I rarely use ride-sharing but other experiences include having been in a FSD Tesla Uber where the driver wasn't paying attention to the road the entire time (hands off the wheel, looking behind him, etc.).
I don't know if I trust Waymo cars with my life, but at least there are SOME standards, compared to the natural variance of humans.
I’ve ridden in a lot of Waymos – 800km I’m told! – and they’re great. The bit that impresses me most is that they drive like a confident city driver. Already in the intersection and it turns red? Floor it out of the way! Light just turned yellow and you don’t have time to stop? Continue calmly. Stuff like that.
Saw a lot of other AI cars get flustered and confused in those situations. Humans too.
For me I like Waymos because of the consistent social experience. There is none. With drivers they’re usually chatty at all the wrong moments when I’m not in the mood or just want to catch up on emails. Or I’m feeling chatty and the driver is not, it’s rarely a perfect match. With Waymo it’s just a ride.
Oh, and it doesn't like to pull into hotel entrances but instead stops randomly on the street outside it.
$$ opportunity: pay $10 extra and Waymo will choose more exciting route.
just a 'take me the scenic route' checkbox?
The sane default is obviously "boring", as it projects an image of safety and control, is comfortable, and reduces wear on the car... but if the user pays for the wear and wants an uncomfortable ride, why not?
This has been a 15+ year process and will probably take a few more years. I don't feel too bad if they didn't manage to pivot in that time period.
I don't subscribe to feeling guilty every time somebody loses a job. I feel empathy, but telling people to "feel bad" is not constructive.
If we've built a society that when it "pivots" leaves swathes of people smeared out as residual waste, I'd argue we should feel bad.
We've certainly reached a point of technological advancement where many of these consequences at the individual level are avoidable. If they're still happening, it's because we've chosen this outcome - perhaps passively. But the clear implication of would be that we're collectively failing ourselves, as a species that tends to put some degree of pride in our intelligence.
And we should feel bad about that failure. It's OK to feel bad about that failure. We tend not to improve things we don't feel bad about.
You mean the way taxi drivers had to watch as Uber and Lyft replaced them?
For the most part, they were the same drivers I think
Uber and Lyft drivers are taxi drivers.
You will be glad to learn that most farmland is farmer owned:
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/land-use-land-v...
The USDA is not trying to pull a fast one with the definition of a farmer.
We could have a discussion about farmers that have other jobs and so are part time farming and part time something else. That tends to correlate with less intensive farming like corn and soybeans.
Taxis didn't lose because rideshares played the game better, they lost because rideshare companies used investor money to leapfrog their apps, ignored actual commercial transport regulations that would have made them DOA, and then exploited workers by claiming they weren't even employees, all so they could artificially undercut taxis to kill them off and capture the market before enshittifying.
There was never a situation where uneducated cabbies on shoestring budgets were going to be able to develop an Uber/Lyft alternative.
This shows just how badly behind they were. All the large cab companies have had apps for years. No one knows about them.
Here's YellowCab's: https://rideyellow.com/app/
> uneducated cabbies on shoestring budgets were going to be able to develop an Uber/Lyft alternative.
Are you under the impression that most cabs are/ were independent? That wasn't the case since at latest the 1980s. Having a radio dispatcher is a huge necessity as a cab driver.
In those days if you needed a car to take you someplace, aside from the outer boro examples, it was always faster to get a yellow cab. The car services could maybe get there in 45 minutes if you were lucky - big companies would often have deals with car service companies to have a few cars stationed at their buildings for peak times, so execs didn't have to wait for a car.
The yellow cab operators were essentially all independent - many rented their medallion/vehicle, either from a colleague or an agency, but they worked their own schedules and their own instincts on where to be picking up fares at given times.
No one expected something like uber - what is essentially a street hail masquerading as a livery cab. This basically destroyed yellow cabs and the traditional livery cab companies, but some of it is attributable to the VC spend, lowering prices (yellow cab fares are set by the city, livery cab fares are market-regulated) and incentivizing drivers. They made it so lucrative to drive an uber that you had thousands of new uber drivers on the road, or taxi drivers who stopped leasing their medallions and started driving uber.
At some point, though - the subsidies dried up, prices went up, and now its often faster to get a yellow cab than an uber/lyft. This is anecdata, but I take cabs a lot, and I've spoken with ~6 taxi drivers in the last year who either started with driving uber and shifted to driving a taxi, or went taxi-uber-taxi. Then I've had a lot more taxi drivers where they need passengers to put the destination into the driver's waze or google maps, even for simple things like intersections - I suspect they're uber drivers who became depedent on the in-app directions and native language interactions.
But the broader point I'm making is that in NYC, the drivers themselves were essentially unable to do anything about the changing market. The only power they had was to shift between the type of fares they were getting. And today when you order an uber, sometimes you get a yellow cab.
And do you not remember what using Yellow Cab was like in the Bay? It was like being kidnapped. They'd pretend their credit card reader was broken and forcibly drive you to an ATM to pay them.
When I first moved here I went to EPA Ikea, afterwards tried to get home via taxi, and literally couldn't because there was a game at Stanford that was more profitable so they just refused to pick me up for hours. I had to call my manager and ask him to get me. (…Which he couldn't because he was drinking, so I had to walk to the Four Seasons and use the car service.)
There was nothing stopping taxi companies from raising investor capital to build better apps and back end technology infrastructure. They were just lazy and incompetent.
Most were, in fact. You just remember the assholes a lot more.
You mean just like programmers watching AI replacing them?
Waymo is most definitely not being used by taxi or rideshare drivers to be more efficient.
Just like AI still uses human programmers... currently
Edit: I think I get what you mean now, you mean when humans have to remotely intervene for whatever reason and pilot the car
In 1995 Navlab 5 completed the first autonomous US coast-to-coast journey. Traveling from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to San Diego, California.
The history is long, but the technology is finally here. Hopefully soon the technology will be everywhere.
The one thing you can trust Waymo to do is spy on you. Hurray, more surveillance-on-wheels! Every one of these things has 29 visible-light cameras, 5 LIDARs, 4 RADARs, and is using four H100s to process all of its realtime imagery of you: https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2024/10/27/waymos-5-6...
in a vehicle that is unmanned and unguarded, which anyone can summon to a dodgy warehouse
what do you think will happen once this becomes public knowledge?
> A few months ago, I was in the city for a weekend and took Waymo for most of my rides.
> [...]
> I don't know if I trust Waymo cars with my life [...]
Authorities later said that they only went after 30% of the worst offenders, because otherwise the sheer number of tickets would be to high to process in a reasonable timespan.
Once word got out that the limit was actually enforced, speeds dropped. Now we have section control on some highways and personally I'm a fan, as I was always going around the speed limit anyway.
This is distinct from just a Speed Camera which is measuring over a very short interval from a single camera, the Average Speed Camera involves two or more cameras, recording people passing different points and working out how fast, on average, they must be travelling to have done so.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09666...
https://archive.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/9/9/improvement...
Some of you may die, but that's a price we're willing to make.
People aren't on the whole suicidal, they're not going to go up in a plane they expect to kill them, but they absolutely will push their luck in privately owned planes and statistically that doesn't end well. Go see the figures for yourself, inadequate maintenance isn't first on the list for why GA crash rates are too high, but it's on there.
Alfred Gilmer Lamplugh
These things must be saving lives, it's obvious. When my kids are riding their bikes around I want the other cars to be Waymos, not human drivers.
Any different than with a human taxi driver?
It's not about absolute reliability, it's about how well it compares to the alternative, which is human taxi drivers. And the thing is, you don't hear about human car accidents because it's so common that it's not worth making the news.
Another very interesting thing about robotaxis is agency and blame. Taxi driver had an accident? Just that driver is suspect. Robotaxi had an accident? They're all suspect.
Waymo is 100% with zero fatalities.
But then again, the Concorde was the safest airplane ever built for nearly 30 years, until its first crash and then it was the most dangerous passenger jet ever with 12.5 fatal events per million flights.[1]
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.[2]
0: https://assets.ctfassets.net/vz6nkkbc6q75/3yrO0aP4mPfTTvyaUZ...
1: https://www.airsafe.com/journal/issue14.htm
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statist...
I imagine it also goes without saying that not every mile of road is equally risky, and I have to imagine that Waymo's miles traveled probably on far less risky roads on average given the way they've been rolled out (which isn't a bad thing, but it does make extrapolations from the data about relative safety a bit more dubious).
Unfortunately stats can be spun in whatever way you need them to in order to support or hinder an effort.
To use your example, risk per mile is a sliding scale, not necessarily a Boolean value. So then someone could conceivably draw the line on that scale wherever most benefited the company they were trying to support.
These vehicles very regularly block traffic because they can’t maneuver in congested areas with the finesse of a human driver.
Aggressive driving isn’t always bad. Sometimes it’s to unblock others waiting behind you so they can get somewhere they need to be.
If you were running a private equity robotaxi firm and your bonus relied on 1% more rides wouldn't you be dialing up the aggressive driving? Repeat for a few quarters and the robot will be cutting the same corners that the human is forced to.
Some future Fight Club reboot will reference your ChatGPT logs that show you asked how much the corporation would need to pay to the people killed in crashes vs increased profit to find the profit maximising level of dangerous driving.
I get there. Basically isn't any laws for corporations anymore, is there any way I can see anything in regards to the safety of this at a statistical level?
Where is NHTSA? Oh right, no federal agencies exist anymore except for those that maintain the oligarchy.
And I don't give a crap if Uber has really good statistics and studies and evidence. We are talking about one of the least ethical companies in the last 20 years.
I want independent Federal testing.
Now, before you say this peer-reviewed paper is corporate propaganda, all self-driving companies are required by law to disclose accidents they are involved in, whether liable or not, in CA. You could access each raw accident report published by the CA DMV periodically and come up with your own statistics.
Yes, it is corporate propaganda. "Peer reviewed" doesn't mean anything if it is SPONSORED BY THE COMPANY. There is peer reviewed studies to kingdom come that are industry sponsored and have plagued our society for at least a century.
I AM NOT THE PERSON that should be doing this research. A FEDERAL AGENCY TASKED WITH HIGHWAY SAFETY should be doing it, barring that, the auto insurance industry groups should be doing it. Not a corporate sponsored shill paper.
It’s not a viable defense if you get a ticket for speeding but in practice the speed limit is really the prevailing speed of traffic plus X mph, where X adjusted for the state. I.e. in my experience Texas is more strict about the speed limit even on their desolate highways, LA is about 10 mph faster than San Francisco, in Seattle it depends on the weather, you’ll never hit the speed limit in New York anyway, and in Florida you just say the gator ate the officer who pulled you over.
No they don’t, you’ve misinterpreted what was written. “Not impeding traffic” is not codified as “exceed the speed limit if everyone else is, or get a ticket”.
Or perhaps you have a documented counter-example.
> No person shall drive a motor vehicle at such a slow speed as to impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic, except when reduced speed is necessary for safe operation. [1]
Versus California:
> No person shall drive upon a highway at such a slow speed as to impede or block the normal and reasonable movement of traffic unless the reduced speed is necessary for safe operation, because of a grade, _or in compliance with law_. [2] (underscore emphasis mine)
It’s part of the Uniform Vehicle Code but each state has its quirks in how they adopt it since theres no federal mandate.
My apologies though, this seems way less common than I thought. As far as I can tell Georgia and Oregon are the only two states left that don’t have that compliance exception.
On the other hand “in compliance with law” is it’s own barrel of monkeys because it doesn’t specify priority.
[1] https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/title-40/chapter-6/arti...
[2] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
Georgia isn't going to punish you for going the speed limit in the right lane, they passed that law recently and called it the 'slow poke law'.
> On the other hand “in compliance with law” is it’s own barrel of monkeys because it doesn’t specify priority.
It really isn't.
So you’re saying they had to pass a law clarifying a contradiction in previous laws? Those contradictions were my original point. And it still only applies to the slow poke lane.
> It really isn't.
Oh you sweet summer child.
"a person who knows, or should reasonably know, that another vehicle is overtaking from the rear the vehicle that the person is operating may not continue to operate the vehicle in the left most lane"
With of course some reasonable exceptions.
https://law.justia.com/codes/indiana/title-9/article-21/chap...
That's a rule just about everywhere, but that's not what's being discussed. I'm in the right lane doing the speed limit, and OP claims that's "technically" illegal due to contradictory laws. (Where there is no real contradiction, because the Chesterton's Fence is that we don't want Farmer Jones driving his tractor to his fields down I-75 through Atlanta.)
[0] The "joke" here being that WA drivers are notorious about parking in the left lane while driving 5mph under the limit.
As others have mentioned, this is dead wrong.
But the actual complication is enforcement usually requires a margin of error, and in some states (e.g. Wyoming) you can go 10 mph over when passing.
A lot of laws aren't enforced consistently in practice, sure. The implicit point is that while that may be so, it is nonetheless enforceable and nonetheless the law. So while individual people may be comfortable about being flexible in following traffic laws, having that behavior encoded or permitted by software is basically a declaration of broad intent to violate the law made by a company.
If you're driving 45 in a 40, that may sound like 12% faster, but once you add traffic, lights, stop signs, turns, etc - you'll find that the 12% all but evaporates. Even if you're really pushing it and going 15 over, at most speeds and for most typical commutes, it saves very little.
Most of the time speeding ends up saving on the order of seconds on ~30 minutes or shorter trips.
Just about the only time it can be noticeable is if you're really pushing it (going to get pulled over speeds) on a nearly empty highway for a commute of 1.5+ hours.
This overconfidence causes humans to take unnecessary risks that not only endanger themselves, but everyone else on the road.
After taking several dozen Waymo rides and watching them negotiate complex and ambiguous driving scenarios, including many situations where overconfident drivers are driving dangerously, I realize that Waymo is a far better driver than I am.
Waymos don't just prevent a large percentage of accidents by making fewer mistakes than a human driver, but Waymos also avoid a lot of accidents caused by other distracted and careless human drivers.
Now when I have to drive a car myself, my goal is to try to drive as much like a Waymo as I can.
Speeding feels like "I'm more important than everyone else and the safety of others and rules don't apply to me" personally. It's one thing to match the speed of traffic and avoid being a nuisance (that I'm fine with) - a lot of people just think they're the main character and everyone else is just in their way.
It's a problem that goes way beyond driving, sadly.
You have the group that's really bad and does things like drive drunk, weave in and out of traffic, do their makeup and so on.
The other group generally pays attention and tries to drive safely. This is larger than the first group and realistically there's not all that much difference within the group.
If you're in group two you will think you're above average because the comparison is to the crap drivers in group one.
But now that Waymo is gonna use freeways, that major speed difference is gonna evaporate.
These sentances conflict. I recently took a taxi from JFK to Manhattan during rush hour, and I estimate if the driver didn't use all of the paved surface, it would have taken at least 10 more minutes to arrive. (And it wouldn't have been an authentic NYC experience)
It's ok if you prefer the Waymo experience, and if you find it a better experience overall, but if a human driver saves you time, the Waymo wasn't better in every single way.
I am assuming the Lyft driver used the shoulder effectively. My experience with Lyft+Uber has been hit or miss... Some drivers are like traditional taxi drivers: it's an exciting ride because the driver knows the capabilities of their vehicle and uses them and they navigate obstacles within inches; some drivers are the opposite, it's an exciting ride because it feels like Star Tours (is this your first time? well, it's mine too) and they're using your ride to find the capabilities of their vehicle. The first type of driver is likely to use the shoulder effectively, and the second not so much.
For example, getting at the back of the line for an exit rather than trying to go to the front and cut your way in could be a multi-hour mistake.
It's a viral race to the bottom.
New Yorkers are already incapable of non-extractive development. Like the GP they have been transformed into zero-sum zombies by their city. A cautionary tale of culture.
You don't need to break any laws to get to where you're going, what are you even talking about? And you think that just because you're in a taxi you should get to magically cut to the front of a line of cars, made of the vast majority of New Yorkers who actually respect each other? What could possibly make you feel so entitled?
And if you think waiting in line for an exit takes multiple hours, I question whether you've ever been to NYC in the first place.
I've lived in New York for longer than most HN posters here have been alive, most likely. A couple of times a year, I'll end up in a car with someone who doesn't understand how this whole thing works, and they'll do something insane like getting on the Brooklyn Bridge and then just staying in the right lane the entire time waiting to get off to the right. Or they'll sit on the BQE at the Flushing Avenue exit a mile back from the exit, causing me to waste large portions of my life that I will never get back.
I'm sorry, but you clearly don't live here, or at least don't drive here. You're describing some kind of Mad Max fantasy, like the image of New York people get from movies and fiction where everyone is flipping everyone else the bird every thirty seconds.
People in NYC are pretty cooperative. Driving isn't every-man-for-himself. I don't know why you're trying to paint this picture of some lawless fantasy. Maybe you think it's exciting, but it's not connected to reality.
Please stop driving here, you clearly aren't qualified to do so.
My hot take is that people who "use all of the paved surface" because their whiny passenger is "in a rush" (which of course everyone stuck in traffic is) should permanently lose their license on the very first offense.
It is just gobsmackingly antisocial behavior that is 1) locally unsafe and 2) indicative of a deep moral rot.
Obviously exceptions can be made for true emergencies and what not, but "I need to save 10 minutes" is not one of them.
That said, yes GP is obviously a psycho.
I've got news for you about how dysfunctional New York City transit planning has been and the status of transit to our three giant airports.
If you're traveling with a family or group, it really is often going to be much easier to take an XL Uber than deal with turnstiles and transfers and stairs and everything.
I've come from abroad with two large checked bags, a carry-on, and a backpack. You think I'm trying to take all that through the subway?
Obviously, yeah if you're traveling solo with a carry-on, most people take public transportation.
Or not, if it's 1 am and you don't want to be waiting 20 minutes for each connection.
Also, if you're a tourist new to the city after a long flight, the last thing you want to do is figure out the massively complicated transit system. Just having someone take you straight to your hotel where you can shower and sleep and deal with jet lag can be an important priority.
London Heathrow (LHR)
Tokyo Haneda (HND)
Amsterdam Schiphol (AMS)
Paris-Charles de Gaulle (CDG)
Frankfurt (FRA)
Dubai (DXB)
Seoul Incheon (ICN)
Guangzhou (CAN)
Shanghai Pudong (PVG)
New Delhi (DEL)
Madrid Barajas (MAD)
Beijing Capital (PEK)
Chicago O'Hare (ORD)
Denver (DEN)
You generally never want to take A/E/J/Z because they're sooo much slower than LIRR, unless you live along them.
Yes, LGA is far worse.
Bart from SFO to downtown SF is about $11 due to a surcharge and the combined fare AirTrain + subway is also about $11.50. LIRR is a bit more expensive. The Paris RER is €13. I don’t see how the fare is objectionable.
I personally appreciate the subway connections exist. Taking LIRR would require a subway transfer to most destinations anyway.
And like I said, you don't want to take the subway unless you live along its route, it's so much slower.
If you need to pay for the construction cost of the AirTrain, it should just be funded as part of the airport generally, because that's what it is. Charging for it is as silly as if you charged to take the AirTrain between terminals.
I don't know that any life was endangered either. I would accept an argument that property was endangered, certainly the margin between vehicles was very close, but at speeds where a collision would not have been injurious.
Lived in New York for 10+ years and still go back regularly. This is unacceptable behaviour by a cabbie.
Given the amount of construction and thus police presence on that route right now, you’re lucky you didn’t get a 60-minute bonus when the cab got pulled over. (The pro move during rush hour and construction is (a) not to, but if you have to, (b) taking the AirTrain and LIRR.)