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Comment by tempest_ | Hacker News Reader

Also isnt waymo only operating in Pheonix and California where the weather is always nice?

What happens when it snows ?

They don't operate in snow now, but everybody was like "This is great, but it doesn't work in the rain!" this time last year. I've now taken many flawless rides in outright downpours in SF. It might take a year or two, but I have no doubt snow will be something that is a non-issue in the near future.

Sensing tech has to improve to get through the noise. As far as I'm aware, you can't see a yellow line or white line on a highway if it's covered in dirty snow.

We could also rework our roadways to include better sensing design and tech (passive or active!), but we are a ways out still from willingness to pay for that.

Do what humans do and drive without lines while trying to stay to one side of the road. This doesn’t seem like a major problem to self driving snow cars. More like, how do you deal with other drivers who are RWD with summer tires and are fish tailing all over the place.

If the sensors are up for it... Mountain roads covered in snow pack are a white blur, especially in certain light. Best bets for actually knowing where the road is might be previous tracks. I've dipped a wheel in a ditch more than once, not from carelessness, but snow drift obscuring the road... A road that I drive 500 times a year

To clarify, I'm not saying it's impossible to have a functional vehicle in dangerous conditions, simply that it's an area loaded with edge cases.

I don’t drive at all when it snows as a human. Our whole city basically shuts down then, and we are pretty far north as far as cities go.

Even in places that expect snow, cars are moving much more slowly and cautiously than normal. It almost seems like self driving cars would do much better in those situations given the speeds and caution involved.

> I don’t drive at all when it snows as a human.

That's the smart move. I've been quite astounded at family members without a driving license pushing family members with driving licenses to drive when they thought it wasn't safe. If it snows and it isn't 911 level urgent then simply stay put.

What is the point you're trying to make? Waymo isn't making claims about their driving performance in snow. And they're not comparing their performance to using a basket of human performance in all weather conditions, if you read the linked blog post they're specifically comparing to human driving performance in the regions in California and Arizona they're testing in.

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