I don't think US companies are much appreciated in the EU. It
has to do with a certain orange guy, Mr. Krasnov. Just see how
he sold out Ukrainians to Putin recently (again!) aka no info
sharing. (Though, EU countries also suck here - why can they
not compensate for the USA? This is deliberate sabotaging
going on from EU countries as well, though Krasnov far
outperforms them all combined, in a negative manner. He must
get a lot of financial kickbacks for his family dynasty.)
Munich has been a long-standing operational base for many US companies in EU, so they might try just a pilot, but it's not only waymos I see here, also some bmw self-driving test vehicles, also nvidia(?) test vehicles etc. And trust me as a ukrainian myself I know what people think about orange man both here and back there. And europeans are largely sceptical about US companies not because of him but mostly because they're just american.
Winter is the real test here. Worked on lidar perception for a bit and falling snow throws returns everywhere, plus once the lane lines are under slush everyone just drives in the ruts the car ahead made. Curious how they handle those unofficial lanes.
That's one of the reasons lidar will prove to be a dead end for this application. It's a temporary enabling technology on the path to the simpler multiple camera based solution.
True. But don't most people drive in the tracks of the car ahead? I know when it snows people sometimes make a three-lane highway into a two-way "rut railway" road, and make do.
I worked on perception systems five years ago and we had de-noising algorithms that are much better now. We would never have dared to drive in obscured lanes, but I assume Waymo’s high resolution maps and sensor fusion are extremely good, but yeah, are the vehicles going to plow through the unofficial lanes?
As a driver in places where it snows... I'm curious about how it will handle:
1. Fresh unplowed snow where there are no lane markers visible.
2. Significant banks that take up half a lane with two lanes in each direction.
3. Ice (often one doesn't start going through an intersection on a green until you're 100% sure that every car has cleared - I've been on both sides of this, where you don't go because there's a car sliding through, and the car sliding through because slick ice doesn't care about brakes)
4. Hard braking (the "drive slow and use the brakes lightly for a long while")
5. Cold car things. Electric battery life in the cold (heater for the passengers). Wipers frozen to the windshield. Accumulation of snow on the window. Excess snow on top of the car (considered an insecure load).
> Driving a snowplow during whiteout condition is one such example. In order to improve the safety and efficiency of the snow removal operation, a supplemental steering guidance display was proposed and instrumented in a Caltrans snowplow. The guidance information was calculated based on the magnetic markers embedded under the roadway. Operations were successfully conducted on a 6.25 km freeway over Donner Summit on Interstate 80 in California during the 1998-1999 winter season.
You will never stop hearing about this until they are restored. Also enjoy your very slow commute with all the bikes now legally required to ride in the car lane and block you.
Fair, but I would take Waymos over Rob Ford being allowed to drive any day. As a bicycle commuter I find that Waymos are quite pleasant to share the road with. They generally try to avoid hitting me. Never had a Waymo swerve into my lane, or try to sideswipe me, or accelerate to cut me off to make a right turn, or make overt death treats because "roads are for cars".
No I meant Rob - Doug's fatter more drug addicted younger brother. He made some rather hateful comments to people who commute by bicycle back in the day. I didn't realize he died a decade ago (apologies for being a bit behind on local politics 2500 miles and one border away from home).
Will be interesting how it handles the tougher climate conditions.
Montreal would be the ultimate test, both climatically and just for navigating sheer chaos. Those Roadster jets may finally make a smooth ride throughout the whole of the city possible.
They have a limited presence in New Orleans, mostly rolling around the French Quarter and Uptown. The roads look bombed out in parts of Uptown, maybe not the absolute worst anywhere but it's close.
Yeah, I've seen them going around. The last one I saw at Jackson Square looked like the safety driver was driving. This is probably the worse urban environment for Waymo to be. I'm not sure how they're going to handle the roads or the people dancing in the streets (as well as mules, pedicabs, wacky bikes, scooters, drunk people and all of the wonderful chaos). Not looking forward to them becoming operational here.
You are confusing predictable continuous low level noise for sheer chaos. The chaotic potential Montreal has in winter, and it uses, is spectacular. The fact that it is so unpredictable in exercising this merely contributes to the problem.
>> Montreal would be the ultimate test, both climatically and just for navigating sheer chaos.
Montreal is a vacation compared to the great plains/prairies: -40 with half the road coved by blown snow. Lets see how the navigation system reacts to a total absence of painted lines and visible curbs. Or go to the rocky mountains. I doubt Montreal streets contain any mountain passes worthy of naming.
Try starting at the east side of pooass Manitoba if you want to contend with sketchy road conditions. By the time you get back to Regina your cortisol levels will be telling you to back out of the trip altogether
I had a similar thought from my time living in Alaska. half the year there aren't any lines on the road other than the occasional tracks from the previous car that drove on it, and that's if the wind is low. It's not unusual to have half the road covered in a foot or two of snow from a drift. Humans can see them and usually avoid them, but it involves strategically using the oncoming lane. Would be interesting to see the nav system deal with that!
Ya, all mountains get names. Passes only get names if the are legendary, usually for dramatic views or as highpoints between geographic areas. If a pass has a name, drivers should expect dramatic weather changes between one side and the other.
I wouldn't say Montréal is more dangerous, but it is 100% more complicated for drivers. There are so many variables that change suddenly. A road is fully plowed and salted, you turn right and everything turns to shit with tons of snow on the ground. You keep going, suddenly there's ice *underneath* a layer of snow so the car starts skidding, and the plow's going the other way trying not to swallow your car whole.
You're talking about one variable I'm familiar with, but it's one variable. With snow cover in a plain, you just drive much slower and turn on your hazards.
The most complicated scenario, imho, is getting on and off a car ferry. Dark. Wet. Pedestrians. Dogs. No sidewalks. Flashing lights and lots of signs, most of which have nothing to do with car traffic. Lines on the road which you ignore in favor of following hand gestures. Then dramatic up/down ramps followed by parking way too close to other cars. And it is all in a metal box where GPS fails and internal systems are thrown off by ship movements.
There are very few reasons why a Waymo should get on a ferry. It can take you to the ferry and then you can get another transportation (maybe even a Waymo!) when you disembark.
Headlights don't eliminate darkness. They often exacerbate it, creating stronger shadows in which people/animals can be missed. With lots of slow moving cars the sheer number of headlights all pointing the same way can also wash out reflective signs.
Laughs in Montreal. Over here, the cones surround you, mug you and leave you naked holding nothing but a steering wheel in the middle of the street. _Then_ you fall into a pothole. During a snowstorm. BTW, your car is already in a container headed for Africa.
They've been mapping, or whatever they do, Pittsburgh for almost a year now, and it was pretty funny watching the cars navigate around massive snow piles last winter. Curious to see how the rollout goes here. <Insert popcorn emoji.>
I'll giddily await the moment when a Waymo gets swallowed by a random sinkhole.
I was visiting my brother there shortly after the bus-hole happened, and the winter market had several vendors selling bus-hole related merch. I regret not buying any.
I was thinking this too - my guess is the cars simply wouldn't offer rides on days with really poor conditions.
Toronto's winter driving is normally very reasonable compared to Montreal. My guess is the Waymos operate some ~355 days a year, taking days off after big storms.
This could still be a problem. Human drivers are still available on these days today, and if services like Waymo take over and theres less Uber (et al) drivers, then we'll have no support on the worst days.
Maybe, but I'd expect a good chunk of rideshare traffic still ends up leaving the city, which AFAIK Waymos still won't do.
My understanding is Uber etc. charge and pay based on demand, so if that means the (fewer) human drivers are that much more expensive on snowy days then so be it. If it's a blizzard and Uber fares work out to $100/h I'd be very surprised if drivers couldn't be found.
on the other hand, montreal doesn't allow right on red, and instead has an extremely strongly planned traffic grid including priority right turns. Not much ambiguity in the prescribed traffic patterns.
Toronto gets snow! Do any other cities they operate in get snow?
So much of winter driving is knowing what is blocked by ice and snow, what snow is probably safe to pass, and navigating around piles of ice and snow that become temporary obstacles.
Granted Toronto gets much less accumulation than a city like Montréal.
Took my first Waymo in Austin, TX last weekend and it did not go well. Was supposed to be a 9 minute drive, then randomly it tells us the ride has been 'slightly extended' to 45 minutes. Customer support dropped us off at a restaurant and said sorry. We ordered a human Uber.
Honestly the last thing I thought would happen would be that it would get lost. I thought maybe it would get confused on the road, but it drove better than most human drivers.
I’ve seen them around in London - they are incredibly slow. There’s no way they’ll succeed here - speed is important for getting around.
This is what happens when people who live in a bubble automatically assume what works there must scale and make economic sense to the rest of the world.
Do Waymos move off and brake in the same manner as humans? Nope. They can’t take any gambles - in a tight congested traffic area the difference adds up.
It’s idiots like you who are ultra pro waymo that’ll make Everyone else worse off.
There's no way their slowness is going to make a difference in London. I would have thought the real problem is that they'll just get completely stuck at places where you have to be a bit aggressive to make any progress at all. They don't really have that in America.
That and cyclists/pedestrians can be kind of anywhere at any time. Again not a quite the same in America.
They get stuck in LA as it is which is pretty chill for a major American city all things considered.
They're just really cautious and do need an extra 10s to think sometimes, and there's a lot of driving scenarios that don't allow that much time to decide to go or not. The biggest culprit seems to be unprotected intersections with the potential for human/bike crossing, which includes driveways which they insist on using for dropoffs (even when they're obviously not public driveways), which they then take a very long time to leave.
Both of these "don't really have that in America" routinely happen in San Francisco, which gets semi-aggressive during gridlock and has a good amount of cyclists and scooter riders. Waymos are known to not do well during busy events that result in gridlock (like Independence Day or big music festivals), causing so much disturbance that the city introduced their first geofence banning autonomous cars (but not Uber/Lyft) from part of the city during Fleet Week this year.
At the same time technology doesn't stand still and the algorithms now have an "aggressiveness" slider that goes up if the car can't make any progress.
I went to Austin a few months ago and half the interchanges weren't on Google Maps because they were built so recently. In the week I was there I think they finished building a new one near my hotel.
It's shocking how fast things get built there compared to anywhere else in North America.
> half the interchanges weren't on Google Maps because they were built so recently
Uh, bullshit? It takes more than a year to build a modern interchange. Plenty of time for Google to update its maps. Can you provide a couple example satellite photos of the interchanges that are not yet mapped by Google?
Here's the interchange near my hotel that's not on satellite but is on Google Maps. Unfortunately satellite coverage on Google Maps is older than Google Maps is, but you can see on streetview in April 2025 it mostly wasn't there and in May 2026 it mostly was. I think I visited a month or so after which is why it was so recent.
Google doesn't always update when the new ramp goes into effect and can sometimes lag by a few weeks or more from what I've personally experienced, living around places experiencing rapid redevelopment.
You are missing the point. The GP wrote "half". Utter bullshit. Sure, maybe one new on-ramp is missing... but half? And how many new interchanges is Austin building per year? I guess two at max.
> And how many new interchanges is Austin building per year? I guess two at max.
Sounds like someone who's never in their life driven in Austin.
It wouldn't surprise me to find it's nearly a half dozen per year, on a slow year. I only drive down there a few times a year and yet almost every time I go on my random route at least two stretches of road are just radically different from the last time I drove on it.
Sometimes it really feels like Texas' biggest industry is highway bridge/overpass construction.
If you've never experienced the rapid redevelopment of Texas exurbs and what not it's something of a marvel to behold, like watching a train wreck take place over months.
> Like did a bunch of teenagers sneak out at night and build a highway?
With how some of this urban design happens it almost feels to be the case at times.
A bit more real of an answer is: federalism. You're assuming the state DoT is entirely in charge of these projects. Lots of different government organizations are in charge of these things, and they don't always communicate well. Cities, counties, toll operators, and others can decide when these ramps are opened or closed. It's not just the state DoT that does these things. There's no single org that can authoritatively say "these are all the roads which are open, right now."
Now, I do agree with you, making such a data set complete and public should be some level of priority. There should be reporting standards involved in defined, standardized formats. These do not really exist, and making such a thing happen is a political question not a technical one.
I used them all the time when I lived in LA and they worked great. I didn't have a single bad experience. In general they were much more pleasant than having a human Uber, but that's just my opinion.
Really? Bad luck, I have literally never had that happen! What time was this? Because Austin is closing down 35 in the evening and it is just doing crazy things to traffic. Maybe it was that?
I understand the issue of technical power, mind you, but I don't
really see how US companies expanding into Canada is a good idea
as long as a hostile orange individual keeps on potty-mouthing
Canadians.
No, the rest of us will continue trading without the US. Its not giving in, its ignoring the billionaires that are buys favors and not buying from their companies.
You sure about that? My friends and colleagues outside the US are awful pissed that US gen pop let/lets this happen.
They’re encouraging their leaders to route around 300 million Muricans as they see no collective action in response to threats to global trade they rely on.
And argue ok if US institutions and zeitgeist are "fuck yall we're America" well again 300 million are really at the whim of 8 billion.
Not sure the typical Mr Rogers naive optimism "we're America!" is gonna get the US through after 10 years of this (Biden admin effort was binned just months after Trump 2.0 took off so it effectively didn't matter)
What does robotaxi offer apart from less taxi-driver jobs? They can't inherently shorten journeys or avoid surface disruption, we already have taxi services in most cities. This just removes a human job and that's the progress.
Do you know any minors that had the police called on them mid ride by a RoboTaxi company becuase the taxi AI though the minor had guns. Yeah Waymo did that.
For your Women's safety POV. just because now youre alone in the car doesn’t really mean you are alone. You are under constant remote surveillance.
Regarding the meter broke issue. So you'd rather have corporate price fixing. Because that’s what Waymo is doing. The fleet size is same but the costs are going up.
And when a giant tech company is a service provided and rule maker , you don't really have a choice left.
The Support Team checked in on the live internal video after being alerted, and the Support Team saw firearms, so they alerted law enforcement, who arrested the children, for possession of actual guns.
> frees up people to do more important things than drive you around
Like what?
They still need a paycheck. What do you think the outcome of a bunch of unemployed taxi drivers is going to be? What other low skill career is going to absorb them?
We're really rapidly approaching a "automate too many jobs for the remainder of the job market to absorb" situation imo and It's hard for me to imagine it going very well for anyone.
Buses / Trams are the best use of this tech since not only is a high percentage of the cost the driver but they also drive the same predictable routes and not all over the place.
There are issues though. If you remove the staff from the bus you will need to handle some particularly unruly passengers in a different way. Currently the driver just stops until that person leaves or gets police / special constables involved.
If you've ever seen bus drivers in NYC, it's genuinely impressive how they manage to weave a giant box through the chaos. I'm not sure that self-driving tech will be able to replace them anytime soon.
This would be interesting for my native Kansas City though. There's a severe shortage of buses and it's much simpler driving conditions. Could be a game changer.
Cost of driver replaced with cost of what ? how do you sustain that cost and dose it cost more than the driver ? One liner sounds cool but please back it up with something.
Where are you getting this number?
Imagination is free but to execute the imagination is not. So yes, it depends on the imagination of the person who owns the tech AI company not your imagination.
And what is the cost of replacing the driver with the hardware/software and the servicing cost. and the operators in Philippines that are remotely working ?
Of the robotaxis in Austin, I've only used Waymo, but have used it fairly extensively. So far I have noticed:
- Waymo vehicles don't argue about having the air conditioning on,
- They don't try and talk about local (or national) politics to you while driving,
- They don't play annoying games to try to make you cancel rides they don't want to take while collecting cancellation fees (see the /r/uberdrivers subreddit for quite how endemic this is),
- The selection of music (or not) is with the rider, not the driver,
- They smell better - an especially important point during summer when temperatures are regularly over 100 degrees. This is as much about the lack of gross air freshener trees as it is about an extra person in the car the whole day,
- The cars aren't falling apart. This has got noticeably worse for Uber and Lyft (which was always a little more flexible on the age and condition of cars) - it's not uncommon to see fault lights on human-driven ride share vehicles, or body panels duct-taped or twined in place.
There are three major disadvantages right now:
- Waymo is only available through the Uber app, and there is no preference to say you only want Waymo vehicles. This will be fixed in January 2028, which I assume is contractual rather than technical, since during the launch period the standalone app was used - but I wish they'd hurry up, or they'll likely lose my business to Zoox or similar,
- They don't use highways currently, leading to some fairly circuitous routes that take longer than they should, especially to downtown,
- They don't go to the airport. Ride sharing dynamic pricing to the airport means that for trips under a week it's often cheaper to park than to ride-share though (even from ~downtown). I have no doubt that the robotaxis will learn the tricks of late-stage capitalism once they have some market lock-in though.
> What does robotaxi offer apart from less taxi-driver jobs?
One more passenger seat (once the wheel is removed); the option for privacy (once the recordings are removed); increased safety (starting now, but even more so in the future); ability to build overnight charging stations in unpopulated areas; once fully adapted you can have reduction or removal of parking spaces, eliminate commercial daytime traffic, etc. Maybe it is the ever optimist in me… I think eliminating a job that led to increased cardiovascular problems and reduced lifespan of fulltime drivers while keeping the human rate of accidents, will be seen as an obvious improvement in human civilization in the future, similar to giving up horse carriages.
I'm sure many people have had enjoyable rides with taxis. I've had many.
But I've also has rides where the drivers was obviously exhausted and driving recklessly, and I've had a few drives where the driver started going on about some insane political topics.
Some days I don't want the latter. Having that service would be a nice option.
HackerNews is a bubble in itself. Most people here cannot relate to a person who drives a cab for a living and is having a real tangbile crisis seeing how these tech companies are eating up their livelihood. Switching jobs for a taxi driver is not the same as switching jobs or career as a software coolie.
No taxi driver union can combat the amount of money waymo is spending lobbying.
I wonder how this will handle streetcars. It's illegal to pass a streetcar with the doors opening. There's a flashing signal on the vehicle, but it seems like a fairly important local difference. I hope it won't take a pedestrian death to get that sort of thing looked at.
I happened to drive past 2 of them in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago. One was making a left turn into an alley, another was on the otherwise of the road so I never got to see how they actually drove but I giddily squealed like a happy pig rolling in the mud WAYMO! as I tried explaining to my shocked wife wtf was going on. It's been so long since I've had this feel of wonder when seeing technology.
I'm so going to ride in one once they're open to the public.
I'm not them but I will answer from my viewpoint, as someone who has learned to appreciate the efficiency of AI coding.
First, my only interaction with a waymo was while driving in a low traffic location and it started with me having to be extra evasive with it's cautious style shifting into it deciding to pass me despite my safe but assertive driving normal stance.
Second, lots of people (myself included) remember the talk 5-7 years ago around autonomous cars and how the leaders of such companies were talking of futures where nobody (but the ultra rich, of course) would actually own a car and everyone would just use these autonomous car services.
Where that breaks down is how the surveillance state makes the average person worry how every trip could be tracked and used against them somehow or outright denied...
But also everyone sees how once vendors have a captive market they get squeezed.
Saving lives is the main thing for me. Waymo at least seems to take safety fairly seriously, with data indicating they cause far fewer serious accidents than the average human driver.
Traffic fatalities are one of the top 3 causes of death for kids in the US (iirc it's right behind firearms).
Beyond children, more people in the US in general are killed by drivers/cars than firearms. In the 25-44 age bracket, it's the most probable cause of death IIRC.
And, as an avid pedestrian and cyclist (and as a driver), the more humans we get off the road, the better.
As a motorcyclist, I am confident that I'd rather trust software to drive near me than the median motorist. I've ridden in a Waymo and I've ridden in the back of countless rideshares driven by humans, and I've never had to complain that my Waymo was speeding or running stop signs.
I was in a Waymo in SF a year ago that ran a red light. But there were no cars or pedestrians or anything going the other way so it was a completely safe manoeuvre (akin to running a red light at 3am in a rural area).
Waymo is a mostly seperate group of people from Google, to start with. What's more, on the whole I think the reason they've been winning the self-driving race is that they've actually taken the safety and reliability of the system very seriously, in comparison to a lot of their competitors. Waymo seems to be the only one that both has the necessary level of respect for the problem and the ability to execute on it.
I live in Denver, Colorado. A Waymo drove into a farmers market. Luckily, no one was hurt. I assume a human doing this would be charged with reckless driving. Local cops said there are no laws to charge a driverless car with a crime. Absolutely stupid for a city or state government to approve autonomous systems in their municipalities without first enacting very strict and very punitive laws around these systems. This goes for surveillance, sidewalk delivery bots, and especially driverless cars.
I only say this hoping Toronto is not like "The Wild West" and hopefully has protections around these tech companies stealing jobs and hording wealth in the interest of public efficiencies.
Just to be clear: there are humans choosing to have the car operate. That's not just semantics. Responsibility lies with the people making the choice to cause a system to operate.
If people act with gross negligence, then yes, we should arrest them. How that is defined may depend on a variety of factors, though, and is something that already has relevant case law in related fields.
Certainly not unless they are personally responsible for a serious offense, that's more like corporate malfeasance, not an individual traffic incident.
But the company itself should be given a citation for the majority of ordinary traffic violations, and should be the one fined.
If the violation is serious enough the autonomous predatory tow trucks will hear it on the radio then show up promptly to whisk the vehicle away, as usual. Plus in this case the driver is detained and the vehicle is impounded in the same stroke :)
After that it would only be fair that they would have to not only pay bail to the court, but also towing & storage fees before being released, like for any normal driver.
And if they skip bail, they're going back in the slammer :0
It wasn't luck though, the cars are incredibly cautious around people. Yes the car did the wrong thing here, but it wasn't driving at speed or endangering people.
The first comment seems to be trying to make it sound way worse than it really was. Technically it drove into a farmer's market, but usually that headline means crashing into one.
"Endangering" is an exaggeration based on what actually occurred it seems. What the car did was technically in violation of traffic regulations but it was careful to not hit anybody or cause significant damage to people's property as it did so. This is essentially no different than a careful driver ignoring (intentionally or otherwise) a sign restricting them from entering an area, but still driving through the area successfully without doing any harm. Technically, traffic rules were broken, by mistake (an algorithmic one most likely) in this case, but there were no lasting effects.
People make mistakes like that all the time, and sometimes they still get ticketed for that kind of thing, and other times they get a simple warning or don't get any form of rebuke at all. How many of us have never accidentally gone into a one-way traffic lane from the opposite side and managed to still drive through and get back on track without killing or maiming anybody? It's unlikely anybody would get charged with a crime for this, nor should they over a simple mistaken rule violation that did no harm.
This exactly. The car didn't drive into people: it followed a vendor truck into a place it shouldn't have gone, apparently slowly exited the area.
It's bad, and obviously shouldn't have happened, but the car is cautious around people and didn't hit anyone. It's a far better failure mode than the typical case of a human who drives into a crowd.
A human driver, mowed down and killed a family of four in my city [1]. They got six days in jail. With this context, what level of punitive laws are you think for autonomous car companies? Humans drive through these situations too [3].
When people point out "reckless" behavior of autonomous cars to me, the conversation simply isn't worth having unless you're comparing to current conditions. We're looking at 40,000 deaths per year so, endless community meetings and hand-wringing around regulations is not an option, unless we're ready to first stop all human driving and have the same process for those.
> Two years ago, the family of four was on their way to the San Francisco Zoo with their two young children when they were killed by Lau, driving 70 miles an hour in the residential area of West Portal in San Francisco.
I'm sure per mile driven, there is an "acceptable death rate", but should we atleast wait till the autonomous cars are on the board to make that a priority?
How is that different from a malfunction of human-operated car?
There are drive-by-wire cars on the road.
ABS systems can disable breaks.
If a malfunction is caused by the control software of that car or a mechanical malfunction by bad design it seems to me like the same thing. Do you/we don't have a solution for that already?
> I live in Denver, Colorado. A Waymo drove into a farmers market. Luckily, no one was hurt. I assume a human doing this would be charged with reckless driving.
I also live in Denver, and while the quote is technically true, it is misleading. A Waymo did drive into a farmers market...before there were barricades up, when other cars were still driving through as well for set-up time. Nobody would have been charged with anything.
> “It entered through our food truck area,” said Nicole Jarman, the production director of the farmers market... there was a “Road Closed” sign on one side of the street, but the other side of the street was still open to vendor traffic during set up and the Waymo followed a vendor vehicle past the sign and then turned onto the 1400 block of South Pearl Street.
> “It’s still load-in, our barricades are moved to the side, so there’s vehicular access, and it followed that traffic, went slow, and then made its way on out at Arkansas and kept going” she said.
> “It was not anything that made us nervous,” Jarman said.
I disagree with this. I'm okay with permissive permitting of self driving (it seems to be much safer according to their own studies, which I am willing to skeptically accept), but where I agree is being permitted should not give you any special rights when it comes to avoiding civil (criminal?) liability.
A taxi company that kept a drunk employed might be liable for damages that drunk causes, same rules should apply to your own self driving fleet.
Earlier this year a 92-year-old woman drove into our local Asian supermarket, killed three people and injured at least six. No criminal charges were filed. At least they pulled her driver license.
I don't say this to suggest excusing autonomous car companies from bearing liability, but just for context.
Perhaps we should not make the regulations too punitive on the AV companies as that would reduce the speed of replacing bad human drivers who currently cause 40,000 deaths a year in the US.
Some of you downvoted-to-dead this from another poster ("Hi, I'm Nelson" from Technologists for Democracy); new user who had low karma, so it's dead in the thread.
I frankly think it's a legit POV, and I'm also local to this, so I'm going to use my own much higher karma to post it again:
I think there are legitimate concerns in promoting American BigTech as provider of infrastructure/services in Toronto. Concerns about data collection, about technological autonomy, and local employment.
I fail to see any unique argument in this. That is to say you can replace Ontario with San Jose and it'll all work.
> Digital sovereignty and privacy is at stake.
This is the most strongest argument, and luckily that's the first one. Many ways to solve this so not really a big problem.
> Ontarians’ jobs risk being outsourced
What jobs are being displaced by driverless cars? The best argument here is uber drivers are going to be affected. Who would you rather drive you at 3am if you're a drunk woman? An uber driver or Waymo?
> Public transit could lose riders
What is the goal here? The goal is to move people efficiently and decrease the reliance on human driving, which can cause deaths. Public transportation is vital but again, there are times when subway / buses wont work.
Also, if public transit is a major concern, shouldnt we be asking Uber (see point #2) to go away?
The last two points are super generic, it isnt even worth discussion.
It's not just you. My family gets around on foot, bike and transit, but occasionally we find the most practical way to get somewhere we want to go is by car. Having more options to get a ride is very welcome.
From the viewpoint of a pedestrian, having more "drivers" that don't get distracted on their phone sounds blissful.
I learn this each time Apple releases a product. New iPhones could be $500, 10x the speed, half the weight and full week battery life and a fringe loud group will post and upvote some dumb complaint.
anecdotal but waymo was flawless. zenlike music. safe driving. Vs recent uber getting a lot of invasive personal questions from drivers, weird smells, only reason chose is it was half of waymos cost. Even at double the cost might just chose waymo next time.
I think the bigger lesson from what you say isn't so much about Waymo or this topic generally but to always remember that forums like HN are not reliable reporters of reality: they can only give you an indication of who was moved to say something and an indication of what they want you to believe... true or not.
I'm sure you were already aware of that, but its easy to forget that and think you're dealing with something more real.
i had a funny first experience where the lidar got super lost on a bush, but it did a uie around the block and pulled in from the other side, and from there the experimence was that it was the best driver ive ever seen
Last week there were two separate posts, one said "AI is not a tool" and the other one said "AI is a tool." Even though that logically covers all possibilities, somehow the vast majority of comments in both were negative or contradicting. My takeaway is that comments aren't a very representative sampling of how people actually feel.
Remember that happy people don't come whine on the internet.
And HN has become a very negative hole by itself, rewarding complainers and pushing people who don't complain away (positive posts or ones that push back on needless negativity get downvoted a lot these days).
They keep announcing new cities, but do they really follow up and actually launch there? I remember a couple of years ago they announced NYC as a market, but I don't think they're fully launched in NYC yet.
Earlier this year, Waymo had a permit to test 8 autonomous vehicles with safety drivers in NYC. The permit was not renewed [1]. Waymo can no longer drive autonomously (even with a safety driver behind the wheel) in NYC.
252 comments
[ 0.18 ms ] story [ 58.6 ms ] thread1. Fresh unplowed snow where there are no lane markers visible.
2. Significant banks that take up half a lane with two lanes in each direction.
3. Ice (often one doesn't start going through an intersection on a green until you're 100% sure that every car has cleared - I've been on both sides of this, where you don't go because there's a car sliding through, and the car sliding through because slick ice doesn't care about brakes)
4. Hard braking (the "drive slow and use the brakes lightly for a long while")
5. Cold car things. Electric battery life in the cold (heater for the passengers). Wipers frozen to the windshield. Accumulation of snow on the window. Excess snow on top of the car (considered an insecure load).
---
Tangent for the "how do you handle lanes when you can't see any" ... old school approach: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/833362
> Driving a snowplow during whiteout condition is one such example. In order to improve the safety and efficiency of the snow removal operation, a supplemental steering guidance display was proposed and instrumented in a Caltrans snowplow. The guidance information was calculated based on the magnetic markers embedded under the roadway. Operations were successfully conducted on a 6.25 km freeway over Donner Summit on Interstate 80 in California during the 1998-1999 winter season.
https://ahmct.ucdavis.edu/advanced-snow-plow
Forget unplowed snow. Often in Calgary where I live there's no lane markers visible under the snow for months at a time, even if it's plowed regularly
Ford is already removing bike lanes.
Tax dollars to put in bike lanes, and then tax dollars to remove them.
You can walk or cycle... Modern bikes are light and pretty fast too.
We need regulation to ensure they don't come here.
Montreal would be the ultimate test, both climatically and just for navigating sheer chaos. Those Roadster jets may finally make a smooth ride throughout the whole of the city possible.
Otherwise you're just being racist.
Freezing rain, for example. My god.
Montreal is a vacation compared to the great plains/prairies: -40 with half the road coved by blown snow. Lets see how the navigation system reacts to a total absence of painted lines and visible curbs. Or go to the rocky mountains. I doubt Montreal streets contain any mountain passes worthy of naming.
I'm generally enthusiastic for electric vehicles, but batteries and FSD don't really work in a 12 hour blizzard at -40. Doesn't match my use case. :)
Try starting at the east side of pooass Manitoba if you want to contend with sketchy road conditions. By the time you get back to Regina your cortisol levels will be telling you to back out of the trip altogether
;)
You're talking about one variable I'm familiar with, but it's one variable. With snow cover in a plain, you just drive much slower and turn on your hazards.
Headlights of cars in various states, and some drivers think they have them fully on when they don't.
pothole observed. Diverting a-
pothole observed. d-
pothole.
po-
I was visiting my brother there shortly after the bus-hole happened, and the winter market had several vendors selling bus-hole related merch. I regret not buying any.
Toronto's winter driving is normally very reasonable compared to Montreal. My guess is the Waymos operate some ~355 days a year, taking days off after big storms.
My understanding is Uber etc. charge and pay based on demand, so if that means the (fewer) human drivers are that much more expensive on snowy days then so be it. If it's a blizzard and Uber fares work out to $100/h I'd be very surprised if drivers couldn't be found.
Don't hear many anecdotes about FSD in Pittsburgh on a night in January...
So much of winter driving is knowing what is blocked by ice and snow, what snow is probably safe to pass, and navigating around piles of ice and snow that become temporary obstacles.
Granted Toronto gets much less accumulation than a city like Montréal.
Honestly the last thing I thought would happen would be that it would get lost. I thought maybe it would get confused on the road, but it drove better than most human drivers.
I’ve seen them around in London - they are incredibly slow. There’s no way they’ll succeed here - speed is important for getting around.
This is what happens when people who live in a bubble automatically assume what works there must scale and make economic sense to the rest of the world.
It’s idiots like you who are ultra pro waymo that’ll make Everyone else worse off.
That and cyclists/pedestrians can be kind of anywhere at any time. Again not a quite the same in America.
We'll see I guess.
They're just really cautious and do need an extra 10s to think sometimes, and there's a lot of driving scenarios that don't allow that much time to decide to go or not. The biggest culprit seems to be unprotected intersections with the potential for human/bike crossing, which includes driveways which they insist on using for dropoffs (even when they're obviously not public driveways), which they then take a very long time to leave.
At the same time technology doesn't stand still and the algorithms now have an "aggressiveness" slider that goes up if the car can't make any progress.
It's shocking how fast things get built there compared to anywhere else in North America.
Here's the interchange near my hotel that's not on satellite but is on Google Maps. Unfortunately satellite coverage on Google Maps is older than Google Maps is, but you can see on streetview in April 2025 it mostly wasn't there and in May 2026 it mostly was. I think I visited a month or so after which is why it was so recent.
Sounds like someone who's never in their life driven in Austin.
It wouldn't surprise me to find it's nearly a half dozen per year, on a slow year. I only drive down there a few times a year and yet almost every time I go on my random route at least two stretches of road are just radically different from the last time I drove on it.
Sometimes it really feels like Texas' biggest industry is highway bridge/overpass construction.
If you've never experienced the rapid redevelopment of Texas exurbs and what not it's something of a marvel to behold, like watching a train wreck take place over months.
Like did a bunch of teenagers sneak out at night and build a highway?
How hard can it be to have a process where mapping companies can register with a state’s DoT and get information when they build stuff?
With how some of this urban design happens it almost feels to be the case at times.
A bit more real of an answer is: federalism. You're assuming the state DoT is entirely in charge of these projects. Lots of different government organizations are in charge of these things, and they don't always communicate well. Cities, counties, toll operators, and others can decide when these ramps are opened or closed. It's not just the state DoT that does these things. There's no single org that can authoritatively say "these are all the roads which are open, right now."
Now, I do agree with you, making such a data set complete and public should be some level of priority. There should be reporting standards involved in defined, standardized formats. These do not really exist, and making such a thing happen is a political question not a technical one.
I understand the issue of technical power, mind you, but I don't really see how US companies expanding into Canada is a good idea as long as a hostile orange individual keeps on potty-mouthing Canadians.
"I will show that America first President who wants to fracture global trade...by arguing for fracturing global trade."
That gen pops tune changed with the political climate just like big corp previously going on about left wing shit is stunning
Ya'll are just LARPing what you watch on TV and read online
They’re encouraging their leaders to route around 300 million Muricans as they see no collective action in response to threats to global trade they rely on.
And argue ok if US institutions and zeitgeist are "fuck yall we're America" well again 300 million are really at the whim of 8 billion.
Not sure the typical Mr Rogers naive optimism "we're America!" is gonna get the US through after 10 years of this (Biden admin effort was binned just months after Trump 2.0 took off so it effectively didn't matter)
Orange guy may make news, but Canada has greater problems from within.
Includes St Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburg, Minneapolis etc.
There are lots of reasons somebody might prefer a driverless car and lots of reasons somebody might prefer a human driver. Why not have a choice?
For your Women's safety POV. just because now youre alone in the car doesn’t really mean you are alone. You are under constant remote surveillance.
Regarding the meter broke issue. So you'd rather have corporate price fixing. Because that’s what Waymo is doing. The fleet size is same but the costs are going up.
And when a giant tech company is a service provided and rule maker , you don't really have a choice left.
That is not what happened.
The Support Team checked in on the live internal video after being alerted, and the Support Team saw firearms, so they alerted law enforcement, who arrested the children, for possession of actual guns.
How is that wrong or bad?
- can play your own weird free jazz via Spotify.
- obeys traffic rules
Like what?
They still need a paycheck. What do you think the outcome of a bunch of unemployed taxi drivers is going to be? What other low skill career is going to absorb them?
We're really rapidly approaching a "automate too many jobs for the remainder of the job market to absorb" situation imo and It's hard for me to imagine it going very well for anyone.
Imagine what cities could do with 50% higher bus frequency or more bus routes.
There are issues though. If you remove the staff from the bus you will need to handle some particularly unruly passengers in a different way. Currently the driver just stops until that person leaves or gets police / special constables involved.
As a driver, you should want cheaper buses. More bus riders = fewer other cars on the road.
This would be interesting for my native Kansas City though. There's a severe shortage of buses and it's much simpler driving conditions. Could be a game changer.
What does that mean?
> dose it cost more than the driver ?
No. That's the whole reason the field of self-driving exists. It will become cheaper than the driver.
> One liner sounds cool but please back it up with something
I don't feel like looking for links right now. You can disagree with my opinion and move on.
And what is the cost of replacing the driver with the hardware/software and the servicing cost. and the operators in Philippines that are remotely working ?
Previous discussion on this topic on HN. I don't feel like searching for it now, you are welcome to.
I don't know what you're saying about imagination.
- Waymo vehicles don't argue about having the air conditioning on,
- They don't try and talk about local (or national) politics to you while driving,
- They don't play annoying games to try to make you cancel rides they don't want to take while collecting cancellation fees (see the /r/uberdrivers subreddit for quite how endemic this is),
- The selection of music (or not) is with the rider, not the driver,
- They smell better - an especially important point during summer when temperatures are regularly over 100 degrees. This is as much about the lack of gross air freshener trees as it is about an extra person in the car the whole day,
- The cars aren't falling apart. This has got noticeably worse for Uber and Lyft (which was always a little more flexible on the age and condition of cars) - it's not uncommon to see fault lights on human-driven ride share vehicles, or body panels duct-taped or twined in place.
There are three major disadvantages right now:
- Waymo is only available through the Uber app, and there is no preference to say you only want Waymo vehicles. This will be fixed in January 2028, which I assume is contractual rather than technical, since during the launch period the standalone app was used - but I wish they'd hurry up, or they'll likely lose my business to Zoox or similar,
- They don't use highways currently, leading to some fairly circuitous routes that take longer than they should, especially to downtown,
- They don't go to the airport. Ride sharing dynamic pricing to the airport means that for trips under a week it's often cheaper to park than to ride-share though (even from ~downtown). I have no doubt that the robotaxis will learn the tricks of late-stage capitalism once they have some market lock-in though.
One more passenger seat (once the wheel is removed); the option for privacy (once the recordings are removed); increased safety (starting now, but even more so in the future); ability to build overnight charging stations in unpopulated areas; once fully adapted you can have reduction or removal of parking spaces, eliminate commercial daytime traffic, etc. Maybe it is the ever optimist in me… I think eliminating a job that led to increased cardiovascular problems and reduced lifespan of fulltime drivers while keeping the human rate of accidents, will be seen as an obvious improvement in human civilization in the future, similar to giving up horse carriages.
I'm sure many people have had enjoyable rides with taxis. I've had many.
But I've also has rides where the drivers was obviously exhausted and driving recklessly, and I've had a few drives where the driver started going on about some insane political topics.
Some days I don't want the latter. Having that service would be a nice option.
No taxi driver union can combat the amount of money waymo is spending lobbying.
[1] https://sfstandard.com/2023/08/23/cruise-waymo-spent-million...
New York is still holding on but I dont know how long it can. https://thenextweb.com/news/waymo-new-york-city-political-ro...
I'll let you rewrite this, since as written it implies having a disease makes you in some way bad.
Toronto is already on Lake America (approved by Google). Maybe bring out the traffic cones or get another trucker protest.
I'm so going to ride in one once they're open to the public.
It seems like you’re into using new technology like AI, based on the success you’ve had using it:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49162724 > I've recently been into AI and orchestration and have set up some pretty neat systems and side projects :)
Or maybe you think autonomous cars are as evil as AI:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644738 > There is no room for nuance. AI is capitals access to our labour. It's evil. The end.
Your views on technology sure are interesting, to say the least.
First, my only interaction with a waymo was while driving in a low traffic location and it started with me having to be extra evasive with it's cautious style shifting into it deciding to pass me despite my safe but assertive driving normal stance.
Second, lots of people (myself included) remember the talk 5-7 years ago around autonomous cars and how the leaders of such companies were talking of futures where nobody (but the ultra rich, of course) would actually own a car and everyone would just use these autonomous car services.
Where that breaks down is how the surveillance state makes the average person worry how every trip could be tracked and used against them somehow or outright denied...
But also everyone sees how once vendors have a captive market they get squeezed.
Traffic fatalities are one of the top 3 causes of death for kids in the US (iirc it's right behind firearms).
And, as an avid pedestrian and cyclist (and as a driver), the more humans we get off the road, the better.
Why would you?
I was surprised that it would do that.
I only say this hoping Toronto is not like "The Wild West" and hopefully has protections around these tech companies stealing jobs and hording wealth in the interest of public efficiencies.
This is bananas. Cops are not experts in the law. I'm sure a competent district attorney would be able to throw somebody in jail for this.
But the company itself should be given a citation for the majority of ordinary traffic violations, and should be the one fined.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%932011_Toyota_vehic...
https://apnews.com/article/robot-germany-sexual-assault-colo...
Can you extend that to this situation?
And cops do sometimes want a higher performance police cruiser than average in case a runaway speeder needs to be apprehended.
Probably going to eventually need an autonomous one of these for some police departments:
https://gmauthority.com/blog/2026/09/california-highway-patr...
No driver needed but you still need to have a Robocop inside to get out and write the citation :)
In the old days this kind of thing was often referred to as a "police interceptor".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW8-1SYvDTI
If the violation is serious enough the autonomous predatory tow trucks will hear it on the radio then show up promptly to whisk the vehicle away, as usual. Plus in this case the driver is detained and the vehicle is impounded in the same stroke :)
After that it would only be fair that they would have to not only pay bail to the court, but also towing & storage fees before being released, like for any normal driver.
And if they skip bail, they're going back in the slammer :0
It wasn't luck though, the cars are incredibly cautious around people. Yes the car did the wrong thing here, but it wasn't driving at speed or endangering people.
> wasn't...endangering people
There's a bit of a disconnect there.
People make mistakes like that all the time, and sometimes they still get ticketed for that kind of thing, and other times they get a simple warning or don't get any form of rebuke at all. How many of us have never accidentally gone into a one-way traffic lane from the opposite side and managed to still drive through and get back on track without killing or maiming anybody? It's unlikely anybody would get charged with a crime for this, nor should they over a simple mistaken rule violation that did no harm.
It's bad, and obviously shouldn't have happened, but the car is cautious around people and didn't hit anyone. It's a far better failure mode than the typical case of a human who drives into a crowd.
When people point out "reckless" behavior of autonomous cars to me, the conversation simply isn't worth having unless you're comparing to current conditions. We're looking at 40,000 deaths per year so, endless community meetings and hand-wringing around regulations is not an option, unless we're ready to first stop all human driving and have the same process for those.
[1]:https://abc7news.com/post/80-year-old-san-francisco-driver-k...
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLLkGaKX7NI
[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8gMd9XZJyg
And that's an easy case to prosecute too, because the driver clearly broke laws beyond just "crashing into people":
>when they were killed by Lau, driving 70 miles an hour in the residential area of West Portal in San Francisco.
Horrifying. Life is short, enjoy what you have.
Why?
Process B has killed none to do the same job.
I'm sure per mile driven, there is an "acceptable death rate", but should we atleast wait till the autonomous cars are on the board to make that a priority?
Driverless meaning no backup safety driver either.
There are drive-by-wire cars on the road. ABS systems can disable breaks.
If a malfunction is caused by the control software of that car or a mechanical malfunction by bad design it seems to me like the same thing. Do you/we don't have a solution for that already?
I would be shocked if that was the case.
I also live in Denver, and while the quote is technically true, it is misleading. A Waymo did drive into a farmers market...before there were barricades up, when other cars were still driving through as well for set-up time. Nobody would have been charged with anything.
> “It entered through our food truck area,” said Nicole Jarman, the production director of the farmers market... there was a “Road Closed” sign on one side of the street, but the other side of the street was still open to vendor traffic during set up and the Waymo followed a vendor vehicle past the sign and then turned onto the 1400 block of South Pearl Street.
> “It’s still load-in, our barricades are moved to the side, so there’s vehicular access, and it followed that traffic, went slow, and then made its way on out at Arkansas and kept going” she said.
> “It was not anything that made us nervous,” Jarman said.
[0]: https://kdvr.com/news/local/waymo-drives-through-denver-farm...
A taxi company that kept a drunk employed might be liable for damages that drunk causes, same rules should apply to your own self driving fleet.
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/westwood-99-ran...
I don't say this to suggest excusing autonomous car companies from bearing liability, but just for context.
Perhaps we should not make the regulations too punitive on the AV companies as that would reduce the speed of replacing bad human drivers who currently cause 40,000 deaths a year in the US.
I frankly think it's a legit POV, and I'm also local to this, so I'm going to use my own much higher karma to post it again:
https://techfordemocracy.ca/2026/04/29/say-no-to-waymo/
I think there are legitimate concerns in promoting American BigTech as provider of infrastructure/services in Toronto. Concerns about data collection, about technological autonomy, and local employment.
> Digital sovereignty and privacy is at stake.
This is the most strongest argument, and luckily that's the first one. Many ways to solve this so not really a big problem.
> Ontarians’ jobs risk being outsourced
What jobs are being displaced by driverless cars? The best argument here is uber drivers are going to be affected. Who would you rather drive you at 3am if you're a drunk woman? An uber driver or Waymo?
> Public transit could lose riders
What is the goal here? The goal is to move people efficiently and decrease the reliance on human driving, which can cause deaths. Public transportation is vital but again, there are times when subway / buses wont work.
Also, if public transit is a major concern, shouldnt we be asking Uber (see point #2) to go away?
The last two points are super generic, it isnt even worth discussion.
Not convinced with the approach here.
From the viewpoint of a pedestrian, having more "drivers" that don't get distracted on their phone sounds blissful.
I learn this each time Apple releases a product. New iPhones could be $500, 10x the speed, half the weight and full week battery life and a fringe loud group will post and upvote some dumb complaint.
I'm sure you were already aware of that, but its easy to forget that and think you're dealing with something more real.
There's a lot of people who have a strong opinion about these things - But they're not sure how to vocalize their thoughts about it.
Or they have strong feelings, but they're not sure what opinions emerge from it yet.
The comments we see are from people who have refined both.
Comments of a single thread, no.
For a question like "is AI a tool?", there's often little reason to comment if you agree with OP, only if you're critiquing the post.
And HN has become a very negative hole by itself, rewarding complainers and pushing people who don't complain away (positive posts or ones that push back on needless negativity get downvoted a lot these days).
[1] https://www.thecityreporter.nyc/2026/04/06/waymo-driverless-...