It's fascinating seeing all the comments elsewhere anytime Waymo starts testing in another city along the lines of, "ah, but how will they handle X, Y, and Z here?? Checkmate, robots!" despite having already launched service in several other cities.
Granted, NYC is the biggest city in the US, so maybe that sort of reaction is more reasonable there than when people in Dallas or Boston do it.
I’m curious if autonomous cars will become targets for aggressive drivers. Like a driver isn’t going to be as scared cutting off a Waymo or tailgating one because the AI isn’t gonna get road rage or honk like hell. In some places I could see the Waymo’s getting severely bullied if that’s the case.
The game-theoretic aspect of this is interesting to me. A lawful robot will never make progress in Manhattan because the people will just walk across its path continuously, forever. To be an effective driver in Manhattan you have to intimate that you're willing to hit people, without ever hitting them. If humans believe that the Waymo will categorically never hit them, then the Waymo will never get a turn.
I live in the bay and occasionally ride Waymo in SF and I pretty much always have a good time.
I visited NYC a few weeks ago and was instantly reminded of how much the traffic fucking sucks :) While I was there I actually thought of Waymo and how they'd have to turn up the "aggression" slider up to 11 to get anything done there. I mean, could you imagine the audacity of actually not driving into an intersection when the light is yellow and you know you're going to block the crossing traffic?
Tried Waymo in SF and LA, and the service was great. The only problem I noticed is that sometimes it tells you they'd pick you up in 5 minutes, and then when it's almost over they tell you "sorry, it's actually going to be 20 minutes now". Since it's still new technology, I always gave it enough buffer so it never actually was a problem for me, but they probably could do better than that... Another weird thing was it chooses strangest places to stop. E.g. I asked it to pick me up at the hotel once, and it drove right past the hotel way to the end of the block where by coincidence a couple of homeless people were camping. Not that it led to any problems, just weird, it could have stopped right where hotel had a convenient place for loading/offloading of people. Maybe eventually that gets sorted out.
I can't wait to hear how it goes in NYC -- its going to be a total cluster - with the significantly more chaotic behavior on the streets, bike scooters, pedestrians and then the oddness of the streets/aggressive driving necessary behavior.
Give it one month if they saturate it too much there will be political blowback on waymos causing traffic chaos. Queue track record in SF as datapoints.
I haven’t lived in NYC, but I have lived in Boston. Isn’t the real concern winter? Has Waymo (or any other self driving tech company) shown that it can handle the snow well: non-visible lanes, downshifting to avoid braking, etc.?
Waymo should add a thin layer of "assertiveness" for actual deadlock that their self-driving architecture could cause.
While in Austin, I was in a Waymo that blocked 3 lanes of incoming traffic while attempting to merge into a lane going into the opposite direction. It was a super unorthodox move, but none of the drivers (even while stopped for a red light) would let the Waymo* merge into their lane.
Thank God for the tinted windows, people were pulling their phones out to record (rightly so). It felt like I was responsible for holding up a major portion of Austin 5 pm traffic on a Friday.
Wish it just asserted itself ever-so-slightly to get itself out.
Basically it was pulling out of a parking a lot, cutting across 3 lanes, and then attempting to merge into the flow of traffic going the opposite direction.
I'm not doing a good job of explaining it, so here's a visual:
V V V
| l l | l l |
| l l | l l |
↑
-------·
| l l | l l |
| l l | l l |
^ ^ ^
I exclusively use Waymo in SF, even if it costs a bit more than Uber. You'll most often get a great human Uber driver, but there's a very real possibility that the person is a bad/unsafe driver or the ride is unpleasant for a myriad of other reasons. With a Waymo, you know exactly what you're buying.
Lots of comments sharing their waymo experience, so I'll hop on the bandwagon :) I visited Austin for a work trip and went out of my way to get waymo rides for work events, reimbursed of course ;) , managed to score 3 rides.
The airport is out the coverage map so I had a real person behind the wheel both ways. Objectively, the waymo was way safer experience because one driver was a local and drove like one (e.g. rolled through stop signs, drove past a long queue to merge at the end, etc.) and the other smelt like weed in the car. Luckily, both trips we arrived unharmed. In comparison, the Waymo drove pretty well, imo and very consistent. Nothing extra ordinary but no reason to stress.
The difficult part of riding the waymo was all moral cope: it cost just as much (minus tip) as paying a real person, driving past homeless people under a bridge in an autonomous vehicle felt unsettling, and my driver from the airport in my home city was wonderful and hard working. I don't typically like to chat in the cab, and the driver didn't initiate, but I was feeling empathetic and guilty so I struck up a conversation. By the time I got home we were enjoying ourselves and the driver was sharing animal facts because I had learned he was a real enthusiast that could not make a living solely on ecology. We were laughing and joking around together. (Google, if you're reading do NOT try to replicate this experience with AI)
I'm glad I got to try it and out of my system. Still would prefer trains or more public transit over more cars :p
This is great long term for having cars that follow traffic laws since human drivers in NYC are awful (kill/injure pedestrians, bikers, and other street users all the time).
Not so great for getting cars out of NYC and pedestrianizing more of the city/moving towards more “low traffic neighborhoods” as I imagine Waymo and other similar companies are going to fight against these efforts.
Edit: Lots of people talking about human drivers taking advantage of self-driving cars being more cautious/timid. Good news is that once you have enough self-driving cars on the road, it probably slows down/calms other traffic (see related research on speed governors).
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 71.0 ms ] threadGranted, NYC is the biggest city in the US, so maybe that sort of reaction is more reasonable there than when people in Dallas or Boston do it.
Obviously starting in the easy places is the right move, but I don't think you can dismiss the comments like that.
Would it be way better to make walkable neighborhoods, mixed-use developments, and reliable and frequent public transit?
Yes. Yes it would.
But, in lieu of that, self-driving has a lot of advantages in the long run, even if the technology isn't 100% perfect right now.
> We’re a tech-friendly administration
Clearly not.
I think some of the Pittsburgh-based self-driving firms may have tried this, but unaware how far they got.
I visited NYC a few weeks ago and was instantly reminded of how much the traffic fucking sucks :) While I was there I actually thought of Waymo and how they'd have to turn up the "aggression" slider up to 11 to get anything done there. I mean, could you imagine the audacity of actually not driving into an intersection when the light is yellow and you know you're going to block the crossing traffic?
Self-driving is a non starter in many parts of the world.
Give it one month if they saturate it too much there will be political blowback on waymos causing traffic chaos. Queue track record in SF as datapoints.
Definitely interested in how this turns out.
While in Austin, I was in a Waymo that blocked 3 lanes of incoming traffic while attempting to merge into a lane going into the opposite direction. It was a super unorthodox move, but none of the drivers (even while stopped for a red light) would let the Waymo* merge into their lane.
Thank God for the tinted windows, people were pulling their phones out to record (rightly so). It felt like I was responsible for holding up a major portion of Austin 5 pm traffic on a Friday.
Wish it just asserted itself ever-so-slightly to get itself out.
I'm not doing a good job of explaining it, so here's a visual:
The airport is out the coverage map so I had a real person behind the wheel both ways. Objectively, the waymo was way safer experience because one driver was a local and drove like one (e.g. rolled through stop signs, drove past a long queue to merge at the end, etc.) and the other smelt like weed in the car. Luckily, both trips we arrived unharmed. In comparison, the Waymo drove pretty well, imo and very consistent. Nothing extra ordinary but no reason to stress.
The difficult part of riding the waymo was all moral cope: it cost just as much (minus tip) as paying a real person, driving past homeless people under a bridge in an autonomous vehicle felt unsettling, and my driver from the airport in my home city was wonderful and hard working. I don't typically like to chat in the cab, and the driver didn't initiate, but I was feeling empathetic and guilty so I struck up a conversation. By the time I got home we were enjoying ourselves and the driver was sharing animal facts because I had learned he was a real enthusiast that could not make a living solely on ecology. We were laughing and joking around together. (Google, if you're reading do NOT try to replicate this experience with AI)
I'm glad I got to try it and out of my system. Still would prefer trains or more public transit over more cars :p
Not so great for getting cars out of NYC and pedestrianizing more of the city/moving towards more “low traffic neighborhoods” as I imagine Waymo and other similar companies are going to fight against these efforts.
Edit: Lots of people talking about human drivers taking advantage of self-driving cars being more cautious/timid. Good news is that once you have enough self-driving cars on the road, it probably slows down/calms other traffic (see related research on speed governors).