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Comment by icyfox | Hacker News Reader

Waymo is such an interesting case study. For most other ~AI deployments you have strong public reaction to the proliferation of slop, non-human failure modes, cost cutting at the expense of quality, etc. But I haven't met a single person who doesn't like the experience of Waymo. They ended up cracking the code on what I suspect people really want:

- consistent car quality

- safety of the drive (conservative driving and potential fear of drivers)

- no randomly chatty driver

All of those feel like a breath of fresh air especially when stacked up against the current state of Uber & Lyft rides. People really just want consistency. I don't actually think you needed AI to get there (I've had occasional rides in black cars that provided the same experience). Waymo was just right time, right place, right price.

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> but I haven't met a single person who doesn't like the experience of Waymo.

Just last week a Waymo was driving on train tracks and the rider had to jump out of the car and run because the car stopped while trains came at it. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26KJvL2clTs) I bet that guy'd have something to say about the experience.

Yeah that's obviously not great but that video is nothing like what you described. You made it sound like it drove onto a mainline train track with a train barreling down the tracks that couldn't stop with the guy diving out of the car to avoid getting clobbered. It did not, it got stuck on a tram track. Not quite the same thing.

not having to talk to the driver and picking my own music are my fav parts. the novelty wears off quick and it becomes normal

I've had Waymos in SF take very strange routes. It seemed to really strongly avoid ever using Market St, generally preferring a long right-angle route over the perfect hypotenuse. Sometimes this delayed me very considerably, doubling my ride time compared to the Google Maps estimated time.

That said, I've never felt unsafe or uncomfortable. But I have jumped out halfway through the ride and grabbed an eScooter instead.

Back when I had to drive/walk in SF, I would also go quite out of my way to avoid market or mission. Especially near 6th. Self-preservation and whatnot...

Market used to be closed to all cars (2021-2025); only taxis and busses were allowed but that changed recently:

https://www.sfmta.com/blog/creating-better-market-street-car... https://www.planetizen.com/news/2025/08/135849-sfs-market-st...

Wonder if that explains your observed preference. I'd bet Waymos will start utilizing the route again if it aligns with Google's mapping algo.

There's a lot of complaints about externalities, especially when a power cut stopped all the vehicles in a city recently.

I'm not commenting on the externalities. For that I'd also cite economic impact, job loss, occasional emergency services issues, etc. I'm saying the experience when you yourself are taking a ride. I haven't met a single person who's said "this sucked - I'm going back to Uber".

I think parent was talking about how users of the service were very satisfied with it, not about externalities.

My first and only Waymo ride was super sketch. Car slowed down to ~5mph in a 35mph zone and stayed that way for 5+ minutes as other cars were swerving around us. Felt like it was going to come to a complete stop in the middle of the road, I prefer real humans.

What you're getting at is basically the difference between probabilistic models vs deterministic ones.

waymo is also a probabilistic deep learning system

Tried calling it and it left without picking us up.

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