Self-driving Waymos secure final clearance for expansion beyond S.F
sfchronicle.com
sfchronicle.com
- Quality of Lyft and Uber rides have gone down significantly.
- Consistently spacious, clean and quiet cars. You know what you'll get.
- AC always works and not up to the whim of the driver.
- No chatty driver to disturb our sleeping baby.
Negatives:
- Rides have usually 10% mark up over Lyft and Uber.
- Pick up and drop off tend to be a small walk from requested locations.
Forgot one more positive - you can choose a soothing music play list in the car and it automatically resumes in the next ride. Small but really nice detail when traveling with a baby.
Maybe I’m wrong though? I think they go to the airport in phoenix, I just haven’t heard any reports on the experience.
I’ve taken it to and from the airport at Phoenix. Pick-up was an in-airport light-rail station to the first stop. Drop-off was right to the curb late night.
I found that to be true as well, but when you factor in the tip to the driver they come out to more or less the same price.
San Fransisco slave-owning class misanthropy on display.
I'm sorry that the poor tried to talk to you instead of shutting up, and performing his digi-task without disturbing your innocent baby.
Is it any wonder that the same upper-middle class NPC's that treat human beings like machines also (in error) dream of a future where machines will replace human beings?
While I have you: could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait generally? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
If we want nice, relaxing ride with no time pressure then we call a Waymo. Uber is still our go to if we are in a rush.
(I've read comments that if you're on a skateboard this isn't true but I've never used a skateboard in SF so I don't know much about the experience.)
Sometimes I wish I could load my bike into a Waymo. I hit a flat yesterday and left my replacement tube at home and it would have been so much nicer if I could have loaded my bike into the car and gotten a ride home.
He didn't carry tools or spare parts. He'd just summon an appropriate Uber to his location and get a ride home home with his bike if he had an issue.
Basically anything negative is rolled up into one signal no matter what the safety aspect is.
Trust me, you'd feel very differently if you were on a bike regularly in the city. The lyft/uber drivers are the most dangerous drivers in the city. Have been since almost the very beginning of this ride "share" app crap.
Any time a driver did something dangerous with me in the car, they got reported and a one star rating with a comment explaining exactly why. If they did something particularly dangerous around a pedestrian or cyclist, I'd tell them the ride was over and to let me off immediately, and then call uber/lyft to report it to an agent instead of just clicking the "unsafe" button in the app.
You don't have a right to drive for a living.
If you do, you damn well should act like it is your living and be safe about it.
The whole fucking reason we have a massive problem with traffic safety in the US is because police and courts and legislators act like it's so necessary that we must endlessly tolerate people endangering others with their cars, and people get "hardship" exceptions where they're allowed to keep driving even after proving themselves to be a complete fucking menace, because "they need to get to their job" instead of "you knew you needed to be able to drive to get to your job and you still drove the wrong way down that street and hit someone? Sucks to be you."
I'm actually a Waymo fan but this particular argument doesn't really hold water.
The only motivation I see that drives self-driving taxi development is reduced labor costs. But that isn't different than what has happened since the industrial revolution.
Probably a better solution is more reasonable speed limits and more consistent enforcement of those limits, but now I'm just engaging in wishful thinking.
But I'm not sure if we can trust these studies. I'd really like to see a completely independent evaluation, of how the safety of Waymo cars compares to human drivers, and to the safety other companies like Zoox.
That said, human drivers in the US are bad. We have the highest traffic crash rate among all developed countries by far. Pedestrian and cyclist crash rates have been increasing in the US, one of the only developed countries in the world that this is happening in. Much of the US remains opposed to automated traffic enforcement or speed governors of any kind. Privacy advocates use privacy as an excuse but given how much Americans care about their privacy in other aspects of their life, I'm doubtful. And anecdotally it's common for friends to talk about driving 10-15 mph over the speed limit, and we know speed is the leading predictor for severity of a crash. Most US drivers, especially of higher income classes, are probably well aware that they speed and break plenty of other traffic laws on a regular basis and don't want to reckon with that fact.
Because 99 44/100 percent of the time, this is not a factor. The true threat is not someone going 10 over on the highway, it's the loons you see zooming ahead of everyone else going 20+ over, weaving like they're in a video game. Equally unsafe are the self-appointed speed police camping in the left lane doing 2 under (looking at you, Greater Seattle). This forces people to pass on the right to keep up the flow of traffic, which is much less predictable.
The correct answer is to keep right except to pass, keep your speed within reason (<10 over max in good weather), keep a decent following distance, and let the cops take care of anyone driving recklessly. If speed was so dangerous by itself, Germany would not have Autobahns.
According to a government study into Autobahn fatalities that occurred in 2018, "non-adapted speed" (defined as the appropriate speed for the traffic conditions and allowing full control of the vehicle) was the cause of death in 45% of cases overall. For stretches without a tempo limit it was 46%, for stretches with one it was 50% -- this may be a good statistical for the tempo limits, as presumably there would have been more deaths on those stretches without the limits having been set.
Overall, 70% of Autobahn deaths occur on the segments without a tempo limit for a variety of reasons.
Speed limits on the Autobahn are a frequently-discussed and controversial topic in Germany, but for what it's worth, they're quite actively managed for safety reasons.
Gov source (in German): https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/Zahl-de...
Our freeways stateside were largely built in the late 20th century to a uniform 70mph (~110km/h) speed limit engineering-wise. But after the 1970s oil crisis, speed limits became a political football that often have as much to do with driving traffic ticket revenue for local governments as actually promoting driving at a safe speed.
So the problem is that a portion of Americans commenting on our speed limits don't understand there's a difference between "what the government puts up on the sign" and "what is actually a safe speed to drive without endangering other people" as if what's on the sign is some sacred totem that shall not be questioned because We Must All Follow The Rules Like Good Little Boys and Girls.
Not just because it's easier to pass the time, but also because there's no push to make the experience of driving "more interesting." (Too much, and someone drives unsafely, too little, and they aren't really paying attention.)
Given how commonly understood this situation is, I wonder what fraction of the population can read a book or watch a movie while riding in a car without getting fairly sick.
Published: 18 June 2024
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48526-4
"The analysis suggests that accidents of vehicles equipped with Advanced Driving Systems generally have a lower chance of occurring than Human-Driven Vehicles in most of the similar accident scenarios. However, accidents involving Advanced Driving Systems occur more frequently than Human-Driven Vehicle accidents under dawn/dusk or turning conditions, which is 5.25 and 1.98 times higher, respectively."
Not necessarily. Safety is not the only thing we care about, we also want to spend less time in cars.
20mph motorways would be much safer than current limits or even 50mph, but the loss of QALYs from people sitting in cars would not be worth it.
I don't know anything about USA, but my understanding of other humans tells me that "Waymo is 10-25% slower than the rest of traffic" actually means "Waymo drives at the legal speed limit for that location, without surpassing it".
Roads can be designed to slow down traffic, but slapping a 25 mph speed limit sign up on an 80-100’ wide 4-lane road does not slow down traffic.
A road near me was reconfigured with a center turn lane and two lanes from four lanes and traffic slowed from 40 mph to 30 mph, the speed limit for this particular road.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/8/6/the-key-to-slow...
Probably 100% safer too
Speed is the most dangerous aspect of motor vehicles
Not in the way you think. If you're going 55 because it's the speed limit, but everyone else is going 70, you're the most likely driver to cause a collision. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_curve
All that said. If you cannot maneuver safely around drivers going the speed limit then they are not the problem.
Let's assume people are going at a speed that the road is designed to handle, since that's usually the case. In that situation, the behavior you're calling out as unsafe is simply "going faster". Now, in a technical sense that's true, but it's always true. Going faster reduces safety when you're above the speed limit. Going faster reduces safety when you're at the speed limit. Going faster reduces safety when you're below the speed limit.
If you reduce safety to black and white, then you should always go slower, until you're barely moving. If the speed limit is 40, that doesn't magically make it safe to go 40.
Black and white thinking leads to a bad conclusion, so let's add nuance back in. Speed is dangerous but roads are designed to let you go a certain speed while minimizing the danger. You're not being dangerous until you go over that speed. And that speed is almost always higher than the speed limit, especially in good weather.
Going over the speed limit is not itself a problem. It's going over the design speed of the road that's a problem.
Let's not, because most of the speeding I see is from people who very mistakenly think they know what speed the road's designed to handle, because they don't give a crap about pedestrians, bicyclists, visibility, other vehicles, or really, anything but getting to the next red light faster.
Perhaps you drive in a utopia that's solely populated by traffic architects, but here in the real world, it's populated by normal people, many of whom are bad drivers, and bad judges of road safety, but are really good at hitting the gas.
Our high death rates reflect this.
I drive in an area that has a lot of overbuilt roads, and I don't think that's a very uncommon situation.
> they don't give a crap about pedestrians, bicyclists, visibility, other vehicles, or really, anything but getting to the next red light faster
That's very dangerous even if you strictly follow the speed limit. It's a separate problem.
A sign doesn’t really change behaviour but narrowing roads , separated bike lanes, pedestrian controlled crossings, roundabouts, and generally making the road “feel slower” does
My point is that until the road is narrowed, the safe speed on it may be lower than the average backseat traffic architect might think.
Want to know what any arbitrary driver on a road has as a reference for “the design speed of the road”? The posted speed limit.
I’m not saying their argument is right or wrong, but just that this post isn’t nuanced or convincing.
There is a link there, that refers to lots of scientific research. From almost a century ago to almost today, and in a huge amount of agreement.
Do you have more nuance than that?
A few mph over the speed limit in dry weather is rarely outside the design.
And I think I have a reasonable amount of nuance. If you don't have nuance you get "the sign can't be wrong" or "always go slower". The former is objectively not true, and I've never seen anyone seriously advocate for the latter.
Laws were put in place because people are not in fact qualified to make these assessments.
The only nuance here is that you are not required to go the speed limit at all, you can and should go only as fast as the conditions allow.
who gives a shit who is at fault when they're in an accident?
the goal is to avoid the event all together, not to have a scapegoat.
If everyone gets over at the first opportunity, then things go fine. The empty lane isn't wasted, it absorbs brief bursts in traffic that need more time to get over. But even if it was wasted, that wouldn't be a big deal. A 5-mile long section with fewer lanes and a 5.5-mile long section with fewer lanes will have almost the same throughput.
Everyone staying split across two lanes until the end and aligning themselves to do a clean zipper merge also goes fine.
What makes everything go wrong is when people drive down the nice empty lane that's ending and intend to do a normal merge at the end, but they don't start it early enough. Then everything slows down as they squeeze over.
You mean the people who must get past every single car and merge at the last possible second?
What I often see if a lane that intended to go through and a turning lane that is backed up; people pretend to be on through lane, then stop to merge at last minute into long turning lane and void the line.
Not sure why did you link it.
Ironically in my town, we did have a "string" (3 people in 5 years) of pedestrian fatalities. All of which took place downtown where people actually do drive 25.
Ignoring reality
A lot of people killed on the road
The fact that they’re not there.
The idea that the same speed is appropriate at 9am when kids are crossing the street going to school and 2am when there’s noone there and no cars parked on the side of the road, is insane beyond belief.
Speed limits are generally repressive and mostly just a tax collection scheme (though I strongly support most daytime city speed limits!)
Don't we already have school zones which are 20mph when kids are around and higher otherwise?
If you want people to drive slower you just design the road to slow them down.
No speed limits anywhere, or at least no enforcement.
As I said above, speed limits are repressive and a way for the government to bully its citizens and extract money from them. If the government actually wanted to solve the problem (making roads safer), they would simply design the roads differently. Speed bumps are also a very bad solution. Good solutions are "road islands" [1], "curvy roads" [2] or "metal rods" [3].
No limits on the highway either, except to mark more dangerous parts of the road (i.e. it's a suggestion not a limit).
By definition, if you don't crash, your speed was OK. So maybe there should be speeding-related fines only if you do crash.
[1] https://www.google.ch/maps/@46.9519887,8.6213984,3a,75y,174....
[2] https://www.google.ch/maps/@46.0665621,14.4965949,3a,75y,188...
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/14vls...
Definition of what? By this logic SBF shouldn't be jailed but rather given an award for making FTX users whole with modest interest.
The law must scale to all of society. There cannot be different rules based on whether you are lucky, "skilled", or not. Most people overestimate the their competence, as evidenced by fatalities involving motor vehicles. (A professional truck driver I knew died, killing his wife, and harming his nephew just driving back home.)
Texas vs EU: https://i.redd.it/jlqp9vv8flb31.jpg
But making such dynamic limits would be an extremely expensive endeavour.
In comment threads like these, one invariably views vigorous venting of virtuous vitriol versus the vice of velocity, but simply getting out on the road and having a look around - pretty much anywhere in the country - will show that such opinions must either be hypocritical or held by a small minority.
If the maximum traffic density doesn't happen often, then people can understandably be annoyed when they can safely drive faster most of the time.
Speed limits can also exist for reasons beyond the safety of drivers. There are roads around me that are wide, straight, and empty enough to comfortably drive 40mph but are right next to a school. The school-zone limit exists to provide extra safety for children who might foolishly step into the road very suddenly.
Not really. Because speed works in relative. I.e. if everyone drives at 200mph it is much safer than if half drive 100mph and other half drives 200mph. Granted you can't have things appearing at 200mph.
Speed is not the problem deceleration is. Which happens more often when some percent of people drives slower than others.
Decreasing speed limits has the counterintuitive effect of increasing vehicle to vehicle accidents, and intuitive effect of increasing ticket fees. Pedestrian safety isn't that imprcted since a portion of drivers drives above limit anyway.
Speed difference is dangerous. So yes the difference in speed between vehicle and stationary objects it can hit (trees, poles, parker cars). On highways without a divider the danger is from incoming cars as that will double the impact speed. On highways with dividers having speed different from cars around you can be dangerous because it means you are changing lanes often else others are changing lanes to get around you.
Apparently they even have entry and exit cameras on some freeways - and they take photos of everyone to check your average speed. Even if they don’t catch you in the act of speeding, if your average speed is over the limit they’ll still send you a fine.
The moral of the story: Don’t speed in Melbourne. It’s a meme that everyone who visits the state gets done at least once. Everyone in Sydney has a friend who’ll tell you the harrowing tale of their vacation speeding fines.
I'm having a hard time understanding how that makes sense. I understand that matching the flow of traffic is important, but more important than the speed limit? They're there for a reason.
If the speed limit is 30km/h and everyone is driving in 50km/h, you're saying you'll opt for driving at 50km/h?
Besides, if there is multiple lanes, you take the right lane and follow the speed limit. The ones who don't want to adhere to the speed limit, have the left lane(s).
And in the case of it only being one lane, you can literally decide the flow of traffic by adhering to the speed limit, and everyone behind you need to follow it, and once it stabilizes, that's now the flow of traffic, problem solved?
(Just as a disclaimer, I do sometimes drive above the limits myself, but limited only to the highways, never on road with a limit below 120km/h)
Here in Vic (the next state over), people think that law is stupid because it’s apparently less safe having everyone on a freeway driving at different speeds. It makes changing lanes much more difficult and dangerous. Here learner drivers are expected and encouraged to match the speed of traffic (obviously obeying speed signs too).
I suspect vic is right on this one. It probably is more dangerous having different drivers driving at different speeds. At least, more dangerous to human drivers. But what do you expect Google to do about it? Make their entire fleet break the road rules? Their licence to drive their cars on the roads at all is on a trial basis. They’re being closely watched by everyone. Even if it’s potentially unsafe for other drivers who are speeding, sticking to the letter of the law is really the only choice they have here. Maybe in time all traffic will flow at the posted speed. And officials will finally feel comfortable raising the speed limit to match the speed everyone actually comfortably drives at on the roads.
The consensus from the folks writing laws appears to be that the problem is not in fact solved in that case. There are laws which apply independent of your speed that require you to give way when more than X number of cars are behind you constrained by your speed (X varies by jurisdiction).
Of course the response to this is usually "but if I am going the speed limit that other law cannot apply." Very much like the laws saying you must keep right unless passing someone. Everyone seems to have their own opinion on which laws they will follow, and which they can ignore.
Yes absolutely. Speed limits are cooked up in a room somewhere and do not reflect the actual conditions of the road. The real world situation you find yourself in when on the road is too dynamic to suggest a number on a sign should be the ultimate authority
It's very understood that when it's raining or snowing or foggy you should slow down because you drive to the conditions of the road because that's safest.
If everyone around you is speeding then that's also a condition of the road, which you need to adapt to
I think theres a bit of nuance. If the flow of traffic was all being crazy lunatics then yes I'd say so. But I would feel safer without other cars flying past me/around me because I decide to go 70mph when everyone else around you is going 80-85.
Many believe the myth that as long as we’re going with the flow of traffic, we’re not doing anything wrong. It makes sense– everyone else is going the same speed, so why shouldn’t you? There’s no way a cop could pull you over if you’re just going with the speed of traffic. Wrong.
If you argue that you were just driving with the flow of traffic, then you are essentially admitting to speeding. Other people breaking the law does not justify you breaking the law.
Do they? Almost without exception the argument for going with the flow of traffic is that it is safer, not that it is the most legally defensible.
Of course they can skip the speed study, or not repeat it every 5 years as required, but then tickets are effectively unenforceable on that road.
> Department of Transportation, with the approval of the Department of the California Highway Patrol, may declare a higher maximum speed of 70 miles per hour
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....
Cities aren't dropping their speed limits to 25 mph for shits and giggles. They're doing it because the odds of a person on foot or bike surviving being hit by a car goes up dramatically when speed drops from 30 to 25. Fatalities drop to nearly zero at 20mph, which is why many dense residential side-streets are 20mph. It also has the nice side effect of discouraging people Waze-slaloming their way through neighborhoods instead of using major routes.
https://nacto.org/publication/city-limits/the-need/designed-...
The whole "make the speed limit what most people are doing" was just auto industry bullshit that helped make our roads even more dangerous to people not in a car or truck.
I wish cities would solve this problem by making the main roads faster instead of by making the side streets slower.
Hard disagree. It is simply an observation of reality, and a very useful reminder to anyone who wants to waste time and resources putting different numbers on signs. You have to actually engineer the roads for the speeds you want, and I get that it's more expensive than just painting new signs and telling your constituents how much you're trying to help.
We have neighborhoods where cars cannot pass without one giving way and pulling off into the parking area. Is it inconvenient? Sure, sometimes, very much so. But you know what? People drive damn slow. Nobody cuts through the neighborhood to save time when traffic on the arterial road is congested. It matters not one bit what the speed limit signs say (there aren't any, actually), because road design solved the problem neatly.
humans drive fast becuase when they're late it makes them feel like they're doing something to solve their problem, but the time savings are almost always inconsequential.
Also 3 minutes is huge if you’re almost late to a 30 minute private lesson.
Sometimes you beat them, sometimes you don't. It's not always in your favor, it averages out.
You can also pay attention to them, and learn the cycle lengths, timing patterns, and pedestrian patterns.
Wow, then I don't know how they'd ever expand to NYC.
In most areas there's no such thing as a "safe place" that doesn't block traffic.
If there are sides of the road that aren't traffic (or bicycle) lanes, then they're taken up by parking.
Taxis, Ubers, delivery trucks -- literally everything just stops in the street (or bicycle lane) and traffic temporarily goes around it.
Everyone in NYC does it because they have to, but Waymo is obeying the law.
The Waymos probably don't have that kind of social skills.
Not a big deal for us to be honest, except when going to the theaters in SF, where the car can stop a block away in sketchy Tenderloin.
I’ve never had it be more than a few hundred feet - usually it’s 2-3 cars away where it can parallel park on the other side of an intersection in the WORST case. Oh I guess they do avoid some of the intense AF hills but I’ve had Uber drivers do the same.
But programming a robot to deliberately break the law is uncomfortable for people to think about.
I don't expect this to hold true once Waymo become generally available, alas.
We'll see how Waymo handles it! It will definitely be Waymo's problem to solve, though.
More cynically, there are simply too many people that won't take care of "public" property. If every 3rd rider (exaggerated for rhetorical purposes) trashes the car, it's gonna be dirty no matter what.
Like others said: the second they have run drivers out, the cars will stop getting cleaned obsessively because you won't have a choice.
Same thing that happened when Lyft and Uber when they ran the taxi industry out of business.
Same thing that happened when Zipcar was established. Cars went from being spotless and well maintained to damaged, dirty, and half the dash being lit up.
I will have a choice. I will choose one of the competitors.
> Same thing that happened when Lyft and Uber when they ran the taxi industry out of business
There's still a taxicab industry in San Francisco. It became better after competing with Lyft and Uber.
> Many of our riders choose Waymo for the clean and consistent vehicle we offer. To ensure every rider gets this experience, we’ll be applying a vehicle cleaning fee for riders who leave a mess behind in the vehicle, such as vomit, excessive trash, and smoking odors.
> For those that self-report their mess during their ride (not including smoking), the fee will be $50. For issues that go unreported, we’ll charge riders $100 for the first violation and increase the fee for subsequent violations. Repeat trash and smoking related violations may also impact your account standing.
A much larger percentage of people will add trash to an already trashed environment.
Its like living with 4 roommates, but one of them leaves their shit everywhere. It could make the whole place look unkept for everyone else.
And because we generally don't want to pick up after other peoples shit/mess things may be left trashy for a long time before anything gets cleaned.
Compare that to other car sharing options (e.g. Zipcar, where cars are usually a mess, but there's no way to keep users accountable).
I think theres a stigma against reporting drivers so most people don't, but then that leaves the people who don't care about these policies to continue giving people bad experiences.
The time spent travelling out of service, in cleaning, and back into service are all lost opportunities. Hopefully you can clean a very large number of cars in a very short period of time.
The cars may be standard. The messes, obviously, will not be.
The win they do have, that I did not consider is, they have cameras _in_ the car. So visible cleanliness is something they can manually check before and after the rid and schedule for service if required; however, it currently seems that this requires the vehicle to go to the larger centralized maintenance facility, which I guessing takes quit a bit more time than the auxiliary charge only lots.
Not trying to be super pessimistic, but mixing distributed autonomous operations with centralized manual service, especially in an urban environment, seems fraught with novel challenges.
B. If the car is reaching the point it needs cleaning without an acute mess, it can go to the centralized location next time it needs a charge.
C. They can also elect to have people at the charging centers at off-hours to clean a subset of cars, to reduce the amount of B you need to do.
The overall point being way more efficient to clean than an Uber.
Privately operated public transport (e.g. jitneys and ferries) frequently are when positioned at a premium, as Waymo is.
The driverless cars can also, well, drive themselves to a cleaning center during the night-time when it won't affect the income generation.
Another interesting possible feature is to redesign cars to be more easily cleanable. Driverless cars can dispense with the central console, steering wheel and pedals, with simple hard plastic covered in detachable covering. Even the seats can be made detachable.
In New York right now. Subway stations are dinghy. But the cars themselves are fine. Hop on the Metro-North or LIRR and they're on par with European cleanliness standards. (If not behavioural.)
European trains are far cleaner.
They can. My local state operated ferry plays an announcement on every ride that if you harass the staff, they will issue a no trespass order banning you from the service for 60 days. Violating the order is criminal tresspassing.
Of course, enforcement isn't easy, and confronting passengers to issue the orders isn't easy, and both can contribute to confusion and delay. It's a little easier to do on a ferry vs a bus because there's more staff.
If you're looking for easy clean surfaces, you could go for police car backseats. Not very comfortable from the looks of them, but very amenable to cleaning.
I might believe that for ferries, they have personnel for that.
Our local bus drivers were told that fentanyl fumes are not harmful, and that asking the state to do anything about junkies smoking _on_ _the_ _bus_ is systemic racism or something.
Waymo says they are a premium service like Uber Black because they have nice cars (Jaguar I-Pace), plus the novelty and safety of being driverless. They’re not trying to be competitive with Uber X or shared rides for in their current form.
Much like buying a museum ticket to see a famous painting isn't comparable to owning the same painting.
I haven't seen Uber or Lyft effectively go down the route of having their service be a part of a user's identity. But Waymo could make an effort, if they wanted to: they use a distinctive car model, and they could offer incentives to make carpooling with Waymo cheaper (to try and make a user 'known' in their social circle for using the service).
Some limos have poor or blocked views of the outside which can trigger motion sickness. I also wonder about their side impact protection and how much testing that gets.
Oh wow! There is a non zero chance that was implemented because of some feedback I provided as a trusted tester many months ago. I napped my son in them a lot when they were free and just spent my time thinking up things they should do and reporting them in app.
Strapping her down in a car seat and taking her for a drive usually rectified the situation.
I look forward to a future where this process can become more automated.
(/s, sorta)
That and a white noise machine (set it low, their ear canals are very straight so they're sensitive to noise, although babies get used to noise around them given time and sleep through it, which is more practical / useful.
You can also just do what people have done for tens of thousands of years: wrap your kid against your body and go about your business.
Putting your kid in a car (self driving or not) is putting them in the most dangerous situation they could possibly be in - car crashes are the number one cause of death for kids (in the US.)
It would follow that since no children die each year playing in active volcanos that's the safest thing they could possibly do. Kindergartens should be filled with magma.
Source: an organization with a fleet installed some driver tracking gps's and looked at the data over a year or two.
In the SF Bay Area, you can have CHP check it for free. The full-time job of the officer that checked ours is investigating accidents where kids in car seats died. Almost all the child fatalities around here are due to improper car seat installation.
We had it dangerously wrong. Before the appointment, I read the manual twice and spent something like 60 minutes installing it. The seat used the latch system with a top anchor, it was a new car and we had a top-ranked car seat. All the straps were connected up correctly. During installation, I sat on it with all of my weight, pushed against the ceiling of the car with my back, pulled the tightening strap until it felt like it'd break, and then pulled harder. The straps were still too loose. I'm not small.
Our last car seat had a failure mode where one of the latch straps would just self-release every 1000 miles or so. I'm not sure if it was user error or not. It happened twice.
After that experience, I think part of the certification process for car seats and cars should involve proving that the majority of people that have never installed a car seat (i.e., first time parents) can get it right on the first try without reading the manual. The test group should include people with physical impairments, and should include at least a dozen popular car models going back a decade. (Car certification should be the same, but with multiple car seat models.)
Since you mention only SF, for anyone else who happens to read this, just go to your local Fire Department. They will 100% either know how to secure it for you or guide you to the correct place.
- "where the baby is secured correctly" => "Restrained", <1 age group and 1-to-3 age group
- car speed is <= 40mph : NHTSA does not separate out accident speed, or separate residential roads from freeways
[1] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... "Traffic Safety Facts, 2021 Data, Children, DOT HS 813-456"
Key Findings • Of the 42,939 traffic fatalities in 2021 in the United States, 1,184 (3%) were children 14 and younger. • An estimated 162,298 children were injured in traffic crashes in 2021, a 17-percent increase from 139,058 in 2020. • Of the 26,325 passenger vehicle occupants killed in 2021 in traffic crashes, 863 (3%) were children. Of these 863 child passenger vehicle occupants killed in traffic crashes, restraint use was known for 769, of whom 308 (40%) were unrestrained. • Of the 1,184 children killed in traffic crashes, an estimated 294 (25%) were killed in alcohol-impaired-driving crashes in 2021.
[2] From NHTSA: NCSA (National Center for Statistics and Analysis) Motor Vehicle Traffic Crash Data Resource Page https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/#/
[3] "DOT HS 811 144, November 2008, FATALITIES AND INJURIES IN MOTOR VEHICLE BACKING CRASHES" https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
A backover is a crash which occurs when a driver reverses into and injures or kills a nonoccupant such as a pedestrian or a bicyclist. Backovers can occur either on a public roadway or not on a public roadway, i.e., in a driveway or in a parking lot. The former are called traffic backovers and the latter nontraffic backovers. There are also “other backing crashes” that are not backovers, i.e., they do not involve a pedestrian or other nonoccupant, that occur when, for example, a driver backs into a tree or pole or when a driver backs out of a driveway or parking space and is struck by another vehicle. Together, backover crashes and other backing crashes are referred to as backing crashes."
Look at the table on page iv.: Fatalities and Injuries, by Type of Crash, Type of Vehicle
Swaddle - wrap the baby
Side/stomache - position like the womb
Shush - white noise
Sway/swing - walking or bouncing
Suck - a finger, a sucker, etc
These were a life saver for my son. Most nights it was just swaddle + sway, on bad nights it took all 5. I think the reason cars work for so many baby’s is that car seats, the rhythm, the white noise from the car, etc… these all do the same thing.
We also somehow got very very lucky in that he didn't need to be transitioned out of the swaddle, he just grew to dislike it so one night we just stopped cold turkey and it was fine. We've had friends that have had to do the one arm in / one arm out, swaddle the legs, etc. and transition over days or weeks to get any sleep at all.
Is this satire, or am I missing something (going by the serious replies)? Not sure I would ever use this phrasing to describe anything serious - much less about my own child.
If you've never experienced this, you are very lucky.
But it sure did feel like that was happening every now and then, despite our very best efforts and resources. And sometimes, something like a trip to the store ("HEY, DO WE NEED MORE EGGS AND MILK FOR TOMORROW?" "YOU KNOW WHAT? I THINK WE DO NEED MORE EGGS AND MILK FOR TOMORROW!" "OK! LET'S TAKE THE KID AND GO TO THE STORE!") was the the only thing that allowed for a return of sanity for anyone involved.
It was not the first option. We always employed all positive options first and had good support for finding new methods; we really did do pretty-OK at that time as non-robotic human parents, I think.
Going for a short drive was the last option before "Let her scream. It's hard work to make that much noise and she'll tire out eventually, and fall asleep [0]" would come into play after everything else has already failed.
[0]: We once got this advice from her doctor as a last-resort option. And maybe that was good advice or maybe that was terrible advice, but it was absolutely untenable advice for us when we were living in a stick-framed apartment building: Letting a kid scream like that for a prolonged period with a multiplicity of neighbors on the other sides of the walls is an easy road towards getting the police, CPS, and/or building management involved through no particular fault or misdeed of our own. And as a practical matter, when third parties become involved like that, now there are at least two problems (at least one of which is now an ongoing major problem) instead of just one relatively minor problem of a clearly-tired little human who chooses to scream instead of sleep.
I'm very glad that you never had the opportunity to experience this kind of thing. It's awful, and if it were easy to resolve I wouldn't have any of this to write about.
Maybe it’s the Silicon Valley but it’s cool they still care about details like this.
That's going to be a lot of cars to build.
I really wonder if and when they expand to a lot more car manufacturers and models, just to avoid supply chain issues.
Waymo cannot take me on the freeway (backstreets only)
Waymo cannot go to the entire city of Peoria, Surprise, Goodyear..
Waymo cannot go to the entire western half of the state.
If you live 30 minutes from the downtown city centre, there is a 30% chance Waymo can go there. Waymo serves higher-end areas only today (Scottsdale, Tempe, Chandler) - if you live in a poorer area, no Waymo for you.
I have family who lives in Scottsdale and Surprise, Waymo can't take me there.
My dentist is less than a mile from my house, Waymo can't take me there - but can take me to a fashion mall in chandler.
Is it better than Uber/Lyft? Experience wise, sure, but their snail's pace expansion is disheartening. Not to mention the freeway issue.
They have to prepare the infrastructure anyway in all the cities to get to the scale they want to get to, but each new car built is going to be sent to the least scaled city so far.
I have had Uber/Lyft cars that were going to come to me and then some time before picking me up, they change their mind and I get to start a new wait for a new car/driver... worse, I've had that happen a few times in a row on some occasions.
I've seen more in the 10% premium ballpark for most Waymo rides (for just the base fare, excluding tips). There was a very stormy day once where the price shot up pretty high very quickly, but that's not the norm I see.
So, for example, I had to pick up my kid from school the other day and found out last minute I wouldn't have a car. So I booked a Waymo, selected my destination, and then also selected that it would be "round trip" in the app. The car got me to the school and an option in the Waymo app for "ready for pickup" was available; the car left after it dropped me off. After my kid came out, I clicked that ready button and another car came to the school and took us home.
The price for the round trip was just over $20. The price for two independent trips would have been about $10 more (if I'm calculating & remembering correctly). So another interesting feature on the pricing discussion which, to my knowledge, isn't an option with the other ridesharing/taxi businesses.
This is a phenomenally solvable problem. And it’ll scale without requiring more humans to train and monitor.
the comparisons are worse if i am coming from the outer richmond
I couldn't possibly agree with this less. My view is that "it depends." Level salaries in San Francisco and I'll consider not tipping. Until then, I'm comfortable with my choices.
I'd agree that after tipping culture is definitely established in a field, then stiffing someone is unfortunately bad, unless you can coordinate on reversing this harmful cultural norm. This is just very different from not helping to establish the harmful cultural norm, which is a positive, prosocial good; I believe you are doing the opposite of a prosocial good here, without realizing it. Of course I'm a fallible human.
Not going to continue here.
I can see how that might be irritating. Good thing I haven't done that.
> you've twice ignored my main point that expectation of tips lowers the posted price and makes life harder for all of the drivers/servers
That's not a point. That's a claim, which you have not persuaded me to accept.
> I tried to probe for what is not coming through to you this third time, with another case where the legibility of a cost is shifted to no benefit.
If only you had been clear that that's what you were doing, I would've told you that what's not coming through is the casual relation between tips and wages. You seem to believe tips necessarily suppress wages. I see no particular reason to believe that's true.
> Not going to continue here.
Suit yourself.
Now, if you want to talk about organizing collectively beyond the individual level, to use political and market power to make structural changes that raise wages but curb tipping, well that's a different topic that's worth discussing. But, absent that, I'm going to keep tipping.
(I'm happy to hear if the answer is "yes".)
For example, most kinds of shops were (like jewelry stores today) apparently historically not self-service, so you had to ask the shopkeeper for every item individually, and the shopkeeper would have to retrieve it for you.
Maybe a more direct analogy is that you once had to ask human operators to complete telephone calls for you, and gradually this was replaced with automated switches and direct-dial systems. That has benefits and drawbacks, but I think I appreciate it quite a bit. Do you think it would be better if that change hadn't happened?
In Tesla's model, you buy a Tesla, and allow it to operate as a robotaxi when you're not using it. It generates income passively for you. The technology has introduced automation that might have displaced your job responsibility but not your means of generating income.
In Waymo's model, you have completely displaced both the job itself and the means of generating income. This is a strict lose-lose for everyone except Google, who reaps the profit.
Automated telephone switching fits the latter pattern. The job and the income went away. So the question is valid, would you prefer automated telephone switching was never deployed?
Here we are talking about paying extra pretty much solely to not have to deal with a human.
Why are they more expensive? I hoped they would be cheaper without a driver to compensate.
Likely because they're not pricing based on their costs, but rather what the market will bear.
Although they have a lot of R&D to recoup, so that's a cost.
When it's been 28 quarters of general availability of Wayno and profits need to keep growing faster than before, they'll get dirty, the AC will stop being fixed, they'll start getting flats / engine trouble, etc. in the middle of the drive.
Enjoy it while it lasts. Be sure you move quickly to the next new thing before this one goes downhill too :/
How much of the cars being clean, quiet, and having HVAC working is just because it's new?
A few years down the line the cars will be old (until they're replaced) and won't be as clean or quiet or have reliable AC. It will probably become like aircraft where they prioritize maintenance of safety-critical features but not so much the seat comfort.
There are lots of upsides to not having a driver in the car, but I wouldn't count on the cars always being nice.
Maybe. Then again, maybe not.
Isn't the whole point of Waymo is that it'll be cheaper than a human driver?
Eventually price will always be what people are willing to pay.
I bet what that in a decade the price will be identical to (disappearing) human drivers and then gouged higher.
It's depressing how focused we are on the wrong things for cities and planet, self driving taxis rather than quality public transport. We are destined to extinction and we deserve it.
Direct cost savings to the business or to the customer?
Waymo has been operating at an incredible loss for a very long time. They now have a product that people are willing to pay for and, in fact, find to be more comfortable—from OP's description it's basically a luxury Uber. Further, they expect to not be the only autonomous taxi system forever, competitors will eventually catch up.
Given that, I think it's only rational for them to operate at very high margins for as long as they can before competition drives the prices down. They probably won't come anywhere close to recouping the loss in that interval, but they'll get a head start on it.
Obviously not, because consumers appear willing to pay a premium to not have a driver.
Waymo just doesn’t want the backlash of them replacing human jobs right now.
Slightly expensive than humans for a premium consistent service is a good play.
Kudos to consistent execution for Waymo.
Wish we could say the same for Tesla.
- They take extended stops at stop signs, around 3-4 seconds.
- They have extra-bright headlights and brake lights.
- When waiting for a ride, they pull up next to parks and parking lots to avoid bothering residents. Their brake lights are on the whole time. If demand is low, they'll hang out in batches of 2-4. If a block has a hazy red hue at night, you know you've found a Waymo nest.
I love this
The base car is appealing (currently Jaguars). They're spacious for a >6 ft individual like myself. The user interface is intuitive and fun. There's a cool factor that exists.
Against ride sharing, given the lack of a driver, there's no variability in driver with regards to ambiance, scents, cleanliness, chattiness, and smoothness of the ride.
I am very much looking forward to this expansion.
A big problem with Waymo in its current state is how its routes are terribly inefficient.
It purposely avoids freeways and higher speed roads, opting to take more inefficient routes without regards to the number of stop signs, hills, and other factors which will inevitably lead to a longer travel time. It's almost like it's using a worse version of the "Avoid highways" feature on Google Maps, and getting to a further destination can take almost twice the amount of time as compared to a Lyft/Uber.
Another problem is its lack of human intuition and strategies when driving in the city during some kind of event where many of the roads are blocked off. A human driver would have been navigating the blocked roads throughout the day and already know where to go to avoid the crowds, where as Waymo naively follows its navigation system and gets stuck in a bunch of traffic for no reason.
It also drives annoyingly slowly which leads to frustration from human drivers who constantly try to overtake you.
It would be cool if you can configure the ride preferences for how aggressive you'd like it to drive.
I suspect with their new permits approved, you’ll see them drive on the highway soon, which will result in much faster trips where applicable.
I am really glad it’s not aggressive at driving - they drive how humans are supposed to - cautiously. Humans kill people regularly from aggressive driving.
(There's a slight component where as primarily a cyclist I feel that Waymos are much nicer to cyclists than human drivers are and it gives me affinity to Waymos that I don't feel for human drivers in the city.)
I find Waymo the most useful to take after a concert far from a MUNI stop because usually surge pricing makes Lyft and Uber really expensive and I'm usually tired enough to not want to walk to a stop or it's late enough that MUNI headways are far apart.
As someone who lives in a city without Waymo, I'm curious -- are you allowed to ride in the front seat?
I can generally tolerate riding in the front passenger seat, as long as the driver is competent, but I suffer a bit riding in the rear. And don't get me started on what it's like riding in a limo...
So I was pretty annoyed after I got into the car and then realized that the route it selected was going through a bunch of hills and side streets that would take twice as long as the most direct route (via Google Maps) and there's nothing I could do to change that once the ride started.
When did you take it? They’ve started taking freeways in January, including for intracity trips [1].
[1] https://waymo.com/blog/2024/01/from-surface-streets-to-freew...
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/watch-waymos-self-driving...
I tried it in Phoenix in May and it wouldn’t take the freeway. And it’s definitely not generally available in the Bay area. (I take them every week or two.)
Not a special customer, can't even get access in LA. Waymo took the freeway in Phoenix in March.
Do you mean they were doing testing with employees and special customers? Or do you mean anyone who had gotten off the waitlist could ride on the freeway in Phoenix?
[0] - https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/11/24069251/waymo-driverless...
[1] - https://abc7news.com/waymo-sf-attacked-self-driving-car-inci...
If I were to place my bets on the biggest risk it'll be YouTubers finding out how to fuck around with the cars in unexpected ways and potentially tricking them.
Here's a dumb example. If you use one of those phone apps that flashes your screen like a police siren, could you trick the car to pull over? Would it unlock the doors and allow you to just hop in? What if you put a dog shaped balloon in the road on front of it? Could you set up some confusing cones and get it to drive into a wall? Could you confuse it at a stoplight with a green flashlight and have it start driving?
> “I hope that, in the meantime, our communities do not suffer too much in terms of injuries and community damages due to the current regulatory gaps,” Cortese said in a statement.
What gaps? What injuries? What community damages? If someone can actually present statistics that these cars are more socially dangerous than an equivalent amount of Ubers and Lyfts, I would be very, very surprised.
Not operating in difficult areas would slow them down because progress in this domain is bound by the breadth of edge cases encountered in the wild.
1. Silicon Valley, both for the workers and the general public's willingness to embrace fancy new tech 2. SF is DIFFICULT to drive in. If you follow all driving laws & drive super defensively, you'll never get anywhere on time. If an AI can learn to effectively navigate around traffic, construction, stopped rideshare and foodshare cars, large crowds, etc etc, it can drive anywhere.
SF also gets a lot of rain and dense fog, good for testing low-visibility conditions
I think you are really understating it. I believe Chandler, AZ has been Waymo's proving grounds for years, and according to this article (https://www.wsj.com/us-news/waymo-phoenix-arizona-self-drivi...) the Phoenix area is the leader of autonomous vehicle service.
It’s just absolutely normalized here to the point of barely being a novelty anymore. Waymos are absolutely everywhere.
Also, the risk aversion of people in retirement zones does not make it a great target customer base.
With the current apps/services, 70% of the time the driver won’t stop talking on the phone, or won’t turn on the AC, or will drive in a way that’ll make you want to throw up, etc etc.
The improved 0-60 times alone will prove Elon the more effective accellerationist.
Or maybe not. Okay then, Luxor Cab it is. Cheaper, better conversation, more aggressive about squeezing through traffic, and doesn't violate my privacy.
I'm not against automated taxi services in principle. I'm just not interested if it's a package deal where I have to surrender my physical comings and goings to a scummy data broker like Google.
It is?
I thought they wanted to disrupt transportation.
But other things like making the roads safer is a nice side effect.
I'm not.
https://agkn.wordpress.com/2014/09/15/riding-with-the-stars-...
i think the answer is just that you don't have much meaningful privacy when using a taxi service in a normal way.
I can't imagine a self-driving car request via an app could be accomplished without _someone_ knowing / tracking your travel patterns. You can't do cash transactions because that would be rife for smash-n-grabs from others.
Crime happens, but that's why there's insurance. It's not like cab drivers don't get robbed too. It doesn't (and shouldn't) stop cash commerce.
https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/13381216?hl=en
"Waymo may disclose user personal information to third parties to tailor advertising and offers to your interests. Such disclosures may be considered “sales” or “sharing” of personal information under the California Consumer Privacy Act."
It is rather surprising that so many here downvote the obvious, which even non-technical Guardian journalists have found out.
As far as I understand the advertising model is the same as with Google Ads - Google builds profiles and lets advertisers target users based on profiles. They do not sell user data, and I'm not personally aware of a case where Google has even been alleged to be selling user data.
https://www.dli.tech.cornell.edu/post/facebook-and-google-ar...
It's a taxi that you don't have to risk having a conversation with a stranger in. Outside of that it seems that all other benefits are marginal or well crafted illusions.
Anyways, I'm sure I'm just being a pessimist, it's not as if large monopolistic companies with no human customer service have failed us significantly before. I mean, I trust them with my data completely, so why not my life, too?
Remote operation is considered dangerous due to possible issues with network connection latency or stability. If it was actually happening, Waymo is big enough now (IIRC they said 50,000 paid rides each week) to where someone would've leaked such a secret.
That sounds a lot like remote operation.
Waymo is notoriously tight-lipped about this. Look at the number of journalists and reporters who have, over the years, asked very basic questions, like:
1. How often do remote operators intervene?
2. How many miles are driven per intervention? How does this compare to FSD?
3. How much of a typical ride is remotely operated and not actually driven by the car itself?
Waymo never provides answers, and one can only imagine it is because they are not proud of the answers.
Found this by searching "waymo stats"
https://waymo.com/blog/2023/12/waymo-significantly-outperfor...
I'm not trying to answer your question because I don't want to put in the time with someone who seems to only want to be combative in conversation
And most of these are just simple numbers! Like stating, the number of miles per intervention is 10. Yet that number is nowhere to be found from Waymo's press relations department.
Cruise had their numbers leaked during the incident last year and they came up in several negative media pieces despite being fairly good overall.
/s
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
The guidelines don't say anything about being free to be a dick when the other person is being a jerk. They even say not to:
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
If you have a friend in the front passenger seat directing you where to go, are they operating the car?
Me: "does it appear the remote operator can take over and drive the car if needed."
Claude: "Based on my reading of the document, it does not appear that the remote operator (referred to as "fleet response agent") can take over and drive the car directly"
If you were a professional driver, you know you put your life in the hands of people right? The average person is a pretty terrible driver. I’ll take a safely trained machine all day every day.
Waymo recalls driverless cars to make them less likely to drive into poles https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/13/business/waymo-recalls-driver...
This conversation is invisible since everyone downvoted it so I don't know why you bothered to comment
In my reading this is trying very hard to put a self-driving spin on an interface that allows a human operator to set waypoints for a robot to follow. This should at best be called "human remote-assisted self-driving", rather than "self-driving".
Btw, NASA uses a similar setup for its Mars rovers with autonomous navigation capabilities, like Perseverance. There was a report that described how humans on Earth can guide Perseverance to plan paths avoiding areas with potentially deep sand where the rover can get seriously stuck. The human operators draw the limits of what seems to them to be the safe area and the rover's onboard planner than plans a path through the safe area. That's still the farthest that autonomous navigation can go; pun not intended.
Ref: Autonomous robotics is driving Perseverance rover’s progress on Mars
I can 100% confirm you're reaching way too far to find excuses to indicate Waymo isn't self-driving.
Fucking internets.
Come with curiosity! Ex. "How would one be able to 100% confirm Waymo isn't just being live monitored and incremental way points set?"
(I'll leave it to you ask if you want, you seem upset and I worry you'll think the answer is obvious and that's not what you meant and I'm creating strawman. I want to deescalate and make you un-angry!)