Waymo to begin testing on San Francisco freeways this week

[jacobjjacob]

I don’t understand how Tesla is continuing to ride so high on a borderline-vaporware robotaxi when Waymo is so far ahead.

[mensetmanusman]

Hmm, buddy with a new Model Y in the Midwest has driven less than 5 miles while putting in over 1500 miles.

Waymo doesn’t exist here.

[blackeyeblitzar]

They’re solving different problems. Waymo works in only some areas and requires all sorts of hardware. Tesla FSD is trying to do something more generalized.

[KoolKat23]

It's not a zero sum game.

[xnx]

The gap between Waymo and all other competitors in the self-driving space continues to widen.

[andrewmcwatters]

Comma has given up on self-driving cars and they're downplaying it now.

[saddlerustle]

AutoX and Pony.ai in China have been been offering rides to the public with no safety driver for much longer than Waymo

[aantix]

Have you seen FSD 12.5.1.3?

[someonehere]

I continue to use them instead of Lyft or Uber. Same price practically for me when I commute around SF. I love it.

[yieldcrv]

Why, if its not cheaper, what is the value add (if you’re not female as another commenter pointed out)

I routinely have as little interaction with the driver as I want

[SoftTalker]

Why do they use Jaguars? Seems an unnecessary expense.

[etaioinshrdlu]

Expecting this to go well generally because freeways are pretty much always easier to self-drive than city streets!

[SECProto]

Freeways are much, much less forgiving of abrupt speed changes and braking, which is something waymo (used to) have quite an issue with. Moving to freeways shows they are confident that won't be an ongoing issue.

[sjducb]

Emergency braking is much harder at freeway speeds.

At 35mph you can have something (radar/cameras) look a few meters ahead, then if there is a stationary obstacle you slam on the brakes.

At 60 that doesn’t work because braking distances are much longer. There might be an obstacle directly ahead of you on the pavement, but you won’t hit it because the car will turn with the road. This means that your emergency braking system needs to be aware of the steering, the road layout, and the expected route.

[gniv]

Whenever I drive on highways in heavy rain I wonder how a self-driving car would behave. Virtually all human drivers drive unsafely in these conditions by following too closely. Would a Waymo keep the distance? Seems difficult to do in heavy traffic. The alternative I guess is to drive very slowly.

[greenthrow]

Like many people, you are focusing too much on the easy case and neglecting the many, many edge cases.

[xnx]

I thought this as well, but I think it emerged in an Waymo interview that any weird thing that can happen on city street can also happen on a freeway and the reaction time is lower and the consequences higher on a freeway.

[tomblomfield]

I’m a big Waymo fan. Some of my thoughts;

Waymos are one of the first things that my visitors to SF want to try. It feels like living in a science-fiction future.

The ride and navigation feels very smooth - after the novelty of having no driver in the front seat wears off, you become accustomed to the experience surprisingly quickly. In comparison, I found the Cruise driving experience pretty uncomfortable and stress-inducing.

The app and software inside the vehicle is really well-designed. Which is unusual for a google consumer product!

And my female friends, in particular, far prefer Waymo to Uber or Lyft because they don’t have to engage with a creepy driver trying to hit on them.

I, for one, welcome our new self-driving overlords.

[firloop]

As I've mentioned on another thread, I just wish Waymo drove faster. They often don't keep up with the pace of traffic.

[dventimi]

I wish they would test going back to point-to-point pick-ups and drop-offs. I can easily see reasons to move to a designated pick-up and drop-off location model, but I feel it weakens the value proposition for people with mobility issues if they have to walk a few blocks.

[crazygringo]

I don't think that's up to Waymo, it's a legal thing mostly. The city has to allow that.

The funny thing about self-driving cars is that they're designed to obey laws to the letter, which real drivers never do. I think we're going to see a lot of laws necessarily getting updated to allow real-life driving behavior, such as double-parking during pickup and dropoff.

[TulliusCicero]

For context, they announced that they were starting freeway testing with employee passengers in Phoenix back in January.

[leesec]

I'm happy for Waymo and hope they continue to expand. I do expect Tesla to still win out on "robotaxis" in the nearish term, e.g. I expect them to have given way way more rides than Waymo by say 2030

[typon]

Tesla has yet to demonstrate autonomous driving capability. A human ready to intervene in long tail scenarios (which is the hard part of the problem) does not constitute autonomous capability, no matter what the marketing material says.

[Moon_Y]

Waymo's continuous advancement and expansion in the field of autonomous driving technology. The plan to test fully autonomous vehicles without human safety drivers on freeways in the San Francisco Bay Area is a significant milestone. By having employees as the first testers, Waymo demonstrates confidence in its system.

[Sad90sNerd]

I don't understand why people are so eager to give up autonomy. I doubt the software is certified in any meaningful way (see DO-178B), the algorithms are unknown, and the NHTSA sits on its hands whenever these vehicles have accidents.

Here is a litmus test: would you allow Waymo to drive schoolbuses with your children? I know I certainly will never allow my family or myself to get into a metal box going 80 mph without a driver.

[bigyikes]

Show me the statistics. If there is data which shows that autonomous vehicles are significantly safer than than the 90th percentile driver, then I absolutely will put my children in it. In fact, it might be irresponsible for me not to.

School buses are an interesting case because they drive fixed routes, so you can imagine some intense mapping and route planning process which makes them even safer than a normal autonomous vehicle. They could also afford to have a larger number of higher quality sensors.

[rufus_foreman]

One of the last times I took a taxi, the taxi driver explained at length how he worked extra shifts so he could afford to buy meth which he would take in order to work more shifts which allowed him to buy even more meth which he would take in order to work more shifts etc.

I won't be the first in line to take Waymo on a freeway but at some point the results will speak for themselves.

[xnx]

> Here is a litmus test: would you allow Waymo to drive schoolbuses with your children?

Waymo's obey all traffic laws and never drive tired, drunk, or distracted.

[antli35]

Assuming the children are still supervised by an adult, I don't see the issue. As a rider, Waymo generally feels safer than a human driver.

[tracerbulletx]

Does your family ride roller coasters, is that not giving up your autonomy? Waymo has done enough rides to have statistically significant risk data, and they are very safe and SF strikes me as hard a city to drive in as almost anywhere with all the rain fog pedestrians traffic, and weird routes and elevation changes.

[AlotOfReading]

Automotive has a similar standard called ISO 26262. ISO-26262-6 is closest to DO-178B, though ISO-21448 is also highly relevant. Both are widely used throughout the industry, including Waymo. The norm in the US is self-certification. European homologation generally requires third party certification, and Waymo is almost certainly in that process right now, as part of their discussions with European regulators.

[standardUser]

> would you allow Waymo to drive schoolbuses with your children? I

Yes, obviously. Humans are provably more dangerous.

[timmg]

Aren’t many/most airline flights auto-landed? (Certainly autopiloted.)

Does that bother you?

[gosub100]

think of the children!

[matthewfelgate]

This is great news. I expect this will open up many more routes. And hopefully more profit.

[8f2ab37a-ed6c]

About time, hope it goes well.