ive chatted up a lot of women who just feel safer with no driver and will pay more to get in the waymo. (which uber has tried to respond to by giving them a preference in driver gender.)
and some of them.. who dont really have waymo money.. really like getting on an escooter to up and get out of certain neighborhoods to do their errands or get to a job safely without being hassled on a 1-2 mile walk out of neighborhoods that rideshare drivers routinely cancel on.
now I dont take uber just because i resent how shitty they started treating me as a driver after about 7 years in with a 5.0. punishing me for stuff like prescriptions or food not being ready. i wont drive or ride with that company again. a lot of their problems stem from being left with people who are so desperate for a job theyll put up with anything that company does.
No one in LA with money is buying a sports car to "flex".
Heck, it wasn't even all that rare for it to take me 45 minutes to go 5 miles on 101 from Rengstorff Ave to Willow Rd in the Bay Area in 6pm rush hour just because of the exit.
It even once took me 2h to make it from Candlestick Park to the 101 after an NFL game.
So yeah, maybe 2 hours for a few miles isn't quite right, but I've experienced daily counterexamples to your 20mph number too.
That being said, you also have a heavy rail alternative.
Though I’ve heard people treat it differently in the US
If "we'll have too many cars on the freeway following the speed limit" ranks as a serious concern, I think we've really lost the plot.
I recently drove by a fatal accident that had just happened on the freeway. A man on the street had been ripped in half, and his body was lying on the road. I can't imagine the scene is all that unlike the 40 thousand other US road deaths that happen every year.
As a driver I'm willing to accept some minor inconvenience to improve the situation. As a rider I trust Waymo's more than human drivers.
I've lived in a couple of places where going the speed limit is a whole problem that can cascade outside of just yourself. There is an argument to be made that perhaps then the speed limit shouldn't be that low, but in driving safety is far more important than legality. It will be interesting to see how Waymo handles these realities when it gets to those areas.
I often wonder about laws that are ostensibly there to prevent dangerous actions, about whether they actually help prevent dangerous driving.
This guy analyses tailgating: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6n_lR09sjoU Awesome software although he seems biased (e.g. no mention of pedestrians), but he does say that tailgating is much more dangerous than speeding.
I'm interested whether cameras will start to catch dangerous drivers. I regularly seeing drivers do very dangerous things. Yet we have no easy way to train them (for those that care but are unaware), or catch them (for the antisocial that don't care).
I used to drive 20 under all the time (I achieved 57mpg once doing that) - but since this was an empty rural highway the few cars that were around saw me well in advance and moved over and passed without a problem.
There is substantial research that frustration with a slow driver in a fast lane is a significant factor in aggressive tailgating (as a way to express anger, control, or impatience) to get others to change lanes.
But perhaps research doesn't measure arseholeness?!
For selfish reasons I usually let dangerous tailgaters pass me: I want to avoid the bad outcomes from pissed off aggressive drivers.
If I'm stuck behind someone slow, I usually politely wait or politely flash lights or politely tap horn. I think Tailgating is personally dangerous as a way to signal my displeasure and I value my life highly. Polite drivers generally let one pass, and impolite drivers do whatever the fuck they want.
Regardless, it would be interesting to see stats on how risky tailgating actually is (unfortunately stats are sure to be biased by correlation versus causation).
Second, it is a widely known issue, that a slower mowing car is causing ripple-like delays far from the car itself. For example when a police car is driving inside the traffic flow. But if most of the cars are following the rules, like 95% of them, then one law abiding Waymo would fit just fine. In EU, with the deluge of speed traps and mobile patrols, most of the cars are driving under the limit, and honestly it feels fine. I'm originally from a country where +20 above was like a norm, and fast cars were +40 or more, so adjusting to EU took some effort. But now I don't even feel the need to speed, especially if it is 140km/h highway (86 m/h)
Plenty of people do not follow the rules about staying to the right.
It makes less sense in an urban environment with 5 or more lanes in your direction. Vehicles will be traveling at varying speeds in all lanes, ideally with a monotonic gradient, but it just doesn't happen, and it's unlikely to.
In California, large trucks generally have a lower speed limit (however many trucks are not speed governed and do exceed the truck limit and sometimes the car limit) and lane restrictions on large highways. Waymo may do well if it tends toward staying in the lanes where trucks are allowed as those tend to flow closer to posted car speed limits. But sometimes there's left exits, and sometimes traffic flow is really poor on many right lanes because of upcoming exits. And during commute time, I think the HOV lane would be preferred; taxis are generally eligible for the HOV lane even when only the driver is present, but I don't know about self-driving with a single or no occupant.
(also it’s kind of amazing that 5 parallel lanes is considered normal in the US… I think the most I’ve ever personally seen in the UK is 4 and that’s only on very major routes, and we don’t have any exits on the wrong side of the motorway)
Not necessarily. I've seen things like the left two lanes at free flow (speed limit or above) and the right two lanes at full congestion (~ 10 mph), and the middle lane(s) somewhere in between. But then you also have sometimes where the left lane is only doing 60 for some reason, but the next two lanes are at or above the speed limits. It's a complex system.
Wrong side exits for interchanges between highways are common, depending on site details and relative flows. When there's congestion on a left exit, you then get situations where the right lanes are flowing faster than the left lanes (sometimes much faster). I don't think interchanges as left exits are necessarily awful.
Wrong side exits to surface streets have been discouraged for new construction for quite some time, but there's a fair number of "legacy exits" in some areas. They're not so bad when there's only two lanes in your direction; but when there's been highway expansion, it can get pretty hard to use. And inevitably rebuilding to current standards would causes a lot of confusion and delay, it's postponed. My exemplar of the worst left exits, the Milwaukee Zoo Interchange, was rebuilt in 2012-2022 and I can't find pictures of what it was before, but you had a sizable interchange with right and left exits to other highways, combined with several surface street exits and entrances on both sides, and I think two through lanes. It was a mess.
If you watch the videos more carefully, you will notice the people who speed by at 85 MPH later enter the screen again, because that is the nature of freeway traffic.
I predict that a few hundred of these on the road will measurably improve safety and decrease severe congestion by being that one sane driver that defuses stop-and-go catastrophes. In fact I think CHP should just contract with them to pace 101 in waves.
Normal human drivers tend to lift off the gas and only brake when they decide that just lifting won't do.
Don't EVs light up the brake lights when regenerative braking engages?
I've definitely observed Teslas coming to a halt, and the brake lights only kick on at the very end. I don't know how widespread the problem is, but it's very annoying.
If you're annoyed by the braking lights on a Tesla, it's because you're following too (dangerously) closely.
"Waves" are really what we would want them to prevent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_wave
The autonomous cars can prevent these waves from forming, which would get people to their destinations faster than speeding.
If you actually thought adoption would benefit us on it's own rather than seeing it a roundabout way to enforce rules that you want to see enforced without buy in from the public you'd want these cars to behave in a way that makes it easier for them to exist in typical traffic.
My dudes, I have been driving the speed limit, even on freeways, for decades.
Nothing bad happens. Your car doesn't explode. You don't instantly create thousand-car pileups.
You get passed slightly more often than when you are speeding. You pass fewer cars. You get to your destination a few minutes later.
A car going the speed limit on the freeway is not a problem.
Until it does.
The biggest problem in car accidents is speed differential. When you are not driving the prevailing speed, your speed differential is significantly higher and the accident will be worse than average.
Motorcyclists can give you long lectures about this.
Yes: it is way more dangerous to slam into a stationary object going 80mph than it is to be rear-ended by an object going 80mph while you're going 65. Only a 15mph differential in the initial collision.
Also, it almost never happens, compared to vehicles losing control due to excessive speed.
There’s no making sense of it, people who speed will come up with infinite excuses why they are right and traffic engineers are wrong.
I’ve never been in an accident in over 40 years, I’m never late cause I leave on time and plan ahead and driving isn’t some stressful event.