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Comment by bps4484 | Hacker News Reader

I should first note that I'm a big fan of waymo and want autonomous to succeed generally.

I take both waymo's and lyft/uber all the time in sf and waymo's are way slower. I'd estimate it at 10-15% slower. Once the novelty of a waymo wears off you realize that they drive like a high anxiety teenager and going 15 mph on a 15 mph road, coming to gentle full stop at every stop sign, and being very tentative on turns and passing people all add up to a very slow ride.

You're right though it definitely feels safer.

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The calmness is a major selling point for me, personally. Beyond just the safety aspect, I can't count how many times I've gotten nauseous from Uber and taxi drivers swerving and accelerating/stopping abruptly, often for no actual speed gain.

Were those rides in hybrids? I've noticed the way they brake is a lot more likely to get me carsick if I'm sitting in the back, especially Priuses.

Cars of all kinds, really. But It seems to be more common in either crappy old gas cars or Teslas. I know Teslas have weird brake settings, but every ride I've experienced this has definitely been from aggressive and reckless driving.

It stopped at a stop sign?!?!? THE HORROR!

Kidding but not kidding. Easily half my Uber rides have been legit scary. Yellow cabs only slightly better.

How does Waymo do for cleanliness and odor? That would be another selling point vs regular Uber/Lyft and many yellow cabs. These days they all seem to douse the interior with cheap cologne.

I stopped using Lyft after two close calls with drivers who must have faked their papers. One Lyft drive ran a red light into a postal truck at an otherwise empty intersection causing the front to fall off, like that Australian ship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM

Stopping at a stop sign isn't just stopping at a stop sign. The way you pull up to it conveys a rough picture of your intentions to other drivers, or at least the ones that are on the ball. Good drivers actively time their arrival to avoid potential confusion with other traffic.

The sad truth about Waymo is that they have to aim for a 0 (or extremely close to 0) accident rate for PR/regulatory reasons, especially so for accidents caused by Waymo, and that's always going to heavily influence the way they drive.

Uber drivers cause accidents sometimes, just like all drivers do. Whenever this happens, we generally blame the driver and not Uber. It's a completely unremarkable event that the media will not pick up on, because everybody knows that car accidents are just a fact of life.

If a Waymo causes just one fatal accident, people will be up in arms and demand a ban on self driving. That means they have to be extremely conservative in how they drive, especially as more and more of them appear and the probability of one causing an accident goes up due to simple statistics.

There is a simpler explanation: every Waymo vehicle is effectively the same. If one makes a mistake, every vehicle will likely keep making the same mistake over and over again, until it's fixed. If the mistake causes harm, there is often a clear causal link from a flaw in the system to the harm, which can be a pretty good incentive to fix it.

Human drivers are all different. They also learn from their mistakes and change unpredictably over time. Humans can get away with all kinds of unsafe behavior, because bad outcomes are unlikely in any particular situation. If something bad happens, it could easily be a one-off issue. And even with systemic issues, it's easier to change the environment / regulations / vehicles than the drivers.

That's a product decision, though. They want people to feel safe, and to build a sustained record for being safe. They could easily hit the pedal if they wanted to.

They are doing the right thing.

>They want people to feel safe.

"Lawful to a fault teenager" is not what people want in a taxi driver. That type of chauffeur doesn't make people feel safe. It makes them on edge. But unfortunately that's the kind of AI chauffeur regulators want.

I agree it's the "right" way to do it from a PR perspective though.

They don't drive like teenagers do (the Tesla FSD does, but that's another story).

A Waymo drives more like a 50 year old who's seen some shit and drives well but defensively.

Having more people drive like Waymo would likely result in faster travel times for all. It’s a well studied phenomenon. In cities the intersections are a bottleneck and driving at slower average speed often means stopping less often.

Also, don’t you think it’s weird that you complain that the car goes 15 on a road with speed limit equal to 15?

I'd rather do that than fear for my life when an uber driver decides that the 65mph speed limit should be understood as 85mph. Waymo doesn't even get on the freeway.

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