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Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

Waymo cars are also more likely to be properly maintained. I've noticed that a lot of Uber / Lyft cars have some kind of warning light on the dashboard: check engine, low tire pressure, overdue for service.

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Waymo cars are new. Wait until their fleets are 10+ years old. They'll have all the same bad maintenance issues that airplanes, semis, rental cars, and any other company-owned vehicles have.

I expect that Waymo will have standards. In theory Uber does as well, but since the drivers own their own cars they can't enforce them. A 15 year old car that has been well maintained is still safe to have on the road (within the limits of the safety systems on board), while a 6 year old car with a lot of miles that hasn't been maintained can be deadly.

You may be right, but historically speaking, "this company will stick to quality standards" is a bad bet compared to "this company will cut corners to squeeze out more profit".

I think the apt comparison is the rental car business. They are reasonably good at quality standards because the competition is stiff, and if the vehicles aren't reliable and clean, you will just use the company next door. This incentivizes prudent fleet management, and thanks to economies of scale, having in-house mechanics to constantly maintain the fleet quickly becomes cost efficient.

Yeah I’ve almost never got in an Uber that was notably unclean or damaged in some way in London. Most of the times I’ve got one in SF, it’s been an unpleasant experience and so I now Waymo when I can there.

If you have access to a Google campus that is 10 years old, they seem to be doing fine? A little bit worse for wear, perhaps, but it's not like Google hasn't encountered this issue ever before.

Really? I fly a lot and Part 121 commercial airliners seem to be pretty well maintained.

Very few airliners depart in perfect working order. There is a "MEL" (minimum equipment list) that details which systems can be inop and still operate the flight.

Sure, however that's why there's a minimum. The problem is that lots of GA aeroplanes aren't that well maintained.

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.

"Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect."

Alfred Gilmer Lamplugh

None of that stuff really impacts safety. They're not leaving the gate with under inflated tires or expired engine oil.

This seems to be a US thing. Every time I take an Uber/Lyft in the US the car that shows up more often than not has a cracked windshield. In the UK this just doesn't happen, maybe because we have stricter laws around what is safe to drive and a cracked windshield wouldn't pass an MOT.

I’ve been in so many Ubers in the UK with check engine lights and the similar — but at least some of the difference is Uber UK has much higher requirements for cars, which I expect is probably partly because of competition from private hires.

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