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Comment by fhub | Hacker News Reader

Another fun anecdote. When a Waymo is in the vicinity of another Waymo they acknowledge each other in a whimsical/cute way - the windshield wipers swipe once (I'm not sure they still do this). But it wasn't implemented very well at some point since the Waymo I was in was behind another one for many blocks. The wipers went at least 17 times. As an earlier adopter I provided lots of feedback. Even little things like I tried working on a laptop in the back* and when I went to type in my 1password password I reached up to cover the camera that is positioned perfectly to see my keystrokes.

* Not recommended in SF. But I imagine on the 280 it would be great one day.

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> When a Waymo is in the vicinity of another Waymo they acknowledge each other in a whimsical/cute way - the windshield wipers swipe once

Pretty sure that's just lidars messing with Jaguar's rain sensors.

That explains a lot. Thank you.

Why is working on a laptop not recommended in SF?

The start stop traffic gave me car sickness quickly. The 280 is a 4 lane highway that, at certain times of day, adaptive cruise control gets very little workout.

May be actually getting better over time. A lot of the screen-related car sickness goes away with the refresh rate bumped up to 120Hz. These are slowly arriving to not-completely-gaming laptops fortunately.

That's interesting. I wonder if that's the same phenomenon that causes VR sickness with low refresh rates

Car sickness happens when reading a book as well. It's your inner ear being out of sync with what you are witnessing. Which is why looking out the front window helps.

There's more than one reason for the sickness to kick in. It can happen with a book, but for some people a slow refresh rate -vs- book or high refresh rate makes a massive difference.

It's one of the reasons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality_sickness

"The" 280? Has Norcal shifted to usage of definite articles for freeways?

probably a transplant.

For those interested: _Generally_, Bay Area natives will refer to highways as "280", "101", maybe even "Highway X".

SoCal natives (and many others) will, _generally_ say: "the 101", "the 280", etc.

I was genuinely curious, haven't lived in the bay since 2011 and it seemed like it could be shifting. When I lived in the central coast it was a clear shibboleth when meeting people.

> Another fun anecdote. When a Waymo is in the vicinity of another Waymo they acknowledge each other in a whimsical/cute way - the windshield wipers swipe once (I'm not sure they still do this).

What is your motivation here? I can see why some think it looks like promotional material.

What do you even mean by motivation? If it's true (though it's probably a sensor error), it's perfectly reasonable to mention. And lying about it would be ridiculous. What scenario is there where you're worried about bad motivation here? It's not unrealistic for someone to like the idea.

It sounds promotional, having little other value. But the question wasn't answered; instead it was attacked - a good way to avoid answering a question. Oh well.

> But the question wasn't answered

That's because you asked a question with no valid answer.

Seriously, what would you accept as being an innocent response? Anything equivalent to "I thought it was neat" is apparently not good enough since that sentiment was already in the previous post.

If you want to accuse them of being a shill, just do it directly. (But only if you have a good enough reason to break the rule against doing so.) Don't do this roundabout "what's your motivation" thing where you implicitly reject the innocent motivation.

And why would it need to have "other value"?

> a good way to avoid answering

Since I'm the only one that responded, are you suggesting I'm in cahoots with them? Come on, dude.

a) Share some anecdotes as I was lucky enough to get early access by simply applying through the app. b) I'm a believer/early adopter and as such I guess I've enjoyed sharing my experiences.

It turned out I was wrong about the windscreen wipers. LIDAR from other vehicle tripping the rain sensors.

In any event, I do wish Waymo the very best. They aren't just trying to do something hard, they are doing it whilst getting lots of opposition from SF gov. Whether the business model works - time will tell.

Thanks!

> b) I'm a believer

That is interesting to me. Not that you shouldn't be one, or that such an attitude is new to the world, but I always wonder: Why care about a for-profit company's product? Usually these companies don't care about anything or anyone else.

> When a Waymo is in the vicinity of another Waymo they acknowledge each other in a whimsical/cute way

I hate “whimsical” stuff like this. Part of maturity/adulthood is coming to the realization that you don’t have the right to conscript other people into your sense of humor.

> Part of maturity/adulthood is coming to the realization that you don’t have the right to conscript other people into your sense of humor.

And yet, you aren't willing to accept that they have a different sense of humor without hating them. Ironic.

I don’t hate them, and never said I did. I find their childish antics annoying.

It is however, interesting to me to confirm they are aware of other AVs and can sync with them, enable better safety, and potentially could optimize routing through traffic with the combined data. Imagine if the car in front could warn the car behind of an incident, enabling it to take action before a human driver would even be aware of the incident.

> Imagine if the car in front could warn the car behind of an incident

They can, that is why cars have all this pretty lights in the back! They can warn of several things, like intention of turning, braking, accidents, is amazing.

And it works wonders if the human driver focus on the trafic ahead of the car just in front

Yeah, the lights in the back of your car can warn of exactly four things:

- The car is going to turn left (one blinking yellow light) - The car is going to turn right (one blinking yellow light) - The car is stopping (three solid red lights) - An unspecified error occurred (two blinking yellow lights).

It's not exactly a high - bandwidth form of communication. Most of the purpose of the lights behind your car is to remind other human drivers of your continued existence. As you point out, some of this deficiency can be made up by not looking at them.

Imagine a world where you could automatically talk over an intercom with the driver in front of you about traffic conditions. I bet you'd find safer, better-informed driving. Self-driving cars make that theoretically easy and humanly pleasant.

It's hard to get right, and almost no one gets it right. Remember when Lyft cars had pink moustaches on them?

"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to appear very grown up" - CS Lewis

I disagree strongly, I want more personality in the people and things I see in life. Even if I'm not a fan of someone's sense of humour I can appreciate an attempt at levity and whimsy.

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