Autonomous cars and robot taxis - the future of motoring is driverless
- Thread starter roryer
- Start date
weltweit
Well-Known Member
Sounds like they tested it on a new route that didn't have many passengers.
And they needed a captain on each bus.
Glad it is stopped.
skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
I finally took a ride in a driverless Waymo vehicle the other day. From a bar in LA to my friend's place nearby. I have to admit it was cool AF just sitting in the passenger seat watching what seemed like an invisible driver observe all the traffic signals, and drive smoothly to my destination. It felt like this is the future I've been waiting for.
View attachment video_1_8308210e3cba447981bb7abeb6851b20.mp4
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skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
Good spin. No I've been waiting for a car I don't have to drive, which can carry more people, and has a much safer performance record than any human can achieve.
magneze
🎧
Buses and trains are available
T & P
|-o-| (-o-) |-o-|
Fair enough if you’re after the convenience aspect of it, but AFAIAC the ‘much safer’ performance aspect really is a relative term that pales into insignificance when you consider the overwhelming safe road statistics seen in this country, and the chance of anyone who drives or even gets driven in the UK actually ever being involved in a serious accident in their entire long lives.
I myself love driving and whereas not claiming to be god’s gift to driving, I am certainly competent and safe enough to envisage spending my entire driving life without being involved in a single serious incident, regardless of whether I might be at fault or not, as most other drivers will be.
It could happen of course, just as some people who play the National Lottery every week for their entire lives eventually manage to land a five-number or above win. But realistically it is a very unlikely event for most of us, and one which extremely low odds is never going to make me choose an autonomous car over one I can drive myself.
Perhaps an attractive proposition for the odd one-off journey, but certainly not as a permanent replacement for my being able to drive myself to places.
And if automation were ever to become the norm, surely one does not need to be a clairvoyant to guess that the companies providing the required tech would become so rich and powerful they would soon start cutting corners and calculate the threshold where paying compensation to the relatives of accident victims might become more profitable than correcting software errors or any other problems. See the history behind Boeing’s 737 MAX for a perfect example of such soulless corporate greed.
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mhendo
Aussie in San Francisco
Autonomous cars have been all over the place here in San Francisco for a few years now. When Waymo began offering paid rides to the general public, I signed up for an account, but never had occasion to use the service. When my wife and I go places in the city, we usually either take our own car or use public transit, depending on the destination and the time of day.
But today, I was South of Market with some groceries and without the car, and I thought I'd give it a try. Here's a sped-up video of my 22-minute ride home.
It's quite an odd feeling, sitting in the back of a moving car with no-one in the driver's seat. The technology is incredibly impressive, though. The car does an amazing job of navigating the city streets, dealing with traffic lights, stop signs, double-parked cars, pedestrians, and a whole range of other everyday challenges.
Like T & P , I like driving. We also need a car. We live in San Francisco but I work in Sacramento (about 90 miles away), driving up and back once a week. I could theoretically get there and back using buses and trains, but that would turn a one-and-a-half to two-hour drive into a three-and-a-half to four-hour multi-stage ordeal. To get to Sacramento from my house would require a 20-minute bus ride, a 30-minute subway ride, followed by almost two hours on the train to Sacramento, and then another bus or light rail or taxi on the other end.
If I were to get a job in SF, though, we could probably live without a car, and get by pretty well with public transit, periodic paid car rides (taxi/Uber/Waymo), and occasional car rentals. My wife works here in the city and can get to work quite easily by bus. We have grocery stores, a farmer's market, restaurants, bars and shops within a four or five block walk of our house, and downtown SF is a 15-25 minute bus ride away. While transit, car rides and car rentals cost money, so does the car. In addition to buying the car in the first place, we pay about $1000 a year for insurance, about $1500 for fuel, as well as maintenance, which varies from a few hundred to over $1000, depending on what needs doing. Getting rid of the car would also eliminate the hassle of dealing with parking in a tightly packed city where we don't have a garage or a driveway and have to find a space on the street.
If not for the novelty of trying the Waymo, I could just as easily have taken a taxi or an Uber home today. The prices for the three services are all reasonably similar. I do know some women who like Waymo, though, because they can call a car without worrying about whether they'll have to spend half of the trip trying to ignore or fend off the crass advances of their driver. While most taxi and Uber drivers are fine, and I've never had any problems, I 've heard some stories of pretty unpleasant rides. The Waymo was also incredibly clean and well kept, which isn't always the case with the other services. Of course, as Waymos become more ubiquitous and their cars rack up miles, that could easily change.
But today, I was South of Market with some groceries and without the car, and I thought I'd give it a try. Here's a sped-up video of my 22-minute ride home.
It's quite an odd feeling, sitting in the back of a moving car with no-one in the driver's seat. The technology is incredibly impressive, though. The car does an amazing job of navigating the city streets, dealing with traffic lights, stop signs, double-parked cars, pedestrians, and a whole range of other everyday challenges.
Like T & P , I like driving. We also need a car. We live in San Francisco but I work in Sacramento (about 90 miles away), driving up and back once a week. I could theoretically get there and back using buses and trains, but that would turn a one-and-a-half to two-hour drive into a three-and-a-half to four-hour multi-stage ordeal. To get to Sacramento from my house would require a 20-minute bus ride, a 30-minute subway ride, followed by almost two hours on the train to Sacramento, and then another bus or light rail or taxi on the other end.
If I were to get a job in SF, though, we could probably live without a car, and get by pretty well with public transit, periodic paid car rides (taxi/Uber/Waymo), and occasional car rentals. My wife works here in the city and can get to work quite easily by bus. We have grocery stores, a farmer's market, restaurants, bars and shops within a four or five block walk of our house, and downtown SF is a 15-25 minute bus ride away. While transit, car rides and car rentals cost money, so does the car. In addition to buying the car in the first place, we pay about $1000 a year for insurance, about $1500 for fuel, as well as maintenance, which varies from a few hundred to over $1000, depending on what needs doing. Getting rid of the car would also eliminate the hassle of dealing with parking in a tightly packed city where we don't have a garage or a driveway and have to find a space on the street.
If not for the novelty of trying the Waymo, I could just as easily have taken a taxi or an Uber home today. The prices for the three services are all reasonably similar. I do know some women who like Waymo, though, because they can call a car without worrying about whether they'll have to spend half of the trip trying to ignore or fend off the crass advances of their driver. While most taxi and Uber drivers are fine, and I've never had any problems, I 've heard some stories of pretty unpleasant rides. The Waymo was also incredibly clean and well kept, which isn't always the case with the other services. Of course, as Waymos become more ubiquitous and their cars rack up miles, that could easily change.
MrCurry
right after this urgent rest
Very interesting! I guess the next generation of cars will have 4 passenger seats and no driver’s seat, as a driver’s seat is just a waste of space in a self driving car.
Making these things work outside cities and affordable enough to take over from human driven cars will take a while, but when you see the way some humans drive, it’s not such a high bar for computer controlled cars to be a safer alternative!
Alternatively, if driverless cars become more common, rather than taxi driver's you may just have vehicle operators. i.e. buy a robo taxi, pay a subscription to Uber or whoever to use their back end services and stay at home or do something else whilst their car is out.
Uber and the like aren't going to want to get into the business of buying and maintaining a fleet of vehicles.
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ska invita
back on the other side
i dont doubt it, but what is the safety difference in fenced and non approved areas?
skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
Based on my experience the other week, if I had a choice between a driverless and a driver driven car I'd go driverless all day long. At no point did I feel unsafe, and it was nice to have the extra seat, and no issues with having to take into consideration the driver when adjusting temperature/opening windows/playing music.
I've not read into it but I would assume because Known traffic patterns, roads, predictability of routes meaning fewer variables to contend with. Less chance of potentially dangerous anomalies.
A podcast I listen to mentions Arizona has been a big testing ground for Waymo, partly as the weather is largely predictable. Mostly hot, dry, little rain fall, so more predictable driving conditions.
editor
hiraethified
That's one of the big sells of the robot taxi tech companies: privacy.
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
Yeah, a few private minutes for a JR Arthur en route to your next appointment 
mhendo
Aussie in San Francisco
Right, although it's only a certain type of privacy.
You don't have to deal with a driver in the car with you, and my Waymo made a point of telling me that the voice recorder in the car is only activated when you hit the button to contact support. But they have a record of everywhere you go, and unless you explicitly opt out, they're sharing your data with advertisers and other third parties.
Do not sell or share my data - Waymo One Help
Pursuant to the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) Waymo may disclose user personal information to third parties to tailor advertising and offers to your interests. Such disclosures may be consid
support.google.com
It's also not clear to me whether a rider in Arizona would be able to opt out of data sharing. That Waymo page connects the feature explicitly to California privacy laws. I've got to say, though, that most of the 20-something and 30-something tech types that I've spoken to, and that constitute a big percentage of Waymo's user base, don't really seem to care at all about digital privacy issues like this.
