As someone who is often on SF city streets without a car - I bike and run a lot - I absolutely love Waymo. I am continuously seeing human drivers cut me off, perform illegal maneuvers (i.e. run red lights when I'm going through a crosswalk), and break various other traffic laws. All these things genuinely put people in danger. Just the other day, a guy started running a "no right turn on red" lane in SF, and when I pointed it out to him he floored his car - through the red - right in front of me and laughed at me as he sped away. To say nothing of all the times when cars will honk or give me the finger for doing normal things on a street, like walking on a crosswalk.
Waymo is like the most courteous, respectful driver you can possibly imagine. They have infinite patience and will always take the option which is the safest for everyone. One thing which really impressed me is how patient they are at crosswalks. When I'm jogging, a Waymo will happily wait for me to cross - even when I'm 10 feet away from even entering the crosswalk! I don't know if I even have that much patience while driving! I've had a number of near misses with human drivers who don't bother checking or accelerate for no reason after I'm already in the crosswalk. Can you imagine a Waymo ever doing that?
If I see a Waymo on the street near me I immediately feel safer because I know it is not about to commit some unhinged behavior. I cannot say enough good things about them.
Even setting aside the malicious SF stuff, Waymo's have enormous advantages over humans relying on mirrors and accounting for blindspots. I never have to be concerned a Waymo hasn't seen me.
I can't wait until the technology is just standard on cars, and they won't let drivers side-swipe or door cyclists.
The one time I ever rode in a waymo (in Los Angeles), I had a contradictory experience. My Waymo was attempting to make a right turn at a red light. We were stopped behind a human driver who was waiting for pedestrians to finish crossing before proceeding to make the turn. This was a college campus (UCLA), so there were lots of pedestrians. After a few seconds of waiting, the Waymo decided that the driver ahead of us was an immobile obstacle, and cut left around this car to complete the right turn in front of it. There was only one lane to turn into.
Luckily, no one was hurt, and I generally trust a waymo not to plow into a pedestrian when it makes a maneuver like that. I also understand the argument that autonomous vehicles are easily safer on average than human drivers, and that’s what matters when making policy decisions.
But they are not perfect, and when they make mistakes, they tend to be particularly egregious.
Best part is that they probably have data to show that all that patience costs the typical passenger mere seconds to a minute on 99% of rides.
This has always bothered me about aggressive or impatient human drivers: they are probably shaving like 30 seconds off of their daily commute while greatly increasing the odds of an incident.
I’m a fellow cyclist in SF and can only wholeheartedly second this. To add some extra anxiety, I’m usually riding a cargo bike, ferrying a child to or from daycare.
I still remember the first time I went through a four-way stop intersection and saw a driverless car idling, waiting for its turn. It was weird and nerve-wracking. Now… I’d much prefer that to almost any other interaction at the same spot.
My favorite thing from my first Waymo ride was watching a lady walk up to the middle of the street to cross. The Waymo saw her, slowed, and waited to let her cross. She smiled and waved and immediately felt dumb because who is she waving to? Do I wave back? We laughed at each other as it drove away.
Ever since then my fear melted away. They see every direction, never blink, and are courteous and careful with pedestrians.
I am also hopeful that Waymo has other positive externalities for bikes/pedestrians: less need for parking spots, car ownership, etc. At the same time, I guess you could say the same for rideshare, so it would depend on if robo-rideshare is cheaper than ownership
I've now had it happen twice that a car will fully blow through an intersection because they know a Waymo will slam on the breaks to avoid a collision. They basically abuse the car's reflexes.
Also in any sort of situation where the Waymo is being very cautious the biggest danger is the impatient people behind the Waymo who will break the law to go out and around it.
It’s really cool to read reports like this, keeping in mind that just a few years ago many people were loudly proclaiming self driving cars were decades away, and would never be safer drivers than humans.
If they keep up the slow and steady improvements and roll outs to cities worldwide it’s hard to imagine my one year old ever needing to drive a vehicle.
One night a few weeks ago I took a Waymo ride at night. Somewhere out in an unfamiliar neighborhoood, I realized that I hadn't seen a human being for dozens of blocks. The streets were full of cars, but every single one was an empty Waymo or Zoox. I spent the rest of the ride musing about what would happen if an armed mugger jumped in front of the car at the next traffic light, and the whole thing felt a little bit less safe.
I agree, to a point. Waymo has some vaguely aggressive habits that are usually for the best, like initiating their turn forcefully, but there is one specific thing I've noticed. Coming down Mason and turning left onto Bush it is a one way street turning left onto a one way street. Twice now while trying to cross with the light Waymos have crept into the crosswalk while I was already crossing. It's very unsettling.
I imagine the weirdness of the situation (legal left on red) triggers it's "creep forward so I can see" logic but it definitely shouldn't be blocking a busy crosswalk there when there is little to know chance it will be able to turn AND peds from both sides.
You just described situation in Switzerland (and some other western European countries). I don't mean some tiny isolated situation or place, I mean whole countries, anything from tiny village to biggest traffic jam-packed cities.
Sometimes I am ashamed a bit how early drivers break for me as a pedestrian and let me pass, like 3m from road when they and 2-3 more cars could easily pass through without affecting my crossing.
The problem is getting used to this and then going to places where this is not the norm, potentially very dangerous especially for kids.
I wonder how will this behaviour evolve over time? Right now waymo is definitely prioritising safety, but as the tech matures (and competition grows) will the systems start to prioritise speed and so little-by-little start cutting the margins they give to pedestrians? As with any digital platform this degradation wouldn't be explicitly chosen, but just the consequence of many little A/B tests designed to optimise some other metric
I feel like this study aligns with my experience. I don't live in a Waymo city but I do sometimes drive to the office. I find many other drivers to be impatient, short tempered, selfish and at least once a trip, borderline reckless. Computer drivers definitely aren't perfect. But from what I can tell they aren't intentionally unsafe and will probably improve over time. I wish I could say the same for humans.
They are now because winning trust is their biggest hurdle. They've got the "public risk" slider turned all the way down. Let's hope they don't later start to optimise for speed and realise that people probably won't just step out due to fear of death and it's in their best interest to nurture that fear like human drivers currently do.
Once pedestrians and cyclists figure out that Waymo cars will always stop or avoid them they will start ignoring crosswalks and signals and just cross or cut in front of them.
This will surely get some skepticism as it's a Waymo study, but it's nice to see a real‐world dataset this large at 56M miles. An 85 % drop in serious‐injury crashes and 96 % fewer intersection collisions is a strong signal that Level 4 ADS can meaningfully improve safety in ride-hail settings. Still curious about how much of that comes from operational design versus the core autonomy, but it’s a big leap beyond “novelty demo.”
Really excited for autonomy to become more and more common place. People drive more and more like distracted lunatics these days it seems
Literally riding in a Waymo right now in Los Angeles.
IMO they already won. The amount of stupid things you see people do here while driving is astonishing, so many people are not paying attention and looking at their phones.
I used an Uber on the way here and the car was dirtier while the service was identical (silent ride, got me where I needed to go.)
I’ve also been stuck in a Waymo that couldn’t figure out its way around parked buses, so they have edge cases to improve. But man does it feel like I’m living in the future…
> I used an Uber on the way here and the car was dirtier
To be fair, the fact that Waymos are fancy clean Jaguars is kind of ancillary to the main technology. The tech is currently expensive, so they are targeting the luxury market, which you can also get on Uber if you select a black car or whatever. The people willing to pay for that are less likely to make messes, and the drivers put more effort into frequent cleanings.
Once the tech becomes cheap, expect the car quality and cleanliness to go down. Robocars do have some intrinsic advantages in that it's easier to set up a standard daily cleaning process, but they will still accumulate more garbage and stains when they are used by a broader cross section of the population and only cleaned during charging to reduce costs. (Of course, cheaper and more widely accessible tech is good for everyone; if you want a immaculate leather seats cleaned three times a day, you'll generally be able to pay for it.)
I considered getting a Waymo once in LA but I found that since it doesn't go on highways, it is incredibly slow, and cost $60 to spend the same 1 hour as riding the E line for my trip. I ended up riding the E line.
I found I can't rely on it too much. Rain and a momentary (2-second) power blackout and suddenly my pickup in 3 minutes is cancelled and they're sending me a human driver who's 20 minutes away. Wonder what happens if the blackout occurs during the ride
Was genuinely impressed when I took my first Waymo, not only for comfort, but the small microdecisions it made as a driver. As a person whose lost a parent to a sleepy driver, and a victim to 2 texting drivers, I welcome AI driving revolution.
Anecdotally, as someone who bikes a lot in SF, Waymo's are a lot safer than human drivers simply because they follow the letter of traffic laws. Stopping at stop signs, waiting for pedestrians to clear the box, following the posted speed limits, etc.
I was just on a business trip to San Francisco for a few days, and I observed the near opposite of this from the Waymo fleet in SoMa:
* Waymo vehicle creeping into the pedestrian crosswalk (while the pedestrians had right of way to cross), which caused someone to have to walk around the car into the intersection ahead of the Waymo.
* Waymo vehicle entering a dedicated bike lane and practically tailgating the bicyclist that was ahead of it.
These might be safer than human drivers in aggregate and normalized by kilometer driven, but they drive like humans — greedily and non-defensively. I wouldn't want one these anywhere near a high-pedestrian traffic area ever, and I feel the same about human-driven cars, too.
Just following the letter of the law is so huge. Even people who think they're being nice by doing something out of the ordinary make the situation so much more dangerous because now you don't know what's going to happen. Even if they weren't great drivers, the consistency makes so much of a difference.
This is great and there’s another area of influence that I’ve heard other traffic engineers discuss: platoon pacing. A platoon is the word that traffic engineers give to a group of cars traveling together. A platoon is most explicitly visible on a corridor with signals timed for a green wave, but occurs in many other contexts.
Human drivers often race when in a platoon— not even on purpose it’s just an instinct to go as fast or faster than other cars which has a feedback effect to increase platoon speed.
Waymos, following the exact speed limit, don’t do this. On 1 lane streets they literally set the platoon pace to the legal speed limit.
The effect of this is hard to study and quantify but it’s a real and positive impact of self driving cars on city streets. Haven’t seen research on this topic yet.
This also came up recently in a thread about speed governors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43812856 Just a few governor-equipped vehicles (e.g. from public fleets or prior speeding offenders) can reduce speeding on the whole road.
I saw a Waymo stop at a crosswalk last night in the dark where there was a person standing there waiting to cross that I don't think I would have seen. The person was not standing out in the road, they were standing there patiently waiting to make sure the car actually stopped since it was dark. I was really impressed! I don't think I'm a reckless or impatient driver, but I think the Waymo's are probably better at driving than I am. I know I prefer the Waymos to the human drivers I typically see on the road.
For what it's worth, I have exclusively used Waymo in SF ever since my last Uber driver was smoking weed while driving. I just don't want to deal with the human variable anymore.
For cycling and walking in SF, the Waymos are optimal. If there's one at the front of the line at the red light I know I won't be right hooked as I go straight in the bike lane. Very well-behaved. I am so glad they're here. Some concentration of them actually ruin crazy drivers' ability to do damage because they set the speed limit and won't go through reds.
How do AI cars fare with those instinctual "decide which way to swerve in a split-second" scenarios that come up maybe once every 10-20 years over the course of a driver's history?? It's happened to me about 2-3 times and I've always made the "(assumedly) correct" split second swerve decision. Wondering if that is a "human/instinctual" skill and if AI cars do just as well or better, or perhaps not as good? I don't have any evidence backing this but my gut tells me these scenarios are something that a human driver would handle better than AI.
It's just ape hubris that makes you think these were the right swerves instead of just dumb luck that you did not flip over the center barrier head-on into a school bus.
The Waymo doesn't have to swerve as much as a human because it can see a mile away and never blinks, and it knows that the right thing to do in every swerve-worthy situation is to slam on the brakes to take the energy out of the event. It also drives around with the brakes pre-pressurized because it isn't trying to compensate for the fact that its control system is partially made of meat. Anyway you can go to r/waymo or r/selfdrivingcars for lots of videos of Waymos avoiding objects.
Far quicker and with better situational awareness probably.
Those instinctual human responses can be wrong/misguided as well and can have pretty serious ripple effects (e.g. most chain collisions after somebody panics and steps on the breaks). And even when those instincts work correctly, they rely on driver focus and attention; which to put it mildly is not very reliable. The lack of that is a well known root cause of many accidents. People get tired, distracted, etc. or become otherwise unfocused from driving safely. And of course some drivers are simply not that competent, barely know traffic rules or how to drive safely. The barrier for getting a drivers license is pretty low. And all that is before you consider road rage, drunk drivers, elderly drivers with cognitive and visual impairments, and all the other people who really shouldn't be driving a car.
If you rank AIs against most drivers, they probably hit the top percentile in terms of safety and consistency. Even if you are in that percentile (and most drivers would likely overestimate their abilities), most human drivers around you aren't and never will be.
Traffic deaths in the U.S. are staggering — annually far exceeding the fatalities of most U.S. military conflicts since World War II, including the peak years of the Vietnam war. It's hard to do worse than that for AI drivers. The status quo isn't very safe. Most of that is human instincts not working as advertised. People really suck at driving.
Probably better? 'Who' can process more data faster is likely impossible to answer, but (e.g.) Waymo can train on those scenarios and have way more 'experience' than any individual driver who's seen it once every 10-20 years of their driving career.
So, what’s it gonna take for Waymo to start selling retrofit kits for existing cars?
If a $10,000 investment reduces the chances of a serious accident by 90%, the corresponding reduction in insurance rates might have a payoff within a few years. Especially if adoption starts to push rates up for customers who don’t automate. I can’t take a taxi everywhere, but I’d sure like it if my car drove me everywhere and did a better job than me at it too.
Well yeah, they stack the deck in their favor. They avoid very hilly roads. They don’t yet go on the freeway. And they don’t get drunk or tired or distracted.
That being said I’d like to see how a typical “good” driver compares vs the average. Someone who doesn’t speed or get duis and gets plenty rest.
i am suspicious of all the anti-human-driver comments and all the dismissal of any concerns about Waymo in the comments here.
I am not convinced that public testing of such services is safe, let alone commercial service.
One cannot punish a self driving vehicle in any meaningful sense.
Corporate incentives vs the public commons, is a general concern that cannot be sweettalked away.
The metaphors about human drivers recording you also seem like reductio ad absurdum.
puff pieces like this should not be well received on HN or it discredits any pretence at separation of concerns with regards to HN and ycomb.
That's great news. I wonder how much insurance rates will go down when autonomous vehicles get popular. Seems like the liability portion could go way down.
>The research finds that, compared to human benchmarks over 56.7 million miles and regardless of who was at fault, the Waymo Driver had [list of better than human stats]
Well considering this sensor package...
>With 13 cameras, 4 lidar, 6 radar, and an array of external audio receivers (EARs), our new sensor suite is optimized for greater performance...it provides the Waymo Driver with overlapping fields of view, all around the vehicle, up to 500 meters away, day and night, and in a range of weather conditions.[0]
...I would hope it is considerably better than humans who are limited to a sensor suite of two cameras and two lower-case ears.
Waymo per their track record I trust and am excited to try / use it once it comes to DC or another city close to DC.
All the other big names that are no longer around... their tech was dangerous and definitely not ready for prime time. Their tech and focus seemed all about making all involved wealthy or wealthier.
Once self driving cars take over and fill the streets with gridlock autonomous traffic, the only way to get around in a city is going to be by bike.
Its great to here their algorithms are good for cyclists, a better solution is to keep investing in infrastructure that separates cyclists completely from cars.
While driving a car, it is possible to do something, even on accident, that can land a person in jail. These crimes do not have the option of paying a fine in lieu of prison time.
A "self-driving" car can cause the same accident but gain advantages over a human driver that the person ultimately responsible is no longer held to the same set of laws.
This seems to undermine foundations of law, placing the owners of those assets into a different legal category from the rest of us.
A few weeks ago we were in Santa Monica on vacation. This was my first time seeing Waymo vehicles in the wild. We did see one blatantly run a red light, well after the light had changed. Fortunately no car was crossing at the same time. It wasn’t like the sun was somehow obscuring the traffic light at that time. I was surprised it did something so unsafe.
what's up with all the waymo sycophantry here?
choruses repeating the same claims "its ok for waymo to enter the bike lane"
"yeah, waymo is right"
"yes, good waymo entering the bike lane because reasons"
this is blatantly obvious and unacceptable.
the site rules prohibit accusations of astroturfing but that is precisely what is going on here.
precisely no sf programmers were convinced, either.
this site had better be concerned with future legitimacy and not being seen as a puppet of specific corps like waymo.
While Waymo is good for safety, it is constantly collecting data not just from users, but from everyone nearby. The vehicles essentially function as mobile surveillance devices, recording bystanders without consent, with no clear policies on data use, retention, or oversight.
One way to inteprent their data is that Waymo is LESS efficient protecting cyclists and motorcyclists compared to pedestriants. As a motorcycle rider I hope they will work to fix that gap.
It's a great start, but also shows how driving is not a navigation challenge as much as it is a socialization challenge. If I drove right up to some responders dealing with an emergency and repeatedly refused to stop then I could be in big legal trouble and could end up with fines and possibly an arrest. This has not happened with Waymo vehicles because there is legal ambiguity about who is responsible in such cases. Realistic analysis shows these vehicles have a driving record similar to that of overconfident teens which is worrisome.
As someone who is often on SF city streets without a car - I bike and run a lot - I absolutely love Waymo. I am continuously seeing human drivers cut me off, perform illegal maneuvers (i.e. run red lights when I'm going through a crosswalk), and break various other traffic laws. All these things genuinely put people in danger. Just the other day, a guy started running a "no right turn on red" lane in SF, and when I pointed it out to him he floored his car - through the red - right in front of me and laughed at me as he sped away. To say nothing of all the times when cars will honk or give me the finger for doing normal things on a street, like walking on a crosswalk.
Waymo is like the most courteous, respectful driver you can possibly imagine. They have infinite patience and will always take the option which is the safest for everyone. One thing which really impressed me is how patient they are at crosswalks. When I'm jogging, a Waymo will happily wait for me to cross - even when I'm 10 feet away from even entering the crosswalk! I don't know if I even have that much patience while driving! I've had a number of near misses with human drivers who don't bother checking or accelerate for no reason after I'm already in the crosswalk. Can you imagine a Waymo ever doing that?
If I see a Waymo on the street near me I immediately feel safer because I know it is not about to commit some unhinged behavior. I cannot say enough good things about them.
Fellow SF cyclist:
Even setting aside the malicious SF stuff, Waymo's have enormous advantages over humans relying on mirrors and accounting for blindspots. I never have to be concerned a Waymo hasn't seen me.
I can't wait until the technology is just standard on cars, and they won't let drivers side-swipe or door cyclists.
The one time I ever rode in a waymo (in Los Angeles), I had a contradictory experience. My Waymo was attempting to make a right turn at a red light. We were stopped behind a human driver who was waiting for pedestrians to finish crossing before proceeding to make the turn. This was a college campus (UCLA), so there were lots of pedestrians. After a few seconds of waiting, the Waymo decided that the driver ahead of us was an immobile obstacle, and cut left around this car to complete the right turn in front of it. There was only one lane to turn into.
Luckily, no one was hurt, and I generally trust a waymo not to plow into a pedestrian when it makes a maneuver like that. I also understand the argument that autonomous vehicles are easily safer on average than human drivers, and that’s what matters when making policy decisions.
But they are not perfect, and when they make mistakes, they tend to be particularly egregious.
Best part is that they probably have data to show that all that patience costs the typical passenger mere seconds to a minute on 99% of rides.
This has always bothered me about aggressive or impatient human drivers: they are probably shaving like 30 seconds off of their daily commute while greatly increasing the odds of an incident.
I’m a fellow cyclist in SF and can only wholeheartedly second this. To add some extra anxiety, I’m usually riding a cargo bike, ferrying a child to or from daycare.
I still remember the first time I went through a four-way stop intersection and saw a driverless car idling, waiting for its turn. It was weird and nerve-wracking. Now… I’d much prefer that to almost any other interaction at the same spot.
My favorite thing from my first Waymo ride was watching a lady walk up to the middle of the street to cross. The Waymo saw her, slowed, and waited to let her cross. She smiled and waved and immediately felt dumb because who is she waving to? Do I wave back? We laughed at each other as it drove away.
Ever since then my fear melted away. They see every direction, never blink, and are courteous and careful with pedestrians.
I am also hopeful that Waymo has other positive externalities for bikes/pedestrians: less need for parking spots, car ownership, etc. At the same time, I guess you could say the same for rideshare, so it would depend on if robo-rideshare is cheaper than ownership
The thing I dislike about Waymo is other drivers.
I've now had it happen twice that a car will fully blow through an intersection because they know a Waymo will slam on the breaks to avoid a collision. They basically abuse the car's reflexes.
Also in any sort of situation where the Waymo is being very cautious the biggest danger is the impatient people behind the Waymo who will break the law to go out and around it.
It’s really cool to read reports like this, keeping in mind that just a few years ago many people were loudly proclaiming self driving cars were decades away, and would never be safer drivers than humans.
If they keep up the slow and steady improvements and roll outs to cities worldwide it’s hard to imagine my one year old ever needing to drive a vehicle.
One night a few weeks ago I took a Waymo ride at night. Somewhere out in an unfamiliar neighborhoood, I realized that I hadn't seen a human being for dozens of blocks. The streets were full of cars, but every single one was an empty Waymo or Zoox. I spent the rest of the ride musing about what would happen if an armed mugger jumped in front of the car at the next traffic light, and the whole thing felt a little bit less safe.
I agree, to a point. Waymo has some vaguely aggressive habits that are usually for the best, like initiating their turn forcefully, but there is one specific thing I've noticed. Coming down Mason and turning left onto Bush it is a one way street turning left onto a one way street. Twice now while trying to cross with the light Waymos have crept into the crosswalk while I was already crossing. It's very unsettling.
I imagine the weirdness of the situation (legal left on red) triggers it's "creep forward so I can see" logic but it definitely shouldn't be blocking a busy crosswalk there when there is little to know chance it will be able to turn AND peds from both sides.
You just described situation in Switzerland (and some other western European countries). I don't mean some tiny isolated situation or place, I mean whole countries, anything from tiny village to biggest traffic jam-packed cities.
Sometimes I am ashamed a bit how early drivers break for me as a pedestrian and let me pass, like 3m from road when they and 2-3 more cars could easily pass through without affecting my crossing.
The problem is getting used to this and then going to places where this is not the norm, potentially very dangerous especially for kids.
I saw a waymo break a red light yesterday in Nob Hill. I think they’re cool but I exercise extra caution around them.
Besides, this is a study on Waymo probably influenced by them too to publish on their blog.
I wonder how will this behaviour evolve over time? Right now waymo is definitely prioritising safety, but as the tech matures (and competition grows) will the systems start to prioritise speed and so little-by-little start cutting the margins they give to pedestrians? As with any digital platform this degradation wouldn't be explicitly chosen, but just the consequence of many little A/B tests designed to optimise some other metric
I feel like this study aligns with my experience. I don't live in a Waymo city but I do sometimes drive to the office. I find many other drivers to be impatient, short tempered, selfish and at least once a trip, borderline reckless. Computer drivers definitely aren't perfect. But from what I can tell they aren't intentionally unsafe and will probably improve over time. I wish I could say the same for humans.
They are now because winning trust is their biggest hurdle. They've got the "public risk" slider turned all the way down. Let's hope they don't later start to optimise for speed and realise that people probably won't just step out due to fear of death and it's in their best interest to nurture that fear like human drivers currently do.
Once pedestrians and cyclists figure out that Waymo cars will always stop or avoid them they will start ignoring crosswalks and signals and just cross or cut in front of them.
As a cyclist, this is the dream IMO, letting everyone be in cars while safely being able to ride my bike without fear of death or road rage.
Looking forward to this future.
Unwary drivers would be at the bottom of my List-of-Dangerous-SF-Things
This will surely get some skepticism as it's a Waymo study, but it's nice to see a real‐world dataset this large at 56M miles. An 85 % drop in serious‐injury crashes and 96 % fewer intersection collisions is a strong signal that Level 4 ADS can meaningfully improve safety in ride-hail settings. Still curious about how much of that comes from operational design versus the core autonomy, but it’s a big leap beyond “novelty demo.”
Really excited for autonomy to become more and more common place. People drive more and more like distracted lunatics these days it seems
It's an incentive problem.
Uber/Lyft drivers are strongly incentivized to drive as quickly and aggressively as possible.
The individual drivers are trading risk for cash.
A company like Google isn't going to make that trade because it's actually the wrong trade across millions of hours.
It's good to be skeptical of the source, but I can't remember seeing any substantive criticism of the methodology or conclusions.
[dead]
Literally riding in a Waymo right now in Los Angeles.
IMO they already won. The amount of stupid things you see people do here while driving is astonishing, so many people are not paying attention and looking at their phones.
I used an Uber on the way here and the car was dirtier while the service was identical (silent ride, got me where I needed to go.)
I’ve also been stuck in a Waymo that couldn’t figure out its way around parked buses, so they have edge cases to improve. But man does it feel like I’m living in the future…
> I used an Uber on the way here and the car was dirtier
To be fair, the fact that Waymos are fancy clean Jaguars is kind of ancillary to the main technology. The tech is currently expensive, so they are targeting the luxury market, which you can also get on Uber if you select a black car or whatever. The people willing to pay for that are less likely to make messes, and the drivers put more effort into frequent cleanings.
Once the tech becomes cheap, expect the car quality and cleanliness to go down. Robocars do have some intrinsic advantages in that it's easier to set up a standard daily cleaning process, but they will still accumulate more garbage and stains when they are used by a broader cross section of the population and only cleaned during charging to reduce costs. (Of course, cheaper and more widely accessible tech is good for everyone; if you want a immaculate leather seats cleaned three times a day, you'll generally be able to pay for it.)
I considered getting a Waymo once in LA but I found that since it doesn't go on highways, it is incredibly slow, and cost $60 to spend the same 1 hour as riding the E line for my trip. I ended up riding the E line.
I found I can't rely on it too much. Rain and a momentary (2-second) power blackout and suddenly my pickup in 3 minutes is cancelled and they're sending me a human driver who's 20 minutes away. Wonder what happens if the blackout occurs during the ride
Was genuinely impressed when I took my first Waymo, not only for comfort, but the small microdecisions it made as a driver. As a person whose lost a parent to a sleepy driver, and a victim to 2 texting drivers, I welcome AI driving revolution.
Sorry for your loss. I hope we get road deaths to 0.
Anecdotally, as someone who bikes a lot in SF, Waymo's are a lot safer than human drivers simply because they follow the letter of traffic laws. Stopping at stop signs, waiting for pedestrians to clear the box, following the posted speed limits, etc.
I was just on a business trip to San Francisco for a few days, and I observed the near opposite of this from the Waymo fleet in SoMa:
* Waymo vehicle creeping into the pedestrian crosswalk (while the pedestrians had right of way to cross), which caused someone to have to walk around the car into the intersection ahead of the Waymo.
* Waymo vehicle entering a dedicated bike lane and practically tailgating the bicyclist that was ahead of it.
These might be safer than human drivers in aggregate and normalized by kilometer driven, but they drive like humans — greedily and non-defensively. I wouldn't want one these anywhere near a high-pedestrian traffic area ever, and I feel the same about human-driven cars, too.
Just following the letter of the law is so huge. Even people who think they're being nice by doing something out of the ordinary make the situation so much more dangerous because now you don't know what's going to happen. Even if they weren't great drivers, the consistency makes so much of a difference.
This is great and there’s another area of influence that I’ve heard other traffic engineers discuss: platoon pacing. A platoon is the word that traffic engineers give to a group of cars traveling together. A platoon is most explicitly visible on a corridor with signals timed for a green wave, but occurs in many other contexts.
Human drivers often race when in a platoon— not even on purpose it’s just an instinct to go as fast or faster than other cars which has a feedback effect to increase platoon speed.
Waymos, following the exact speed limit, don’t do this. On 1 lane streets they literally set the platoon pace to the legal speed limit.
The effect of this is hard to study and quantify but it’s a real and positive impact of self driving cars on city streets. Haven’t seen research on this topic yet.
This also came up recently in a thread about speed governors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43812856 Just a few governor-equipped vehicles (e.g. from public fleets or prior speeding offenders) can reduce speeding on the whole road.
I saw a Waymo stop at a crosswalk last night in the dark where there was a person standing there waiting to cross that I don't think I would have seen. The person was not standing out in the road, they were standing there patiently waiting to make sure the car actually stopped since it was dark. I was really impressed! I don't think I'm a reckless or impatient driver, but I think the Waymo's are probably better at driving than I am. I know I prefer the Waymos to the human drivers I typically see on the road.
For those that are interested, our Safety Research team also makes the underlying data available for download:
https://waymo.com/safety/impact/#downloads
(I don't work on that team, but I've noticed a few comments that would be better served with their own analysis on top of the available data)
For what it's worth, I have exclusively used Waymo in SF ever since my last Uber driver was smoking weed while driving. I just don't want to deal with the human variable anymore.
Waymo is a nice guy, he will definitely share his weed with you
For cycling and walking in SF, the Waymos are optimal. If there's one at the front of the line at the red light I know I won't be right hooked as I go straight in the bike lane. Very well-behaved. I am so glad they're here. Some concentration of them actually ruin crazy drivers' ability to do damage because they set the speed limit and won't go through reds.
How do AI cars fare with those instinctual "decide which way to swerve in a split-second" scenarios that come up maybe once every 10-20 years over the course of a driver's history?? It's happened to me about 2-3 times and I've always made the "(assumedly) correct" split second swerve decision. Wondering if that is a "human/instinctual" skill and if AI cars do just as well or better, or perhaps not as good? I don't have any evidence backing this but my gut tells me these scenarios are something that a human driver would handle better than AI.
They test extensively on those types of scenarios. See: https://waymo.com/research/collision-avoidance-testing-of-th...
Blog post for the paper: https://waymo.com/blog/2022/12/waymos-collision-avoidance-te...
> those instinctual "decide which way to swerve in a split-second" scenarios that come up maybe once every 10-20 years
The correct answer is almost always to hit the brakes. Not to swerve. And Waymo will hit the brakes earlier than you or me.
It's just ape hubris that makes you think these were the right swerves instead of just dumb luck that you did not flip over the center barrier head-on into a school bus.
The Waymo doesn't have to swerve as much as a human because it can see a mile away and never blinks, and it knows that the right thing to do in every swerve-worthy situation is to slam on the brakes to take the energy out of the event. It also drives around with the brakes pre-pressurized because it isn't trying to compensate for the fact that its control system is partially made of meat. Anyway you can go to r/waymo or r/selfdrivingcars for lots of videos of Waymos avoiding objects.
Far quicker and with better situational awareness probably.
Those instinctual human responses can be wrong/misguided as well and can have pretty serious ripple effects (e.g. most chain collisions after somebody panics and steps on the breaks). And even when those instincts work correctly, they rely on driver focus and attention; which to put it mildly is not very reliable. The lack of that is a well known root cause of many accidents. People get tired, distracted, etc. or become otherwise unfocused from driving safely. And of course some drivers are simply not that competent, barely know traffic rules or how to drive safely. The barrier for getting a drivers license is pretty low. And all that is before you consider road rage, drunk drivers, elderly drivers with cognitive and visual impairments, and all the other people who really shouldn't be driving a car.
If you rank AIs against most drivers, they probably hit the top percentile in terms of safety and consistency. Even if you are in that percentile (and most drivers would likely overestimate their abilities), most human drivers around you aren't and never will be.
Traffic deaths in the U.S. are staggering — annually far exceeding the fatalities of most U.S. military conflicts since World War II, including the peak years of the Vietnam war. It's hard to do worse than that for AI drivers. The status quo isn't very safe. Most of that is human instincts not working as advertised. People really suck at driving.
Probably better? 'Who' can process more data faster is likely impossible to answer, but (e.g.) Waymo can train on those scenarios and have way more 'experience' than any individual driver who's seen it once every 10-20 years of their driving career.
In Holland we have this saying (based on an old commercial): "We from WC Duck recommend... WC Duck". (Which is a toilet cleaning product)
It was a funny ad at the time. Unfortunately based in reality more and more these days.
So, what’s it gonna take for Waymo to start selling retrofit kits for existing cars?
If a $10,000 investment reduces the chances of a serious accident by 90%, the corresponding reduction in insurance rates might have a payoff within a few years. Especially if adoption starts to push rates up for customers who don’t automate. I can’t take a taxi everywhere, but I’d sure like it if my car drove me everywhere and did a better job than me at it too.
Waymo is part of my investment thesis as to why Google is undervalued
We don't have waymo in France and I am not sure it wrote work well.
Streets in France are full of entitled people. Drivers, bikers (both bikes with pedals and the ones with an engine) and pedestrians.
Everyone thinks that they have all the rights but ultimately some kind of order emerges from the chaos.
Pedestrians will walk on red lights, but are also careful.
Cars will park anywhere, but usually in a way that is just really frustrating but not blocking.
Bikes will slalom, but to a point.
This does not always work, but it is so much driven by culture that somehow we are statistically alive when moving outside.
Personally I hate it with all my heart. I dream of the dystopian world where everyone will follow the rules.
Well yeah, they stack the deck in their favor. They avoid very hilly roads. They don’t yet go on the freeway. And they don’t get drunk or tired or distracted.
That being said I’d like to see how a typical “good” driver compares vs the average. Someone who doesn’t speed or get duis and gets plenty rest.
Can we mention that drivers using Tesla’s FSD are 5x less likely to be in an accident than human drivers?
Or all things Elon bad?
i am suspicious of all the anti-human-driver comments and all the dismissal of any concerns about Waymo in the comments here.
I am not convinced that public testing of such services is safe, let alone commercial service. One cannot punish a self driving vehicle in any meaningful sense. Corporate incentives vs the public commons, is a general concern that cannot be sweettalked away.
The metaphors about human drivers recording you also seem like reductio ad absurdum.
puff pieces like this should not be well received on HN or it discredits any pretence at separation of concerns with regards to HN and ycomb.
That's great news. I wonder how much insurance rates will go down when autonomous vehicles get popular. Seems like the liability portion could go way down.
>The research finds that, compared to human benchmarks over 56.7 million miles and regardless of who was at fault, the Waymo Driver had [list of better than human stats]
Well considering this sensor package...
>With 13 cameras, 4 lidar, 6 radar, and an array of external audio receivers (EARs), our new sensor suite is optimized for greater performance...it provides the Waymo Driver with overlapping fields of view, all around the vehicle, up to 500 meters away, day and night, and in a range of weather conditions.[0]
...I would hope it is considerably better than humans who are limited to a sensor suite of two cameras and two lower-case ears.
[0] - https://waymo.com/blog/2024/08/meet-the-6th-generation-waymo...
Waymo per their track record I trust and am excited to try / use it once it comes to DC or another city close to DC.
All the other big names that are no longer around... their tech was dangerous and definitely not ready for prime time. Their tech and focus seemed all about making all involved wealthy or wealthier.
Once self driving cars take over and fill the streets with gridlock autonomous traffic, the only way to get around in a city is going to be by bike.
Its great to here their algorithms are good for cyclists, a better solution is to keep investing in infrastructure that separates cyclists completely from cars.
This article has a huge conflict of interest. I would like more independent data.
They operate in Los Angeles on the city streets in a square between Marina Del Ray and West Hollywood.
They can definitely do better when taking left turns. I've seen situations where Waymo depends on the oncoming drivers to slow down.
While driving a car, it is possible to do something, even on accident, that can land a person in jail. These crimes do not have the option of paying a fine in lieu of prison time.
A "self-driving" car can cause the same accident but gain advantages over a human driver that the person ultimately responsible is no longer held to the same set of laws.
This seems to undermine foundations of law, placing the owners of those assets into a different legal category from the rest of us.
reminder that if waymo type cars replaced human driven cars and cut the deaths to zero. (perhaps a big if)
Then it'd be like finding a cure for cancer, for people aged 0 - 40, who die as much in auto accidents as they do of cancer
I've noticed that nearly ANY criticism here is grayed out.
HN has a credibility problem here.
Why is Waymo waiting so long to roll out more broadly?
source waymo.com???
A few weeks ago we were in Santa Monica on vacation. This was my first time seeing Waymo vehicles in the wild. We did see one blatantly run a red light, well after the light had changed. Fortunately no car was crossing at the same time. It wasn’t like the sun was somehow obscuring the traffic light at that time. I was surprised it did something so unsafe.
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what's up with all the waymo sycophantry here? choruses repeating the same claims "its ok for waymo to enter the bike lane" "yeah, waymo is right" "yes, good waymo entering the bike lane because reasons"
this is blatantly obvious and unacceptable.
the site rules prohibit accusations of astroturfing but that is precisely what is going on here.
precisely no sf programmers were convinced, either.
this site had better be concerned with future legitimacy and not being seen as a puppet of specific corps like waymo.
Waymo is using public roads 25/7 for automating profit and not paying fair taxes.
While Waymo is good for safety, it is constantly collecting data not just from users, but from everyone nearby. The vehicles essentially function as mobile surveillance devices, recording bystanders without consent, with no clear policies on data use, retention, or oversight.
One way to inteprent their data is that Waymo is LESS efficient protecting cyclists and motorcyclists compared to pedestriants. As a motorcycle rider I hope they will work to fix that gap.
It's a great start, but also shows how driving is not a navigation challenge as much as it is a socialization challenge. If I drove right up to some responders dealing with an emergency and repeatedly refused to stop then I could be in big legal trouble and could end up with fines and possibly an arrest. This has not happened with Waymo vehicles because there is legal ambiguity about who is responsible in such cases. Realistic analysis shows these vehicles have a driving record similar to that of overconfident teens which is worrisome.
Waymo says Waymo is safe. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-16/woman-ge...