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Comment by potato3732842 | Hacker News Reader

Your comment is a slight of hand. Yes it "works" but it is an MVP. Everywhere it's rolled out people say yes it drives, but it drives like a rookie that can follow the rules but doesn't have any of the predictive power that every driver who doesn't suck has some of.

Like for example how traffic will often modulate its spacing or time its lane changes to reduce issues with merging or exiting traffic and certain intersections with most traffic doing the same thing become an efficient repetitive cycle, Waymo doesn't "get it".

So it works, in the same way a newly licensed teenager "works". It's no cabbie.

Edit: It's been over a year since I've ridden in one. Good to hear it's potentially better now.

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After taking both Uber and Waymo in San Francisco I think I disagree with this. Only caught a few so maybe I didn't see the bad sides, but from what I saw it was able to predict flows and navigate far more smoothly than humans in many situations. Really comfortable and overall safe feeling ride.

It's different than human drivers for sure, but to me at least it's better.

I agree with MVP part, my understanding is that there's still a lot of Wizard of Oz stuff in terms of regularly mapping and remapping its routes and having a lot of human operators remotely checking and maybe controlling the fleet, but I'm impressed personally.

> Everywhere it's rolled out people say yes it drives, but it drives like a rookie

When did you last update this hypothesis?

The Waymos I’ve been in creep, honk and modulate their aggressiveness quite naturally. In the cities they operate in, they’re a premium product to cabs.

The part where you’re right is on freeways. But my point is that tends to be ignored when folks gatekeep “real” autonomy. Instead, it’s some random peculiarity of their city which humans traverse at low speeds. Exactly the thing Waymo has mastered.

> People say yes it drives, but it drives like a rookie

I think you just made this up. Almost every anecdote I've heard, and I spend a lot of time in two cities where it's launched, is that "it drives better than most humans". Which is exactly how I would characterize it too. It doesn't drive exactly like a human. But for every subtle human behavior it doesn't do, there are probably several things it does much more skillfully than a human.

I rode in one in Austin TX for the first time last weekend. I was going from UT back to a hotel in a different part of downtown. No complaints, it was a smooth experience granted it didn't face anything I would see as out of the ordinary or unexpected while driving. Edit: well one thing i thought was interesting, it came up behind a delivery truck stopped in the lane. Instead of just stopping and waiting forever, which is what i expected, it turned on the blinker and got in the oncoming traffic lane, passed the truck and then returned to the correct lane. It crossed two solid yellow lines on the road to do this which is usually a no-no but in this case fine. That stuck out to me as something rather advanced to automate (when to wait and when to pass/overtake)

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