[HN Gopher] Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in ...
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Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and
Phoenix
Author : nharada
Score : 274 points
Date : 2025-11-12 16:06 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| NullHypothesist wrote:
| This is a huge sign of confidence that they think they can do
| this safely and at scale... Freeways might appear "easy" on the
| surface, but there are all sorts of long tail edge-cases that
| make them insanely tricky to do confidently without a driver.
| This will unlock a lot for them with all of the smaller US cities
| (where highways are essential) they've announced plans for over
| the next year or so.
| NullHypothesist wrote:
| Looks like they've opened up SJC Airport, too! SFO imminent?
| terminalshort wrote:
| Freeways are easier than surface streets. The reason they held
| off allowing highways is because Waymo wants to minimize the
| probability of death for PR purposes. They figure they can get
| away with a lot of wrecks as long as they don't kill people.
| jordanb wrote:
| There's also the risk of a phantom breaking event causing a
| big pileup. The PR of a Waymo causing a large cascading
| accident would be horrible.
| xnx wrote:
| Do Waymos phantom brake? Given the number of trips hey do I
| would imagine there would be a ton of videos if that was
| happening.
| razingeden wrote:
| they brake to "suss out" certain things, that ive
| noticed:
|
| construction workers, delivery vehicles, traffic cones..
| nothing unreasonable for it to approach with caution,
| brake for, and move around.
|
| the waymo usually gets about 2 feet away from a utility
| truck and then sits there confused for awhile before it
| goes away.
|
| it usually gets very _close_ to these hazards before
| making that maneuver.
|
| it seems like having a flashing utility strobe really
| messes with it and it gets extra cautious and weird
| around those. now, it should be respectful of emergency
| lights but-
|
| i would see a problem here if it decided to do this on a
| freeway , five feet away from a pulled over cop or
| someone changing a tire.
|
| it sure does spazz out and sit there for a long time over
| the emergency lights before it decides what to do
|
| i really wish there was a third party box we could wire
| into strobes (or the hazard light circuit) that would
| universally tell an autonomous car "hey im over here
| somewhere you may not be expecting me , signaling for
| attention."
| jordanb wrote:
| > sits there confused for awhile before it goes away.
|
| Probably what you're witnessing is the car sitting in
| exception state until a human remote driver gets assigned
| potato3732842 wrote:
| This. Stop in a dumb way and a garbage truck bumps you on a
| city street and it's no big deal. Applying a bunch of brake
| at the wrong time and you could easily cause a newsworthy
| sized (and therefore public scrutiny sized) accident.
|
| The real public isn't an internet comment section. Having
| your PR people spew statements about "well, other people
| have an obligation to use safe following distances" is
| unlikely to get you off the hook.
| bluGill wrote:
| Only because most drivers are tailgating and so if someone
| touches the brakes everyone needs to do a panic stop just
| in case. If people maintained a safe following distance at
| all times there would be space to see the lights and
| determine that no action is needed (or more likely you just
| take your foot off the gas but don't flash your brakes thus
| not cascading).
|
| Of course the above needs about 6 times as many lanes as
| any city has. When you realize those massive freeways in
| Houston are what Des Moines needs you start to see how
| badly cars scale in cities.
| repsilat wrote:
| "Easier" is probably the right one-word generalization, but
| worth noting that there are quite different challenges.
| Stopping distance is substantially greater, so "dead halt"
| isn't as much of a panacea as it is in dense city
| environments. And you need to have good perception of things
| further away, especially in front of you, which affects the
| sensors you use.
| andy99 wrote:
| Also on surface roads you can basically stop in the middle
| of the street and be annoying but not particularly
| dangerous. You can't just stop safely dead in the middle of
| a freeway.
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| It sounds like you are saying freeways are easier than
| surface streets if you don't care about killing a reasonably
| small number of people during testing.
|
| Really it's a common difficulty with utilitarianism. Tesla
| says "we will kill a small number of people with our self
| driving beta, but it is impossible to develop a self driving
| car without killing a few people in accidents, because cars
| crash, and overall the program will save a much larger number
| of lives than the number lost."
|
| And then it comes out that the true statement is "it is
| slightly more expensive to develop a self driving car without
| killing a few people in accidents" and the moral calculus
| tilts a bit
| bluGill wrote:
| The more important question is how many people are killed
| by non-autonomous cars in the same situation. It is
| inevitable that someone will be killed by a self driving
| car sometime - but we already know lots of people are
| killed by cars. If you kill less people getting autonomous
| rolled out fast than human drivers would that is good, but
| if you are killing more people in the short term that is
| bad (even if you eventually get better)
| terminalshort wrote:
| It's not just slightly more expensive. And you have to
| consider substitution effect. If you take the more
| expensive route and it takes 10 years longer to deploy,
| then there will have been another 400K car collision deaths
| in just the US, and over 10 million in the world in those
| 10 years that could have potentially been saved. So was the
| delay for the safer product worth it? The only reasonable
| answer to this question is "I don't know" because you can't
| predict how much safer the expensive system will be and how
| much longer it will take.
| CPLX wrote:
| I mean, if you define "easier" as "less likely to involve
| death," then freeways are not easier. And I'm pretty sure
| that's a good way to define "easier" for something like this.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Waymo (prev. Chauffeur) were cruising freeways long before they
| were doing city streets. Problem was that you can't do revenue
| autonomous service with freeway-only driving.
|
| The real reason I see for not running freeways until now is
| that the physical operational domain of for street-level
| autonomous operations was not large enough to warrant
| validating highway driving to their current standard.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Freeways might appear "easy" on the surface, but there are
| all sorts of long tail edge-cases that make them insanely
| tricky to do confidently without a driver
|
| Maybe my memory is failing me, but I seem to remember people
| saying the exact opposite here on HN when Tesla first
| announced/showed off their "self-driving but not really self-
| driving" features, saying it'll be very easy to get working on
| the highways, but then everything else is the tricky stuff.
| notatoad wrote:
| the difficult part of the highways is the interchanges, not
| the straight shots between interchanges. and iirc, tesla
| didn't do interchanges at the time people were criticizing
| them for only doing the easiest part of self-driving.
| xnx wrote:
| Highways are on average a much more structured and consistent
| environment, but every single weird thing (pedestrians,
| animals, debris, flooding) that occurs on streets also
| happens on highways. When you're doing as many trips and
| miles as Waymo, once-in-a-lifetime exceptions happen every
| day.
|
| On highways the kinetic energy is much greater (Waymo's
| reaction time is superhuman, but the car can't brake any
| harder.) and there isn't the option to fail safe (stop in
| place) like their is on normal roads.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Those constraints apply to humans too. So it seems likely
| that:
|
| - it's easier to get to human levels of safety on freeways
| then on streets
|
| - it's much harder to get to an order of magnitude better
| than humans on freeways than it is on streets
|
| Freeways are significantly safer than streets when humans
| are driving, so "as good as humans" may be acceptable
| there.
| GloamingNiblets wrote:
| I don't have any specific knowledge about Waymo's stack,
| but I can confidently say Waymo's reaction time is likely
| poorer than an attentive human. By the time sensor data
| makes it through the perception stack, prediction/planning
| stack, and back to the controls stack, you're likely
| looking at >500ms. Waymos have the advantage of consistency
| though (they never text and drive).
| blinding-streak wrote:
| It's actually a really interesting topic to think about.
| Depending on the situation, there might be some
| indecision in a human driver that slows the process down.
| Whereas the Waymo probably has a decisive answer to
| whatever problem is facing it.
|
| I don't really know the answers for sure here, but
| there's probably a gray area where humans struggle more
| than the Waymo.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > but I can confidently say [...] you're likely looking
| at >500ms
|
| That sounds outrageous if true. Very strange to
| acknowledge you don't actually have any specific
| knowledge about this thing before doing a grand claim,
| not just "confidently", but also label it as such.
|
| They've been publishing some stuff around latency
| (https://waymo.com/search?q=latency) but I'm not finding
| any concrete numbers, but I'd be very surprised if it was
| higher than the reaction time for a human, which seems to
| be around 400-600ms typically.
| GloamingNiblets wrote:
| My experience is from another prominent AV company; I do
| not have Waymo insider knowledge.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Human reaction time is very difficult to average
| meaningfully. It ranges anywhere from a few hundred
| milliseconds on the low end to multiple seconds. The low
| end of that range consists of snap reactions by alert
| drivers, and the high end is common with distracted
| driving.
|
| 400-500ms is a fairly normal baseline for AV systems in
| my experience.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Human reaction time is very difficult to average
| meaningfully
|
| Indeed, my previously stated number was taken from here:
| https://news.mit.edu/2019/how-fast-humans-react-car-
| hazards-...
|
| > MIT researchers have found an answer in a new study
| that shows humans need about 390 to 600 milliseconds to
| detect and react to road hazards, given only a single
| glance at the road -- with younger drivers detecting
| hazards nearly twice as fast as older drivers.
|
| But it'll be highly variable not just between individuals
| but state of mind, attentiveness and a whole lot of other
| things.
| crazygringo wrote:
| What gives you that confidence?
|
| You're quite wrong. It tends to be more like 100-200 ms,
| which is generally significantly _faster_ than a human 's
| reaction.
|
| People have lots of fears about self-driving cars, but
| their reaction time shouldn't be on the list.
| GloamingNiblets wrote:
| The better part of a decade as a SWE at another AV
| company. In practice the latency is a not a concern, I
| was just sharing some trivia.
| overfeed wrote:
| Waymo "sees" further - including behind cars - and has
| persistent 360-degree awareness, wheres humans have to
| settle for time-division of the fovea and are limited to
| line-of-sight from driver's seat. Humans only have an
| advantage if the event is visible from the cabin, and
| they were already looking at it (i.e. it's in front of
| them) for every other scenario, Waymo has better
| perception + reaction times. "They just came out of
| nowhere" happens less for Waymo vehicles with their
| current sensor suite.
| viftodi wrote:
| Even if we assume this to be true, waymos have the
| advantage of more sensors and less blind spots.
|
| Unlike humans they can also sense what's behind the car
| or other spots not directly visible to a human. They can
| also measure distance very precisely due to lidars (and
| perhaps radars too?)
|
| A human reacts to the red light when a car breaks,
| without that it will take you way more time due to stereo
| vision to realize that a car ahead was getting closer to
| you.
|
| And I am pretty sure when the car detects certain
| obstacles fast approaching at certain distances, or if a
| car ahesd of you stopped suddenly or deer jumped or w/e
| it breaks directly it doesn't need neural networks
| processing those are probably low level failsafes that
| are very fast to compute and definitely faster than what
| a human could react to
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > I don't have any specific knowledge about Waymo's
| stack, but I can confidently say Waymo's reaction time is
| likely poorer than an attentive human.
|
| Wait, so basically, "I don't know anything about this
| subject, but I'm confident regardless"?
| jerlam wrote:
| One of the first high-profile Tesla fatalities was on a
| highway, where the vehicle misunderstood a left exit and
| crashed into a concrete barrier.
|
| https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?g.
| ..
| zipy124 wrote:
| Highway is easier, but if something goes wrong the chance of
| death is pretty high. This is bad PR and could get you badly
| regulated if you fuck it up.
| jfim wrote:
| It's easier to get from zero to something that works on
| divided highways, since there's only lanes, other vehicles,
| and a few signs to care about. No cross traffic, cyclists,
| pedestrians, parked cars, etc.
|
| One thing that's hard with highways is the fact that vehicles
| move faster, so in a tenth of a second at 65 mph, a car has
| moved 9.5 feet. So if say a big rock fell off a truck onto
| the highway, to detect it early and proactively brake or
| change lanes to avoid it, it would need to be detected at
| quite a long distance, which demands a lot from sensors (eg.
| how many pixels/LIDAR returns do you get at say 300+ feet on
| an object that's smaller than a car, and how much do you need
| to detect it as an obstruction).
|
| But those also happen quite infrequently, so a vehicle that
| doesn't handle road debris (or deer or rare obstructions) can
| work with supervision and appear to work autonomously, but
| one that's fully autonomous can't skip those scenarios.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _remember people saying the exact opposite_
|
| It was a common but bad hypothesis.
|
| "If you had asked me in 2018, when I first started working in
| the AV industry, I would've bet that driverless trucks would
| be the first vehicle type to achieve a million-mile
| driverless deployment. Aurora even pivoted their entire
| company to trucking in 2020, believing it to be easier than
| city driving.
|
| ...
|
| Stopping in lane becomes much more dangerous with the
| possibility of a rear-end collision at high speed. All
| stopping should be planned well in advance, ideally exiting
| at the next ramp, or at least driving to the closest shoulder
| with enough room to park.
|
| This greatly increases the scope of edge cases that need to
| be handled autonomously and at freeway speeds.
|
| ...
|
| The features that make freeways simpler -- controlled access,
| no intersections, one-way traffic -- also make 'interesting'
| events more rare. This is a double-edged sword. While the
| simpler environment reduces the number of software features
| to be developed, it also increases the iteration time and
| cost.
|
| During development, 'interesting' events are needed to train
| data-hungry ML models. For validation, each new software
| version to be qualified for driverless operation needs to
| encounter a minimum number of 'interesting' events before
| comparisons to a human safety level can have statistical
| significance. Overall, iteration becomes more expensive when
| it takes more vehicle-hours to collect each event."
|
| https://kevinchen.co/blog/autonomous-trucking-harder-than-
| ri...
| richardubright wrote:
| I think the key is, it's easy to get "self-driving" where the
| car will hand off to the driver working on highways. "Follow
| the lines, go forward, don't get hit". But having it
| DRIVERLESS is a different beast, and the failure states are
| very different than those in surface street driving.
| lumens wrote:
| Perhaps more a reaction to pressure from Tesla; the latest FSD
| builds show full autonomy is coming very soon. Without highway
| driving, Waymo would quickly be seen as a distant second in the
| race when the safety driver is removed from Robotaxis in Austin
| (supposedly before EOY 2025).
| eloncuck wrote:
| You Tesla/Elon stans crack me up. "2 more weeks" has been the
| claim for literal decades at this point.
| lumens wrote:
| Truly curious - have you tried it recently?
| eloncuck wrote:
| Daily. I'm still unable to leave my culdesac without
| phantom leaves causing phantom braking.
|
| There was a time when I believed in the hype, I'm less
| skeptical than most. But the evidence now is
| incontrovertible.
| lumens wrote:
| I assume this is not a HW4 vehicle?
|
| I am empathetic to the disappointment of older vehicle
| owners who have been promised this capability for years
| and still don't see it (because their hardware just can't
| -- and the hardware upgrade isn't coming either).
|
| That said, the new Y with 14.1.x really does do as
| claimed.
| eloncuck wrote:
| 2024 MY with HW4. I've been through all the shenanigans,
| updates, sending logs, etc etc. I'm done with it, and
| it'll take a lot of evidence to convince me that people
| reporting it's great don't have either a financial
| interest in TSLA, poor memory, or the easiest daily
| route.
| senordevnyc wrote:
| These threads always give me deja vu. I've been reading
| these exact comments for a decade. Only the version
| numbers change.
|
| But yes, I'm sure any day now.
| wstrange wrote:
| I have HW4, and have tried FSD with every major release.
|
| It works brilliantly, 99.5% of the time. The issue is
| that the failure mode is catastrophic. Like getting
| confused with the lane marking and driving off the
| shoulder. And the complete inability to read construction
| zone signs (blasting through a 50 KM zone at 100 KM).
|
| I'm deeply skeptical that the current sensor suite and
| hardware is going to have enough compute power to safely
| drive without supervision.
|
| It will no doubt improve, but until Tesla steps up and
| assumes liability for any accident, it's just not "full
| self driving".
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| This is how the Tesla superfans treat every single new
| FSD version.
|
| FSD 18 is out, 17 is garbage for babies, 18 is amazing!
| Wait, 19 just released, why are you still talking about
| 18, that shit was never gonna work, it's 19 that's nearly
| at unsupervised driving! Wait a second, 20 just came
| out...
| boulos wrote:
| Not at all. We've been working on this for a while, and we're
| now comfortable with the reliability bar we've hit to begin a
| gradual rollout to the public. As people said, this has been
| years in the making.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| "Ignore the previous eighteen wildly off predictions; _this_
| time we got it for sure! "
|
| Note, in July of this year, Musk predicted robotaxi service
| for half the country by the end of 2025. It's November now
| and they haven't even removed the safety monitors, in any
| city!
| sjducb wrote:
| Slow roads are easier because you can rely on a simple
| emergency breaking system for safety. You have a radar that
| looks directly in front of the car and slams on the breaks if
| you're about to crash. This prevents almost all accidents below
| 35mph.
|
| The emergency breaking system gives you a lot of room for error
| in the rest of the system.
|
| Once you're going faster than 35mph this approach no longer
| works. You have lots of objects on the pavement that are false
| positives for the emergency breaking system so you have to turn
| it off.
| ddp26 wrote:
| I agree, but it's funny to think that Project Chauffeur (as it
| was known then) was doing completely driverless freeway
| circuits in the bay area as far back as 2012! Back when they
| couldn't do the simplest things with traffic lights.
|
| I think anyone back then would be totally shocked that urban
| and suburban driving launched to the public before freeway
| driving.
| toast0 wrote:
| When it started, from what I've heard, the design goal was
| for part-time self-driving. In that case, let the human
| driver do the more variable things on surface streets and the
| computer do the consistent things on highways and prompt the
| user to pay attention 5 miles before the exit. They found
| that the model of part time automation wasn't feasible,
| because humans couldn't consistently take control in the
| timeframea needed.
|
| So then they pivoted to full time automation with a safe stop
| for exceptions. That's not useful to start with highway
| driving. There are some freeway routed mass transit lines,
| but for the most part people don't want to be picked up and
| dropped off at the freeway. In many parts of freeways,
| there's not a good place to stop and wait for assistance, and
| automated driving will need more assistance than normal
| driving. So it made a lot f sense to reduce scope to surface
| street driving.
| philistine wrote:
| If you understand physics, it's easy. When you double the
| speed, you quadruple the kinetic energy. So you're definitely
| going to do slower speeds first, even if it's harder to
| compute.
| kappi wrote:
| This is correct. Freeways have lot of edge cases of hitting
| random objects and it becomes serious issue. Check the youtube
| video of bearded Tesla whose car hit a random metal object
| making them replace the entire battery pack.
| dlsfjke wrote:
| Ahh yes, the US tech sector, a universally benevolent force
| known for its slow pace due to lack of confidence from an over
| abundant concern for safety finally showing some confidence in
| their product roll outs.
| creer wrote:
| Isn't really the main problem, the Waymo "let's just stop right
| here" current failure mode? Which really is not ideal on city
| streets either. Hopefully they have been working on solving
| that.
| dekhn wrote:
| This reminds me of the time I was driving on 101 south of SF
| and saw a sea lion flopping across the road
| (https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/seal-otter-on-
| freeway...). It took my brain quite some time to accept that I
| was seeing what I was seeing. Felt like a real edge case.
| asdff wrote:
| There's videos of waymos absolutely decking delivery robots
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Robot on robot violence.
| bronco21016 wrote:
| I don't live in a served market yet so I haven't yet tried Waymo.
| However I have used SuperCruise and BlueCruise from GM and Ford.
|
| What I've noticed from those other systems is that a human in the
| loop makes the system so much more comfortable. I've had times
| where I can see the red lights ahead and the system is not yet
| slowing because the car immediately in front of me isn't slowing
| yet. It's unsettling when the automated system brakes at the last
| moment.
|
| Because of this experience the highway has been the line in the
| sand for me personally. Surface streets where you're rarely
| traveling more than 45 mph are far less likely to lead to
| catastrophic injury vs a mistake at 70 mph.
|
| I don't think Waymo is necessarily playing fast and loose with
| their tech but it will be interesting how this plays out. A few
| fatal accidents could be a fatal PR blow to their roll out. I'm
| also very curious to see how the system will handle human
| takeover. Stopping in the middle of a freeway is extremely
| dangerous. Other drivers can have a lapse in attention and
| getting smoked by a semi traveling 65 mph is not going to be a
| good day.
| huevosabio wrote:
| In my experience, Waymo's driving style is more comfortable
| than most humans.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I'm not sure about Supercruise (although I am pretty sure its
| the same), but I know blue cruise is only available in places
| where there are no stop lights, and that is pretty much 95%
| interstates only. Supercruise and blue cruise are way under
| Tesla's FSD, and Tesla is a bit of a ways under Waymo.
|
| You may be thinking of the ACC these cars offer, which is a
| standard feature, but different than their premium "self-
| driving" services they offer.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| Honestly you need to try Waymo. It's in a league of its own.
| bronco21016 wrote:
| I would love to. Just haven't traveled to any of their
| markets yet. They've announced expansion to a market near my
| home and if I get the opportunity I will absolutely give it a
| shot.
| jjfoooo4 wrote:
| Waymo is in another league compared to every other autpilot
| system out there - I've used Tesla, Toyota, and Cruise before
| it got shut down.
|
| The political climate is VERY suspicious of autonomous
| vehicles, but they most serious incident I can really recall
| was the recent one where a car ran over a cat. You can see the
| reaction here:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/cats/comments/1omortk/the_shrine_to...
|
| If the biggest black mark against the company is running over a
| cat on the street at 11:40 PM (according to Waymo, after it
| darted under the car), I feel pretty good.
| advisedwang wrote:
| Waymo isn't relying only on speed matching the car in front, so
| your experience with SuperCruise and BlueCruise doesn't
| extrapolate to Waymo.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > However I have used SuperCruise and BlueCruise from GM and
| Ford.
|
| We had Waymo and Cruise in SF at the same time for a while and
| by god Cruise was shit and felt unsafe. Waymo is year ahead of
| Cruise and better in every manner.
| moandcompany wrote:
| SuperCruise and BlueCruise are technology names from GM and
| Ford for assisted driving in their car products, and not
| synonomous with Cruise the company providing ride share
| services.
| s1mon wrote:
| How will Waymos handle speed limits on highways? In the city,
| they seem to stick to the rules. A large percentage of drivers in
| the bay area, including non-emergency police, drive well above
| the legal limit regularly. Unless Waymo sticks to the slow lane,
| it's going to be a weird issue.
| mkinsella wrote:
| In the few times I've seen a Waymo on the freeway in the Bay
| Area, they have always been in the slow lane and driving 55-65
| MPH.
| jeffbee wrote:
| If you watch the videos that insiders have been posting, it
| never exceeds the speed limits.
|
| If you watch the videos more carefully, you will notice the
| people who speed by at 85 MPH later enter the screen again,
| because that is the nature of freeway traffic.
|
| I predict that a few hundred of these on the road will
| measurably improve safety and decrease severe congestion by
| being that one sane driver that defuses stop-and-go
| catastrophes. In fact I think CHP should just contract with
| them to pace 101 in waves.
| aworks wrote:
| I was on 101 during evening rush hour, speeding along like
| everyone. Then I saw brake lights from a Waymo. Later
| followed by all the surrounding cars. Interesting that it was
| the first to detect a slowdown.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| First to apply brake, not first to detect.
|
| Normal human drivers tend to lift off the gas and only
| brake when they decide that just lifting won't do.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Normal human drivers tend to lift off the gas and only
| brake when they decide that just lifting won 't do_
|
| Don't EVs light up the brake lights when regenerative
| braking engages?
| macintux wrote:
| As best as I can tell, not universally. I'm rather
| obsessive about watching brake lights around me; my state
| doesn't have safety inspections, so I try my best to
| alert other drivers when they have brake lights out.
|
| I've definitely observed Teslas coming to a halt, and the
| brake lights only kick on at the very end. I don't know
| how widespread the problem is, but it's very annoying.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yes this unfortunately varies by make and model. My Honda
| pretty much hits the lights whenever the vehicle
| decelerates. Others can come to a dead halt without the
| lights.
| gs17 wrote:
| > In fact I think CHP should just contract with them to pace
| 101 in waves.
|
| "Waves" are really what we would want them to prevent:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_wave
|
| The autonomous cars can prevent these waves from forming,
| which would get people to their destinations faster than
| speeding.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The omnipresent threat of being splattered by someone who's
| weaving lanes or distracted by their phone and not expecting
| to see a vehicle doing 20mph (!!!!) below traffic speed is
| exactly what I want when I'm in a taxi. /s
|
| If you actually thought adoption would benefit us on it's own
| rather than seeing it a roundabout way to enforce rules that
| you want to see enforced without buy in from the public you'd
| want these cars to behave in a way that makes it easier for
| them to exist in typical traffic.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Luckily this won't be a problem in Los Angeles, because traffic
| prevents you from ever going over the speed limit.
| nradov wrote:
| It's hilarious to see people in LA buying sports cars. Like
| even if you're willing to risk a speeding ticket you won't be
| able to drive faster than the traffic in front of you. Just a
| status symbol, I guess.
| btian wrote:
| There are many race tracks in LA area.
| kirubakaran wrote:
| To the extent that it's rational, it's more about
| acceleration than velocity
| djoldman wrote:
| It's about acceleration + other things. If the other
| things didn't matter, they would just drive a Tesla Model
| S Plaid with 2 second 0-60mph.
| sib wrote:
| A sports car on the roads through the Malibu hills is very
| fun...
| astrange wrote:
| But not as much as knowledge.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GIwTG8V-Ko
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| There are car clubs that go on drives in the twisty santa
| monica mountains and san gabriel mountains.
| ojr wrote:
| traffic in LA never got back to pre-pandemic levels, maybe
| during the Olympics it will other than that after 9pm until
| 6am there's no one on the road, which is horrible for
| Ridesharing drivers, the demand is less and being taken by
| Waymo
| sib wrote:
| Have you driven in LA? Traffic speed is generally bimodal:
| either stuck in traffic jam or easily 15 mph above the limit.
| (Source: live in LA, drive regularly.)
| toast0 wrote:
| While young and stupid, I did 100 mph on the 710 once.
| Driving home from work at 12:30 am on Monday gives
| opportunity for lots of speed. There's no traffic at that
| time of day. It _was_ many years ago, and traffic grows with
| population, but still, I can 't imagine there's much traffic
| then; I visit the area at least once a year for about a week
| and there's always some opportunities during the trip to
| travel above the speed limit, even though I'm not out very
| late anymore.
| edm0nd wrote:
| I remember my buddy telling me it would sometimes take him 2
| hours to go a few miles in LA traffic and sometimes he would
| just walk to work instead because he'd get there faster.
| asdff wrote:
| 2 hours for a few miles is pure hyperbole. In my experience
| bad highway traffic moves at like 20mph.
| rkomorn wrote:
| It used to take me 50 minutes to go 11 miles on 101/110
| from studio city to downtown LA, so 20mph seems
| optimistic.
|
| Heck, it wasn't even all that rare for it to take me 45
| minutes to go 5 miles on 101 from Rengstorff Ave to
| Willow Rd in the Bay Area in 6pm rush hour just because
| of the exit.
|
| It even once took me 2h to make it from Candlestick Park
| to the 101 after an NFL game.
|
| So yeah, maybe 2 hours for a few miles isn't quite right,
| but I've experienced daily counterexamples to your 20mph
| number too.
| circuit10 wrote:
| As someone who doesn't drive but has done a UK theory test -
| aren't you supposed to stick to the "slow lane" (no matter how
| fast you're going) unless you're overtaking? And that's why
| it's not actually called the "fast lane" but the "passing
| lane". So I don't see why you would be in the passing lane
| unless you're going faster than others anyway. And there are
| plenty of lorries and coaches (trucks and buses in US terms?)
| that are physically limited to below the speed limit anyway
|
| Though I've heard people treat it differently in the US
| jjfoooo4 wrote:
| Yes. People do in fact safely drive the speed limit.
|
| If "we'll have too many cars on the freeway following the
| speed limit" ranks as a serious concern, I think we've really
| lost the plot.
|
| I recently drove by a fatal accident that had just happened
| on the freeway. A man on the street had been ripped in half,
| and his body was lying on the road. I can't imagine the scene
| is all that unlike the 40 thousand other US road deaths that
| happen every year.
|
| As a driver I'm willing to accept some minor inconvenience to
| improve the situation. As a rider I trust Waymo's more than
| human drivers.
| iteria wrote:
| It depends on where you are. There was a protest in in
| Atlanta about the speed limit. What did they do? They got
| in every. Single. Lane. As did the speed limit. This backed
| up traffic for miles. It stopped commercial delivery and
| had ramifications for entire area. The protesters were
| arrested. For going the legal limit. The speed limit did
| not change, but there is a reason why it's never enforced.
|
| I've lived in a couple of places where going the speed
| limit is a whole problem that can cascade outside of just
| yourself. There is an argument to be made that perhaps then
| the speed limit shouldn't be that low, but in driving
| safety is far more important than legality. It will be
| interesting to see how Waymo handles these realities when
| it gets to those areas.
| robocat wrote:
| I'd really love to see some good statistics on the risks
| of speeding on motorways.
|
| I often wonder about laws that are ostensibly there to
| prevent dangerous actions, about whether they actually
| help prevent dangerous driving.
|
| This guy analyses tailgating:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6n_lR09sjoU Awesome
| software although he seems biased (e.g. no mention of
| pedestrians), but he does say that tailgating is much
| more dangerous than speeding.
|
| I'm interested whether cameras will start to catch
| dangerous drivers. I regularly seeing drivers do very
| dangerous things. Yet we have no easy way to train them
| (for those that care but are unaware), or catch them (for
| the antisocial that don't care).
| jjfoooo4 wrote:
| I mean, isn't the most common reason people tailgate is
| that they're frustrated that a slow driver is in a lane
| they want to use to drive fast in?
| bluGill wrote:
| Not a slow driver in most cases, many slow drivers - all
| who want to go faster but cannot. There is just so much
| traffic that you can't go faster, and neither can the
| person in front of you.
|
| I used to drive 20 under all the time (I achieved 57mpg
| once doing that) - but since this was an empty rural
| highway the few cars that were around saw me well in
| advance and moved over and passed without a problem.
| Yizahi wrote:
| First of all, while I hear about that protest first time,
| I'm 99% sure that they were not fines for driving under
| speed limit, but because of the unreasonable obstruction
| of the left lanes. This is prohibited probably in all
| countries, regardless of the limits in use.
|
| Second, it is a widely known issue, that a slower mowing
| car is causing ripple-like delays far from the car
| itself. For example when a police car is driving inside
| the traffic flow. But if most of the cars are following
| the rules, like 95% of them, then one law abiding Waymo
| would fit just fine. In EU, with the deluge of speed
| traps and mobile patrols, most of the cars are driving
| under the limit, and honestly it feels fine. I'm
| originally from a country where +20 above was like a
| norm, and fast cars were +40 or more, so adjusting to EU
| took some effort. But now I don't even feel the need to
| speed, especially if it is 140km/h highway (86 m/h)
| tfehring wrote:
| You're correct. There are people in the US who drive in the
| passing lane without passing, but most consider that a bad
| practice, as it makes roads both less efficient and less
| safe.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i think this is a state by state cultural difference
| maxerickson wrote:
| If there are vehicles going slow due to capability, you are
| pretty likely to be in an area where traffic density means
| that there's lots of vehicles in all the available lanes.
|
| Plenty of people do not follow the rules about staying to the
| right.
| toast0 wrote:
| The slow lane and passing lane dichotomy makes sense in a
| rural highway with two lanes in your direction.
|
| It makes less sense in an urban environment with 5 or more
| lanes in your direction. Vehicles will be traveling at
| varying speeds in all lanes, ideally with a monotonic
| gradient, but it just doesn't happen, and it's unlikely to.
|
| In California, large trucks generally have a lower speed
| limit (however many trucks are not speed governed and do
| exceed the truck limit and sometimes the car limit) and lane
| restrictions on large highways. Waymo may do well if it tends
| toward staying in the lanes where trucks are allowed as those
| tend to flow closer to posted car speed limits. But sometimes
| there's left exits, and sometimes traffic flow is really poor
| on many right lanes because of upcoming exits. And during
| commute time, I think the HOV lane would be preferred; taxis
| are generally eligible for the HOV lane even when only the
| driver is present, but I don't know about self-driving with a
| single or no occupant.
| circuit10 wrote:
| Isn't the situation you're describing where speeds vary due
| to queues going to be in heavy traffic where cars aren't
| getting close to the speed limit anyway?
|
| (also it's kind of amazing that 5 parallel lanes is
| considered normal in the US... I think the most I've ever
| personally seen in the UK is 4 and that's only on very
| major routes, and we don't have any exits on the wrong side
| of the motorway)
| toast0 wrote:
| > Isn't the situation you're describing where speeds vary
| due to queues going to be in heavy traffic where cars
| aren't getting close to the speed limit anyway?
|
| Not necessarily. I've seen things like the left two lanes
| at free flow (speed limit or above) and the right two
| lanes at full congestion (~ 10 mph), and the middle
| lane(s) somewhere in between. But then you also have
| sometimes where the left lane is only doing 60 for some
| reason, but the next two lanes are at or above the speed
| limits. It's a complex system.
|
| Wrong side exits for interchanges between highways are
| common, depending on site details and relative flows.
| When there's congestion on a left exit, you then get
| situations where the right lanes are flowing faster than
| the left lanes (sometimes _much_ faster). I don 't think
| interchanges as left exits are necessarily awful.
|
| Wrong side exits to surface streets have been discouraged
| for new construction for quite some time, but there's a
| fair number of "legacy exits" in some areas. They're not
| so bad when there's only two lanes in your direction; but
| when there's been highway expansion, it can get pretty
| hard to use. And inevitably rebuilding to current
| standards would causes a lot of confusion and delay, it's
| postponed. My exemplar of the worst left exits, the
| Milwaukee Zoo Interchange, was rebuilt in 2012-2022 and I
| can't find pictures of what it was before, but you had a
| sizable interchange with right and left exits to other
| highways, combined with several surface street exits and
| entrances on both sides, and I think two through lanes.
| It was a mess.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| 5 each way is decently big imo but it really depends on
| the area. A freeway near a really large metro that's
| particular car-dependent can easily go higher.
| __s wrote:
| In Ontario we have lots of 3 lane highways (we'll ignore
| Toronto area, where speed is limited by traffic anyways).
| What happens is that trucks & people getting on/off exits are
| in right most lane. Middle lane is everyone else, going 10-20
| km/h over speed limit. Leftmost lane is people passing, or
| the maniacs going over 150 km/h while relying on their map
| system to alert them of highway patrol
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| You're framing the problem space in a way that doesn't match
| major freeways in the US at all. There's a bunch of lanes,
| and you need drivers spread out across all of them, otherwise
| traffic would slow to a standstill.
| mixedbit wrote:
| With self driving cars population on roads increasing, a side
| effect can be that all traffic will be shaped towards staying
| within the speed limits. With more cars staying within the
| limits, breaking the limits becomes more difficult.
| boulos wrote:
| We comply with the posted speed limits. Definitely on 101 near
| San Francisco where there are 55 mph zones (and maybe even 50
| mph?) it's pretty noticeable. But we do hug the right lanes.
| wagwang wrote:
| going the speed limit is actually a good thing, even on the 101
| saalweachter wrote:
| It always blows my mind how aghast some people are at the idea
| of _driving the speed limit_. How dangerous they make it sound!
|
| My dudes, I have been driving the speed limit, even on
| freeways, for decades.
|
| Nothing bad happens. Your car doesn't explode. You don't
| instantly create thousand-car pileups.
|
| You get passed slightly more often than when you are speeding.
| You pass fewer cars. You get to your destination a few minutes
| later.
|
| A car going the speed limit on the freeway is not a problem.
| m0llusk wrote:
| All of the serious problems I have seen with Waymo navigation so
| far have had to do with busy urban streets. Trying to make use of
| blocked non through way alleys, turning around in driveways when
| other vehicles are exiting, coming to a complete dead stop on
| busy one way streets, failing to brake predictably for
| pedestrians walking into lanes, suddenly backing up a half block
| from stopped at a red light in order to change lanes, and so on.
| Freeways are a simplified driving environment that should suit
| current technologies well.
| tanseydavid wrote:
| >> suddenly backing up a half block from stopped at a red light
| in order to change lanes
|
| I have taken at least 50 Waymo rides and have never experienced
| anything remotely like what you have described here.
|
| I am not saying it never happened, just that I expect that if a
| bone-headed move of this magnitude was at all commonplace with
| Waymo, we would be hearing about it and probably with a lot
| more details.
| xnx wrote:
| The gap between Waymo's service and Tesla's public beta test
| keeps getting larger.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Official post: https://waymo.com/blog/2025/11/taking-riders-
| further-safely-...
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45901905)
| beastman82 wrote:
| I will never understand blog spam. post the source luke!
| dfee wrote:
| I want to see the Waymo's go up to Skyline. Can they handle the
| windy roads?
| fnord77 wrote:
| I rode one through the Presidio which has some windy roads. It
| didn't have problems.
| toast0 wrote:
| They should be fine in the wind, they're not driving boxtrucks.
| :P
| asdff wrote:
| No, my hilly twisty neighborhood is geolocked from the service.
| greesil wrote:
| I have seen a Waymo do a very stupid thing where it darted across
| a busy street, and it left very little margin of error for the
| oncoming traffic, which happened to be a loaded dump truck that
| could not have stopped. The dump truck driver was clearly
| surprised. It was a move that I never would have made as a
| driver. Did they dial the aggression up? I'm sure they're safer
| than humans in aggregate as there are some dumb humans out there
| but it's not infallible.
| brokencode wrote:
| Waymo continues to improve every year, but dumb drivers never
| will.
| izzydata wrote:
| It is probably possible to get drivers to improve if the
| incentives were there or if they had no choice due to
| external factors. I bet it would be cheaper than money spent
| on self driving tech too.
|
| Or public transit on a track.
| jeffbee wrote:
| American drivers specifically can be improved. Every other
| country stands as an existence proof of that.
| some_random wrote:
| You clearly haven't been to very many countries if you
| think American drivers are the worst out there.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I don't need to travel to learn this:
| https://www.onlinesafetytrainer.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/...
| some_random wrote:
| Ah of course, all other thirty seven countries of the
| world.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| True, the UK is basically an alien civilization compared
| to the average american state. No comparison is
| meaningful unless we compare it to every nation state in
| the world.
| eloncuck wrote:
| Not normalized per miles driven? Sure, makes sense chief.
| triceratops wrote:
| What about non-OECD countries? I'm told those are
| actually most of the world's population and driving.
| toast0 wrote:
| If only we honked the horn when our cars are stopped, to
| let people know where it is. And honked before putting
| our cars in motion, to let people know we're about to
| move. And while the car is in motion, to let people know
| the car is in motion. I saw no collisions while visiting
| India, and continuous honking must be a significant part
| of the reason.
| sagarm wrote:
| Drivers hate enforcement, and they vote.
| bluGill wrote:
| Drivers can improve, but they won't. They will talk about
| the abstract just fine, but always in context of how "the
| other guy" is so bad, they resist any suggestion that they
| might not be good either. As soon as your point out
| something that nearly everyone is doing wrong (as backed up
| by statistics and traffic safety engineers who study this)
| and suddenly they will shut you down. As the other reply
| said: drivers vote and so any change that would affect all
| of them is impossible.
|
| I'd love to see better public transit, but transit is so
| bad for most of us that it would take a massive investment
| before there is any return, and half measures won't work.
| You have to go all in on transit before you can see any
| significant change - if you invest in the wrong network you
| won't know until a massive amount as been invested and
| there is no return (leaving open the question of if a
| different investment would have worked).
| threatofrain wrote:
| But the incentives are there. The knowledge is even there.
| What's left is the sum of all values.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| Weird, because per capita deaths leveled off in the 1930's
| and declined from that plateau in '70's to lows in the
| 2010's.
|
| Did we get less dumb drivers starting in the '70's?
| macintux wrote:
| Deaths and accidents are different measurements. Cars are
| much safer in an accident than they were in the
| early/middle 20th century.
|
| Per-mile-driven deaths started climbing again around 2012
| in the U.S., I'd wager due to the trend towards larger
| vehicles causing more collateral damage.
| sagarm wrote:
| Waymos do seem to have gotten a lot more aggressive.
| toast0 wrote:
| That reminds me of the Feb 14, 2016 collision in Mountain View
| [1] (sorry for pdf, but it has the best images of articles I
| saw) between a Google self-driving car and a VTA articulated
| bus. TLDR, the software and the safety driver thought the bus
| would move out of the way because it was a big vehicle and a
| professional driver. From the report:
|
| > Google said it has tweaked its software to "more deeply
| understand that buses and other large vehicles are less likely
| to yield to us than other types of vehicles."
|
| Maybe that got lost.
|
| [1] https://phys.org/news/2016-03-apnewsbreak-video-google-
| self-...
| asdff wrote:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/waymo/comments/1hoermn/food_deliver...
| mmmlinux wrote:
| I was in SF a few weekend ago and rode both Waymo and normal Lyft
| style taxi cars. the Waymo was a better experience in every
| single way. One of the Lyfts i was in drove on the shoulder for a
| while like it was a lane. The Waymos were just smooth consistent
| driving. No aggressive driving to get you dumped off so they can
| get to the next fair.
| prismatix wrote:
| I had a similar experience. A few months ago, I was in the city
| for a weekend and took Waymo for most of my rides. The one time
| I chose to use Lyft/Uber, the driver floored it before we even
| had a chance to shut the door or get buckled! The rest of the
| time we took Waymo.
|
| I rarely use ride-sharing but other experiences include having
| been in a FSD Tesla Uber where the driver wasn't paying
| attention to the road the entire time (hands off the wheel,
| looking behind him, etc.).
|
| I don't know if I trust Waymo cars with my life, but at least
| there are SOME standards, compared to the natural variance of
| humans.
| Swizec wrote:
| > I don't know if I trust Waymo cars with my life, but at
| least there are SOME standards, compared to the natural
| variance of humans
|
| I've ridden in a lot of Waymos - 800km I'm told! - and
| they're great. The bit that impresses me most is that they
| drive like a confident city driver. Already in the
| intersection and it turns red? Floor it out of the way! Light
| just turned yellow and you don't have time to stop? Continue
| calmly. Stuff like that.
|
| Saw a lot of other AI cars get flustered and confused in
| those situations. Humans too.
|
| For me I like Waymos because of the consistent social
| experience. There is none. With drivers they're usually
| chatty at all the wrong moments when I'm not in the mood or
| just want to catch up on emails. Or I'm feeling chatty and
| the driver is not, it's rarely a perfect match. With Waymo
| it's just a ride.
| astrange wrote:
| I did have one drive straight through a big pothole in LA
| once, and I also felt like it chose extremely boring
| routes. But neither of those are very surprising.
|
| Oh, and it doesn't like to pull into hotel entrances but
| instead stops randomly on the street outside it.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > and I also felt like it chose extremely boring routes
|
| $$ opportunity: pay $10 extra and Waymo will choose more
| exciting route.
| kbaker wrote:
| I mean, if the scenic route is longer anyways, the
| revenue potential is there to fund it...
|
| just a 'take me the scenic route' checkbox?
| ericmcer wrote:
| It must be interesting being an Uber driver right now and
| literally watching the robots that will replace you driving
| around with you.
|
| This has been a 15+ year process and will probably take a few
| more years. I don't feel too bad if they didn't manage to
| pivot in that time period.
| pa7ch wrote:
| You say the term pivot like its a startup founder who has
| every option in life. You should feel bad for anyone who
| would struggle for a basic job.
| dekhn wrote:
| the history of humans on earth has been pivots, even
| amongst people who had few options.
|
| I don't subscribe to feeling guilty every time somebody
| loses a job. I feel empathy, but telling people to "feel
| bad" is not constructive.
| phainopepla2 wrote:
| "Feel bad for" is not the same as "feel bad". The former
| is the same as feeling empathy, in colloquial English
| SirFatty wrote:
| "It must be interesting being an Uber driver right now and
| literally watching the robots that will replace you driving
| around with you."
|
| You mean the way taxi drivers had to watch as Uber and Lyft
| replaced them?
| umeshunni wrote:
| > You mean the way taxi drivers had to watch as Uber and
| Lyft replaced them?
|
| For the most part, they were the same drivers I think
| adventured wrote:
| I imagine most traditional taxi drivers converted into
| Uber and Lyft drivers. Unique regulatory circumstances in
| places like NYC might have delayed that process some of
| course (eg trying to pay off a medallion).
|
| Uber and Lyft drivers are taxi drivers.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Drivers rarely owned the medallion. They leased the cab
| for 8-12 hours and drove it on behalf of the medallion
| owner.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| What a stupid process. It bothers me that farmers rarely
| own the land too. We can't shake our tendency to let
| wealth turn us into tiny little kings that live off the
| rent. (not so tiny in the case of farms, but you get it).
| sib wrote:
| I've been in plenty of Uber & Lyft rides in what were
| literally taxis.
| ang_cire wrote:
| It's funny how "exploit workers worse (medallions) and
| worse (rideshares) until we can fully cut them out" has
| played out in such a perfect microcosm, and yet somehow
| people here don't seem to register that it was never the
| workers' own fault.
|
| Taxis didn't lose because rideshares played the game
| better, they lost because rideshare companies used
| investor money to leapfrog their apps, ignored actual
| commercial transport regulations that would have made
| them DOA, and then exploited workers by claiming they
| weren't even employees, all so they could artificially
| undercut taxis to kill them off and capture the market
| before enshittifying.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Taxi companies didn't have any apps to leapfrog in the
| first place. Uber and Lyft created a superior product
| that people wanted. Doesn't matter whose fault it is, the
| buyers preferred something that was more convenient.
|
| There was never a situation where uneducated cabbies on
| shoestring budgets were going to be able to develop an
| Uber/Lyft alternative.
| ang_cire wrote:
| > Taxi companies didn't have any apps to leapfrog in the
| first place.
|
| This shows just how badly behind they were. All the large
| cab companies have had apps for years. No one knows about
| them.
|
| Here's YellowCab's: https://rideyellow.com/app/
|
| > uneducated cabbies on shoestring budgets were going to
| be able to develop an Uber/Lyft alternative.
|
| Are you under the impression that most cabs are/ were
| independent? That wasn't the case since at latest the
| 1980s. Having a radio dispatcher is a _huge_ necessity as
| a cab driver.
| mattzito wrote:
| I think you have to go market by market to make that
| statement. In NYC, for example, it was explicitly illegal
| for yellow cabs to accept radio/pickup calls, which was
| the domain of the livery cabs (black cars). The tradeoff
| was that only yellow cabs could do street hails. That
| worked for everybody for years - yellow cabs did a volume
| business, livery cabs were for outer boros or
| luxury/business travel and would sneakily try to pick up
| street hails.
|
| In those days if you needed a car to take you someplace,
| aside from the outer boro examples, it was always faster
| to get a yellow cab. The car services could maybe get
| there in 45 minutes if you were lucky - big companies
| would often have deals with car service companies to have
| a few cars stationed at their buildings for peak times,
| so execs didn't have to wait for a car.
|
| The yellow cab operators were essentially all independent
| - many rented their medallion/vehicle, either from a
| colleague or an agency, but they worked their own
| schedules and their own instincts on where to be picking
| up fares at given times.
|
| No one expected something like uber - what is essentially
| a street hail masquerading as a livery cab. This
| basically destroyed yellow cabs and the traditional
| livery cab companies, but some of it is attributable to
| the VC spend, lowering prices (yellow cab fares are set
| by the city, livery cab fares are market-regulated) and
| incentivizing drivers. They made it so lucrative to drive
| an uber that you had thousands of new uber drivers on the
| road, or taxi drivers who stopped leasing their
| medallions and started driving uber.
|
| At some point, though - the subsidies dried up, prices
| went up, and now its often faster to get a yellow cab
| than an uber/lyft. This is anecdata, but I take cabs a
| lot, and I've spoken with ~6 taxi drivers in the last
| year who either started with driving uber and shifted to
| driving a taxi, or went taxi-uber-taxi. Then I've had a
| lot more taxi drivers where they need passengers to put
| the destination into the driver's waze or google maps,
| even for simple things like intersections - I suspect
| they're uber drivers who became depedent on the in-app
| directions and native language interactions.
|
| But the broader point I'm making is that in NYC, the
| drivers themselves were essentially unable to do anything
| about the changing market. The only power they had was to
| shift between the type of fares they were getting. And
| today when you order an uber, sometimes you get a yellow
| cab.
| astrange wrote:
| Taxi drivers were already not employees, they were
| exploited contractors for the taxi companies.
|
| And do you not remember what using Yellow Cab was like in
| the Bay? It was like being kidnapped. They'd pretend
| their credit card reader was broken and forcibly drive
| you to an ATM to pay them.
|
| When I first moved here I went to EPA Ikea, afterwards
| tried to get home via taxi, and literally couldn't
| because there was a game at Stanford that was more
| profitable so they just refused to pick me up for hours.
| I had to call my manager and ask him to get me. (...Which
| he couldn't because he was drinking, so I had to walk to
| the Four Seasons and use the car service.)
| nradov wrote:
| Taxis lost at least partly because the workers were
| assholes. Refusing to take credit card payments (the card
| reader is "broken") or not picking up members of certain
| ethnic groups or not driving to certain areas. Sure some
| cabbies were nice, honest people with good customer
| service skills but those were the exception in many
| cities.
|
| There was nothing stopping taxi companies from raising
| investor capital to build better apps and back end
| technology infrastructure. They were just lazy and
| incompetent.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > some cabbies were nice, honest people
|
| Most were, in fact. You just remember the assholes a lot
| more.
| energy123 wrote:
| Enshittifying? It's still better than taxis ever were and
| competition between providers is preventing that from
| regressing.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| > It must be interesting being an Uber driver right now and
| literally watching the robots that will replace you driving
| around with you.
|
| You mean just like programmers watching AI replacing them?
| ang_cire wrote:
| AI doesn't replace programmers, it's used _by_
| programmers for efficiency.
|
| Waymo is most definitely not being used by taxi or
| rideshare drivers to be more efficient.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| As I understand, Waymo still uses humans in some
| circumstances. Theoretically, the drivers could do this
| job instead.
|
| https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/
| JeremyNT wrote:
| Waymo definitely uses human drivers in some markets...
| _currently_
|
| Just like AI still uses human programmers... _currently_
| vinni2 wrote:
| Actually i spoke a uber driver about this and he said he
| was waiting for cars with FSD available to buy then he
| could make his car work for him.
| tuhgdetzhh wrote:
| If he can create a buisness of operating a fleet of self
| driving cars fine, but 99% of regular taxi/uber drivers
| will loose their job.
| treis wrote:
| It's interesting that we're on the cusp of a major change
| in our world and no one is really talking about it. Self
| driving cars will have a profound impact on society.
| Everything from real estate to logistics will be impacted.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Looking forward to when they get rid of traffic lights
| and the networked cars just whiz through and avoid
| hitting each other. They'll also seamlessly zip lanes
| together on the highway, and traffic waves will be a
| thing of the past. Maybe China will do it first.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| No thoughts on pedestrians? With no traffic lights it'd
| be a total nightmare to be a pedestrian
| HPsquared wrote:
| You could still have pedestrian crossings with buttons
| etc which signal the cars to stop, just the same logic as
| we have now. Maybe even physical lights for redundancy.
| Pedestrians are pretty rare in most places though so this
| shouldn't slow things down too much.
| nxor wrote:
| Some places are less car-dependent. That plays a role
| Lammy wrote:
| > I don't know if I trust Waymo cars with my life, but at
| least there are SOME standards, compared to the natural
| variance of humans.
|
| The one thing you _can_ trust Waymo to do is spy on you.
| Hurray, more surveillance-on-wheels! Every one of these
| things has 29 visible-light cameras, 5 LIDARs, 4 RADARs, and
| is using four H100s to process all of its realtime imagery of
| you: https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2024/10/27/waymos
| -5-6...
| holler wrote:
| I had my first waymo ride in Austin recently and it suddenly
| slowed down to 20mph in 40mph zone for 5+ mins before returning
| to normal speed. Cars were passing around us and it felt like
| the car was glitching out, which felt very sketchy.
| vjerancrnjak wrote:
| I was doing this a lot in US whenever I'd see construction
| work speed limits and had similar experience. Realized no one
| cares about these custom signs.
| daemonologist wrote:
| Yeah it always wigs me out going through those super narrow
| "55 mph" construction zones on US highways. I'm not in a
| hurry and want to slow down, but if I did I'd have semis
| blowing past at 75 which feels even more unsafe. Honestly I
| think they should put up speed cameras.
| Tade0 wrote:
| In my corner of the world it was the workers who demanded
| section control limiting speed to 70kmph in a segment of
| highway that was being renovated.
|
| Authorities later said that they only went after 30% of
| the worst offenders, because otherwise the sheer number
| of tickets would be to high to process in a reasonable
| timespan.
|
| Once word got out that the limit was actually enforced,
| speeds dropped. Now we have section control on some
| highways and personally I'm a fan, as I was always going
| around the speed limit anyway.
| bluGill wrote:
| What do you mean by "section control"? A did a quick
| search and founds lots of possibilities but none that
| seem to apply to construction zone speed control.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Average speed camera. "Section control" is how they were
| named in Austria where I've first encountered them and
| the term translates to something similar in my language,
| so I assumed that was the English term, but it appears to
| be a case of Onglish.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Yeah, Average Speed Camera is definitely the terminology
| in the UK.
|
| This is distinct from just a Speed Camera which is
| measuring over a very short interval from a single
| camera, the Average Speed Camera involves two or more
| cameras, recording people passing different points and
| working out how fast, on average, they must be travelling
| to have done so.
| scoofy wrote:
| Enforcement of traffic laws for public safety?!? Clearly
| you don't have American priorities. You need to focus
| more on _level of service_ and _only_ level of service.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09
| 666...
|
| https://archive.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/9/9/improvem
| ent...
|
| Some of you may die, but that's a price we're willing to
| make.
| thebytefairy wrote:
| I've been in ride shares where the driver has crossed a curb
| road divider or squeezed through tiny gaps in front of
| trucks. Going too slow sounds like a better 'bad' experience
| to me.
| mdorazio wrote:
| Are you sure it was actually a 40mph zone in that section?
| Austin has plenty of school and construction zones with lower
| speed limits that most drivers completely ignore.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Waymo was a better experience in every single way. One of the
| Lyfts i was in drove on the shoulder for a while like it was a
| lane.
|
| These sentances conflict. I recently took a taxi from JFK to
| Manhattan during rush hour, and I estimate if the driver didn't
| use all of the paved surface, it would have taken at least 10
| more minutes to arrive. (And it wouldn't have been an authentic
| NYC experience)
|
| It's ok if you prefer the Waymo experience, and if you find it
| a better experience overall, but if a human driver saves you
| time, the Waymo wasn't better in every single way.
|
| I am assuming the Lyft driver used the shoulder effectively. My
| experience with Lyft+Uber has been hit or miss... Some drivers
| are like traditional taxi drivers: it's an exciting ride
| because the driver knows the capabilities of their vehicle and
| uses them and they navigate obstacles within inches; some
| drivers are the opposite, it's an exciting ride because it
| feels like Star Tours (is this your first time? well, it's mine
| too) and they're using your ride to find the capabilities of
| their vehicle. The first type of driver is likely to use the
| shoulder effectively, and the second not so much.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| You want your cab driver to drive on the shoulder and break
| the law? What?
| CPLX wrote:
| You may want to become aware of the existence of New York
| City. It's a pretty interesting place.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| Yeah, that sounds like NYC nonsense. I assume it's still
| illegal to drive on the shoulder in New York.
| CPLX wrote:
| Perhaps. But if you have a taxi or car service driver
| who's not willing to ever break any traffic laws in New
| York, you will not arrive at your destination in anything
| approaching a reasonable amount of time.
|
| For example, getting at the back of the line for an exit
| rather than trying to go to the front and cut your way in
| could be a multi-hour mistake.
| triceratops wrote:
| I hope robocars get really good at maintaining close
| formation and keeping out asshole linecutters.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Haha, this is both entirely true and entirely the reason
| why NYC is pretty much stuck where it is. If cities were
| parables, NYC would be The Parable of the Tragedy of the
| Commons. Globally, among cities I've been to it would
| have to be Delhi, but NYC is certainly in that category
| of South Asian cities where the infrastructure is far
| outpaced by the population and the population is like a
| swarming rat king constantly jockeying for a few inches
| more.
|
| It's a viral race to the bottom.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| This just sounds like an argument to ban cars for private
| use and invest more in transit.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Certainly it sounds like that. However whatever cultural
| transformation turns Man into Rat King has already
| occurred so you'll notice that it costs over a billion
| dollars per mile of subway in NYC. Everyone who hasn't
| figured out how to leech off the government is a fattened
| milk cow whose production is harvested industrially.
|
| New Yorkers are already incapable of non-extractive
| development. Like the GP they have been transformed into
| zero-sum zombies by their city. A cautionary tale of
| culture.
| crazygringo wrote:
| This is absurd, and it's a**hole behavior you're
| defending.
|
| You don't need to break any laws to get to where you're
| going, what are you even talking about? And you think
| that just because you're in a taxi you should get to
| magically cut to the front of a line of cars, made of the
| vast majority of New Yorkers who actually respect each
| other? What could possibly make you feel so entitled?
|
| And if you think waiting in line for an exit takes
| _multiple hours_ , I question whether you've ever been to
| NYC in the first place.
| CPLX wrote:
| No, I don't think it's because you're in a taxi. I think
| everybody should try to cut to the front of the line.
| That's what everybody does in New York, and it works
| pretty well. It's pretty easy to understand what's gonna
| happen next.
|
| I've lived in New York for longer than most HN posters
| here have been alive, most likely. A couple of times a
| year, I'll end up in a car with someone who doesn't
| understand how this whole thing works, and they'll do
| something insane like getting on the Brooklyn Bridge and
| then just staying in the right lane the entire time
| waiting to get off to the right. Or they'll sit on the
| BQE at the Flushing Avenue exit a mile back from the
| exit, causing me to waste large portions of my life that
| I will never get back.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _I think everybody should try to cut to the front of
| the line. That 's what everybody does in New York, and it
| works pretty well._
|
| I'm sorry, but you clearly don't live here, or at least
| don't drive here. You're describing some kind of Mad Max
| fantasy, like the image of New York people get from
| movies and fiction where everyone is flipping everyone
| else the bird every thirty seconds.
|
| People in NYC are pretty cooperative. Driving isn't
| every-man-for-himself. I don't know why you're trying to
| paint this picture of some lawless fantasy. Maybe you
| think it's exciting, but it's not connected to reality.
| senordevnyc wrote:
| I live and drive in NYC, and this is utter bullshit. To
| the extent that it's difficult to drive here, it's
| _because_ of assholes who think they deserve to cut the
| line and fuck it up for everyone else.
|
| Please stop driving here, you clearly aren't qualified to
| do so.
| CPLX wrote:
| Come to the dark side.
| pastureofplenty wrote:
| Americans are increasingly adopting the kind of mindset
| Israelis have, where following the rules makes you a
| sucker. https://www.thejc.com/judaism/jewish-
| words/freier-fa15k306
| dboreham wrote:
| Apart from not having to deal with a human, observance of
| traffic laws is the main advantage I see in autonomous
| vehicles. Once there are a decent proportion of them on
| the road we can ratchet up penalties against human
| asshole drivers, conviction aided by evidence gathered by
| the sensors on the surrounding non-human vehicles.
| estearum wrote:
| > These sentances conflict. I recently took a taxi from JFK
| to Manhattan during rush hour, and I estimate if the driver
| didn't use all of the paved surface, it would have taken at
| least 10 more minutes to arrive. (And it wouldn't have been
| an authentic NYC experience)
|
| My hot take is that people who "use all of the paved surface"
| because their whiny passenger is "in a rush" (which of course
| _everyone_ stuck in traffic is) should permanently lose their
| license on the very first offense.
|
| It is just gobsmackingly antisocial behavior that is 1)
| locally unsafe and 2) indicative of a deep moral rot.
|
| Obviously exceptions can be made for true emergencies and
| what not, but "I need to save 10 minutes" is not one of them.
| jeffbee wrote:
| My hot take is that anyone who would take a taxi from JFK
| to Manhattan, along the most well-served transit corridor
| on the continent, is probably a psycho and we shouldn't ask
| for their input on transportation topics.
| estearum wrote:
| JFK to Manhattan is actually not _that_ easy for a
| newcomer. JFK - Airtrain - LIRR - Subway is a very stupid
| design.
|
| That said, yes GP is obviously a psycho.
| CPLX wrote:
| Oh my sweet summer child.
|
| I've got news for you about how dysfunctional New York
| City transit planning has been and the status of transit
| to our three giant airports.
| crazygringo wrote:
| You do realize that public transportation doesn't provide
| luggage carts? That you can't take those out of the
| airport?
|
| If you're traveling with a family or group, it really is
| often going to be much easier to take an XL Uber than
| deal with turnstiles and transfers and stairs and
| everything.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| So what you're saying is if you're not in a big group or
| traveling with family, you absolutely SHOULD take public
| transportation.
| crazygringo wrote:
| ...no? Maybe re-read the first half.
|
| I've come from abroad with two large checked bags, a
| carry-on, and a backpack. You think I'm trying to take
| all that through the subway?
|
| Obviously, yeah if you're traveling solo with a carry-on,
| most people take public transportation.
|
| Or not, if it's 1 am and you don't want to be waiting 20
| minutes for each connection.
|
| Also, if you're a tourist new to the city after a long
| flight, the last thing you want to do is figure out the
| massively complicated transit system. Just having someone
| take you straight to your hotel where you can shower and
| sleep and deal with jet lag can be an important priority.
| sib wrote:
| There are many, many, many airports to which it is easier
| to travel via public transit from their associated city
| than it is from Manhattan to JFK. For example, all of
| these global-top-25 airports have single-train access:
|
| London Heathrow (LHR)
|
| Tokyo Haneda (HND)
|
| Amsterdam Schiphol (AMS)
|
| Paris-Charles de Gaulle (CDG)
|
| Frankfurt (FRA)
|
| Dubai (DXB)
|
| Seoul Incheon (ICN)
|
| Guangzhou (CAN)
|
| Shanghai Pudong (PVG)
|
| New Delhi (DEL)
|
| Madrid Barajas (MAD)
|
| Beijing Capital (PEK)
|
| Chicago O'Hare (ORD)
|
| Denver (DEN)
| jwagenet wrote:
| I don't get the gripe. AirTrain gets you to A,E,J,Z, and
| LIRR, all of which get you to "Manhattan" or a
| significant number of intermediate destinations in about
| an hour. LGA is far worse.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Having to take AirTrain beyond the terminals at all is
| annoying. LIRR should just go to JFK directly. AirTrain
| is slow as molasses, and the fact that it costs money is
| absurd. It works and I'm glad it exists, but it's nothing
| like e.g. the Paris RER connecting CDG.
|
| You generally never want to take A/E/J/Z because they're
| _sooo_ much slower than LIRR, unless you live along them.
|
| Yes, LGA is far worse.
| asadm wrote:
| couldn't you have arrived 10 minutes later or was endangering
| life worth it?
| toast0 wrote:
| I certainly could have arrived 10 minutes later, but I
| wouldn't say that arriving 10 minutes later would result in
| a better experience _in every way_. It might result in a
| hypothetically safer experience (in the instance, there
| were no collisions so safety was achieved) or a morally
| better experience (according to the HN consensus morals
| that deem me a psychopath for either taking a cab at all or
| because I did not intervene and let the cab driver drive as
| he saw fit). Up to you what criteria you judge the overall
| trip on, I 'm just pointing out that if the trip time is
| longer, the trip is not better _in every way_ ; at least
| absent an unusual requirement such as if you wanted to see
| the sights on the way, a shorter but less scenic trip would
| be a negative; or if you had a timing constraint that you
| must not arrive before a certain time, a shorter trip might
| infringe that constraint and would be a negative --- no
| such constraint was mentioned.
|
| I don't know that any life was endangered either. I would
| accept an argument that property was endangered, certainly
| the margin between vehicles was very close, but at speeds
| where a collision would not have been injurious.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Uh...driving in the shoulder is illegal.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it would have taken at least 10 more minutes to arrive.
| (And it wouldn 't have been an authentic NYC experience)_
|
| Lived in New York for 10+ years and still go back regularly.
| This is unacceptable behaviour by a cabbie.
|
| Given the amount of construction and thus police presence on
| that route right now, you're lucky you didn't get a 60-minute
| bonus when the cab got pulled over. (The pro move during rush
| hour and construction is (a) not to, but if you have to, (b)
| taking the AirTrain and LIRR.)
| LZ_Khan wrote:
| Waymo is overly conservative last time I checked. Driving the
| speed limit basically means getting to your destination twice
| as slow.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| You realize it's technically illegal to drive faster than the
| speed limit, right? In the eyes of the law, it's doesn't
| matter whether everyone else is doing it or not.
| throwup238 wrote:
| It's more complicated than that because several (most?)
| states have contradictory laws about impeding traffic. It
| can technically be illegal to drive at (or below) the speed
| limit because it creates an unsafe environment for all the
| other cars on the road that are driving faster, even if
| they're all breaking the legal speed limit.
|
| It's not a viable defense if you get a ticket for speeding
| but in practice the speed limit is really the prevailing
| speed of traffic plus X mph, where X adjusted for the
| state. I.e. in my experience Texas is more strict about the
| speed limit even on their desolate highways, LA is about 10
| mph faster than San Francisco, in Seattle it depends on the
| weather, you'll never hit the speed limit in New York
| anyway, and in Florida you just say the gator ate the
| officer who pulled you over.
| mikestew wrote:
| _It's more complicated than that because several (most?)
| states have contradictory laws about impeding traffic._
|
| No they don't, you've misinterpreted what was written.
| "Not impeding traffic" is not codified as "exceed the
| speed limit if everyone else is, or get a ticket".
|
| Or perhaps you have a documented counter-example.
| throwup238 wrote:
| I don't know what you mean by "documented" but here is
| Georgia:
|
| _> No person shall drive a motor vehicle at such a slow
| speed as to impede the normal and reasonable movement of
| traffic, except when reduced speed is necessary for safe
| operation._ [1]
|
| Versus California:
|
| _> No person shall drive upon a highway at such a slow
| speed as to impede or block the normal and reasonable
| movement of traffic unless the reduced speed is necessary
| for safe operation, because of a grade, _or in compliance
| with law_._ [2] (underscore emphasis mine)
|
| It's part of the Uniform Vehicle Code but each state has
| its quirks in how they adopt it since theres no federal
| mandate.
|
| My apologies though, this seems way less common than I
| thought. As far as I can tell Georgia and Oregon are the
| only two states left that don't have that compliance
| exception.
|
| On the other hand "in compliance with law" is it's own
| barrel of monkeys because it doesn't specify priority.
|
| [1] https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/title-40/chapter
| -6/arti...
|
| [2] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displa
| ySectio...
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| > I don't know what you mean by "documented" but here is
| Georgia:
|
| Georgia isn't going to punish you for going the speed
| limit in the right lane, they passed that law recently
| and called it the 'slow poke law'.
|
| > On the other hand "in compliance with law" is it's own
| barrel of monkeys because it doesn't specify priority.
|
| It really isn't.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> Georgia isn 't going to punish you for going the speed
| limit in the right lane, they passed that law recently
| and called it the 'slow poke law'._
|
| So you're saying they had to pass a law clarifying a
| contradiction in previous laws? Those contradictions were
| my original point. And it still only applies to the slow
| poke lane.
|
| _> It really isn 't._
|
| Oh you sweet summer child.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The rule in Indiana is that on a multilane highway you
| must move to the right to allow overtaking traffic to
| pass. You are not there to enforce the speed limit; the
| fact that another car that is passing you might be
| speeding does not give you the right or duty to block
| them.
|
| "a person who knows, or should reasonably know, that
| another vehicle is overtaking from the rear the vehicle
| that the person is operating may not continue to operate
| the vehicle in the left most lane"
|
| With of course some reasonable exceptions.
|
| https://law.justia.com/codes/indiana/title-9/article-21/c
| hap...
| mikestew wrote:
| _The rule in Indiana is that on a multilane highway you
| must move to the right to allow overtaking traffic to
| pass._
|
| That's a rule just about everywhere, but that's not
| what's being discussed. I'm in the right lane doing the
| speed limit, and OP claims that's "technically" illegal
| due to contradictory laws. (Where there is no real
| contradiction, because the Chesterton's Fence is that we
| don't want Farmer Jones driving his tractor to his fields
| down I-75 through Atlanta.)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Right. What's (maybe) illegal (and definitely unsafe) is
| staying in the left lane, although driving at the posted
| speed limit, and impeding traffic that wants to pass.
| mikestew wrote:
| Oh, as a Washington resident[0] I completely agree.
|
| [0] The "joke" here being that WA drivers are notorious
| about parking in the left lane while driving 5mph under
| the limit. Yeah, I've heard all the "little old lady in
| FL" stories. Florida drivers are not only not in the same
| ballpark, it's not even the same sport.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It's more complicated than that because several
| (most?) states have contradictory laws about impeding
| traffic_
|
| As others have mentioned, this is dead wrong.
|
| But the _actual_ complication is enforcement usually
| requires a margin of error, and in some states ( _e.g._
| Wyoming) you can go 10 mph over when passing.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > It's not a viable defense if you get a ticket for
| speeding but in practice the speed limit is really the
| prevailing speed of traffic plus X mph, where X adjusted
| for the state.
|
| A lot of laws aren't _enforced_ consistently in practice,
| sure. The implicit point is that while that may be so, it
| is nonetheless enforceable and nonetheless the law. So
| while individual people may be comfortable about being
| flexible in following traffic laws, having that behavior
| encoded or permitted by software is basically a
| declaration of broad intent to violate the law made by a
| company.
| superfrank wrote:
| I've ridden in Waymos in LA, SF, and Phoenix. You're right
| about them being a bit conservative, but only in Phoenix did
| I feel like that really slowed my ride. In LA and SF there
| was so much traffic that even if cars pulled away from us,
| we'd catch them at the next red light.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| My understanding was waymo in LA does not yet take freeways
| (maybe this announcement will change that) which makes it a
| strictly worse experience in LA specifically.
| jessriedel wrote:
| I check Google maps ETA estimates when I get in a car in
| SF; they are accurate for Uber or Lyfts, but Waymos are
| absolutely slower there. This is especially, but not
| exclusively, true for routes where a human would take the
| 101 or 280, for obvious reasons.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| At this point, any accident or rule violation can whip up a
| luddite storm threatening the whole industry, so self driving
| taxis will be _extremely_ cautious until the general public
| have lost their fear.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| "Twice as slow" is not even slightly accurate.
|
| If you're driving 45 in a 40, that may _sound_ like 12%
| faster, but once you add traffic, lights, stop signs, turns,
| etc - you 'll find that the 12% all but evaporates. Even if
| you're really pushing it and going 15 over, at most speeds
| and for most typical commutes, it saves very little.
|
| Most of the time speeding ends up saving on the order of
| seconds on ~30 minutes or shorter trips.
|
| Just about the only time it can be noticeable is if you're
| _really_ pushing it (going to get pulled over speeds) on a
| nearly empty highway for a commute of 1.5+ hours.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Yeah, I chuckle a bit when the person who blew by me on the
| freeway at 80mph is just 2 cars ahead of me at the offramp
| stop light.
| ang_cire wrote:
| Yeah, speed shouldn't be about time-to-destination except
| for emergency vehicles. It's about fahrfegnuggen.
| mostly_harmless wrote:
| I'll add on that speeding is the biggest contributing
| factor in accidents. And accident outcomes get
| exponentially worse above 30mph. For every 10 mph of
| increased speed, the risk of dying in a crash doubles.
| dekhn wrote:
| There's a great paper which I can't find any more that
| said "going faster makes you take longer to get to the
| destination"; they showed the expected value for arrival
| time was longer at speed due to higher accident rates.
| panarky wrote:
| 93% of American drivers think they're better drivers than
| the median driver [0].
|
| This overconfidence causes humans to take unnecessary risks
| that not only endanger themselves, but everyone else on the
| road.
|
| After taking several dozen Waymo rides and watching them
| negotiate complex and ambiguous driving scenarios,
| including many situations where overconfident drivers are
| driving dangerously, I realize that Waymo is a far better
| driver than I am.
|
| Waymos don't just prevent a large percentage of accidents
| by making fewer mistakes than a human driver, but Waymos
| also avoid a lot of accidents caused by other distracted
| and careless human drivers.
|
| Now when I have to drive a car myself, my goal is to try to
| drive as much like a Waymo as I can.
|
| [0] https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/1981-svenson.pdf
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| It's not just overconfidence, it's selfishness.
|
| Speeding feels like "I'm more important than everyone
| else and the safety of others and rules don't apply to
| me" personally. It's one thing to match the speed of
| traffic and avoid being a nuisance (that I'm fine with) -
| a lot of people just think they're the main character and
| everyone else is just in their way.
|
| It's a problem that goes way beyond driving, sadly.
| treis wrote:
| Eh this doesn't mean much. The quality of drivers is
| pretty bimodal.
|
| You have the group that's really bad and does things like
| drive drunk, weave in and out of traffic, do their makeup
| and so on.
|
| The other group generally pays attention and tries to
| drive safely. This is larger than the first group and
| realistically there's not all that much difference within
| the group.
|
| If you're in group two you will think you're above
| average because the comparison is to the crap drivers in
| group one.
| bluGill wrote:
| In the real world 45 in a 40 will often enough get through
| lights just before they turn to red often enough that your
| real speed is more than twice as fast! Unless the city has
| timed their lights correctly - which sounds easy but on a
| grid is almost impossible for all streets. It all depends
| on how the red lights are timed.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Twice as slow was probably accurate when comparing Uber
| with freeways vs Waymo (which wasn't using freeways yet).
|
| But now that Waymo is gonna use freeways, that major speed
| difference is gonna evaporate.
| pastureofplenty wrote:
| Waymo may be currently safer than human drivers, but this
| right here is why I don't believe for a second they'll stay
| that way. People will complain it took to long to get
| somewhere because "stupid car was following _all_ the rules!
| " and they'll be programmed to become more aggressive and
| dangerous (and due to regulatory capture they'll get away
| with this of course). I've already noticed this in San
| Francisco.
| nradov wrote:
| Waymo cars are also more likely to be properly maintained. I've
| noticed that a lot of Uber / Lyft cars have some kind of
| warning light on the dashboard: check engine, low tire
| pressure, overdue for service.
| ang_cire wrote:
| Waymo cars are new. Wait until their fleets are 10+ years
| old. They'll have all the same bad maintenance issues that
| airplanes, semis, rental cars, and any other company-owned
| vehicles have.
| nradov wrote:
| Really? I fly a lot and Part 121 commercial airliners seem
| to be pretty well maintained.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Very few airliners depart in perfect working order. There
| is a "MEL" (minimum equipment list) that details which
| systems can be inop and still operate the flight.
| nradov wrote:
| None of that stuff really impacts safety. They're not
| leaving the gate with under inflated tires or expired
| engine oil.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Sure, however that's why there's a minimum. The problem
| is that lots of GA aeroplanes aren't that well
| maintained.
|
| People aren't on the whole _suicidal_ , they're not going
| to go up in a plane they expect to kill them, but they
| absolutely will push their luck in privately owned planes
| and statistically that doesn't end well. Go see the
| figures for yourself, inadequate maintenance isn't first
| on the list for why GA crash rates are too high, but it's
| on there.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| "Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to
| an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly
| unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect."
|
| _Alfred Gilmer Lamplugh_
| bluGill wrote:
| I expect that Waymo will have standards. In theory Uber
| does as well, but since the drivers own their own cars they
| can't enforce them. A 15 year old car that has been well
| maintained is still safe to have on the road (within the
| limits of the safety systems on board), while a 6 year old
| car with a lot of miles that hasn't been maintained can be
| deadly.
| FuckButtons wrote:
| They're a good experience, but consider, the other day I took
| an uber in sf with a gay taxi driver who sang along to the Tina
| turner he had on full blast, told me I was fabulous and almost
| caused a crash at a 4 way stop. 5 stars. No notes.
| Greed wrote:
| Absolutely. The value proposition for me with rideshare
| services has ALWAYS been the conversations and experiences
| you get to have with a diverse cross section of humanity. I'd
| take the bus / train otherwise.
| mmmlinux wrote:
| I also just wanted to mention one other nice thing about the
| way Waymo worked vs other ride share apps. as soon as you open
| the app, it tells you how long till you'll be picked up. even
| before you tell it where you're going. no waiting for some
| driver to choose your slightly out of the way trip for them. a
| car just shows up when its supposed to, to take you where you
| want to go.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I feel like I won the lottery whenever I have an aggressive
| driver that knows the city well. It makes me wonder if breaking
| the law will be the main value proposition of human drivers at
| some point.
| bugufu8f83 wrote:
| We have very different value systems, is the politest way I
| would react to this. Aggressive drivers suck for everyone
| else on the road and when I ride with one I feel like I've
| lost something, not won something.
| jimmydddd wrote:
| In NY city, I've noticed that taxi drivers will get agressive
| when we are stuck in traffic. They will start honking,
| yelling, or changing from one almost stopped lane to another
| almost stopped lane. I always thought it was theatrical, to
| show me that they were trying hard, and not just letting the
| fee increase while they sat stopped in traffic.
| o_____________o wrote:
| I think this is too much credit given for emotional labor.
| NY has an intrusive din and these people live in their cars
| all day. They evolve toward chronic irritation alleviated
| with impotent shows of force.
| netsharc wrote:
| That is dumb. Go to a developing country and see what happens
| when everyone is aggressive. Everyone cuts off everyone else
| and drivers brake a lot (none of this waiting for a gap
| before entering from a side street, for example, the
| understanding is they'll brake for you). The end result is
| much more slower traffic.
| proee wrote:
| So it might come down to how many "9s" you're comfortable with.
| The experience is really good 99.999% of the time until it's
| not, and that "not" could be catastrophic. I suppose the data
| engineers are quite confident in the 9s.
| timerol wrote:
| This also applies to getting in a car with a human driver, or
| to driving yourself. Or to any other way of getting from
| point A to point B
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| > and that "not" could be catastrophic
|
| Any different than with a human taxi driver?
|
| It's not about absolute reliability, it's about how well it
| compares to the alternative, which is human taxi drivers. And
| the thing is, you don't hear about human car accidents
| because it's so common that it's not worth making the news.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| > _you don 't hear about human car accidents because it's
| so common that it's not worth making the news._
|
| Another very interesting thing about robotaxis is agency
| and blame. Taxi driver had an accident? _Just that_ driver
| is suspect. Robotaxi had an accident? _They 're all_
| suspect.
| hn8726 wrote:
| I mean it does make sense though - robo taxis (of one
| company) are much more homogeneous than any two human
| drivers could ever be.
| cheschire wrote:
| Lyft is 99.99999% with 1.02 fatalities per 100 million
| vehicle miles traveled[0].
|
| Waymo is 100% with zero fatalities.
|
| But then again, the Concorde was the safest airplane ever
| built for nearly 30 years, until its first crash and then it
| was the most dangerous passenger jet ever with 12.5 fatal
| events per million flights.[1]
|
| Lies, damned lies, and statistics.[2]
|
| 0: https://assets.ctfassets.net/vz6nkkbc6q75/3yrO0aP4mPfTTvya
| UZ...
|
| 1: https://www.airsafe.com/journal/issue14.htm
|
| 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_stati
| st...
| jsbg wrote:
| How many 9s does lyft guarantee?
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Oh great! Doing life-threatening activities is now verified by
| anecdotal evidence.
|
| I get there. Basically isn't any laws for corporations anymore,
| is there any way I can see anything in regards to the safety of
| this at a statistical level?
|
| Where is NHTSA? Oh right, no federal agencies exist anymore
| except for those that maintain the oligarchy.
|
| And I don't give a crap if Uber has really good statistics and
| studies and evidence. We are talking about one of the least
| ethical companies in the last 20 years.
|
| I want independent Federal testing.
| donut_rider wrote:
| You could, you know, just Google it:
| https://waymo.com/safety/impact/. TLDR ~90% reduction of
| serious injury compared with human drivers.
|
| Now, before you say this peer-reviewed paper is corporate
| propaganda, all self-driving companies are required by law to
| disclose accidents they are involved in, whether liable or
| not, in CA. You could access each raw accident report
| published by the CA DMV periodically and come up with your
| own statistics.
| supportengineer wrote:
| next _fare_
| world2vec wrote:
| An interesting prospect is that a bunch of autonomous cars on the
| freeways might have a meaningful impact in preventing traffic
| jams (specifically those "phantom jams") [0] simply by driving in
| a calm and pondered way always at a constant distance.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m74zazYPwkY&t=1860s
| paganel wrote:
| No cats on freeways, so they're safe in that regard. Any word
| back from Alphabet on the cat their machines killed in SF?
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| does anyone know statistics on computer-controlled cars' safety?
| I can guess "safer than humans most likely", but by how much?
|
| it seems like these robotaxis have been around long enough to
| have conclusions now
| brunoTbear wrote:
| https://waymo.com/blog/2025/05/waymo-making-streets-safer-fo...
| next_xibalba wrote:
| Road in a Waymo last weekend in Austin. Amazing experience. I was
| surprised at how mundane it felt. I had to keep looking at the
| empty driver's seat to remind myself that I was experiencing
| science fiction becoming reality.
|
| I will say, I was surprised that the interior of the car was kind
| of dirty. I would imagine this is going to be a growing issue
| these FSD taxi fleets are going to have deal with. Lots of people
| will behave poorly in them.
| boulos wrote:
| Sorry about that. Please file in-app feedback (now under Help >
| Leave Feedback) any time you experience something like that.
| There's a dedicated "Car Condition" tag.
| vasusen wrote:
| I am really excited for this. Once going home with my family via
| Uber in SFO we realized on the freeway that our driver was high
| and driving at 80-85 mph.
|
| It was a really scary experience and I couldn't do much about it
| in the moment.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| high on what?
| junon wrote:
| Does it matter? Can't think of a single substance that's safe
| for driving a car.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Amphetamines certainly
| whimsicalism wrote:
| antidepressants?
| iammattmurphy wrote:
| Speed?
| asadm wrote:
| mj likely? which should be illegal.
| starik36 wrote:
| High on life!
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| How could you tell they were high?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How could you tell they were high?_
|
| In New York it's not too difficult. Fidgitiness, twitchiness,
| rambling series of _non sequiturs_ that make even my ADD
| brain rattle. Screaming at traffic and running on the margin
| one second and then asking me if I know that the archangel
| who visited Muhammed was actually a demon the next. (I 'm not
| Muslim. The conversation wasn't addressed to anyone in the
| vehicle.)
|
| Like, I guess I can't say they're taking too much of a
| substance. But if they aren't, they're taking too little.
| Austin_Conlon wrote:
| One time my driver had a TV show playing on their dashboard
| phone on 101.
| cflewis wrote:
| This happens to me >70% in the Bay peninsula now.
| boulos wrote:
| Make sure to do whatever "express interest" is required inside
| the app. We've often done a first-come, first-served approach
| for getting people off of waitlists, so get in now :).
| robocat wrote:
| Don't bother installing unless you know Waymo is available.
|
| Otherwise the App frustratingly runs you through onboarding and
| _then_ tells you it is unavailable in your area. I had tried
| because they were supposed to be coming to New Orleans.
| qnleigh wrote:
| A lot of people rely on Uber and Lyft for supplemental or primary
| income, so this could be very disruptive if it continues to
| scale. Are we not worried about this in the medium-term?
|
| Also I appreciate many of the random human interactions I've had
| with Uber/Lyft drivers. Of course not every ride was great, but
| many drivers had stories and experiences that no one I usually
| meet would have. For me, the safe but bland experience of a self-
| drivng car isn't worth losing the human touch, not to mention
| taking away income for human drivers.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Convenience beats everything (in capitalism)
| alain94040 wrote:
| To each their own. If you value human interaction, continue to
| book rides with humans.
| modeless wrote:
| I read a lot that uber drivers don't actually make money on net
| after accounting for all the costs of running their cars. It's
| a common narrative that uber is just exploiting their drivers,
| and if you believe that, then this would be a good thing.
| maxwellg wrote:
| I've also had drivers do 50+ in residential areas, run red
| lights, play on their phones, cut off pedestrians in
| crosswalks, and once even park in a handicap spot at a gas
| station to buy cigs with me left in the back seat. If I was
| guaranteed a driver that could obey the traffic laws, I'd be
| happy to continue taking Ubers. That hasn't been the case.
| MatekCopatek wrote:
| Yes, sure, but that worry can be extended to all jobs lost to
| AI and after that all jobs lost to any kind of technical
| advancements.
|
| So far the answer of the current economic system has been to
| invent new products/services and redirect the workforce there.
| It's been working so far, but isn't without issues - ever-
| increasing consumption is bad for the environment; the jobs are
| getting more and more pointless; people wonder why automation
| doesn't result in shorter working hours for everyone.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| It's come full circle from the people who were fighting
| Uber/Lyft to protect taxi drives' livelihoods
| rconti wrote:
| Only ridden Waymo twice but I've been much happier with them than
| the average Uber driver over the past few years.
|
| I keep seeing them around my home in Menlo Park (Redwood City),
| but they're still in testing phase and not available for booking
| yet.
| codemac wrote:
| As of this morning, they should be. My app sent me a
| notification today.
| rconti wrote:
| Aha, right you are! I wasn't logged in since I recently got a
| new phone.
| johnneville wrote:
| the service area still stops at Burlingame for me without
| peninsula access yet
| modeless wrote:
| Nice, there's already a button in the app to get on the waitlist
| for freeways. I'm curious to see how much it would cost to
| commute with Waymo.
| t1234s wrote:
| Can Waymo scale up its fleet fast enough to match Tesla?
| ra7 wrote:
| Can Tesla make its software autonomous enough to match Waymo?
| roman_soldier wrote:
| Given Waymo are just now able to go on the highway which
| Tesla's have been doing for years they are already way ahead.
| Waymo won't exist this time next year they can't compete on
| scaling and price.
| inkysigma wrote:
| If the standard for "going on the highway" is whatever
| Tesla is doing, then Waymo was able to go on highways in
| 2010 under the Chaffeur project. It turns out though that
| the reliability of actually being driverless is a pretty
| big gap and so no Tesla is not able to go the highway yet,
| at least not in the same sense.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Tesla doesn't have an actual robotaxi fleet at all yet, they're
| still in the testing phase with safety drivers/monitors.
| cess11 wrote:
| It'll be interesting to follow how these machines will be
| exploited. I'm waiting for the first robotaxi mediated bombing or
| similar attack.
| zkmon wrote:
| Are they fully self-contained or they need to talk back to
| internet during the ride?
| brokensegue wrote:
| i don't know the answer but i'm curious why you want to know
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| This makes Dallas much more viable. I'm not sure if I'd have a
| usecase for waymo other than going to the airport. The other use
| cases such as going to work when my car is in the shop require
| the freeway too. Only non freeway thing I'd use it for otherwise
| is coming home from a neighborhood party or local restaurant/bar
| when I've been drinking and I don't really drink.
| schainks wrote:
| I am super impressed by Waymo now. Uber and Lyft are in huge
| trouble because the customer experience is just better in every
| way.
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