[pricecomstock]

As someone who both bikes and drives around Brooklyn, I would bet this is going to be nearly a decade of testing. There are so many edge cases that I encounter on almost every single trip, and I just don't see anything but very advanced AI handling it

- obvious, but large numbers of pedestrians and cyclists

- 2 way roads becoming 1 lane where the directions must take turns due to construction, deliveries, or the Uber in front of you stopping in the middle of traffic for a pickup

- resurfaced roads that don't have lines painted on them for weeks or months

- congested intersections where you'd probably need to wait 3 hours to pass through legally, so you have to just pull into the intersection trusting that traffic will clear when the next light turns green

- pittsburgh lefts need to happen for the sake of traffic flow sometimes

- sometimes you need to do very human and assertive "negotiation" to get into the lane you need.

- another comment mentioned Waymo cars just rerouting to the next turn when no cars would let them in. There are a decent number of situations where that will cost you 5-30 minutes of extra trip time

- you can disrupt traffic flow quite badly if you e.g. don't pull up to the crosswalk, and out of the way of cars behind you, while waiting for pedestrians to cross on a turn (humans are also bad at this)

- it's difficult to overstate how often cars/vans/trucks are double parked, changing the lanes available, forcing cars and bikes to improvise lanes. This isn't an occasional thing, this is a 10x on a 15 minute trip thing

[apeace]

- delivery drivers on electric bikes or mopeds zipping the wrong way down the road at 30mph, feeling like they are inches away from colliding with you

- roads completely blocked because of the aforementioned double-parking. If someone is double-parked in a way that prevents a delivery truck from getting through, the entire block gets filled with cars that can't move. Then everyone has to back out, one-by-one.

- situations where a police car or ambulance has their lights on behind you and there is literally nowhere to go to get out of their way other than straight through a red light.

To add to something you said:

> sometimes you need to do very human and assertive "negotiation" to get into the lane you need

I'm generally a pretty slow and careful driver in other places, but having driven around NYC for many years now, I can say that it's basically necessary to be an extremely aggressive driver here. If you want to change lanes, you need to cut someone off. It's just expected. If you don't drive like that, it's almost as if the other drivers don't understand your intention, and you get nowhere. Anyone who's taken an Uber, Lyft, or taxi in NYC knows the way you need to drive to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time.

I'd honestly be excited if they pulled it off. A robot driving like a real New Yorker, but presumably a lot safer? How cool would that be!

[toast0]

> If you want to change lanes, you need to cut someone off. It's just expected. If you don't drive like that, it's almost as if the other drivers don't understand your intention, and you get nowhere.

This is going to be a major challenge or at least a major change for Waymo. It's been a while since I've driven near one, but they were very timid with lane changes. Also, there was that published incident when the Waymo car tried to change lanes into a bus.

There's unwritten rules about who you can cut off. My experience is from LA freeways, the rules may be different in NYC, but the concept is the same. Buses and other vehicles, usually no, but sometimes. Marked taxis, no. Older vehicle with lots of scrapes, probably no. Also, the proper time to signal your lane change is often after your car is already in the lane enough that you can't be displaced.

[DominikPeters]

> I'd honestly be excited if they pulled it off. A robot driving like a real New Yorker, but presumably a lot safer? How cool would that be!

Part of the attraction of self-driving cars is that they will be safer. But as examples like these show, a significant part of danger in driving is completely intentional, especially in cities. You need to deliberately risk crashes all the time to get anywhere and to discourage others (such as pedestrians) from getting in the way. A lot of driving involves such violent threats. I don't know what fraction of crashes comes from this sort of thing, but it would be interesting to estimate, and it would provide an upper bound on the safety advantage of autonomous cars in cities.

[ehsankia]

Check out this video they posted recently of them driving in SF, which isn't much worse than NYC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CVInKMz9cA

Look how it handles the bike going against traffic or how well it sees the pedestrians from far away. It's also quite a bit more assertive I find than in Phoenix.

[wolverine876]

> having driven around NYC for many years now, I can say that it's basically necessary to be an extremely aggressive driver here. If you want to change lanes, you need to cut someone off. It's just expected. If you don't drive like that, it's almost as if the other drivers don't understand your intention, and you get nowhere.

It's beyond that: by behaving in an unexpected manner, and by disrupting the flow of traffic, you are a danger.

[JakeTheAndroid]

To be honest, I'd happily let my car mess up the flow of traffic trying to block the box. The only reason this exists is because everyone decides to enter the box to make the light.

When working in SF without self driving I would regularly not let myself block the box and I'd miss multiple lights. Police need to actually ticket people that do this. I've seen cops sitting at the intersection waiting to ticket people for bypassing traffic by using the carpool freeway entrance while doing fuckall about the blocked intersection causing people to want to choose the HOV option.

I understand that it's a part of driving that a self driving car would need to know how to navigate. But we really should just fix this problem through proper traffic enforcement instead of trying to make self driving cars participate in this completely shitty and unnecessary practice.

[pricecomstock]

I agree with you in principle about not blocking the box. But in practice it's not always like that. Sometimes the actual light timing needs to change. Sometimes the roads need to just be different than they are to prevent bottlenecks, which is a pretty expensive fix

Sometimes you roll up to an intersection, and every time the light turns green, the direction you're trying to go already has all lanes filled by another approaching direction. Every time.

[rcthompson]

This partly falls under "3 hours to pass through legally", but I would add to this the significant number of major intersections where the marked lanes are completely ignored at all times. For example one intersection I'm familiar with has a single lane out of 4 leading to the highway on ramp. However, probably at least 60% of cars passing through the intersection want to get on the highway, so in practice both of the lanes adjacent to the designated lane are also used to access the on-ramp, resulting in an uncontrolled 3-way merge during a sharp left turn in the middle of an intersection.

Edit: For anyone curious, my particular example is getting on 278 South coming from the southeast on Prospect Ave.

https://goo.gl/maps/ySokhy6uXEPPGoG8A

[crmd]

> one intersection I'm familiar with has a single lane out of 4 leading to the highway on ramp.

I suspected instantly you were talking about the prospect Ave BQE entrance . I make that left off third ave onto Hamilton most mornings, and the difference between being in the first- or second-from-left vs third-from-left turning lane is probably an extra 10 minute delay for exactly the reason you describe. I’m no expert in self-driving cars/line following robots, but I suspect real-world NYC driving is computationally impossible at this time.

[totoglazer]

Yes, this also describes, for example, the next entrance at Hamilton and Hicks. Although there’s it’s narrower so primarily just one extra lane.

[emodendroket]

I used to have a drive home where one of the roads had a single lane that everyone local treated by convention like it was actually two lanes, one lane to go straight through and one to turn right, which worked fine until someone from out of town was driving in it and got in the wrong "lane" or just stayed in the middle

[pricecomstock]

I was curious! But not too curious, since this maybe describes most of the on-ramps to the BQE

[ericbarrett]

> another comment mentioned Waymo cars just rerouting to the next turn when no cars would let them in. There are a decent number of situations where that will cost you 5-30 minutes of extra trip time

I took a wrong turn in heavy NYC traffic once (trying to get to the Lincoln Tunnel on a Friday) and it cost me over 2 hours.

[andrewla]

In Philadelphia driving this is called the "New Jersey" problem -- you miss your turn or your exit and all of a sudden you're on a bridge heading to New Jersey with no real idea of how you got there.

[moyix]

I once tried to pass through NYC on the way from Boston to DC and somehow managed to get turned a full 180º around and end up headed back north. On the bright side, superhuman performance might not be a very high bar to clear here.

[darkwizard42]

I mean the way to solve this is to prioritize waiting for a turn over the penalty to missing it.

You would have the same issue if you missed the last exit in San Francisco and got stuck going all the way across the Bay Bridge (can easily hit 2 hours trying to go over and back in traffic both ways)

[adwi]

> it's difficult to overstate how often cars/vans/trucks are double parked, changing the lanes available, forcing cars and bikes to improvise lanes. This isn't an occasional thing, this is a 10x on a 15 minute trip thing

This is so true. Cars haphazardly double park on either side. Best case you’re dodging and weaving, drifting through the painted lane suggestions. Sometimes you’re just stuck and waiting while one of them decides to move. Always the bicyclists get the raw end of the deal in terms of their safety and priority.

I often wonder what would happen if they removed all parking from one side of the street to make long loading-only lanes, and strictly enforced it to prevent people from stopping on both sides.

If you just had one functioning, unimpeded lane for car traffic I suspect it’d improve traffic conditions considerably, vs. four extremely inefficient lanes for cars (2x parking, 2x driving)

[mattzito]

>I often wonder what would happen if they removed all parking from one side of the street to make long loading-only lanes, and strictly enforced it to prevent people from stopping on both sides.

They do this a lot in midtown - commercial only parking during business hours to allow loading/unloading AND you don't need the cops to enforce it because the traffic enforcement people can just write tickets

[jnsie]

> congested intersections where you'd probably need to wait 3 hours to pass through legally

I cannot imagine how self driving cars will (in the future...) deal with entering the Lincoln/Holland/etc. tunnel. I genuinely don't think you can enter these tunnels even during moderate traffic without breaking at least a few laws.

[ep103]

So honest question, when I'm stuck behind one of these fucking things refusing to take a turn correctly, because it means crossing the white line, what do I do?

With a human driver, I can blare the horn, or, god forbid, get out of the car to talk to them.

But with a driverless car, what do I do? Honk at an empty vehicle that literally has no ears?

[bobbylarrybobby]

I love the idea that driverless cars might lower the amount of honking by reducing the number of people who can respond to a honk

[windowsrookie]

Why are you so angry?

[emkoemko]

Jesus you shouldn't be driving a car if you are that angry

[romwell]

You stare angrily at the passenger until they unlock the door and let you drive the damn thing through the intersection :D

[xmprt]

Do the same thing. There's still a human behind the wheels.

[da39a3ee]

You sound like a complete dick when you are behind the wheel. Please consider stopping driving. Your role as a driver isn't to correct other people's driving; it's to get you and your passengers somewhere safely, while keeping all other road users safe.

[ogjunkyard]

I see Waymo/Cruise/Zoox autonomous vehicles multiple times a day in San Francisco and every one of these points are something that happens all the time in San Francisco.

Something I didn't see mentioned about NYC was elevation changes and hills, which is something that San Francisco has all over. There are some VERY steep streets in San Francisco, which means that sensors are out of typically alignment in relationship to the road when an autonomous vehicle is at an intersection.

[chubot]

Yeah NYC is crazy. One thing I saw this summer is streets in Little Italy and Chinatown with exactly one lane, and restaurant boxes on BOTH sides in the parking spots.

So if there was a delivery truck that parked to unload, and there were, literally entire blocks of traffic would have to wait behind it.

Sometimes a parking spot would open up between the restaurant boxes. The truck can pull in there a tiny bit but not all the way.

Then maybe there is room for the driver behind to pass. They are scraping by with literally 1 to 3 inches of room, negotiating the space manually.

I can't even see a remote driver handling this situation!

I also think this "testing" won't lead to much concrete in the next 5-10 years. There will be data gathering and spinning of wheels. After all I think by 2016 they were also "testing" in a bunch of places, and 5 years later it's barely deployed.

[jdavis703]

I’ve never driven in NYC, but I have biked and walked it. NYC may have more frequent edge cases than SF, but in terms of being able to handle urban edge cases I think SF is roughly comparable to NYC. In some regards traffic in NYC seems even more predictable. Like there’s been times I thought a motorist would gun it through a red light in NYC as would happen in SF, only to see the driver stop and then feel embarrassed for being overly cautious.

[whimsicalism]

Yeah, Bay drivers are actually way more nuts than on most of the East coast.

[nojs]

If anyone else was wondering:

> The Pittsburgh left is a colloquial term for the driving practice of the first left-turning vehicle taking precedence over vehicles going straight through an intersection, associated with the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, area. [1]

I guess that would be a Pittsburgh right where I come from :)

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_left

[paganel]

Funny how congested cities resemble each other, I live in Bucharest (one of the most congested cities in Europe when it comes to road traffic) and I checked 7 out of the 9 points you mentioned (I'm too lazy to search for what a Pittsburgh left means and I ignored the waymo-specific bullet-point).

I'll add the numerous cases when you have cyclists (especially delivery guys) and rental scooters coming your way on a one way street. Because of that I always, always check both ways when entering a one way street from a side-street because you never know what may be coming the wrong way "illegally", so to speak.

[jorts]

A Pittsburg left is turning left before oncoming traffic starts moving.

[hiidrew]

happy to see the shout out to the pittsburgh left

[whoisstan]

I live in brooklyn too and cars are an incredible pain, they take away space, stink, honk and are stuck in traffic on the BQE all the time. Replacing cars with a commuter network of self driving cars would be a great upgrade IMO.

[asdff]

I wouldn't be surprised if self driving cars just never go on most roads and only stay on a handful of well mapped and easy to interpret routes. Like how trucks follow certain routes through cities too.

[testfrequency]

Nothing about what you have said is unique to NYC/Brooklyn.

Every major dense city that is piloting self-driving cars has been modeling around most of the scenarios you've described

[wolverine876]

Hmmm ... have you ever driven (or directly observed traffic) in NYC? It's unlike other cities, especially in the US.

[spamizbad]

This problem might get solved for self-driving vehicles by simply banishing non-autonomous vehicles (including bicycles and pedestrians) from the roads.

[gehatare]

Banning all other traffic is of course a solution, but it is hugely unpopular for obvious reasons, so I doubt it will pass.

[circular_logic]

That sounds like it would further increase car dependence in city's, how you see city's improving in this scenario?

[dheera]

or you can do a san francisco mission left:

- if you're turning left, pull forward until you are into the second half of the intersection but don't actually cross into the opposing traffic

- cars behind you can still navigate around you

- when the light just turns red and the opposing traffic stops, finish the left turn. you're blocking the cross traffic that just turned green anyway so you're safe from that.

[gkop]

The yellow light should be long enough for both one last car in the through direction, and one left turner. At least, that’s common outside of SF. I see your point in SF. Anyone care to comment on this? Could it be a combination of short yellows, relatively wide lanes, and nonexistent enforcement (and therefore diminished fear of all parties crossing a red light)?

[freediver]

Decade of testing or more likely… never?

[kirillkh]

Replace "New York" with "Tel Aviv", and nothing else needs to change.

[dml2135]

Great summary. This will be an interesting experiment that I think will ultimately fail.

[FuckButtons]

On the basis of what evidence? Seems quite pessimistic given that waymo has been stepping up its activity in sf considerably over the last year.

[emodendroket]

I don't envy the people involuntarily enlisted to be "beta testers" by being in proximity of the cars.