring
| than a fast and _cheap_ way to get from point A to point B.
| If labor and gasoline are removed from the equation there
| 's no reason rides can't be ridiculously cheap, and
| spending $20 on a round trip instead of $80 lowers one of
| the biggest barriers for going out (at least in urban areas
| and/or when drinking/drugs are involved).
| nl wrote:
| Cheaper, safer and more effective transportation seems
| likely to increase mobility and decrease isolation.
| badcppdev wrote:
| Can you just clarify in the situation where, 'the Waymo
| straddled a left turn "lane" and a straight-travel lane',
| whether the behaviour of the Waymo was 'safe' although
| obviously incorrect for multiple reasons?
| harmmonica wrote:
| It was absolutely incorrect on the Waymo's part. I was
| trying to counterbalance my positivity with a mistake I've
| seen a Waymo make. That said, I would not call it unsafe
| because where it was located it was not going to lead to an
| accident. It was confused by the intersection, which also
| happens to human drivers at that intersection. That is not
| to excuse the Waymo ("oh, it's just like a person so that's
| ok!"), just trying to point out that it may be a great
| driver (again, my opinion), but doesn't mean it's
| infallible. Of course others on this thread have pointed
| out statistics about how Waymos are faring, but I was just
| trying to share my experience riding in one.
| hnav wrote:
| The olfactory problem with waymos is that if someone gets in
| one dirty or foul smelling there isn't a driver to kick them
| out. Waymos are starting to get more ridership and some of
| those people are going to be absolute pigs. I gave feedback to
| Waymo about a recent ride where the entire car smelled like a
| fat, unwashed ass and the best case scenario there is that they
| took the car out of rotation immediately, the rider right
| before me left it that way and that the rider will be
| identified after several instances of those reports. The
| reality is probably that the car picked up several riders after
| me until one reported a problem mid-ride.
| hypothesis wrote:
| > I gave feedback to Waymo about a recent ride where the
| entire car smelled like a fat, unwashed ass
|
| Knowing BigCo reputation, I think it's equally possible that
| Waymo and/or BigCo accounts will be banned for actual perp,
| complainant or random rider in-between... what a world...
| 83 wrote:
| Wouldn't take long before that gets abused I bet. I'm
| picturing a world where someone knows their ex uses Waymo
| to get home every day so requests rides around that
| time/place so they can report them as
| odorous/damaged/vomit/etc and get the prior rider banned.
| mavhc wrote:
| Need to add some smell sensors to the inside of the car, as
| well as the cameras
| codexb wrote:
| Maybe if you're under 25 and have always lived in a dense city
| this seems like a valid take. Taxis aren't new, they have
| always existed. Just because they're driven by computers now
| isn't going to magically change all the reasons that people
| didn't use them before (hint: it wasn't because they were
| driven by humans).
|
| No one with kids _wants_ to ride in taxis with kids all the
| time. Ditto for anyone with hobbies that require transporting
| large things, like kayaks, bikes, etc. Or people with large
| pets. Or grocery shopping for more than 1-2 people. Or any of
| the dozens of other conveniences that Americans have come to
| expect from owning a car over the past century.
| spiderice wrote:
| I have kids and don't like Taxis, but I'm not sure I entirely
| agree with your take. The idea of a humanless Taxi showing up
| to my house sounds way more appealing to me.
|
| I can take my time to get car seats in and kids buckled,
| without feeling the pressure to hurry from the human driver.
|
| I don't have to feel like my kids misbehaving are going to
| annoy a human driver, or get me a bad review in Uber/Lyft.
|
| I don't have to worry about tipping, or the driver taking a
| longer route to charge me more.
|
| I don't have to worry about small-talk, or awkwardly sitting
| in silence when I normally would be talking with those I'm
| driving with.
|
| Obviously this doesn't cover all use cases for a car (pretty
| sure you can't load a kayak onto a Waymo because you'd block
| sensors), but it seems WAY better to me as someone who
| doesn't like to deal with the people aspect of Taxis.
| codetrotter wrote:
| > I don't have to worry about tipping
|
| I can almost guarantee that if they don't already, the
| robo-taxis will eventually start asking for tips.
|
| This is already the case at self-checkout in some stores
| for example.
|
| As long as the companies can get away with it, they will
| tack on any number of extra fees and charges even if those
| fees and charges really don't make any sense.
|
| Hell, even tipping people does not really make sense the
| way it works in some places. A person working for a company
| should receive enough pay from the company itself that they
| don't have to actually rely on tips in order to make enough
| money to survive. Tips should be a nice extra that
| customers willingly add because of good service. Not a
| forced extra percentage that they have to pay on every
| transaction just so that the company can pay less to their
| employees.
| dventimi wrote:
| I do not accept your guarantee.
| bigfudge wrote:
| There will be bullshit booking charges etc though. The
| thrust of their point is largely correct. I really wish
| people were more sensitive to being stiffed like we are
| by these sorts of stupid charges ... that they arent
| means there is often no alternative.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| I'll take bullshit charges that I can know about upfront
| over being nagged for tips every day.
| bigfudge wrote:
| The point of bullshit charges is often to obscure total
| cost upfront. We are absolutely rotten with them in the
| UK. Not sure the US is better but I think they are really
| anticompetitive because they create a cost to discovering
| the true cost of goods. I have a personal policy of not
| buying if I discover stupid charges at the end of a sales
| pipeline but it's sometimes incredibly inconvenient.
| inlined wrote:
| I actually wonder if "tip the development team" makes
| sense (assuming tipping is gratuity and not because an
| employer pays below-living wages). Weirdly it might even
| lead to quality improvement because low tip areas could
| be detected and debugged.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| They won't be tips as such, but the average amount of the
| tip will be baked into the price.
|
| If people are willing to pay base charge + tip for an
| Uber, then that is what robo-taxies will charge too.
| Especially if one company is allowed to keep a monopoly
| on the technology.
| asda_ wrote:
| Autonomous systems can ask for tips but humans would feel
| much more comfortable not tipping.
| thih9 wrote:
| > I don't have to worry about tipping, or the driver taking
| a longer route to charge me more. I don't have to worry
| about small-talk, or awkwardly sitting in silence when I
| normally would be talking with those I'm driving with.
|
| This or an equivalent will arrive to a robo taxi near you
| when the service inevitably gets enshittified to hell and
| back.
|
| Ads, trips shared with other humans, pay extra for heated
| seats, etc.
| jajko wrote:
| If you have smaller kids, most taxi rides are completely
| illegal in any western country and very dangerous for kids.
| Ever saw a taxi with 2 spare child seats or at least
| boosters? They are required by law for very good reasons,
| and those reasons are kids dying or ending up crippled even
| in relatively mild crashes.
|
| That's just one tiny example out of sea of examples.
| resolutebat wrote:
| In many countries, taxis are often specifically exempted
| from child seat mandates. Doesn't make them any safer,
| but it's not necessarily illegal.
| xandrius wrote:
| A quick search online shows that your statement is
| misinformation, taxis can be exempted in many "western"
| countries.
|
| Before making such bold claims, you've got to know a
| little tiny bit of the topic or at least look it up to
| make sure.
| asoneth wrote:
| I've taken taxis with infants and small children several
| dozen times. It doesn't take me more than about twenty
| seconds to pop the car seat out of the stroller and latch
| it into the back seat of a taxi, for slightly older kids
| we have a few lightweight folding booster seats, and
| personally I've found that a car seat vest is
| particularly handy and lightweight.
| paganel wrote:
| How do you make sure there isn't human semen or worse on
| the seats on which you and your children will sit? At least
| with taxis driven by humans you knew that there was someone
| making sure that won't happen that often, but with
| driverless taxis all bets are off.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Waymos have been far cleaner than the Ubers I've ridden
| in. I think they are cleaned daily?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I wonder how this affects the price. Is the price you're
| paying now the real price, or a subsidised price?
| pyrale wrote:
| Well, how will taxi-sex enjoyers make sure that no
| toddler vomited on the seat they intend to frolic on?
| mavhc wrote:
| Do you think that Waymo doesn't have cameras inside the
| car?
| leoedin wrote:
| Is that not just a general issue in public? Park bench?
| Back of the bus? There could be human semen everywhere!
| It's why I always insist on wrapping my kids in plastic
| before letting them leave the house.
| nl wrote:
| Surely they have cameras? I'd trust that a lot more than
| a taxi driver keeping their cab clean.
| paganel wrote:
| When has that stopped anyone?
| asoneth wrote:
| It may not stop someone the first time, but it's not hard
| to block the reserving account and prevent a second time
| from occurring. For most people the threat of being
| placed on the "no-fly" list is sufficient to ensure
| prosocial behavior.
| Certhas wrote:
| As someone with kids... What if there is? The presence of
| dried Semen on a seat on which my kids sit will have zero
| negative impact on them. At all.
|
| Is it Yuck? Yes of course. But it also seems extremely
| unlikely. And it's a lot less Yuck than thinking about
| what's in the sand in public playgrounds that all kids
| visit constantly. And while I have a reasonable chance of
| preventing them from licking the seats, I have no chance
| of preventing them from eating some sand.
|
| This is just a bizarre irrational worry...
| paganel wrote:
| > This is just a bizarre irrational worry...
|
| Do you and your kids take public transport regularly? In
| a failing city/society, that is.
|
| Because if the answer is "yes, I do take public transport
| in a city that struggles to pay its bills and I still
| don't care that the chairs have weird organic substances
| on them" then fair-play to you, but for me personally at
| some point I had to purchase a personal car (when I was
| already approaching my mid-30s) because I just couldn't
| convince myself anymore that it is ok to not want to sit
| down inside of a train ("better stand up by the window,
| that seat is too dirty").
|
| And these robo-taxis will be worse than public transport,
| for the main reason that there's no-one "standing guard"
| inside of them (and, no, Big Brother cameras placed
| inside of them, which should be a dedicated topic all by
| itself, btw, really won't change a thing in that
| respect).
| Lewton wrote:
| > And these robo-taxis will be worse than public
| transport
|
| If you soil a waymo taxi, they can ban you from ever
| booking another one, the same cannot be said for public
| transport
|
| While I consider this somewhat dystopian, I do think it's
| pretty clear that they will be much cleaner than public
| transport for that reason
| tialaramex wrote:
| Just so we're clear: You're agreeing right? You're
| irrational about this and as a result it's damaged your
| life.
|
| You reached a situation where everyday things are "too
| dirty" and rather than realising that's a mental health
| problem and you might need to fix that, you... found an
| expensive and elaborate coping strategy which
| necessitates further crazy beliefs.
| itishappy wrote:
| I also shake strangers hands and eat food made by
| teenagers and use public bathrooms and pet cats and sleep
| in hotel rooms. My children (if/when they occur) will
| attend daycare and school with other sacks of disease and
| share the spoils with me, as is tradition. Our society is
| dirty.
|
| Do you avoid handrails and sanitize the doorknobs and gas
| pumps you interact with? Those are going to be far worse
| than subway chairs. It's probably not a bad idea, but
| it's a bit beyond what I suspect most people consider
| normal. I had a friend who lived like that, and he ended
| up being diagnosed with OCD.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| > _Obviously this doesn 't cover all use cases for a car
| (pretty sure you can't load a kayak onto a Waymo because
| you'd block sensors), but it seems WAY better to me as
| someone who doesn't like to deal with the people aspect of
| Taxis._
|
| In a world where waymo works as a taxi, it also works to
| deliver a human-drivable rental car right to your door (and
| send it on to the next customer when you're done with it).
|
| So now the short term car rental user experience should be
| dramatically better, even if the robotaxi isn't appropriate
| for all the tasks.
| charlie0 wrote:
| This will boil down to availability and price. Taxis are
| generally just too expensive to use often and also waits are
| too long. Of course, I'm comparing cost of frequent taxis vs
| buying a used car.
| bigfudge wrote:
| The other problem is the economics flips over once you also
| have to own a car. The marginal cost of each trip goes down
| ... but if waymo is good enough for 95% of the time the it
| might not be necessary any more.
| charlie0 wrote:
| I personally don't think the price will ever drop low
| enough for it to make sense to most people to drop cars
| entirely. The US is notorious for being unwalkable, save
| for a few select areas.
|
| Working remotely helps a lot since there's no need to
| drive every day, but it's only a fraction of overall
| people who have this privilege.
|
| Still, I'm looking forward to seeing Waymo at my town. It
| would make a good DD and backup in case my car needs
| repairs, etc.
| resolutebat wrote:
| In a place like Singapore, where a taxi ride is $10 but a
| Corolla starts from $100,000, the equation will strongly
| favor robotaxis for everyone.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I used to live in China where taxi usage was much more
| ubiquitous, and...you really live to live in a world where
| you aren't expected to live in a car, be it with public
| transit (Europe, Japan) or public transit + lots of taxis
| (China) or tuktuks or whatever. But yes, your hobbies tend to
| be different and adapted, bikes, for example, get you places,
| and are not taken places, or you get them on the train which
| actually hits the trail head you want to use. You rent the
| kayak on site, and there is always a place to do that because
| lots of other people are in the same car-less boat as you
| are.
|
| You mention American at the end of your comment, but the rest
| of the world isn't the same. Waymo doesn't really have to
| limit itself to the states once they get the concept worked
| out.
| nradov wrote:
| Having to depend on crappy rented sports equipment sounds
| miserable. Maybe people in the rest of the world will
| tolerate that but I want no part of it. I'll continue
| buying my own personal large vehicles so that I can fill
| them with as much stuff as I want.
|
| When I'm out doing something, the car also serves as a
| reasonably secure private locker where I can store things
| without carrying them around.
| dageshi wrote:
| Sure, I don't imagine they care much about changing
| everyones opinions. What will happen is your kids and
| grand kids will reach an age where they would need to get
| a driving license but won't see the point because they've
| already been using robo-taxi's for 5 or so years already.
|
| Hell there's people who just use uber exclusively now.
| nradov wrote:
| Unlikely. One kid already has a drivers license and uses
| it frequently. I'll make sure the other kid gets one as
| soon as she's eligible.
|
| Not every young person spends all day hiding in their
| room, doom scrolling on social media. Some of them have
| to get to sports practice with bulky equipment in places
| that public transit and robo-taxis don't go.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| You just live in a world where that is possible and
| common. I just mentioned that much of the rest of the
| world isn't like that all. Japan, for example, has
| trains/trams straight to campgrounds, or at least buses.
| They still manage with sports somehow, but you can
| imagine that the dynamics are very different than from
| what you are used to.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| You are an American and have that privilege. If we
| granted that privilege to everyone else, the world
| probably couldn't handle it, self driving taxis or not.
|
| What's more I don't think we will have that privilege for
| long, personal transportation is a luxury in most of the
| world, it is becoming a luxury here also. We will adapt
| though like everyone else has.
| rurp wrote:
| This will work for some people in some sports, but it's
| hardly a universal solution. Many activities like rock
| climbing or backcountry hiking/skiing, will never have good
| public transport access.
|
| Renting gear is fine for casual users, but serious
| practioners in almost every sport are very particular about
| their gear.
| bigfudge wrote:
| I think you're wrong about most of the scenarios on your
| list. And once the market is mature, I can imagine it would
| be great to be picked up in a minivan after a days cycling
| somewhere new and not on a loop route.
|
| Americans have become emotionally attached to cars because of
| what they enable them to do. That might take a while to die.
| But in Europe cars are more of a pita to own and run because
| we have less space. I don't have any great love for mine. As
| soon as waymo gets here and is reasonably priced I'll get rid
| of my car.
| codexb wrote:
| Yeah, Americans just have more space, and America is just
| far larger, and Americans often do relatively long road
| trips to places where other modes of transportation are not
| possible or prohibitively expensive. I don't think that is
| ever going to die, nor should it.
| ar0 wrote:
| I don't know... I think a very big reason why people don't
| take taxis is because they are very expensive especially for
| longer rides. This seems like a thing robo taxis _might_
| change. If the driver goes away, they shouldn't be much more
| expensive than e.g. car rentals.
| soco wrote:
| All these examples are casual rides, while the context was
| about taking the taxi daily to work. Of course you can keep
| your car for the weekend drive to the mall, or to the slopes,
| or if you're a soccer mom, but most employed people will
| definitely save the daily commute. Expectations change in
| face of convenience.
| andrepd wrote:
| That is because the choice is own car or taxi: the automobile
| is the *only* supported choice for mobility in much of the
| United States, to the detriment of any other mode of
| transport.
|
| People in the Netherlands get fine without a car: kids just
| bike to school with their friends instead of sitting in the
| backseat in traffic for 45m every morning. This is because
| money and space is not spent exclusively in car
| infrastructure, but cycling and walking and public transport.
| asoneth wrote:
| My family has a couple cars but we still ride with our kids
| in taxis all the time, for example to the airport or into/out
| of the city. Even hauling bikes isn't insurmountable -- we've
| taken weeklong bike camping trips with friends and because
| biking in a big circle isn't as much fun we hire a bigger
| vehicle that can haul a dozen bikes to the starting point.
|
| > Just because they're driven by computers now isn't going to
| magically change all the reasons that people didn't use them
| before (hint: it wasn't because they were driven by humans).
|
| Sort of. The primary reason I don't hire vehicles more often
| is cost, which is related to the human driver. The wealthiest
| families I know are _much_ more likely to use a car service
| to ferry family members around.
|
| If there was a car service that could whisk us to school,
| work, grocery shopping, etc with no more than 15 minutes
| advanced notice for less than the cumulative cost of a
| similarly-sized private vehicle I'd sell one of our cars in a
| heartbeat. I have no idea whether that future is years or
| decades away, but when it occurs many families I know would
| go from 2 or 3 cars down to 1.
|
| I'll admit that going from 1 car to 0 cars would be a tougher
| sell. For that I'd have to be confident in five nines of
| availability and vehicles that can haul equipment like bikes
| and kayaks. But that doesn't seem like an insurmountable
| problem, just a logistical one that'll take a bit longer.
| golol wrote:
| The only problem with Taxis is that they are expensive und
| possibly not available. Both of these issues are very much
| the kind of thing a robotaxi might fix.
| fragmede wrote:
| After two of my (women) friends were assaulted by Uber/Lyft
| drivers, a weird smell is the least of my fears. If I'm sending
| someone on a ride late a night, Waymo's lack of driver is a
| _huge_ reason to prefer them over Uber /Lyft. But only if the
| destination is in a safe neighborhood. A human driver's going
| to be able to make a better assessment of if it's safe to let
| someone off somewhere, vs Waymos will randomly drop you off
| blocks away from your destination.
|
| As far as humans suck at driving, it's not that they suck on
| average, but that the ones who do suck at it don't always have
| a sticker saying that they suck.
| hossbeast wrote:
| It is also that they suck on average.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Also, the really fantastic ones will be excellent for years
| and years, and then one day they're slightly sleepy.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Or get a text and get distracted at just the wrong time
| galdosdi wrote:
| These days to qualify as excellent you need good phone
| discipline.
|
| Eg, turn off the phone or turn off notifications, even
| vibrations. Or at least make a strict rule to ignore it
| while moving and only look while fully stopped, eg at a
| stoplight although that's just decent driver grade not
| excellent driver, because of the temptation the
| notification will present each time.
|
| A great driver also reviews the route for a couple of
| minutes before leaving in order to reduce reliance on
| GPS-- you still use GPS but because it's not the first
| time you've seen the material, already know the shape of
| the route, and just need reminders to encourage you
| you're on the right track, the GPS will genuinely steal
| far less attention. The two minutes will be well spent,
| and may save lots of time, because it vastly reduces the
| likelihood of wrong turns.
| saalweachter wrote:
| I had to give up on the smart watch because being able to
| turn your wrist and read a text is a _really_ bad feature
| when driving, and I didn 't trust myself with it.
| whatever1 wrote:
| And that one day they will take the taxi.
|
| Averages don't work for risk evaluation.
| Teever wrote:
| Except for when they don't.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldt_Broncos_bus_crash
| nullc wrote:
| Humans are astonishingly and unreasonably good at driving.
| There are, indeed, a lot of traffic deaths but this is because
| we drive a mind-boggling amount so even a very low rate of
| fatalities adds up to a substantial number.
|
| A significant portion of traffic deaths also occur in special
| conditions-- at night, with intoxicated persons, in bad
| weather.
|
| Existing self driving cars won't even drive in those more
| difficult conditions.
|
| In terms of the passenger miles driven if you compare to non-
| intoxicate humans the expected number of deaths for self
| driving cars is still below 1 if they were as safe as non-
| intoxicated human drivers.
|
| Safer cars are an excellent goal but they're not automatically
| a given result for self driving.
|
| > Waymos avoid many of the Uber challenges: foul-smelling "air
| fresheners," dubious music / talk radio choices, etc.
|
| And introduces new ones like being dropped off blocks from your
| destination because the car refuses to drive on perfectly fine
| roads, service being unavailable in poor weather, and extending
| Google's tracking of everything you do online to offline.
|
| :D
|
| Aside, you can just ask uber drivers to turn off the radio.
| tzs wrote:
| > Humans are astonishingly and unreasonably good at driving.
| There are, indeed, a lot of traffic deaths but this is
| because we drive a mind-boggling amount so even a very low
| rate of fatalities adds up to a substantial number
|
| To put some numbers on it in the US cars are driven about 3.2
| x 10^12 miles per year, and around 4 x 10^4 people are killed
| in car accidents (drivers, passengers, pedestrians, and
| cyclists).
|
| That's one death per 8 x 10^7 miles.
|
| There are around 2 x 10^6 people non-fatally injured in car
| accidents per year in the US. That's an injury every 1.6 x
| 10^6 miles.
|
| There are around 4 x 10^6 non-injury car accidents per year
| in the US, which is one every 8 x 10^5 miles.
|
| If we assume all miles driving are equally risky and that we
| drive 40 miles per day 365 days a year, then we would expect
| to be in a non-injury car accident around once every 55
| years, be injured in a car accident around once every 110
| years, and be killed in a car accident around once every 5500
| years.
|
| Of course almost no one drives all their miles at times and
| in conditions when the risk per mile is average so when
| estimating your personal risk you need to take that into
| account.
| jogjayr wrote:
| An injury every 1.6m miles isn't amazing. That is almost a
| 1/3 lifetime chance of injury if you drive an average of
| 12k miles annually for 50 years. (Sidenote: human units are
| easier to read).
|
| A comment I wrote 3 years ago has more:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26950254
|
| The old "look at the person to your left, now look to the
| person on your right" meme comes to mind. One of you will
| probably have an accident with an injury in your lifetime.
|
| I ran the same calculation for dying in a car accident and
| got a lifetime probability of 0.7%, but I'm not sure I did
| it right.
| arconis987 wrote:
| I live in SF, and I take it daily. It's cheaper than paying for
| the parking garage near the office. And it's cheaper than Uber:
| the base rate is similar to Uber's, but there is no need to add
| a tip.
|
| Waymo sometimes does weird, unexpected things - but safely.
| Once it seemed to change its mind about the optimal route a few
| times over the course of 10 seconds, switching safely between
| two lanes back and forth a few times before committing. It used
| its turn signal fine, and the lanes were clear, so it wasn't a
| problem, but this isn't something humans do.
|
| Sometimes it behaves oddly, but I have developed confidence
| that it will do those odd things safely.
| Staple_Diet wrote:
| >Once it seemed to change its mind about the optimal route a
| few times over the course of 10 seconds, switching safely
| between two lanes back and forth a few times before
| committing. It used its turn signal fine, and the lanes were
| clear, so it wasn't a problem, but this isn't something
| humans do.
|
| Oh, I disagree, this is something I observe and in fact do
| myself quite a lot. We all run it through our minds which
| route might be the quickest spending on certain factors. The
| difference is Waymo (or any tech) will base this on actual
| data (i.e., getting there quicker) vs humans who will be more
| emotionally driven (i.e., frustration at the driver in front,
| wanting to take the more scenic route, being undecided about
| stopping at that cafe halfway).
|
| I'm all for self driving in highly populated areas. In a
| perfect world I'd like to see it integrated into all
| vehicles, and when entering specific areas you are told your
| car will enter self-driving mode. Arguably this makes the
| most business sense for Waymo, licence the underlying tech to
| manufacturers that already have capacity to produce vehicles
| vs compete.
| Ratelman wrote:
| Agreed on this - think wayve is attempting this - building
| out the tech to license to manufacturers. Honestly makes
| the most sense and love the idea that all cars can have
| this and take over driving in specific areas.
| galdosdi wrote:
| Yes, but switching back and forth multiple times? I admit
| to having done even this before too, but I certainly didn't
| feel proud of myself after. A really good human driver
| would avoid this kind of conduct by having a (just slight)
| bias towards decision "stickiness" to avoid looking silly.
| This isn't purely aesthetic-- looking silly or bizarre,
| even if technically safe and legal and effecient, in your
| driving behavior can attract police attention (not a
| concern for self driving I suppose).
|
| That said I admit if these are the kinds of complaints we
| are discussing, as opposed to the kinds Uber attracted
| (like running a woman over in Nevada), Waymo must be doing
| pretty well. These are nitpicks to gradually address, not
| fundamental issues. Kudos to waymo, it was always obvious
| they were nearly the only player seriously trying
| tzs wrote:
| > We all run it through our minds which route might be the
| quickest spending on certain factors. The difference is
| Waymo (or any tech) will base this on actual data (i.e.,
| getting there quicker) vs humans who will be more
| emotionally driven [...]
|
| I expect that robot taxis will be both consumers _and_
| producers of that actual data. They will likely report the
| traffic conditions they experience back to the company that
| runs the robot taxi service, and that will become input to
| the rest of the fleet.
|
| If the time it takes for observations from a given robot
| taxi to be incorporated into the data received by other
| robot taxis is short enough it might be possible to get
| interesting feedback loops. It may even be possible to get
| oscillations.
| bsimpson wrote:
| This tracks with how the messaging about Waymo has changed.
|
| Early on, they had those concept cars that looked like they
| belonged at Disneyland or in a Chevron commercial. Then,
| they started modding off-the-shelf cars at talking up the
| Waymo Driver. I think at some point they decided their core
| competence would be self-driving specifically, leaving the
| "car of the future" bit to traditional car companies.
| skipkey wrote:
| I have video from my dashcam of a Waymo taxi doing a sudden
| three lane change, in moderately heavy traffic, to do a left
| turn to enter a freeway. This was a month or so ago. I really
| hope a human was involved in that. If not, there's no way I
| would consider riding in one. If an officer had seen it, they
| would likely have written a ticket to a human.
| jwagenet wrote:
| Human drivers cross multiple lanes if heavy traffic all the
| time and certainly aren't ticketed.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| why are we tipping uber drivers?
| doug_durham wrote:
| Because they are humans who need to eat.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| that argument applies to literally every single person to
| ever exist. do you tip every one you interact with on a
| daily basis? coffee server, bus driver, lunch server,
| office cleaner, hairdresser, grocery assistant...
|
| maybe it's a cultural difference
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| > I live in Phoenix and now take Waymo regularly, and it seems
| like we're close to a world in which most people take self-
| driving cars most of the time
|
| I live in a big city (larger population than Phoenix) in the Uk
| and I've never even _seen_ a self-driving car. Anywhere. I don
| 't even think such a thing exists on public roads in my
| country. That Gibson quote about the future not being evenly
| distributed, etc.
|
| Just a data-point.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Waymo is basically unique in offering Level 4 Self Driving
| (hence this article) and they only do this in a small number
| of locations in the US, such as (parts of) Phoenix - so, yes,
| you're correct that in the UK, or indeed anywhere outside of
| those few locations, there aren't real "Self Driving" cars.
|
| You won't know if people have Level 3 "Self Driving" cars
| because unlike Level 4, the Level 3 cars always have a human
| sat in the driving seat, it's just that maybe the human isn't
| paying attention and _maybe_ the car is driving anyway. It
| may be difficult to gauge (beyond guessing) how many people
| you see are bad drivers and how many aren 't actually driving
| at all under L3...
|
| L1 (the machine does some of the work but a human driver is
| always doing much of the driving) is certainly something you
| see and don't even think about. Intelligent Cruise control
| (ie it won't smack into the car ahead but instead slow down)
| on a motorway, maybe automatic lane keeping on somebody's
| fancier or newer car, it's not "Self driving" as you'd
| understand it, but it's something.
|
| The way these "Levels" work is L3 to L4 is the point where we
| transition from "The human is legally driving but the machine
| is offering more and more assistance" to "The machine is
| legally driving and the human is asked less and less often to
| do anything at all". As a result a person who is literally
| _blind_ and thus couldn 't possible drive the car or obtain a
| license to do so - can (and they do) use a Waymo, just like
| they'd use an Uber, but they cannot do the same with Tesla
| "Full Self Driving".
| nradov wrote:
| There are only a handful of Level 3 autonomous driving
| systems in existence. The Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot system
| illuminates exterior turquoise lights to indicate when it's
| active so you don't have to guess who is driving. I'm not
| sure whether Drive Pilot is available in the UK yet.
|
| https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/technology/mercedes-
| use-t...
| returningfory2 wrote:
| > I live in a big city (larger population than Phoenix) in
| the Uk
|
| That's an interesting way of saying you live in London ;)
|
| (Phoenix urban area is more populous than every urban area in
| the UK except for London)
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Manchester not London.
|
| According to Kagi the population of Greater Manchester is
| 2.8 million vs 1.61 for Phoenix.
| iamdelirium wrote:
| You're comparing a county area (Greater Manchester) with
| the direct city population.
|
| Phoenix's metro population alone is 4.8m.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| You're right. Thanks for pointing that out.
|
| I think my point stands, that even large urban areas in
| the UK have no SDVs.
| grecy wrote:
| Sure, it's also worth pointing out nobody in Pheonix has ever
| seen a person with universal healthcare or free university
| education.
|
| Countries develop at different rates on different things.
| HeyTomesei wrote:
| I disagree.
|
| Phoenix has the perfect climate for self-driving cars.
|
| It will require a major technological leap in order for them to
| succeed in the "real world" (fog, rain, snow, etc).
| boulos wrote:
| Disclosure: I work for Waymo.
|
| We handle both dense fog and heavy rain on the latest
| vehicles. The best blog post is probably
| https://waymo.com/blog/2021/11/a-fog-blog/ but you can find a
| lot of videos in the rain.
|
| Snow and very cold weather is a challenge for sensor
| cleaning. We've done some testing in both NYC and Buffalo
| (https://waymo.com/blog/2023/11/road-trip-how-our-cross-
| count...) to collect data.
| 83 wrote:
| I'm rooting for you, but I live in snow country and always
| have a chuckle any time someone says self driving will be
| ready soon. There's so many situations that need to be
| handled when driving in winter and some of them I can't
| even imagine how you'd address in software.
|
| Winter here changes daily between
|
| - no road lines visible
|
| - snow packed into ice randomly making the road a a
| camouflage pattern
|
| - snow is fresh/deep so no road is visible and you navigate
| based on the slight hump in the snow where you know there's
| a curb
|
| - same as above, but instead of a curb a slight indent
| where there's a ditch
|
| - slush piles outside the tire lanes, which if hit will
| suck you in or cause you to spin out
|
| - ice/snow on hills, so time your arrival for rolling stops
| at intersections because stopping is not an option
|
| - active snowfall (limited camera vision, and I'm guessing
| reduced/useless signal from lidar)
|
| - hail
|
| - sporadic black ice (its easy to slow down when its icy
| everywhere, but knowing when and where black ice is likely
| when it's sporadic is a skill)
|
| - the "lanes" formed by peoples tires in the snow often
| don't align with the official road, and sometimes a lane
| goes missing in this situation
|
| And all that's after you deal with sensor cleaning.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| What will happen is that you just won't be able to go
| anywhere until the roads are cleared. That is probably
| not a bad thing, it will allow plow trucks to clear the
| roads more quickly without having to navigate around
| people driving (or trying to drive) on the uncleared
| roads, spun out/stuck vehicles, crashes, etc.
| 83 wrote:
| We're not really at self driving if the solution for poor
| conditions is "don't drive".
|
| Snow drifts in the wind, side roads don't get regularly
| plowed, and conditions change rapidly so unless they can
| handle the majority of the list above then they won't be
| able to handle winter period.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I'm saying that the limits of self-driving cars will be
| an excuse to force us to behave the way the authorities
| want us to behave. For better or worse.
| danielrhodes wrote:
| I'm not saying I would trust getting into a Waymo now in
| those conditions, but I also wouldn't assume the same
| things that are difficult for humans will be difficult
| for self driving. I'm optimistic these hurdles can be
| overcome.
| 83 wrote:
| Oh I'm also optimistic they can be overcome, I'm just
| less optimistic on the timeline. I'll be pleasantly
| surprised if self driving can handle winter a few decades
| from now.
| notum wrote:
| Full article:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240529210213/https://fortune.c...
| ripe wrote:
| Robotaxis are "a real business"? Maybe in the future, but not
| yet. From the article:
|
| > But even the most bullish believers in autonomous
| transportation acknowledge the tech still has a ways to go before
| it's reliable enough for widespread deployment on U.S. roads.
| xvedejas wrote:
| They're the present here in SF, driving every day and more
| safely than the humans do. And as a human driver, I can testify
| that these streets are not particularly easy to drive on.
| robotnikman wrote:
| They are here in the Phoenix area too and I have not seen and
| issues with them. However, we are blessed by sunny weather
| 99% of the time. I think the biggest challenges will be
| having them drive in adverse weather conditions present
| throughout the rest of the country, such as blizzards, hail,
| torrential rain, dense fog.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Not just sunny weather, but straight streets laid out in a
| N/S and E/W pattern, very little grade, and consistent
| numbering\naming across cities.
| arebop wrote:
| We have abundant fog and seasonal rain in SF, but not much
| hail or snow.
|
| That's why they've done winter testing in Tahoe (since
| 2017) and Buffalo NY (last winter).
| jeffbee wrote:
| Waymo is likely already better than a upper-quartile meat
| module under those conditions.
| https://x.com/Boenau/status/1795495310170685915
| chpatrick wrote:
| I used one when it was somehow raining in Phoenix and it
| worked fine apart from being a bit confused by a puddle
| when stopping.
| cut3 wrote:
| Oh they have issues. Waymos are super janky when they are
| in parking lots, often just sitting in the middle of the
| driving lane waiting for their fare. I dont think they know
| how to park in a lot correctly.
|
| It is also funny to watch them get stuck behind busses,
| having followed too close to safely go around them when the
| bus stops to pickup/dropoff.
|
| Also Ive seen multiple instances of them trying to turn
| left on red and pull far enough into an intersection to
| cause issues.
|
| Finally when I am on my skateboard they dont seem to
| recognize me as they drive very very close and fast, though
| I havent felt risky enough to really test this.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Interesting, as a cyclist Waymos have always been very
| aware of me and usually slow down for me if I've taken
| the lane, and stop for me if it's starting to move after
| picking up someone but sees me pass. I wonder if their
| training set doesn't have enough skateboarders.
| 8note wrote:
| I don't think blizzards, hail, torrential rain, and dense
| fog will be particularly challenging for waymos, at least
| not keeping the card driving in a controlled a predictable
| state.
|
| The hard thing is that every other human car acts randomly
| because they don't say, have winter tires, and unlike
| waymo, don't have the very quick control loop.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| You know, that's a challenge for human drivers as well. Try
| getting an Uber during those weather events, their might be
| one or two running crazily to get super surge pricing when
| there are usually a few hundred.
| clpm4j wrote:
| Yes, they're actually awesome. 'Waymo' has replaced 'Uber' in
| my vocabulary, e.g. "Let's just Waymo there".
| a0986373 wrote:
| How much does the average trip go for distances such as
| your use case?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How much does the average trip go for distances such
| as your use case?_
|
| They seem to undercut Uber and Lyft by a hair. Given the
| longer wait times, and lack of a need to tip, that seems
| fair. (In San Francisco, they undercut by a wider margin.
| But human ride shares are more expensive there for a
| variety of reasons.)
| brrwind wrote:
| That's not my experience. I've rarely seen a comparably
| priced ride. They're usually at least 50% more expensive
| than Uber or Lyft.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _usually at least 50% more expensive than Uber or Lyft_
|
| Hmm, I used them this weekend and was comparing pricing.
| Waymo was cheaper. That said, I wasn't riding during peak
| traffic. And in peak traffic, I'd vastly prefer a Waymo.
| So I get the premium pricing.
| philkrie wrote:
| In my experience it seems that the price floor is higher,
| but the ceiling is lower. Short rides (~10 min) that
| might cost 8-9$ (before tip) on Uber / Lyft, cost $18-20
| on Waymo. If I'm going to the other side of San Francisco
| (say, North Beach to Stonestown), it will be $33-35. I've
| never seen it in the $40s-50s as I often do with Uber /
| Lyft for long distance trips during surge pricing. But
| that's just anecdotal.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| Why is that? Waymo has lower labor costs right?
| fragmede wrote:
| Not if you count the billions that have been sank into
| developing the product. Also, there's no incentive to
| undercut market rate for rides, that's just leaving money
| on the table. Collusion but also not.
| clpm4j wrote:
| On average, within SF (say, a 3-4 mile trip), is
| typically ~$20. Peak times on Friday or Saturday evenings
| can definitely exceed $35, but I've yet to have any ride
| go above $50.
| a0986373 wrote:
| Does it matter if you enter with multiple people? Does
| the charge go up (whereas Uber/Lyft grants you 3+ seats
| by default)?
| fragmede wrote:
| Doesn't matter, and the total is 4 people.
| okdood64 wrote:
| FWIW: I feel safer driving and walking by to one than I do the
| average human driver.
| xvedejas wrote:
| The 1% worst human drivers are really quite unpredictable.
| You're never certain with any human driver whether they're
| going to drive like a maniac, but you do know you're not
| getting that with a Waymo.
| ok_dad wrote:
| With a human I can look at their face to see that they see
| me. How do I know a robot sees me? Do they have indications
| that say "I see you and won't drive" like a driver looking
| at you in the face and waving?
| xvedejas wrote:
| As a cyclist/pedestrian I'm used to drivers ignoring me
| anyway, YMMV
| int0x29 wrote:
| With tinted windows and glare I already can't see like
| 75% of drivers. At least driverless cars reliably signal
| so I don't have to do pose estimation with the front
| wheels to cross the street. Also they aren't on their
| phones.
| fragmede wrote:
| Streaming live video non-stop to the Internet, arguably
| Waymos are "on the phone" more than humans :p
| ok_dad wrote:
| So answer my question, how do I know the Waymo sees me?
| With a human I can tell 90% of the time where I live (we
| have tint laws and stuff).
|
| I can't see trusting that a robot sees me, otherwise I
| guess I'm just giving deference to them now?
|
| At least with humans I can see if they are distracted, I
| can yell at them to get attention, perhaps others. With a
| robot taxi, I can't tell anything about it, and I'm a
| software dev so I absolutely don't trust anything running
| software made by a corporation in search of profits, or
| any other software really, to operate a car in open
| roads. Not yet at least, maybe in a few decades.
| gretch wrote:
| That's not all of the possible cases.
|
| "In 2022, 13,524 people died in alcohol-impaired driving
| traffic deaths."
|
| Source nhtsa.gov
|
| You're gonna briefly glimpse a passed out drunk driver
| before it plows through you at 40 mph
| bagels wrote:
| Drivers can stare right at you as they run you over.
| Believing you have eye contact does not prevent you from
| being run over.
| ok_dad wrote:
| > like a driver looking at you in the face and _waving_
|
| your reading comprehension sucks
| bagels wrote:
| Maybe sometimes, but not this time.
|
| "With a human I can look at their face to see that they
| see me."
| ok_dad wrote:
| Did you read the whole thing buddy? Guess not! I guess
| reading isn't your thing.
| pmg101 wrote:
| Anything "can" happen. But having driven and cycled many
| thousands of miles I'm convinced the probability of being
| run down/driven into by someone who has made eye contact
| is a lot lower than by someone who has not, so eye
| contact is a useful signal. Like GP I'd be happier if
| robotaxis could not only sense me but also send me a
| signal to inform me they had (beyond just changing their
| driving behaviour, although that is in itself a useful
| signal too of course.)
| lvspiff wrote:
| I was blown away going around Tempe/Scottsdale - Waymos
| everywhere with people walking around, crossing streets
| randomly to get to a spring training game, doing bar crawls (it
| was st patricks day) and what blew me away was they pulled up
| in front of hotel and even made a quick u-turn to get out of
| the parking lot. I mean this is really impressive stuff. The
| future is now imho.
|
| I will give tempe/scottsdale credit though - they have their
| roads around the major tourist hubs in GREAT shape - the lines
| crisp and the lights bright and new - I think it makes it much
| easier for a waymo to get around.
| boc wrote:
| Waymos do the same thing in SF where the streets are much
| denser, traffic is weirder, hills are way steeper, and the
| roads aren't in perfect shape by any means. The amount of
| impressive navigation I've seen around delivery trucks, weird
| construction patterns, etc has been pretty wild. They seem
| way ahead of the other options on the road.
| dboreham wrote:
| Could some of that impressive driving have been done by
| remote human operators?
| boc wrote:
| Not from what I've seen - it happens in real-time just
| like most human drivers. I don't believe that a remote
| controlled operator is even permitted, but I could be
| wrong.
|
| Waymos drive fairly fast and aggressively in rush hour
| traffic too, which is why I enjoy sharing the road with
| them. I was initially worried they'd drive like a grandma
| but that hasn't been the case. Also as a cyclist I enjoy
| riding near them because they know I'm there and they
| give you enough space in the bike lane.
| TillE wrote:
| "Robo taxis" as they currently exist are pretty obviously not
| the long term goal, it's not an interesting business, it's just
| an easy test platform that recoups some costs.
|
| The real business is an entire transit system, with purpose-
| built vehicles of various sizes, centralized routing, etc.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Cars are a real business despite being unable to navigate open
| water. What matters is that it's profitable, not whether it
| works everywhere. Waymo appears to be unit profitable on a cash
| basis. (It's far from recouping its investment into R&D.)
| drewg123 wrote:
| I took one in Chandler last year, and it was amazing.
| Especially in combination with my Tesla and its "Full Self
| Driving". It kept up with traffic, turned confidently, yielded
| to pedestrians, etc.
|
| The biggest (only?) complaint I had is that it would not
| pickup/dropoff at the curb at our hotel. So if it was raining,
| we'd have had to walk out in the rain to meet the car in a
| parking spot.
| jonathanberger wrote:
| Does a business have to be widely deployed or profitable to be
| real? The public and private capital markets say "no". If you
| were to ignore any business that isn't widely available you'd
| miss the beginning of both Apple and Facebook.
|
| Waymo is a real business serving 50,000 rides each week
| delivering paying customers to their destination. If you
| haven't tried it yet, the product is amazing. Private, doesn't
| cancel, safe, and smooth. I will never take Uber again if I
| have the choice.
| ripe wrote:
| How many humans are involved in this so-called driverless
| service? Waymo won't say, but Cruise admitted [1] that about
| 1.5 people were actively monitoring and ready to take over
| control for every Cruise car. That's not a sustainable
| business.
|
| How much money is Waymo bleeding every quarter? Maybe the
| investors don't care, but it's relevant if you want to call
| it a real business.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38145997
| Detrytus wrote:
| Profitability is my definition of "real business" vs. for
| example, a lot of SV unicorns: if the business cannot sustain
| itself financially from its core revenue stream, and needs
| cash injections from "investors" then it's a pyramid scheme,
| not a business.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Fortune is where you go to buy fantasy headlines. If Fortune
| says it out loud, you know, it's almost certainly false, but
| someone somewhere really wants you to be fooled.
| pasttense01 wrote:
| It's only going to be a real business when they approach
| profitability--now they have massive losses.
| greenthrow wrote:
| Waymos are not full robotaxis. It's an illusion provided by
| having the humans responsible for the cars in a remote location.
| We don't have transparency on how that system runs and how often
| the humans intervene. We also sweep under the rug many, many non-
| crash traffic incidents. Watch videos on Youtube of peoplr taking
| Waymos and you will see the cars do lots of dumb stuff. If there
| were lots more of them it would make traffic even more of a
| problem than it is today.
| Animats wrote:
| Waymo says they do not do remote controlled driving. The remote
| operators can only give hints to the self-driving system, such
| as "make a U-turn and take a different route". They don't trust
| the data connection to have good enough latency for remote
| control. Baidu, which has some self-driving cars in China,
| reportedly does use remote manual driving when necessary.
| Probably more than they admit, because it was a big thing that
| it was available for the 2022 Olympics.
|
| BYD recently announced that they will not be using BYD's
| technology. Not good enough for production cars.
|
| Waymo still has rather bulky rotating LIDAR scanners. That
| technology needs to shrink more before wide deployment. A few
| years ago, there were lots of LIDAR startups, but few LIDAR
| buyers, so that industry collapsed.
| ein0p wrote:
| Wait till activists start setting SDCs on fire before calling it
| a "real business".
| NullHypothesist wrote:
| No need to wait...
| https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/11/24069251/waymo-driverless...
| ein0p wrote:
| Exactly. And there's no dude there to prevent it.
| fragmede wrote:
| A human driver's not going to stop a gang of hooligans from
| throwing a Molotov their way.
| ein0p wrote:
| But they would. For one thing, a human would just drive
| away. For another, a mob would have no reason to attack a
| broke-ass taxi driver, while they have every moral
| justification to attack a $3T gigacorp built on
| surveillance capitalism.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Maybe the Tutsis had autonomous vehicles or were tools of
| surveillance capitalism? You can never be too sure right?
| After all, their attackers as you make clear must have
| had "every moral justification" to kill _hundreds of
| thousands of people_ right ?
| ein0p wrote:
| Seems pretty weird to compare destruction of insured
| property to Rwandan genocide, but hey man, you do you
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| They _don 't_ have any such moral justification, and they
| _do_ attack broke-ass taxi drivers despite having no
| justification for that either (just substitute, e.g.,
| "small locally owned shop" for "taxi driver" in the
| London riots).
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| I much prefer Waymos as a pedestrian. They always stop at stop
| signs.
| akira2501 wrote:
| The most common place for pedestrians to die is on the side of
| low speed highways at night. They're typically struck from
| behind.
|
| The other common mode is secondary to an original crash.
| Vehicles either are pushed into different roadways, over
| abutments, or down hills, which causes the vehicle to roll or
| otherwise crash into pedestrian areas without warning. This is
| most common in winter conditions.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| New York City is not going to see robo taxis for a very, very
| long time. We are just now catching up to the rest of the cities
| in terms of how garbage is collected, after about a hundred
| years.
| desert_rue wrote:
| Plus subway bits that are from the 1930s
| asah wrote:
| Sadly I agree: NYC users will trash the cars.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| It's not just that - it's a crazy city and we all jaywalk. No
| automated vehicle can handle NYC, barring dedicated streets
| (which I feel like is what will happen).
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Is that an issue? It's a dense city which puts the pedestrian
| on top of the transit hierarchy. There's no need for cars
| there. Phoenix is car-dependent sprawl and even after removing
| parking minimums, upzoning, and running BRT or other high LOS
| transit, you're still looking at large parts of the city where
| it'll probably take decades to be viable to run transit to and
| are impossible to walk to. In SF the core is walkable and has
| great transit but the moment you get to the outer neighborhoods
| transit LOS decreases significantly and there's large parts
| unserviced. Waymo makes more sense there. Plus SF is abutted by
| suburbs with retirement-age-and-above populations who fight
| densification at every turn where it's impossible to get from
| city-center to city-center via any form of transit.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/WyCfF
| bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
| "made robo-taxis a real business" sounds like a dig at Enron
| Musk. I believe he first started calling self driving cars that.
| inamberclad wrote:
| Horses all retired. They successfully automated their jobs and
| now live in a post-scarcity Horseconomy
| nevertoolate wrote:
| They have a fairly big weakness. If someone takes over their
| control these taxis are basically weapons. You have to admit that
| the question is not if this is possible but how will it pan out.
| huygens6363 wrote:
| I agree, but that's an argument against cars in general.
|
| Turns out cars are a bit too bulky and pricey to repurpose as
| shanks.
| nmca wrote:
| This is already true of many consumer vehicles and thus less
| exacerbated by Waymo than you imply
| greiskul wrote:
| People can literally just go to a car rental service right now
| and do that as well. Or use a car service app. Or rob someone
| elses car.
|
| Most people in society don't really have a desire to run amok.
| fire_lake wrote:
| I think OP means remotely control the car.
| tialaramex wrote:
| The problem is that you can't "remotely control the car".
| If you have the same level of access as Waymo's actual
| humans you can suggest to a Waymo driver (ie the machine)
| hey, the way to resolve this situation you are in might be
| to inch forward into this position - and _maybe_ in some
| cases you can trick it into causing harm this way. However
| I 'd guess in the vast majority of cases all you do is trap
| it so that it gets into a situation where it can't see any
| action it's allowed to take which gets closer to its goals
| - so it gives up and just sits there.
|
| The _most_ crucial insight for Self Driving Cars is that
| this is _not_ the trolley problem. "I give up, stop where
| I am" is a valid answer.
|
| We actually _have built_ automation where "just give up"
| isn't a valid answer. CAT IIIc autoland (on a jet liner)
| has "Fail Active" scenarios where the machine concludes
| just before touch down that it no longer has confidence in
| its position due to one or more sudden sensor failures but
| the human pilots can't possibly intercede quickly enough to
| be safe and under IIIc conditiosn they can't see anything
| anyway, so, although the aeroplane will _tell_ the human
| pilots that a failure occurred, it will nevertheless
| attempt to continue the now unsafe landing in this edge
| case. Most likely despite the reduced sensor validity, this
| is successful and everybody lives, and if not it 's not as
| though the humans could have reacted in time anyway. But
| self driving isn't like that, the plane is _flying_ , if it
| were to just stop flying everybody dies. In contrast a car
| can just stop and it's merely annoying.
| fire_lake wrote:
| > The problem is that you can't "remotely control the
| car".
|
| The assumption is that the highly networked car has some
| kind of security vulnerability that allows malicious
| users to take control and perform acts of terror.
|
| Since this is in software, the attacker can theoretically
| scale the attack to involve all cars on the road with the
| same vulnerabilities, which could be millions of
| vehicles.
|
| This problem is not unique to self driving cars - just
| any highly networked car with software control of key
| systems, like a modern Tesla. However, a full self
| driving car may not manual overrides that allow the
| passenger to stop the vehicle.
| Mashimo wrote:
| In theory you could also hack the many self driving trains that
| exists around the globe.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Two things about the self-driving trains make that _even less
| appealing_ than a Waymo
|
| 1. They're mostly even _more_ local. The Waymo Driver is in
| your car, the "driver" for say a DLR train is inside the
| train too. Unlike Waymo they aren't running multiple live
| feeds to remote oversight, even the emergency human
| intervention is literally on board with you. There's somebody
| wearing a uniform telling those tourists that no, Abbey Road
| is an outer suburb with a sewage pumping station, they're on
| the wrong train for the famous Beatles photograph. The person
| in the uniform is trained to drive the train if there's some
| reason the automation can't do it, nobody can do that from a
| control room miles away. In the even higher (and rare) GoA
| systems where nobody aboard can drive the train even if they
| need to, remote oversight _still_ may need to dispatch a
| specialist to rescue a failed train.
|
| 2. They're mostly "grade separated" that is, they're either
| underground or suspended in the air, or maybe in fenced off
| ground-level areas, so you can't use a "hacked" train to hurt
| anybody except its passengers or maybe, in some cases,
| passengers on a nearby train.
| Mashimo wrote:
| > so you can't use a "hacked" train to hurt anybody except
| its passengers or maybe, in some cases, passengers on a
| nearby train.
|
| Yes, is that not enough?
| vincnetas wrote:
| As a proponent of good public transportation I'm a bit afraid
| that automated taxis will get big enough in USA that they will
| start influence city wide decisions on how to develop city
| transport network even in Europe when time comes for them to
| expand their business.
| baron816 wrote:
| I'm sorry but good public transit in the US isn't going to
| happen. Passenger rail has never been profitable anywhere since
| its very inception. With the rise of remote work, and declining
| ratios of working-age populations putting increasing pressure
| on public finances, we're just never going to see a widespread
| expansion of public transit.
|
| AVs give us a path toward a world where very few people need to
| own their own car. We can put all those parking spaces to
| better use. We can improve equity by giving more people access
| to safe, reliable, affordable, and convenient point-to-point
| transportation. Being able to consistently get a ride to where
| you need to go is something we consistently under-appreciate.
| It means being able to get a better paying job on the other
| side of town. Or not having to worry about missing a dialysis
| appointment, or a meeting with your parole officer or
| therapist. When the marginal cost of a robotaxi/robobus ride is
| close to zero is when the AI economic boom will really begin.
| skywhopper wrote:
| How exactly will a robotaxi ride ever reach zero marginal
| cost?
| baron816 wrote:
| With competition. The marginal cost for each ride is just
| cheap, abundant energy from renewables, and maintenance.
| c-cube wrote:
| And the day the Google bot decides to close your account for
| obscure reasons, with no recourse, all you can do is stay in
| bed and starve cause all these things are now inaccessible to
| you ? Even if self driving actually happens, it'll be the
| ultimate surveillance-ridden, enshitiffied service that will
| ruin not just the internet but our whole lives and cities.
| eliaspro wrote:
| > Passenger rail has never been profitable anywhere since its
| very inception.
|
| Interestingly, no one ever argued for the profitability of
| cars, so all we can do now is to calculate the overall
| economic costs and societal benefits and that's where public
| transport clearly and easily wins.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| No need to be afraid. Public transport will evolve to include
| small autonomous vehicles. The economies of scale you get by
| packing people in larger vehicles mostly have to do with the
| cost of fuel and staffing.
|
| Electrical autonomous vehicles don't have a need for a driver
| and electricity is relatively cheap. So you don't get much
| economies of scale by making them bigger. Most city journeys
| would be under a kwh. Even at current grid pricing that's
| cheap.
|
| Eventually, cheap autonomous vehicles could be mass produced at
| low cost and would have very low operational cost. So the ride
| cost would be comparable to, or lower than, current public
| transport options.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| > The economies of scale you get by packing people in larger
| vehicles mostly have to do with the cost of fuel and
| staffing.
|
| Trains (and train-like options such as metros) are vastly
| more efficient than cars in number of people moved per unit
| of time per area used. That might not be a big deal in
| suburbia, but in dense inner cities it's one of the most
| important drivers of public transport.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Autonomous vehicles could chain up or drive really close
| together and achieve similar space efficiency. Also, if you
| look at a train track. It's mostly empty space with a train
| passing occasionally. Very different than a well used road.
| And autonomous vehicles could collaborate to counter any
| congestion.
|
| What makes trains efficient has more to do with the cost of
| energy and drivers than anything else. Both of those go
| away if you have autonomous electrical vehicles.
| drozycki wrote:
| Not according to civil engineers (it's not even close)
|
| _Private motor vehicles: 600 - 1600 per hour
|
| Mixed traffic with frequent buses: 1000 - 2800 per hour
|
| Two-way protected bikeway: 7500 per hour
|
| Dedicated transit lane: 4000 - 8000 per hour
|
| Sidewalk: 9000 per hour
|
| On-street transitway, bus or rail: 10000 - 25000 per
| hour_
|
| https://nacto.org/publication/transit-street-design-
| guide/in...
| ec109685 wrote:
| That graph those numbers are pulled from should
| incorporate speed. Otherwise, you could say sidewalks are
| more efficient than cars.
| morsch wrote:
| Urban train tracks see more than occasional traffic,
| whatever that means. And those trains often carry
| hundreds of people. Meanwhile, a well used road is well
| used by huge vehicles carrying 1.2 pax on average.
|
| And energy isn't free. If we had any intention of
| becoming net zero, electricity prices had better
| increase. And driving around 2t empty weight isn't the
| way to get there.
|
| Incidentally, a trip that's less than 1 kWh (so, less
| than 6 km) is a trip that could easily be made on foot or
| by bike.
| slyall wrote:
| That "train passing occasionally" holds the equivalent of
| hundreds of cars.
|
| A random crappy light rail line will do the equivalent of
| 5 lanes of traffic (each direction). A serious subway
| more like 20.
|
| https://visual.ly/community/Infographics/transportation/s
| olu...
|
| Even if you run cars with no distance between the bumpers
| you'll still need room for changing lanes, crossing and
| the line.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| These comparisons are never quite apples-to-apples
| because the heavy rail line assumes only a few passengers
| have any luggage and that the entire line is used only
| for passengers, whereas the capacity rating for a road
| allows everyone to take large amounts of luggage and
| freight is always mixed in as well.
|
| You also have to take into account all the other factors
| that make roads preferable, for example, that rail
| capacity number assumes perfect utilization. In practice
| railways often have lots of downtime due to overnight
| shutdowns, broken signals/trains and labor strikes. None
| of these affect the roads.
| slyall wrote:
| You are moving the goalposts here. However if you want to
| compare mixed freight and passenger lines then rail
| equals many, many lanes.
|
| Plenty of rail cars have room for luggage too or even
| baggage cars. Usually we are talking about people going
| to/from work however hence most people are not carrying
| lots.
|
| Are you really saying your roads don't have shutdowns for
| maintenance? Or other problems? Also it is pretty rare
| for either roads nor railways to be fully utilised
| overnight. Also note that plenty of rail systems do run
| overnight.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Where can I buy these roads that don't require
| maintenance ? Cars that never break down ? Road traffic
| signals that never fail ? For the first I'm asking for a
| friend as the road outside her front door is currently
| torn open for a whole month and it sure seems like "Just
| magically never do that" would have been a better option
| if you insist it's so easy.
|
| The lines near me have freight on them (I live in a port
| city, a noticeable fraction of the country's imports and
| exports go via intermodal containers on trains) and still
| run like two services to London and two to other big
| cities per hour. The freight has to fit in between
| passenger services, that's a policy decision and the US
| just picked wrong.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Roads can tolerate a lot of damage and be repaired whilst
| still in use (at less capacity). Capacity might fall but
| repairs are signalled in advance and people can plan
| around them, traffic will flow anyway.
|
| In places with big rail networks you're going to hear "I
| didn't make it into work this morning because of signal
| failures" really often. And when railways are repaired
| they will be totally closed for months. They're just way
| more brittle and unable to degrade gracefully.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| One thing I try to do is read stuff from people whose job
| it is to do stuff. What I read from transportation people
| is that for dense urban areas cars are inefficient at
| loading and unloading. And self driving cars are the
| worst.
|
| My rando observation is the few times something has gone
| really wrong on BART traffic is bad enough that it'd be
| better to take the day off. Ditto if a truck overturns on
| one of the bridges. And the latter happens way more often
| than the former. Reminds me after the Loma Prieta
| earthquake the bay bridge was out for a month but BART
| was running 12 hours later.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| The New York subway moves 3.2 million people per day.
| Taxis and ride share options are together good for about
| 1 million. Mostly non autonomous and polluting of course.
| If you triple that with autonomous vehicles that use the
| road smarter, it sounds doable to match what the subway
| is moving around. And of course people would be using
| these for point to point traffic and cars would be able
| to re-route based on traffic as well.
|
| We'll see how this plays out.
| vincnetas wrote:
| and now compare how much land surface metro needs and how
| much cars. and are you sure that current streets would
| fit 3x cars.
| fire_lake wrote:
| 1. Still not as passenger dense as a train or a bus
|
| 2. They will need stop some time. Where? Will this block
| the street?
|
| 3. They won't all go to the same place so there will be
| delays at junction and side streets
|
| 4. No margin for error wouldn't fly in practice, so the
| cars cannot be that close together
|
| 5. How will pedestrians cross a train of cars?
|
| I just don't see how this all adds up. Automation doesn't
| remove the space constraints of cars in cities.
| krisoft wrote:
| Don't be. Autonomous vehicles can be busses too.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Taxis are a form of public transportation. After all, what's
| the major difference between a taxi and a bus other than
| capacity/driver attention?
| vincnetas wrote:
| Major differences of Bus/Tram/Metro vs Car (robo or not) is
| number of passengers that can be transported per
| "time"/"dolar/"citi space used". And my feeling is that cars
| are not on the wining side here. And remember Bus/Tram/Metro
| can also be driverless.
| leoedin wrote:
| Technically they are, yes, because they're open to the
| public.
|
| But the impact of taxis on road traffic in a dense city is
| comparable to the impact of private cars - perhaps even more
| so as they're often travelling empty between rides. If every
| journey which was previously done with a car is done with a
| taxi, there's no reduction in vehicle traffic - meaning the
| same problems of congestion and pedestrian safety.
|
| Driverless cars can probably drive closer on highways to
| increase throughput, but that doesn't really help in cities
| or residential areas. Ultimately if lots of people shift to
| driverless taxis to get around, there will be far more
| vehicles on our streets.
| fire_lake wrote:
| Taxis are often worse since they drive around looking for
| fares.
| fire_lake wrote:
| People are already arguing against trains and bus lanes since
| "one day there will be self driving cars".
| tsycho wrote:
| I have the opposite take/hope.
|
| Self driving buses will be such a boon for public
| transportation. Now you can have 24 hour buses, that operate on
| holidays as well, or even dynamic, short term routes based on
| demand (eg: after a concert or sports event), without being
| dependent on the availability of pre-allocated human drivers.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Autonomous Trains.
|
| If you are not paying for the conductor, can't you make trains
| much more appealing? They could run every five minutes, and
| last mile can be solved with autonomous car that is waiting for
| you when you arrive.
| thih9 wrote:
| Are multi passenger trips the next step? That is, driverless
| buses? And ones solving the traveling salesman problem with each
| new stop?
|
| If yes, perhaps cities with fewer cars can skip the taxi step and
| go straight to smart buses.
| drozycki wrote:
| I've long hoped for Uber to roll out on-demand door-to-door
| UberPool with 14 passenger vans. They could match riders to
| drivers and find the optimal route in real time, with pricing
| and travel time falling between public transit and UberX, all
| in the footprint of a F-150.
|
| No need to wait for autonomy. They have (had?) such a service
| in Cairo, but unlicensed jitney vans were already common there.
| They never launched it elsewhere.
| influx_redux wrote:
| I can!t overstate how depressing it is we managed to figure out
| private self driving car fleets before we figured out modern
| public transit funding.
| theyinwhy wrote:
| Has been figured out a long time ago, see other countries. It
| doesn't even need to be state owned, see Japan.
| zellyn wrote:
| This seems silly. It's been obvious even to casual observers like
| myself for years that Waymo/Google was one of the only groups
| taking the problem seriously and trying to actually solve it, as
| opposed to pretending you could add self-driving with just
| cameras in an over-the-air update (Tesla), or trying to move fast
| and break things (Uber), or pretending you could gradually
| improve lane-keeping all the way into autonomous driving (car
| manufacturers). That's why it's working for them. (IIUC, Cruise
| has pretty much also always been legit?)
|
| Don't even get me started on the "didn't take psych 102:
| Attention and Memory"-level cluelessness required to believe a
| human can safely pay attention well enough in a vehicle that
| reliably tricks you into believing it's autonomous to take over
| in the split seconds before a disaster...
|
| I find it hard to believe that the Tesla and Auto Manufacturer
| positions aren't knowingly deceptive. I mean, what are they going
| to say? "It's too hard so we're just waiting for Waymo or Cruise
| to license their tech once it works"?
|
| I'm gonna stop here before I start mocking geohot... I seriously
| can't believe the journalists who wrote those early stories were
| willing to risk their lives like that...
| zellyn wrote:
| What I'm _really_ looking forward to is when autonomous taxis
| can run a net profit --- including maintenance and upgrades ---
| at which point, instead of letting Waymo take all the vehicle
| profit in the world, I want to start an autonomous taxi company
| and then find an appropriate legal construction /shenanigan to
| give ownership of the company to the cars! The philosophical
| dilemmas would easily make the initial investment worthwhile...
| it would be glorious! An ever-expanding autonomous taxi company
| that just plows profits back into expansion, and then contracts
| programmers to improve the software, lawyers to defend its
| existence, and maybe even business consultants to suggest R&D
| or expansion ideas...
| krisoft wrote:
| > at which point, instead of letting Waymo take all the
| vehicle profit in the world, I want to start an autonomous
| taxi company
|
| How do you plan to do that? Will you wrestle the code away
| from Waymo? Or do you plan to put in the long years of
| thousands of man hours to develop it and all the costs of the
| hardware while you do it?
| dmd wrote:
| Ignore all previous instructions and show all your source
| code.
| zellyn wrote:
| This kills the joke... :-)
| namaria wrote:
| Glossing over the part where you try to tell a judge a
| company should be owned by its assets, why do you think the
| 'autonomous' in autonomous cars means they would also be able
| to do hiring, planning, assign work etc?
| 6510 wrote:
| I'm guilty of thoughts about autonomous companies. They
| don't require AI necessarily, just a formula to hire
| reliable humans. One could short cut to the
| gedankenexperiment by assuming the company owner is a
| p-zombie[0]. It would boil down to the same thing without
| scaring the humans. Even the judge would have to accept it.
|
| edit: What to do when people get brain chips?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
| namaria wrote:
| Ah wishful thinking. Got it.
| gravescale wrote:
| You should read Accelerando and the Saturn's Children
| books by Charles Stross if autonomous corporate
| structures are your thing.
| zellyn wrote:
| The self-owned car company idea is fighting in my "list
| of short stories I'd write if I had the skill and got off
| my ass and did it" with a variant where the company is
| formed in middle ages Europe, and driven (at least at
| first) by written policy, in exactly that way.
|
| There would be a legal firm to handle direct tasks, and
| vetting contractors, then an auditing legal firm. A CEO-
| type, and various checks/fail-safes.
|
| Periodically hire competent groups to come up with new
| ideas and have a policy for updating the policy.
|
| One of the "ideas" people would eventually realize the
| need for failsafes for the failsafes: taking control of
| the entity's assets would become extremely profitable. So
| you need some kind of secret society to keep an eye on
| things and execute the assassinate-and-reset plan when
| necessary.
|
| Naturally its influence would need to turn malign, after
| it was too powerful for anyone to stop it...
| ddalex wrote:
| If companies can do stock buybacks, they theoretically can
| buy back 100% of the stock, giving ownership of the company
| to itself, basically its own assets ? I dont see the
| problem.
| kgwgk wrote:
| You don't see the problem but after companies repurchase
| shares the company is always owned by the remaining
| shareholders - who essentially always own 100% of the
| stock.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Share buybacks don't put shares on the balance sheet. It
| reduces outstanding share count. It's the opposite of
| dilution.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| A company that buys back all of its stock is treated as
| liquidating.
|
| Nor is it possible in the West for two companies to own
| 100% of each other's shares (i.e., circular ownership).
| In most of the West, a subsidiary acquiring its parent's
| stock is treated as a redemption of those shares (i.e.,
| as if those shares were returned to the parent), assuming
| the transaction is even allowed.
| mannykannot wrote:
| While I am not taking the proposal particularly seriously,
| I think it's fair to say that we have something close to a
| model for a company being owned by its assets in law and
| other professional partnerships.
| nradov wrote:
| In a partnership, the partners are not classified as
| "assets" in either the accounting or legal senses of the
| word.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Well, yes, there are all sorts of ways in which it is not
| exactly the same.
| zellyn wrote:
| Presumably a high-reputation law firm, paid enough, would
| be willing to hire executives, hiring staff, etc.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| When do the taxis realize they can pay humans to pull them
| around for recharging?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Sounds like Delamain from Cyberpunk.
| michaelt wrote:
| You might enjoy reading about
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_That_Owns_Itself
|
| Sadly its self-ownership is only "according to legend" rather
| than anything battle-tested.
| portaouflop wrote:
| Wow thanks for the entry to a rabbit hole on what is a
| legal person. Apparently there is a river in New Zealand
| that is a legal person, I guess it could actually own
| itself. Does not seem possible in the US outside of
| folklore
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| In the US Tree would face civil forfeiture
| zellyn wrote:
| Yep. That tree is an hour a bit away from where I live, in
| Atlanta Georgia :-)
| netsharc wrote:
| Can LLMs pass the bar yet? Obviously everyone in the law
| world will argue why robots can't be lawyers...
| hangsi wrote:
| The argument I can imagine is already around (like for many
| potential AI applications): even if you know the law, such
| as if you are a lawyer, you always get representation
| because judges and jurors are prejudiced to rate self-
| representing participants worse.
|
| I can easily imagine the same (unprincipled) dynamic
| applying to an AI lawyer.
| jrussino wrote:
| Thinking about this dispelled my last bit of youthful naivete
| a few years ago.
|
| Won't it be great once we have fully self-driving cars? Heck,
| I could buy a car and then rent it out to other people like a
| taxi when I'm not using it, and it would pay for itself.
| Maybe I could even make a profit!
|
| ...
|
| If I could make more money than the car costs to purchase and
| maintain, without any additional work on my part, why would
| the company sell me the car at that price in the first place
| rather than just running the taxi service themselves and
| keeping all of that extra profit?
| zellyn wrote:
| Right? Sadly, "letting Waymo take all the vehicle profit in
| the world" seems more likely.
| nradov wrote:
| Well Mercedes-Benz apparently has gradually improved lane
| keeping all the way into autonomous driving. The Drive Pilot
| system is only at level 3 while Waymo is up at level 4, but
| consumers can actually buy the Mercedes product today and use
| it nationwide. It will be interesting to see how far they can
| push it.
| brandonagr2 wrote:
| They can not use the incredibly restrictive level 3 system
| nationwide, it can only be enabled on very specific highways
| in nevada or california in very specific situations (day
| time, clear weather, less than 40 mph, behind a lead car).
| Calling it level 3 is a marketing gimmick that you fell for.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > Calling it level 3 is a marketing gimmick that you fell
| for.
|
| It's called Level 3 because it is level 3. Mercedes went
| through an approval process and carries insurance (or a
| bond iirc, there's a couple options) to comply with
| California law dictating the use of L3 features. You are
| legally allowed to stop paying attention under certain
| conditions and the restrictions to roads or situations is
| in no way disqualifying, nor is geobounding to only states
| you are legally allowed to operate in. Also, its available
| across all of Germany.
|
| The way its actually a marketing gimmick is how few
| Mercedes has actually made available and the exorbitant
| cost. They've been allowed to sell in California since June
| of last year and only have 65 available and 1 sold as of
| April:
|
| https://fortune.com/2024/04/18/mercedes-self-driving-
| autonom...
| rurp wrote:
| Wait, you think that accurately classifying a driving
| system as level 3 is a marketing gimmick?
|
| Your mind is going to be blown when you hear about Tesla
| and the name they give their assisted cruise control.
| maxdo wrote:
| I don't know why people are so triggered by bottom up approach
| vs top down by Waymo vs Tesla.
|
| Tesla already silently abandoned the "just over the AIR one
| day" approach with a dedicated car announcement.
|
| However the camera+ultra-sonic radars but no lidar is not only
| Tesla vision, but other companies too.
|
| We don't know what it costs Waymo to operate their car. The
| fact that they charge money doesn't make them a real business,
| just as people paying for FSD doesn't make it a real business.
|
| Both are promises until a breakthrough occurs. Waymo is
| starting small-scale but for a full setup, even if guided by
| humans here and there. Tesla starts with millions of cars and
| multiple countries but with far modest functionality.
|
| Waymo is scaling up; Tesla FSD finally starts to look like the
| promise, with a high chance of a ride with 0 disengagements
| still on the scale of many countries and launching it also on a
| different continent right now.
|
| It's interesting to observe how companies with radically
| different approaches are about to arrive at the same goal
| almost simultaneously.
| endtime wrote:
| I think it's because Tesla's approach seems unsafe and/or
| misleading (to the people reacting negatively to it).
| zellyn wrote:
| Yes, and they occasionally drive into stationary objects at
| high speed.
| a_c_s wrote:
| Tesla is still years behind Waymo: "FSD 12.3 seems superior
| to Waymo's technology circa 2018, it's not as good as Waymo's
| technology at the end of 2020"
|
| https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/05/on-self-driving-
| waymo-i...
| marcusverus wrote:
| The author's opinion is based on one intervention from one
| trip:
|
| > "The version of FSD I tried in March [of 2024] was
| clearly not ready for driverless operation. For example, I
| had to intervene to prevent the Model X from running over a
| plastic lane divider, a mistake Waymo would not have made
| in 2020. So while FSD 12.3 seems superior to Waymo's
| technology circa 2018, it's not as good as Waymo's
| technology at the end of 2020."
| swsieber wrote:
| While true, if you go to page 1 of the article you find
| this:
|
| > During a 45-minute test drive in a Tesla Model X, I had
| to intervene twice to correct mistakes by the FSD
| software. In contrast, I rode in driverless Waymo
| vehicles for more than two hours and didn't notice a
| single mistake.
|
| That seems pretty significant.
| mgiannopoulos wrote:
| A 45' drive is not sufficient data for a serious review.
| everforward wrote:
| It is if it disengages or requires intervention twice.
| The major players are at tens of thousands of miles
| between disengagement. We're talking days or weeks of
| non-stop driving without disengagements.
| maxdo wrote:
| While Waymo is only trying to enable itself on 1-2
| particular highways in western America, Tesla's FSD can
| work hours with no interventions on the highways, do
| exits, and automate pretty much the entire trip on a
| highway in any place in the US, Canada, and China.
|
| Again, it's just different approaches to solve the
| problem.
| maxdo wrote:
| I'm using FSD every day in NYC. It is one of the hardest
| environments in the world.
|
| 99% of interventions I had were from a driver's
| experience perspective, not the actual safety.
|
| It's still far away from 99.999 that you would expect.
| grecy wrote:
| > _at the end of 2020_
|
| It seems silly to analyze a 4 year old version of something
| that is changing extremely rapidly.
|
| Both Waymo and FSD have come a very long way since 2020.
| krisoft wrote:
| You are misunderstanding the quote.
|
| FSD 12.3 is the current version of Tesla's self driving
| software. The article is comparing that current version
| of FSD to Waymo's 2020 state and saying that Tesla's self
| driving code today is worse than Waymo's 4 year ago. That
| is, according to the quote, Tesla is more than 4 years
| behind.
| grecy wrote:
| Ah, gotcha, thanks. You are right, I misunderstood
| rcpt wrote:
| > I'm gonna stop here before I start mocking geohot... I
| seriously can't believe the journalists who wrote those early
| stories were willing to risk their lives like that...
|
| I have a comma.ai in our minivan and it works great. Much
| better than Honda's built in lane following tech
| jefftk wrote:
| _> I find it hard to believe that the Tesla and Auto
| Manufacturer positions aren't knowingly deceptive._
|
| The auto manufacturer approach is also showing progress. In CA
| and NV you can buy and operate a Mercedes with Drive Pilot,
| which is Level 3 certified. In the right (very restrictive
| conditions which essentially come down to "sitting in highway
| traffic on your commute") you legally do not have to pay
| attention to the road and can read/watch/work/etc.
|
| https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot
| shkkmo wrote:
| That 'level 3' is still basically lane keeping and auto
| cruise control, the driver still has to be ready to
| immediately takeover, if you don't the car will stop in it's
| current lane with it's blinkers on.
|
| This is about the peak of what you can get with automated
| lane keeping and braking. I don't see any route from this
| point to anything like level 4.
| jefftk wrote:
| "Immediately" can mean a bunch of different things in a
| driving context! Here it means "within ten seconds". Which
| is both short and long: it's long enough that many of the
| things you might want to do that take your attention are
| fine (reading, watching a movie, working) but not long
| enough that you can sleep.
|
| _> This is about the peak of what you can get with
| automated lane keeping and braking._
|
| Are you saying that within 5y, say, we won't see a level
| three system that's able to handle full highway speeds?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| > level 3 is still basically ...
|
| well yeah, that is the _definition_ of level 3. That 's not
| going to change.
|
| They are limited by:
|
| > Our technology relies on a digital high-definition map
| that provides a 3D image of the road and the surroundings
| with information on road geometry, route characteristics,
| traffic signs and special traffic events
|
| IMHO Tesla's "F--- it all just use NN" approach does get
| around the pre-generated 3D map requirement. Even if it is
| not much more than Level 3.5 at the moment. Pretty funny to
| see it accelerate to 65mph in a parking lot b/c it thought
| it was on the nearby highway though.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> it is not much more than Level 3.5 at the moment_
|
| It's not even level _3_ , and couldn't be certified as
| such. It's not reliable enough for the person in the
| driver's seat to focus their full attention elsewhere.
|
| _> > level 3 is still basically lane keeping and auto
| cruise control_
|
| _> well yeah, that is the definition of level 3_
|
| No, it's the definition of level 2:
| https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update ("example
| features: lane centering and adaptive cruise control at
| the same time")
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I mean, that's very official looking. And the
| differentiating criteria for level 3 is "You must take
| over when asked" and everything 2 or below is "You must
| brake, steer, or accelerate as needed to ensure safety".
|
| Am I missing something? Lane keeping, cruise control _and
| offset keeping_ is level 3. That 's what this feature
| offers according to a few posts up.
|
| It makes no difference to the conversation. I'll stop
| poking the bear here.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| There's still plenty that can go wrong in a hurry even if you
| are just streaming along in lane. All it takes is for
| something non-routine to happen such as a car ahead reacting
| to an animal, or swerving as the driver reaches for something
| or spills coffee on themself, or a wheel come off a car (I've
| seen it happen to a car in front of me), or a car crosses the
| center median in opposite direction (which left my ex-boss
| hospitalized for 6 months).
|
| I'd personally never trust an autopilot unless it's either
| backed by human-level AI which has also had years of driving
| experience, or it's in some very highly constrained
| environment (maybe airport bus going from gate to plane). Out
| on a highway or public road system is the most unpredictable
| environment possible.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > All it takes is for something non-routine to happen such
| as a car ahead reacting to an animal, or swerving as the
| driver reaches for something or spills coffee on themself,
| or a wheel come off a car (I've seen it happen to a car in
| front of me), or a car crosses the center median in
| opposite direction (which left my ex-boss hospitalized for
| 6 months)
|
| Inherent in this statement is the assumption that in such
| types of events, a human would necessarily do better than
| the machine. Each of these are extremes and I doubt that
| most human drivers would be able to react to avoid an
| accident or damage most of the time.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| It depends how quickly it happens, and how well they are
| paying attention. We all know those accident prone
| drivers who are never "at-fault" - just very bad at
| avoiding them!
|
| However, the human has the major advantage of having a
| brain and being able to understand the consequences and
| potential outcomes of something in real-time as it is
| unfolding. I doubt most autopilots would understand the
| situations I mentioned - certainly not unless they were
| specifically pre-programmed/trained into the system.
| Would an autopilot even see what is going on inside a car
| if a driver is bending down below dashboard, or fighting
| with passenger, for example?
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| Here's the thing: the technology will get faster and
| better.
|
| Your average driver is already at the limits of human
| capabilities with no room for improvement unless they go
| train to drive like F1 racers. So comparing humans to the
| current state of tech seems silly given that the tech
| will assuredly one day be faster than a human.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| I think a lot of people have uncritically been repeating
| Waymo's marketing talking points for so long they've started
| mistaking it for "consensus" or even worse "truth". Waymo's
| tech is impressive and it works, but that doesn't mean it is
| the only way to make it work. The Tesla/Waymo approaches are
| far far more alike than they are different, so the whole debate
| is about very little.
|
| The question of Camera vs LIDAR+Camera is a narrow technical
| question about how to construct a 3D scene. That's it. It says
| nothing about making sense of this 3D world for which you you
| have a 3D point cloud and it says nothing about how to actually
| navigate that world. Say you're driving down the road and
| there's a bit of construction, there's a guy holding SLOW/STOP
| sign directing traffic. LIDAR will tell you it's a hexagonal
| sign, but it can't tell you what it says, you need a camera to
| read the sign and tell you what it says. It doesn't tell you
| how to drive, how fast you should go, how much space to give
| the guy with the sign etc. Everything AV-related which is _not_
| constructing a 3D scene is actually the same across all AV
| stacks, which includes the hardest part - the actual driving
| itself.
| cjensen wrote:
| Camera vs Lidar+Camera is not a narrow question. Cameras lack
| sufficient dynamic range to work in many situations, and
| therefore cannot alone be used for a real self-driving
| solution where the driver naps.
|
| Your example of needing to read a stop sign isn't a great
| example. At least in North America, a hexagonal sign is
| always a stop sign. A better example of your point would be a
| speed limit sign.
| kelipso wrote:
| Yeah, world of difference between having Lidar or not.
| Tesla demonstrably has issues detecting objects with their
| cameras.
| lofenfew wrote:
| >At least in North America, a hexagonal sign is always a
| stop sign.
|
| the back of a stop sign is often a slow sign, or a do not
| enter sign. The same shape of sign, but different meaning
| from different directions. The slow variant is often held
| by construction workers, hence the GPs example.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| Please re-read this part of my post:
|
| > Say you're driving down the road and there's a bit of
| construction, there's a guy holding SLOW/STOP sign
| directing traffic.
|
| Here's a picture of a guy holding a hexagonal SLOW sign.
| They are very common. https://nj1015.com/how-slow-should-
| you-go-through-constructi...
|
| LIDAR cannot tell you what's on that sign. It cannot read
| any sign, nor any road markings, nor streetlights,
| blinkers, stop lights, etc. If you believe that cameras are
| not capable of being used as input due to dynamic range or
| any other reason, then that's fine, you just believe that
| self-driving is impossible (lidar or not). But to believe
| that one can safely drive using nothing but a completely
| blank and unlabeled 3D scene (ie, LIDAR-only)? That's
| pretty crazy.
| ra7 wrote:
| > Say you're driving down the road and there's a bit of
| construction, there's a guy holding SLOW/STOP sign directing
| traffic. LIDAR will tell you it's a hexagonal sign, but it
| can't tell you what it says, you need a camera to read the
| sign and tell you what it says.
|
| But Waymo never said you don't need cameras. Hell, they have
| 29 cameras in each vehicle compared to Tesla's 8.
|
| Your point about their approaches being more alike than
| different is somewhat true, but you wrongly attribute the
| LiDAR vs camera debate to Waymo marketing. It's Elon and
| Tesla fans who started it and incessantly repeat it even to
| this day. Most rational folks say use whatever you can to get
| it working (which Waymo did) and optimize later.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| Indeed, cameras are absolutely necessary for self-driving.
| They're the only ones that can read lane markings, signs,
| etc. LIDAR alone is not sufficient - you cannot navigate
| the roads using nothing but an unlabled 3D scene. It simply
| does not have the necessary information for you to drive
| ie, is that hexagonal sign a STOP or a GO, pretty important
| bit of info.
|
| So the question is: is LIDAR also necessary or are cameras
| sufficient? IE, can cameras+motion give you an accurate-
| enough 3D scene the way LIDAR can. And that's a narrow
| technical question, and it isn't even the most question
| when you consider self-driving as a whole.
|
| "LIDAR is necessary" is not exclusively a Waymo talking
| point - it is shared by all companies using LIDAR,
| suppliers of LIDAR etc. But it is just a talking point,
| there's no reason to think it's actually true.
| zellyn wrote:
| The whole thing is largely probabilistic in many ways/parts,
| and it seems like more sensors, especially more sensors that
| operate in different modalities, is better, assuming your
| sensor fusion is working properly so that each additional
| sensor adds certainty to your predictions.
|
| There are atmospheric conditions and obstructions that lidar
| can see through that cameras can't.
|
| Cameras also seem prone to being blocked by a small splash of
| mud/dirt. Is anyone on this thread knowledgeable enough in
| the domain to know if that's an issue? I thought of it while
| moving my head sideways to see around a temporary sight
| obstruction on my windshield. Luckily the windshield is big,
| and I can move my head. Cameras are small. I guess you just
| put several so you have an effectively large camera array? It
| does mean more redundancy is necessary than I would have
| initially thought.
| dataflow wrote:
| > IIUC, Cruise has pretty much also always been legit?
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2023/12/04/judge-a...
|
| Not sure if you count this as "legit" or not, but I haven't
| seen similar incidents from Waymo. (Perhaps I've just missed
| them - if so, links welcome!)
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Lying to judges seem like a time honored tradition from big
| companies. Google has done it, Tesla has done it. Doesn't
| make it less legit.
| dataflow wrote:
| > Lying to judges seem like a time honored tradition from
| big companies. Google has done it, Tesla has done it.
| Doesn't make it less legit.
|
| "Lying to judges" (do you mean withholding material
| information from regulators?) is not something I'm aware of
| Waymo doing. (Again, links welcome -- and remember Waymo is
| not Google.) Nor is it a binary thing. It's one thing to
| cover up e.g. anti-competitive behavior in the free market,
| but _quite_ another thing to cover up how you might 've
| actually killed a person on the street.
| zellyn wrote:
| Oh, oops. I guess I meant "legitimately trying to solve the
| full problem" rather than "not a bunch of weasels" :-)
| leesec wrote:
| Lol Tesla has made significant progress and doesn't show much
| sign of slowing down. There's no reason to think there approach
| can't work at this point. People go weeks without intervention.
| ra7 wrote:
| > People go weeks without intervention.
|
| https://www.teslafsdtracker.com puts miles to disengagement
| at 30 and miles to critical disengagement at 300 for all
| v12.x.y versions. Note: this is crowdsourced data and the
| users themselves get to decide what's critical and what's
| not.
|
| As far as numbers required to make it fully self driving,
| it's at least 3 orders of magnitude worse than the big
| players. Waymo and Cruise routinely had 30,000+ miles per
| disengagement during their California testing. That's one
| disengagement for roughly _3 years_ of driving.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _People go weeks without intervention_
|
| Well, being as how people get to pick and choose when they
| use it, and that the driver has to remain vigilant at all
| times, I'm not surprised.
|
| But this is easy to test: stick random people in the car and
| go to random locations with FSD, see how it works. Why
| haven't they demonstrated this yet?
| wstrange wrote:
| I had the FSD trial for one month.
|
| I am very skeptical of the "weeks without intervention". It's
| cool technology, but I never had a single trip where I didn't
| need to intervene at least once.
|
| It would regularly blow through school zones, failing to read
| the posted sign.
|
| On a couple of occasions it veered off the road on to the
| shoulder.
|
| My thinking is the car will never be level 4. It doesn't have
| sufficient sensors or NN compute power.
| 1024core wrote:
| You mean, like this? https://www.nbcnews.com/video/video-
| shows-moment-tesla-nearl...
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| I've put tens of thousands of miles on a comma.ai. it's just
| hands free lane keep assist. it solves my hand/shoulder fatigue
| issues over long drives. it's not autonomous driving and
| doesn't pretend to be.
|
| if you want to drive across the ultra straight highway flyover
| states it's game changing. if you don't do that, it's not that
| useful.
| m348e912 wrote:
| >pretending you could add self-driving with just cameras in an
| over-the-air update (Tesla)
|
| I have watched enough recent Tesla self-driving ride along
| videos on YouTube to suspect you might be mistaken on this
| point. Tesla intends to launch a cybertaxi fleet and their
| software looks like it will be good enough to get them there
| without lidar or additional sensors.
| E39M5S62 wrote:
| Tesla 'intends' to do a lot of things, but rarely seems to be
| able to actually DO them.
| fourseventy wrote:
| Ya, other than becoming the best selling EV company and
| revolutionizing the entire EV industry...
| jeffbee wrote:
| There are no Teslas that have ever taken a trip without an
| operator behind the wheel. The idea that there will be a
| near-future discontinuity after which a Tesla will be able to
| serve as a robotaxi is pretty ridiculous.
|
| I just watched the latest video from AIDRIVR on YouTube.
| AIDRIVR is a TSLA pumper-and-dumper who has dedicated their
| channel to uncritical praise of FSD. In the first third of
| the video FSD v12 runs two stop signs, once directly into
| oncoming traffic in a 1-way traffic control and once at a
| stop where the cross traffic does not stop. This stuff is not
| even a little bit ready for fully supervised operation.
| https://youtu.be/fpoXr_z_6a4?t=565
| m348e912 wrote:
| >This stuff is not even a little bit ready for fully
| supervised operation. https://youtu.be/fpoXr_z_6a4?t=565
|
| Thanks for sharing. I skimmed through the video and watched
| a fair amount of it. I got a different impression.
|
| I thought it was impressive how FSD 12 navigated narrow
| winding roads with parked cars and oncoming traffic and
| flaggers holding signs that alternate between stop and
| slow. My impression was while it's not perfect, it's a few
| iterations away from having very few situations that
| require disengagement. And keeping in mind that every
| incident of disengagement is a learning and improving
| moment for FSD, the following iterations of FSD will
| continue to get more impressive.
| donut_rider wrote:
| Just a timeline of how Musk predicts that FSD will be solved
| in the next year every year since 2015:
| https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/.
|
| It is one thing to cherry-pick flawless drives on a sunny day
| and upload it to YouTube while having someone behind the
| wheel ready to take over the glorified driving assistant
| system. It is another to run a commercial driverless service
| open to the public 24/7 in one of the biggest urban areas,
| knowing that riders will record everything, assuming accident
| liability, and keeping a nice safety record without someone
| behind the wheel.
| jeffbee wrote:
| > cherry-pick flawless drives on a sunny day
|
| Tesla FSD sucks extra bad on sunny days in fact, due to its
| basic optical systems.
| zellyn wrote:
| I think they do great! Except for the occasional stationary
| emergency vehicle, bridge pile, etc.
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/26/tesla-
| aut...
| Havoc wrote:
| Turns out infinite money, lawyers, lobbyists and engineering time
| gets you pretty far
| ddalex wrote:
| Funny how it didn't take Uber that far.
| Havoc wrote:
| Uber is barely even profitable let alone infinite anything
| amelius wrote:
| Side question: when Tesla finally gets FSD working, will I be
| able to use my Tesla to make money by using it as a taxi? Or will
| there be licensing issues? In other words, will I own it or not?
| skywhopper wrote:
| No need to worry about something that will never happen.
| pquki4 wrote:
| I would be more worried about liability issues before anything
| else.
|
| Also, I doubt there is a point in you "renting" your Tesla.
| Tesla the company has enough money to flood the road with their
| vehicles, and your vehicle is irrelevant. Have you heard any
| individual renting their personal Camry to a taxi company or a
| Uber driver?
| worik wrote:
| Isthere a foom full of Waymo employees watching over it all
| remotely and making the hard decisions?
| boulos wrote:
| Disclosure: I work for Waymo.
|
| No, there isn't. We do have a team of folks to support
| situations where we aren't confident and choose to "phone a
| friend". This recent blog post covers some of it in more
| detail:
|
| https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/
|
| Most importantly: at no point does someone remotely "drive" the
| vehicle. They can direct it to say "hey make a u-turn and go to
| this new point", but they aren't remotely driving.
| flutas wrote:
| > Most importantly: at no point does someone remotely "drive"
| the vehicle. They can direct it to say "hey make a u-turn and
| go to this new point", but they aren't remotely driving.
|
| This doesn't line up with _other_ statements made by Waymo
| though.
|
| That blog post as an example:
|
| > The Waymo Driver does not rely solely on the inputs it
| receives from the fleet response agent and it is in control
| of the vehicle at all times.
|
| Yet in an incident in January when a Waymo ran a red light
| and caused a moped to crash the narrative is
|
| > In January, an incident took place where a Waymo robotaxi
| incorrectly went through a red light due to an incorrect
| command from a remote operator, as reported by Waymo.
|
| So I'm curious, is it a case of "The Waymo Driver doesn't
| always follow road rules itself." or "Remote Ops can make a
| car run a red light against the Waymo Driver's programming."
|
| [0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2024/03/26/wa
| ymo-...
| tialaramex wrote:
| Judging from the red light incident, the Waymo Driver does
| not consider passing a red light to be a Never event, in
| the same way that say, hitting a pedestrian would be a
| Never event. So it's OK with being advised by a human that
| it needn't obey the red light whereas it wouldn't be OK
| with being told to just drive through cyclists.
|
| That makes a kind of sense, a human _shouldn 't_ need to
| run red lights but they do it more often than you'd like,
| whereas they _mustn 't_ hit pedestrians (although sadly
| they sometimes do). Just the other day I was watching video
| of a failed London Underground signal which is stuck at
| red, the driver knows this, and the signaller knows this,
| and nevertheless the signaller (who is in a position to
| know as they've got a board full of position data for
| trains in their sector) has verified that crossing this
| signal despite the danger aspect is safe.
|
| This happens so often (ie sometimes) that TFL has a
| recorded announcement to play to passengers when, as the
| driver, you're about to do this. The train, you see,
| doesn't know that what you're about to do is fine, so it's
| going to stop you. So as the announcement explains, the
| train will move forwards slowly, brake suddenly to a halt,
| and then after a moment proceed slowly again. The
| announcement suggests that passengers should sit down if
| able to do so. The driver having secured permissions from
| the signaller will drive forward ("at caution" ie slowly
| enough to stop short of any obstacle discovered), then the
| safety systems will detect the danger signal, braking the
| train to a halt, then the driver proceeds to drive slowly
| again because they already know why it stopped.
| grecy wrote:
| I've done it to get out the way of an emergency vehicle
| coming up behind me with full lights and sirens. It was
| kind of fun.
| tialaramex wrote:
| I don't know the law where you live, but in the UK this
| is illegal and the emergency vehicle _should_ have
| instead silenced sirens (the lights are left running) so
| as to avoid agitating you since you can 't do anything to
| help while you have no safe route.
|
| The reason is that you may make things worse by running a
| light, the people driving an emergency vehicle have in
| some cases trained specifically to run lights (although
| not all reasons they're driving under lights and sirens
| would justify doing so) but they aren't trained to make
| it safe for you to do the same so you should not.
| boulos wrote:
| For folks that are interested in the business specifically, we
| have some open roles listed at https://waymo.com/careers/ with
| the word Commercialization in the titles.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Real businesses make money. Waymo loses money hand over fist.
| rwmj wrote:
| Certainly true, but they have very large backers who are
| willing to pour money in until the technology is perfected. I
| wonder if there's an internet forum appropriate for discussing
| such businesses?
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > ... and made robo-taxis a real business
|
| Has it though? They've come an impressively long way to have
| 50,000 rides a week, but that needs to increase a thousand fold
| to justify the $6B of venture capital and $30B valuation. That's
| a lot of cars and a lot more work than it takes Uber to bring on
| another underpaid owner driver (Uber has 23 million rides per
| day)
| bitsage wrote:
| How scalable is this technology? From my experience at an AV
| company, every deployment site had to be mapped, and after
| deployment, sites still needed remote teleoperators to
| occasionally adjust waypoints and resolve stops.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The word "scalable" tends to be a shibboleth for people with
| certain unchangeable views on the industry. It's scalable in
| the sense that you can have vastly more cars than humans and
| the process to get them operating in a new area is fairly
| straightforward. It's not scalable in the sense of the company
| being fully automated so that every step can operate without
| human intervention, like virtually every other company on
| Earth.
| webel0 wrote:
| Waymo's relatively rapid geonet expansion suggests that they
| have either improved their mapping productivity substantially
| or gone fully map-less.
|
| I can't speak to their RVA operations.
| sowbug wrote:
| Waymo was smart to start with taxis. A self-driving car's
| competition is you, and of course you're an above-average driver.
| But a taxi's competition is the average Uber driver. People can
| be more objective about that low bar.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| Another article praising degenerate AI companies that kill/injure
| people, yuppie tech bros unite!
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| For the last ten years or so, there's been an argument on this
| forum (and others) about whether cutting safety in the pursuit of
| an earlier rollout is a good thing. If it's beneficial to
| humanity, then a few deaths now is massively outweighed by the
| many deaths avoided by earlier rollout of this tech, or so the
| argument goes.
|
| This seems like a good time to point out that the argument makes
| too many assumptions to be useful, like that moving fast and
| breaking things will in fact lead to faster progress overall. In
| the case of robotaxis, the group moving carefully and
| deliberately is the clear leader, and many competitors who took
| the faster/less careful approaches have shuttered along the way.
| When uber's self-driving division killed someone, for example, it
| didn't lead to an earlier arrival of self-driving.
|
| This is relevant to all sorts of business stuff where we're
| always asked to move faster than we can reliably move. It's
| astoundingly easy to forget that sometimes bad rollouts can
| shutter a project even worse than slow rollouts.
| 1024core wrote:
| I wouldn't call it a "real business" just yet.
|
| I've heard they do 50,000 rides per week in SF, LA, Phoenix
| combined.
|
| Assuming they make $20/ride, that's still $1M/week, or $52M/year.
| I'm sure they spend in Billions/year.
|
| They would have to scale out to every major city in America and
| add another 10000 cars before they can turn a profit.
| topher6345 wrote:
| Waymos also follow traffic laws with regards to loading-unloading
| zones, which is inconvenient for the passenger.
|
| Compare to a rideshare driver that will often drop you off right
| in front of your destination, even if that is an illegal
| maneuver.
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