It will be interesting to see how Lyft's partnership with Waymo evolves given this tech announcement and Waymo's acknowledgment that they plan to offer their own ridesharing service.
Lyft's approach to self-driving partnerships in general seems to rest on the assumption that self-driving providers will catch up to each other before any of them can fully handle everything a human driver can do. If this assumption is correct, Lyft ends up in the great position of being compatible with all major self-driving providers before any of them can feasibly launch a standalone service without Lyft's driver network (who wants to take a car service that doesn't take you downtown? Or doesn't work in the rain?). Ideally, this means Lyft can negotiate favorable terms with all the providers and maintain their position as marketplace brokering between riders and ride providers (either human or robot).
But, if this announcement means Waymo is truly way ahead of the competition, is Lyft aiding and abetting its own demise by covering Waymo's short-term holes (weather, urban areas, etc) up until the day that Waymo can cut Lyft out and run their own service? If Waymo is the only self-driving game in town, and they solve the urban case, why do they need Lyft? I wonder if we'll see any tension develop between the two if leadership at Lyft starts to get concerned about this scenario being a likely outcome.
>>> "Waymo will be operating a fully autonomous ride hailing service without any humans at the wheel ... Waymo wants to broaden the geographic scope of its trial, starting with expansion in the near-term to cover the entire Phoenix metro area, which represents more acreage than the whole of the Greater London area, he noted"
My family is mostly in Tempe / Mesa area (near Chandler, AZ) and during my last few visits I've seen an increasing number of these autonomous (driver-at-the-wheel) cars on the streets. Note that Uber / Lyft also are very popular in the area.
Waymo's transition to a general-public/driverless service in the whole Phoenix area will be the first time that automated ride-hailing services go up against human-driven ride-hailing services. This will be a very interesting and perhaps disturbing experiment. I predict Waymo will price their service competitively, will ramp up to a large fleet, and that after a few months Uber / Lyft will be in trouble. The public will accept the perceived risks in driverless rides.
Over a longer term it will be interesting to see what impact there is on car-buying, congestion ... I wonder whether Waymo will provide ride-sharing as well.
EDIT: clarification; ride-sharing; car market; traffic congestion. ( Hmmm, also adding that "... after a few months Uber / Lyft will be in trouble" is probably too compressed, it realistically will take a longer time. )
If Waymo's tech is years ahead of the competition (say 18-24 months ahead minimum) then I think a lot of the self-driving companies and car manufacturers in the US will be having cold sweats. This may not be a winner-take-all market (I don't know honestly...) but I see this lead up enabling Waymo to capture significant market share in the US in regions where laws towards autonomous vehicles are friendly.
One way the competition could attempt to mitigate Waymo's lead is to test and launch in areas where Waymo are not currently active (other states in the US, or other countries altogether). They could of course accelerate development of their self driving tech but that's easier said than done I presume.
I also worry Uber & Lyft's valuations and usage will drop with the introduction of driverless vehicles, unless they somehow manage to strike long-lasting partnerships with Waymo.
Regarding OEMs (i.e. car manufacturers), I can't tell what will happen with them: do they continue shunning Waymo and pursuing their own self-driving car efforts or come back begging for some sort of deal? I presume we will see both attitudes play out depending on how confident each company feels about its own self-driving tech ability and acquisition potential.
It's hard to foresee the consequences of this announcement, but I feel Waymo has upped the stakes tremendously today, and the pressure on everyone (including Waymo) to deliver is on, more than ever.
It'd be interesting to see how this compares in overall efficiency to properly implemented and comprehensive mass transit systems in a dense urban environment. The Tokyo metro alone (not including the JR trains, Tokyo Subway—a separate but compatible subway system, and other train transit systems which totals over 40 million daily users) handles 6.8 million passengers daily just in one city.
It seems like if it scaled to the point where even there are no drivers, there's no way such a system can support a large number of users in a dense area at the same efficiency of a train. For Taxi's the issue isn't the cost of the driver, but actually the space and traffic constraints. Medallion supplies weren't constrained due to corruption and cronyism but to prevent the overpopulation of Taxis. Removing the driver may lower costs of Taxi's but there will still be a minimum floor to Taxi prices as you can't just infinitely supply a city with driverless cars.
The area where I do see driverless taxis flourishing is suburban point-to-point transport. The current use case in SF where basically Uber and Lyfts have supplanted public transit is unique to the city, flush with money and short on public transit options.
This, indeed, is a major step for Waymo. While some people may be skeptical about the safety of these rides, we all saw this coming. This has been a part of the ambitious goal most self-driving companies set out when they start. The reason I say "part of the goal", is because the end goal is L5 - to handle more complex scenarios which I assume Waymo is still working on.
Taking the ninety-ninety rule or the rule of credibility into consideration, the remaining 10% of development will probably take 90% of the time. By this, I mean that reaching a stage where L5 cars are owned by consumers can take a long time (if at all people want to buy instead of sharing, but that's a separate topic). For example, running this project in Pittsburgh, Boston, or SF is much more difficult than in suburbs of Arizona. Conditions with rain, snow, uneven terrain, high population density are still difficult to handle.
Several challenges still remain, from both technical and legal perspectives. However, any of that may not undermine the tremendous opportunities for Waymo (or its partners). There are several areas/markets that are ready for this technology (e.g., ride sharing in suburbs, transportation of non-dangerous goods over passengers, etc.)
What happens if these cars get in a situation where there is no legal way to move? For instance, the other day I was driving down the street and it was closed because of a Farmers market. Will they just sit there for hours? In gridlock, there is often no way to move without "blocking the box."
Waymo has an operations center the car is in contact with. I would assume the car would call out to this operations center for human-provided instructions. And you'd be the only car to experience it, since all other cars would be notified and take an alternate route.
Part of getting this out into the world is finding good answers to these questions.
Excited about the technology and expected this news eventually, but in less of a "Bam, we did it" and more of a "Coming Dec 2017... look for new autonomous vehicles, they'll be bright orange with flashing lights".
Following-up on the "How is this legal" question below, can anyone comment on:
1. For the 'autonomous engineers/technologists':
a) Is the technology mature enough that it can be utilized without an on-board driver such that public isn't at risk?
b) Does the sensor system provide the remote "monitor" have enough situational awareness?
c) What happens if whatever up-link that the vehicle is connected to disconnects? (for example: They're using Comcast)
2. For the 'lawyers':
a) Who's responsible if someone gets hurt or the vehicle breaks a law?
b) Is an Executive Order from the Governor the ideal channel for introducing the technology to the public (versus legislative action)? [I know subjective but curious]
3. For the 'marketers':
a) Any examples of technologies prematurely introduced that had negative impact on their growth or contributed to their demise?
Note: I realize some of these are subjective but thought would make for some great discussion.
>a) Any examples of technologies prematurely introduced that had negative impact on their growth or contributed to their demise?
Not really a class of product, but there certainly have been interesting processor architectures whose implementations weren't very good (and/or their timing was bad) out of the gate. Itanium comes to mind although there are others as well. One can reasonably argue whether it made a difference in the long run but late and slow meant Itanium ultimately never had a chance.
>a) Who's responsible if someone gets hurt or the vehicle breaks a law?
It's an interesting question. Outside of, perhaps, drugs, it's hard to think of consumer products that, correctly maintained, and used according to directions (or even not), randomly hurt or kill people and everyone just accepts that because "stuff happens." No, they get a lawyer. It also raises questions like "I'm sorry. You're not updated to sensor suite 3.72 with firmware patch level 7865 so we're not liable" or "Your vehicle is out of support and we can no longer provide security or safety updates so you can no longer be covered for liability."
Levels of driving automation is an ill-defined concept.
For example, L4 is defined as "mind-off". According to Wikipedia, "the driver may safely go to sleep or leave the driver's seat. Self driving is supported only in limited areas (geofenced) or under special circumstances, like traffic jams. Outside of these areas or circumstances, the vehicle must be able to safely abort the trip, i.e. park the car, if the driver does not retake control."
However, the difficulty of driving varies so much from case to case. City is significantly more complex than urban areas. If some company geofence the cars in urban areas and achieve level 4, it might be less impressive say a Level-3 system that works in complex city scenarios and extreme weather conditions.
It seems like it's not ill-defined, it's like all categorization schemes. It's suitable for some purposes and not others. The level system is important to the experience of the passenger, and to a number of design elements of the car, and, I would guess, to regulation. It's just not a total order on the capabilities or impressiveness of a self driving car project.
> the driver may safely go to sleep or leave the driver's seat
That's going to be hard to do while you are wearing a seatbelt and I don't see seatbelt laws rescinded just because a vehicle is self driving until car accidents are exceedingly rare.
Wow! Waymo is now confident enough in their vehicles that they're willing to risk letting the public use them completely unsupervised? This seems like a huge milestone for self-driving car tech.
I wonder what their current disengagement rates are for Chandler; at this point it has to be really close to zero, right?
No public rides quite yet: "The current passengers for this test are Waymo employees, however, so it’s not as if the Alphabet-owned company is throwing caution to the wind; instead, it’s showing that it’s ready to move to the next major phase of operations after around a decade of working on this incredibly complex problem."
There's a positive feedback loop that will happen: As they get more cars on to the road, the log more real world miles, which makes the cars better, which gets more cars onto the road which log more miles...
The real challenge here is extracting valuable information - if you just dump the sensor data to disk you will consume the world's storage capacity with a handful of cars.
Not sure how much that is worth. Tesla collects a huge amount of data but that doesn't help as much as some had hoped. You need to interpret all that data which is expensive and complicated.
I own the same model of vehicle as Waymo is using (2017 Pacifica PHEV). It's cool to see how little they've had to visibly modify the car (apart from the sensors)—the interior looks 100% stock, other than the row of buttons on the ceiling. Given the level-1 autonomous features in the vehicle (self-parking, etc.), all of the integrations are probably done over CAN-bus, with no additional hardware required (again, apart from the sensors and the computing power).
I think there's more than that. The safety report they released recently indicates the vehicles also have redundant power systems, redundant braking systems, redundant steering systems, etc. I doubt that the stock configurations require as much redundancy.
Roads in Chandler are very regular (nice, wide grid), and the weather is clear and sunny the vast majority of the days. The particular geography helps isolate the number of factors the car needs to consider besides "just" driving.
From a NYT article[0],
>"The company did not say whether it was testing the driverless cars in environments considered challenging for autonomous vehicles, like bridges or tunnels, or more difficult conditions, like driving at night or in rain and snow — usually not a big concern in the dry Phoenix climate."
The Ars Technica article says this is still the case:
> To aid with navigation, Waymo has built high-resolution three-dimensional maps of its service area. Self-driving software in each car can compare the objects identified by sensors to objects on the map, allowing it to quickly distinguish stationary objects like trees and buildings from mobile objects like cars and pedestrians.
> As Waymo expands its map and acquires more vehicles, it will also expand its service area. Before too long, Waymo expects to offer service across the entire Phoenix metropolitan area. Eventually, Waymo will extend service to other metropolitan areas using the same incremental approach.
This article from Dec 2016 seems to suggest that's still the case [0]. However, it also looks like those maps can be built by the cars themselves, which should simplify expansion.
That's pretty terrifying that it can't read street signs and is dependent on mapping. Here in D.C., there are all sorts of fine-grained road rules, such as streets that are one-way only certain times of day, streets that reverse direction at certain times of day, turns that are legal or illegal depending on time of day, etc. That's not including random road closures.
These databases apparently don't get updated that often. Recently, D.C. moved a major highway on-ramp. It used to be that you could get on 395-S heading west on H street, by taking a left onto the on-ramp. They replaced it with an underground entrance ramp on eastbound Mass. Ave., such that westbound traffic on H or Mass. Ave. could no longer use the on-ramp, and had to go several blocks south to use a different one. This was a widely-publicized move planned long in advance. And at least Apple Maps tried to steer me down the old route for awhile.
Similar thing in our neighborhood just outside the Annapolis city limits. They closed our street to car traffic with barriers, so that you can get in an out but can't drive along it for more than one cross street. Whatever database Uber uses still hasn't figured this out--I'll get Uber drivers waiting for me on the other side of one of the barriers.
There's little external information about how map dependent their implementation is.
They certainly have meticulous maps available in areas they operate, but it is easy to imagine other reasons for that. Like they could be using the map to separately process their sensor data, producing a reliable diff and evaluating the sensor only scene based on that.
Why are the videos always done in perfect conditions? I like drive.ai's approach a lot more where they demonstrated the capabilities at night and in heavy rain. It's much more impressive.
What looks impressive in a video is often smoke and mirrors. Just because your car is working in inclement weather for the duration of a video doesn't mean it's safe or that the behavior scales to all situations. Proving that it doesn't cause catastrophic problems is even harder (you need sim).
FWIW most autonomous cars work great at night. As for weather, nobody has heavy rain completely solved (yet) (afaik). It messes with both camera and lasers.
Probably because nobody is behind the wheel. Given that this is the first time a company is willing to do that it's not surprising that it's at 20mph in sunny weather on the quietest most spacious roads in the world.
I haven't looked but I'd guess drive.ai's is no-way near reliable enough to be without a backup driver in the rain at night on a road with road-side parking etc.
A lot of what if scenarios being asked. The key takeaway here is that anyone that drives a truck, taxi, uber, lyft, or any other vehicle for a living will highly likely be out of a job in the next 10-15 years. So roughly about 10-12% of the global workforce will be unemployed.
Having said that I do love seeing these wide, straight American roads and wonder how well this will do on the tiny (often single track) winding country roads around here.
Just as good as the narrow curvy American country roads: Not at all. All the self-driving fanboys are living in la la land if they think this tech is any way near practical for general use.
The cars could be subject to vandalism, or at the very least really aggressive driving. The predictability of the driving and the lack of a driver is going to result in weird interactions with people.
I was really excited, until I read that the change they made is not to have no employee in the car at all. They moved the safety employee from the front to the back.
I think they're massively underestimating the general public's reaction to something like this. I as a nerdy tech dude think this is very tight and if I was much younger this would blow my mind, but I think this also might frighten many people.
I don't know if that's being considered at all here or maybe the transition will be slow enough to allow people to cope with the change.
They have been doing a series of incremental steps and press releases over the last several months. They started the early rider program in April. Recently they have been ramping up the press and public information program. They released a large 'safety report'. They have been working on self-driving education programs with organizations like MADD and NSC. They even put up billboards in Phoenix related to self-driving safety/education. They also did a big press event just recently inviting like 40 major media outlets including NY Times, WSJ etc. to their test track to give journalists rides and announce they would be launching soon.
Surprised you haven't heard about this stuff. They have been working pretty hard to publicize and market it.
[+] [-] a9a|8 years ago|reply
Lyft's approach to self-driving partnerships in general seems to rest on the assumption that self-driving providers will catch up to each other before any of them can fully handle everything a human driver can do. If this assumption is correct, Lyft ends up in the great position of being compatible with all major self-driving providers before any of them can feasibly launch a standalone service without Lyft's driver network (who wants to take a car service that doesn't take you downtown? Or doesn't work in the rain?). Ideally, this means Lyft can negotiate favorable terms with all the providers and maintain their position as marketplace brokering between riders and ride providers (either human or robot).
But, if this announcement means Waymo is truly way ahead of the competition, is Lyft aiding and abetting its own demise by covering Waymo's short-term holes (weather, urban areas, etc) up until the day that Waymo can cut Lyft out and run their own service? If Waymo is the only self-driving game in town, and they solve the urban case, why do they need Lyft? I wonder if we'll see any tension develop between the two if leadership at Lyft starts to get concerned about this scenario being a likely outcome.
[+] [-] nwatson|8 years ago|reply
My family is mostly in Tempe / Mesa area (near Chandler, AZ) and during my last few visits I've seen an increasing number of these autonomous (driver-at-the-wheel) cars on the streets. Note that Uber / Lyft also are very popular in the area.
Waymo's transition to a general-public/driverless service in the whole Phoenix area will be the first time that automated ride-hailing services go up against human-driven ride-hailing services. This will be a very interesting and perhaps disturbing experiment. I predict Waymo will price their service competitively, will ramp up to a large fleet, and that after a few months Uber / Lyft will be in trouble. The public will accept the perceived risks in driverless rides.
Over a longer term it will be interesting to see what impact there is on car-buying, congestion ... I wonder whether Waymo will provide ride-sharing as well.
EDIT: clarification; ride-sharing; car market; traffic congestion. ( Hmmm, also adding that "... after a few months Uber / Lyft will be in trouble" is probably too compressed, it realistically will take a longer time. )
[+] [-] edshiro|8 years ago|reply
One way the competition could attempt to mitigate Waymo's lead is to test and launch in areas where Waymo are not currently active (other states in the US, or other countries altogether). They could of course accelerate development of their self driving tech but that's easier said than done I presume.
I also worry Uber & Lyft's valuations and usage will drop with the introduction of driverless vehicles, unless they somehow manage to strike long-lasting partnerships with Waymo.
Regarding OEMs (i.e. car manufacturers), I can't tell what will happen with them: do they continue shunning Waymo and pursuing their own self-driving car efforts or come back begging for some sort of deal? I presume we will see both attitudes play out depending on how confident each company feels about its own self-driving tech ability and acquisition potential.
It's hard to foresee the consequences of this announcement, but I feel Waymo has upped the stakes tremendously today, and the pressure on everyone (including Waymo) to deliver is on, more than ever.
[+] [-] chrischen|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Greater_Tokyo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway
It seems like if it scaled to the point where even there are no drivers, there's no way such a system can support a large number of users in a dense area at the same efficiency of a train. For Taxi's the issue isn't the cost of the driver, but actually the space and traffic constraints. Medallion supplies weren't constrained due to corruption and cronyism but to prevent the overpopulation of Taxis. Removing the driver may lower costs of Taxi's but there will still be a minimum floor to Taxi prices as you can't just infinitely supply a city with driverless cars.
The area where I do see driverless taxis flourishing is suburban point-to-point transport. The current use case in SF where basically Uber and Lyfts have supplanted public transit is unique to the city, flush with money and short on public transit options.
[+] [-] aecs99|8 years ago|reply
Taking the ninety-ninety rule or the rule of credibility into consideration, the remaining 10% of development will probably take 90% of the time. By this, I mean that reaching a stage where L5 cars are owned by consumers can take a long time (if at all people want to buy instead of sharing, but that's a separate topic). For example, running this project in Pittsburgh, Boston, or SF is much more difficult than in suburbs of Arizona. Conditions with rain, snow, uneven terrain, high population density are still difficult to handle.
Several challenges still remain, from both technical and legal perspectives. However, any of that may not undermine the tremendous opportunities for Waymo (or its partners). There are several areas/markets that are ready for this technology (e.g., ride sharing in suburbs, transportation of non-dangerous goods over passengers, etc.)
[+] [-] hardtke|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agildehaus|8 years ago|reply
Part of getting this out into the world is finding good answers to these questions.
[+] [-] davidkuhta|8 years ago|reply
Following-up on the "How is this legal" question below, can anyone comment on:
1. For the 'autonomous engineers/technologists':
a) Is the technology mature enough that it can be utilized without an on-board driver such that public isn't at risk?
b) Does the sensor system provide the remote "monitor" have enough situational awareness?
c) What happens if whatever up-link that the vehicle is connected to disconnects? (for example: They're using Comcast)
2. For the 'lawyers':
a) Who's responsible if someone gets hurt or the vehicle breaks a law?
b) Is an Executive Order from the Governor the ideal channel for introducing the technology to the public (versus legislative action)? [I know subjective but curious]
3. For the 'marketers':
a) Any examples of technologies prematurely introduced that had negative impact on their growth or contributed to their demise?
Note: I realize some of these are subjective but thought would make for some great discussion.
[+] [-] ghaff|8 years ago|reply
Not really a class of product, but there certainly have been interesting processor architectures whose implementations weren't very good (and/or their timing was bad) out of the gate. Itanium comes to mind although there are others as well. One can reasonably argue whether it made a difference in the long run but late and slow meant Itanium ultimately never had a chance.
>a) Who's responsible if someone gets hurt or the vehicle breaks a law?
It's an interesting question. Outside of, perhaps, drugs, it's hard to think of consumer products that, correctly maintained, and used according to directions (or even not), randomly hurt or kill people and everyone just accepts that because "stuff happens." No, they get a lawyer. It also raises questions like "I'm sorry. You're not updated to sensor suite 3.72 with firmware patch level 7865 so we're not liable" or "Your vehicle is out of support and we can no longer provide security or safety updates so you can no longer be covered for liability."
[+] [-] StreamBright|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strin|8 years ago|reply
For example, L4 is defined as "mind-off". According to Wikipedia, "the driver may safely go to sleep or leave the driver's seat. Self driving is supported only in limited areas (geofenced) or under special circumstances, like traffic jams. Outside of these areas or circumstances, the vehicle must be able to safely abort the trip, i.e. park the car, if the driver does not retake control."
However, the difficulty of driving varies so much from case to case. City is significantly more complex than urban areas. If some company geofence the cars in urban areas and achieve level 4, it might be less impressive say a Level-3 system that works in complex city scenarios and extreme weather conditions.
[+] [-] rictic|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|8 years ago|reply
That's going to be hard to do while you are wearing a seatbelt and I don't see seatbelt laws rescinded just because a vehicle is self driving until car accidents are exceedingly rare.
[+] [-] Ajedi32|8 years ago|reply
I wonder what their current disengagement rates are for Chandler; at this point it has to be really close to zero, right?
[+] [-] harpastum|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hippich|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dabeeeenster|8 years ago|reply
I wonder how valuable this is?
[+] [-] s17n|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giacaglia|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dx034|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] organsnyder|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jvolkman|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JibJabLab|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] udfalkso|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eggpy|8 years ago|reply
From a NYT article[0],
>"The company did not say whether it was testing the driverless cars in environments considered challenging for autonomous vehicles, like bridges or tunnels, or more difficult conditions, like driving at night or in rain and snow — usually not a big concern in the dry Phoenix climate."
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/technology/waymo-autonomo...
[+] [-] theptip|8 years ago|reply
> To aid with navigation, Waymo has built high-resolution three-dimensional maps of its service area. Self-driving software in each car can compare the objects identified by sensors to objects on the map, allowing it to quickly distinguish stationary objects like trees and buildings from mobile objects like cars and pedestrians.
> As Waymo expands its map and acquires more vehicles, it will also expand its service area. Before too long, Waymo expects to offer service across the entire Phoenix metropolitan area. Eventually, Waymo will extend service to other metropolitan areas using the same incremental approach.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/11/fully-driverless-cars-a...
[+] [-] gervase|8 years ago|reply
[0]: https://medium.com/waymo/building-maps-for-a-self-driving-ca...
[+] [-] k__|8 years ago|reply
Huge part is up-front-work, and then?
How often do streets change?
[+] [-] rayiner|8 years ago|reply
These databases apparently don't get updated that often. Recently, D.C. moved a major highway on-ramp. It used to be that you could get on 395-S heading west on H street, by taking a left onto the on-ramp. They replaced it with an underground entrance ramp on eastbound Mass. Ave., such that westbound traffic on H or Mass. Ave. could no longer use the on-ramp, and had to go several blocks south to use a different one. This was a widely-publicized move planned long in advance. And at least Apple Maps tried to steer me down the old route for awhile.
Similar thing in our neighborhood just outside the Annapolis city limits. They closed our street to car traffic with barriers, so that you can get in an out but can't drive along it for more than one cross street. Whatever database Uber uses still hasn't figured this out--I'll get Uber drivers waiting for me on the other side of one of the barriers.
[+] [-] maxerickson|8 years ago|reply
They certainly have meticulous maps available in areas they operate, but it is easy to imagine other reasons for that. Like they could be using the map to separately process their sensor data, producing a reliable diff and evaluating the sensor only scene based on that.
[+] [-] agumonkey|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emerongi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kajecounterhack|8 years ago|reply
FWIW most autonomous cars work great at night. As for weather, nobody has heavy rain completely solved (yet) (afaik). It messes with both camera and lasers.
[+] [-] IshKebab|8 years ago|reply
I haven't looked but I'd guess drive.ai's is no-way near reliable enough to be without a backup driver in the rain at night on a road with road-side parking etc.
[+] [-] PatientTrades|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rwmj|8 years ago|reply
Having said that I do love seeing these wide, straight American roads and wonder how well this will do on the tiny (often single track) winding country roads around here.
[+] [-] kevin_thibedeau|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asteli|8 years ago|reply
dealing with other road users and abusers is far harder
[+] [-] mattpk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] julbaxter|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ersiees|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] debt|8 years ago|reply
I don't know if that's being considered at all here or maybe the transition will be slow enough to allow people to cope with the change.
[+] [-] ilaksh|8 years ago|reply
Surprised you haven't heard about this stuff. They have been working pretty hard to publicize and market it.
[+] [-] frankus|8 years ago|reply
Apparently I'm not alone http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=11177