[vinkelhake]

I live in the bay and occasionally ride Waymo in SF and I pretty much always have a good time.

I visited NYC a few weeks ago and was instantly reminded of how much the traffic fucking sucks :) While I was there I actually thought of Waymo and how they'd have to turn up the "aggression" slider up to 11 to get anything done there. I mean, could you imagine the audacity of actually not driving into an intersection when the light is yellow and you know you're going to block the crossing traffic?

[setgree]

Semi-related, but just once in my life, I want to hear a mayoral candidate say: “I endorse broken windows theory, but for drivers. You honk when there’s no emergency, block the box, roll through a stop sign — buddy that’s a ticket. Do it enough and we’ll impound your car.”

Who knows, maybe we’ll start taking our cues from our polite new robot driver friends…

[chrisshroba]

This always astounds me about cities who have a reputation for people breaking certain traffic laws. In St. Louis, people run red lights for 5+ seconds after it turns red, and no one seems to care to solve it, but if they'd just station police at some worst-offender lights for a couple months to write tickets, people would catch on pretty quickly that it's not worth the risk. I have similar thoughts on people using their phones at red lights and people running stop signs.

[nothrabannosir]

Blocking the box is a ticket in London. It works.

Edit: let me clarify: there is a camera on every intersection which automatically gives a ticket to everyone who blocks for >5sec. That works.

[RankingMember]

> Who knows, maybe we’ll start taking our cues from our polite new robot driver friends…

I think this could be an interesting unintended consequence of the proliferation of Waymos: if everyone gets used to drivers that obey the law to letter, it could slipstream into being a norm by sheer numbers.

[Breza]

Here in Washington DC, we've installed a variety of different kinds of traffic cameras. And the local police engage in targeted enforcement actions against things like driving on the highway shoulder or recklessly operating a moped. It makes a difference. An unexpected upside is that the regular police spend a lot less time catching speeders and stop sign runners, which frees them up for more serious situations.

[Zigurd]

If you look into the fleet size serving Waymo service areas, it's remarkably small. But because they work 24/7 they serve up a lot of rides, punching way above their weight in terms of market share in ride hailing.

Their effect on traffic and how drivers behave will be similarly amplified. It could turn out to be disastrous for Waymo. But I suspect that low speed limits in New York will work to Waymo's favor.]

[soupfordummies]

Ultimately I wouldn’t support this level of snitching (especially in our current political env) but I’ve had the idea of:

A bounty program to submit dash cam video of egregious driving crimes. It gets reviewed, maybe even by AI initially and then gets escalated to formal ticket if legit. Once ticket is paid, the snitch gets a percentage.

Again, I am fundamentally against something like this though, especially now.

[wahnfrieden]

NYPD cops don't like enforcing traffic violations: https://i.redd.it/w6es37v1sqpc1.png (License holders and drivers on the road are up in the same period that summonses are down, too. Traffic is up since pre-covid.)

Now that I live in Toronto we face the same challenges. Politicians may introduce traffic laws to curb dangers and nuisances from drivers, but police refuse to enforce them. As they don't live in the city, cops seem to prefer to side with drivers over local pedestrians, residents or cyclists who they view antagonistically. Broken window works for them because they enjoy harassing pedestrians and residents of the communities they commute into.

So there is a bigger problem to solve than legislation.

[bko]

Isn't that what speed cameras are about? Seem a lot more efficient and cheaper. I got a few tickets, nothing too serious just ran the yellow a little too close and 40 in 25. And if def changed my behavior

[seanmcdirmid]

In many places outside the USA they just use cameras for box blocking, stop sign rolling, speeding...and there is a system for honking also. But many in the states think automation here is too Orwellian.

[rabidonrails]

If only Mitch Hedberg was still alive: https://youtu.be/zonQXdmIlqQ?si=EBrpJiCk2XlhGJIs&t=97

[polynomial]

We don't go after moving violations anymore (in NYC) because the driver might have a bad reaction. True story.

[Sohcahtoa82]

My wife and I took a road trip that included time in SF last year and seeing a Waymo was pretty neat.

To save some money, we stayed in downtown Oakland and took the BART into San Francisco. After getting ice cream at the Ghirardelli Chocolate shop, we were headed to Pier 39. My wife has a bad ankle and can't walk very far before needing a break to sit, and we could have taken another bus, we decided to take a Waymo for the novelty of it. It felt like being in the future.

I own a Tesla and have had trials of FSD, but being in a car that was ACTUALLY autonomous and didn't merely pretend to be was amazing. For that short ride of 7 city blocks, it was like being in a sci-fi film.

[kjkjadksj]

Why does tesla pretend to be autonomous? My friends with tesla fsd use it fully autonomously. It even finds a spot and parks for them.

[QuantumSeed]

I was in a Waymo in SF last weekend riding from the Richmond district to SOMA, and the car actually surprised me by accelerating through two yellow lights. It was exactly what I would have done. So it seems the cars are able to dial up the assertiveness when appropriate.

[Zigurd]

An autonomous vehicle's hivemind knows the exact duration of all yellow lights, even ones that vary based on traffic flow.

[scarmig]

It doesn't seem impossible technically to up the assertiveness. The issue is the tradeoffs: you up the assertiveness, and increase the number of accidents by X%. Inevitably, that will contribute to some fatal crash. Does the decision maker want to be the one trying to justify to the jury knowingly causing an expected one more fatal incident in order to improve average fleet time to destination by 25%?

[sowbug]

When red-light cameras are installed at an intersection, the number of rear-end accidents typically increases as drivers unexpectedly slow down instead of speeding up at yellow lights.

The cost of these accidents is borne by just about everyone, except the authority profitably operating the red lights. (To be fair, some statistics also show a decrease in right-angle collisions, which is kinda the point of the red-light rules to begin with.)

[whyenot]

Each Waymo is equipped with multiple cameras (potentially LPR), LIDAR, etc. The car knows when the vehicles around it are breaking traffic laws and can provide photographic/video evidence of it. Imagine if Waymo cars started reporting violators to the police, and if the police started accepting those reports. Someday they might.

[paffdragon]

Isn't it too dystopian to have cars follow you around and report you to authorities? I can easily imagine some bad scenarios.

[tverbeure]

I had my second Waymo ride in SF 2 weeks ago and I had to press the support button: it was behind a large bus that was backing up to parallel park. The bus was waiting for the Waymo to get out of the way while the Waymo was waiting for the bus to move forward.

It took only a few seconds for a human to answer the support request and she immediately ordered the Waymo to go to a different lane. Very happy with the responsiveness of support, but there's clearly still some situations that Waymo can't deal with.

[daheza]

Eventually the waymo would determine the bus wasn't moving and go around. I had the same situation happen with a garbage truck, but I didn't press the button. It can handle the scenario if you just wait.

[phkahler]

>> could you imagine the audacity of actually not driving into an intersection when the light is yellow and you know you're going to block the crossing traffic?

I wonder how many Waymos following the rules would be needed to reduce gridlock.

[darth_avocado]

Waymo in SF pretty much drives like a human, and that includes doing human things like cutting lanes, stopping wherever it feels like, driving in the bus lane etc. I think it’ll be fine in NYC

[eldaisfish]

the solution to traffic is transit, not computers driving cars.

[DrewADesign]

People complain a lot about drivers in dense eastern states, such as Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, New Jersey, etc. but compare the traffic fatality statistics:

https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/fatality-statistics/deta...

Having grown up driving in these places, I can confirm that people drive a whole lot more aggressively, but what blows my mind driving damn near anywhere else in the country is how inattentive many drivers are. Around here, our turns are tight and twisty, the light cycles at our 6-way intersections are too short, most streets are one lane but on the ones that aren't, lanes disappear without warning, some lanes that are travel lanes during the day have cars parked there at night... all of this means that you need to a) be much more attentive, and b) be more aggressive because that's the only way anybody gets anywhere at all.

It's a cultural difference. Almost any time I've encountered anyone complaining about rudeness in a busy northeastern city it was because they were doing something that inconvenienced other people in a way that wasn't considered rude where they're from: pausing for a moment in a doorway to check a phone message, not immediately and quickly ordering and having their payment method ready when they reached the front of the line at a coffee shop, not staying to the right on escalators if they're just standing there and not climbing/descending... all things that are rude in this environment and people are treated the same way rude people are treated anywhere else.

That culture expresses itself in the driving culture. If those 3 extra people didn't squeeze through after that red for 3 or 4 light cycles, suddenly you're backed up for an entire light cycle which is bad news.

Waymo cars are designed for a different style of driving. I'm skeptical that they will easily adapt.

[ndileas]

This is an interesting point of view, and I think it intuitively makes sense. But it breaks down when considering people who block the flow of traffic by running red lights and clogging the intersection - that's just straightforwardly worse for everyone except the blocker.

[smsm42]

Tried Waymo in SF and LA, and the service was great. The only problem I noticed is that sometimes it tells you they'd pick you up in 5 minutes, and then when it's almost over they tell you "sorry, it's actually going to be 20 minutes now". Since it's still new technology, I always gave it enough buffer so it never actually was a problem for me, but they probably could do better than that... Another weird thing was it chooses strangest places to stop. E.g. I asked it to pick me up at the hotel once, and it drove right past the hotel way to the end of the block where by coincidence a couple of homeless people were camping. Not that it led to any problems, just weird, it could have stopped right where hotel had a convenient place for loading/offloading of people. Maybe eventually that gets sorted out.

[baron816]

I was on Market Street yesterday on my bike next to a Waymo. A bunch of cars were blocking the intersection when we had the green. The light turned red and the cars blocking the intersection were able to move. I decided to stay, but the Waymo sped through despite the light being red. I regretted not crossing.

[spaceywilly]

Honestly the train system in NYC is so good, I have only taken a cab a few times since I moved here. I’ll probably take a waymo once if they roll it out here for the novelty of it, but I’d rather see people getting exciting about public transit. Life is so much better when you don’t have to depend on cars to get you places.

[nkozyra]

Driving in most of the city isn't that bad. Even most of Manhattan is fairly regular driving compared to most of the country. It really isn't until you're near midtown that the insanity kicks up.

[ivape]

occasionally ride Waymo in SF and I pretty much always have a good time

Surreal. You have to step back and absorb what you just said. We have self driving cars, insane.

[thrown-0825]

Imagine somewhere like Bangkok with millions of motorcycles that completely ignore traffic laws.

Self-driving is a non starter in many parts of the world.