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Comment by kyle_martin1 | Hacker News Reader

I live in Phoenix and applied to their beta program. Haven't heard a word since but I've seen a few passengers riding in them. My guess is that they're hand picking people with compelling stories for marketing reasons.

Gotta say though...it's quite amazing to see 5-10 SDCs/day.

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Yeah in Phoenix/Tempe/Chandler I see them all the time, multiple companies here with Waymo being the most seen and having the actual self-driving ones.

Arizona/Phoenix metro is a great place for self-driving because the relatively flat, square mile based road grid and the fact that we have both lots of college students and older people that live here that need it. Most of the self-driving ones are in and around ASU.

When both college kids and seniors are testing these out, it will also be good for word of mouth, for the older crowd especially which will be a big consumer of self-driving transportation.

Since so much SDC data is being collected in Arizona, it is great for being early as a robust product for Arizona. Colder areas with more complex roads, obstructions and traffic may take much longer.

LiDAR becomes a liability in inclement weather. If you can't drive without LiDAR, then you can't drive in rain, snow,or fog.

Are they already fully driverless or do they still have a safety driver?

Google moving them out of driver seat. So not possible to fake it.

https://www.wired.com/story/waymo-google-arizona-phoenix-dri... Waymo Finally Takes the Driver Out of Its Self-Driving Cars | WIRED

I think I've read a about a dozen announcements like that stating that they are going to start having the cars drive without safety drivers, but all the videos I saw on Youtube still have safety drivers, that's why I asked.

Even without a safety "driver" you can have an employee monitoring with a finger on the kill switch.

Safety driver still there in my experience.

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