Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

Last week Waymo said they are driving 100,000 miles per week in San Francisco. That figure is just bonkers. SF MTA only operates about 450,000 miles per week, and that was before COVID-19 shut them down. When one is on the streets of San Francisco does a Waymo Jaguar just drive by every couple of minutes? I honestly haven't been over there in a few months.

View on HN

Long story short, yes, you do indeed see the white jaguar crossover with the spinning lidar sensors every few minutes while you are out and about. Always a different person sitting in the driver seat, yes I've checked because I didn't believe the number of Waymo cars at first either.

Anecdotally I've seen many more of them in Chinatown in recent weeks, it's not particularly rare to see multiple Waymo Jaguars at the same intersection waiting for the lights to turn green.

They seem to have taken over a previously public parking lot at Pacific and Sansome in the city. There are often 20/30 of these cars parked up there.

I've never seen one without a driver, but occasionally when I look at the steering wheel it is turning independently and just being monitored by the driver.

> When one is on the streets of San Francisco does a Waymo Jaguar just drive by every couple of minutes?

I live on Dolores park. They drive by multiple times an hour

The are everywhere. I'm fairly certain that I encounter them more often than SFMTA.

My car was broken into over the weekend and I couldn't help but think about whether a Waymo captured the vandalism... Not like it would help, but like all mass data collection campaigns, the potential implications are strange.

I see them in my neighborhood at least twice a day. They don't bother me, to be honest. Just like any other car.

They’re also in my neighborhood - I generally see one every time I do an errand. They tend to drive 5-10 mph under the rest of traffic which can be frustrating. They also tend to be slow when making lane changes and turns to the point where it holds up other vehicles.

5-10mph under while within the city limits, on streets where things pop out at you all the time, sounds really nice actually. It's one of the things that happen all the time that drivers ignore the possibility of.

I'm in glen park neighborhood of sf, it's the suburbs basically. I see them anytime I walk outside, but I don't think I keep track of which company I see driving by. It could be waymo, cruise, etc.

I saw a few of them when I went to visit my friend in SF a few weeks ago.

They’re all over Potrero Hill. I see at least one daily.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com