But pedestrians and bikes are everywhere, and they don't always obey the rules. I wonder how well collision detection handles sharing lanes with bikes without suddenly braking in the middle of the road.
Also see https://x.com/dmitri_dolgov/status/1868778679868047545
I don't know how it'll handle significantly more pedestrians, but I assume that they're confident enough in the models and have run enough simulations to expand to Tokyo.
This is a kind of environment that human drivers are NOT made for. All the more not while clicking around on their Uber app or changing the music track or trying to read street signs or understand a Nissan dashboard map. In San Francisco, computers with multiple sensors have a gross advantage over humans.
* They stop on the side of roads and streets whenever they feel like it without worrying about blocking the traffic.
* They don't turn the lights on no matter how bad the weather is. Super fun to be in the middle of a snow storm and people are driving white cars with the lights off.
* Whenever someone wants to turn right at an intersection, the cars behind will pass it on the left, without worrying if someone is coming the opposite direction, which is really dangerous. I am not sure about the Japanese law, but in my home country (Spain) that is highly illegal.
* Many people watch TV or anime while driving. I even saw one guy reading a book while driving, somehow holding it open over the driving wheel.
Add to this the awful state of most streets and roads, and I can see more accidents here in one year that I saw in 33 years in Spain.
I have seen many near accidents due to this. That's why such a maneuver is forbidden in many countries.
To be fair, that's also true of pedestrians in this country.
I would say that is the easy problem.
> In my experience the cars are highly regulated and very predictable on the main roads. Marked out lanes, low speed limits, many red lights.
A city without this is the harder problem.
I wait for the day Waymo comes to Italy or better yet India.