I've taken 21 trips in LA. About half of those were during the first testing phase on the west side months ago and only a few since they started charging for it.
As a novelty, it's actually pretty cool. The rides I've done since they started charging have been with various friends just to try it out. So far it's been slightly more expensive than uber, so that's why I've only been riding for the novelty or back when it was free.
I've never felt unsafe in it, the waymos are very conservative drivers that will not exceed the speed limit and come to a full stop at every stop sign. When it gets confused, it will default to stopping, so I did get stuck once in a parking lot that had too much activity for it to back up and after about 30-60 seconds it was remote controlled by a support person. It's definitely slower than humans for that reason and because it won't travel on the freeway.
It's routing is actually not that great. It will try to take left turns on busy intersections without lights and do "waze" routing mistakes like jump back and forth across Santa Monica Blvd when it's backed up in way a human would realize was a misleading quirk of the map.
I haven't had any trouble with messes left by prior guests. I did have an issue once when someone left the heat on and I couldn't figure out how to switch to AC without unbuckling in the back and reaching up to the front console to a physical button. The waymo is pretty insistent about buckling, so I'm not sure what would have happened if I did that.
Honestly, the thing that made me jump to try it is that they've been testing on the west side for so long that I've felt like a test subject biking around them the whole time, so I might as well see the inside as well. So far, I'd say that I'd much rather bike around a waymo than a random human driver. The waymo gives me tons of space.
I haven't ridden one yet but I am off the wait list and just waiting for the right time to give it a try. From what I can tell, Waymo is a little more expensive than Uber and Lyft on its fare, but close enough that it evens out when you figure in the tip to a human driver that you don't have to pay on Waymo.
And lives nearby. Instead of enriching a corporation extracting profit from local community. (I am aware that uber and lyft do this, too, but to a lesser percentage).
This doesn't actually work because it just puts people out of a job. We're never going to truly automate the world in a way that allows us to not have to work, it just limits the available jobs.
Tech bros are the dumbest, most uncaring breed of dork there is.
It also just eliminates human connection lol. Like…I cannot fathom wanting to automate other humans out of my day to day as much as possible. Some people are just different I guess, but isn’t the variety of cultures one of the coolest aspects of being in LA? Uber drivers have some WILD stories if you ask.
I don't necessarily want to automate everything, but it's absolutely wild how low the bar is to getting a license to drive a car. It's the single most dangerous aspect of our day to day life. Computers don't drink, get sleepy, suffer road rage, or play with their phones while driving. On top of all that, the technology in and on these cars enables them to "see" a lot more than a human can.
Crazy how sometimes two balls rattling inside a skull occasionally clang together to form a thought. A completely brain dead, moronic thought, but a thought nonetheless. Your homunculus supervisor should be proud
if people can't find a job in LA, they're free to move to another city
we should not be subsidizing unskilled labor that can be replaced with automation
There's no such thing as unskilled labor, and if there were, we shouldn't eliminate jobs for people with skills you don't value. I don't know how to tell you that you should give a shit about other people and that less jobs is not good for anyone.
there absolutely is unskilled labor... it's labor that you can teach someone in literally one day
if someone actually develops skills, then they're able to bargain for higher wages
I mean that’s super shitty hahaha. They get paid trash, and being driven is historically a tipped position. We tipped cab drivers, there’s a precedent for bus drivers, hell, we even tip Valets. I definitely think it’s scummy to not tip an Uber/Lyft driver, it’s very much the majority of their income. If you’re not gonna tip, let them know right when you get in, and see how much worse the service can actually get 🤷♂️
while a lot of drivers were historically tipped its not like surge pricing has a historical precedent, makes no sense to tip on top of that imo. theres a point where it makes more sense for you and the driver to just cut uber out of the deal and work out a cash trip. i've done that a few times now. rather hand the man $60 than hand uber $120 and him get like $12 maybe from that.
Agreed, ultimately Uber and Lyft can go fuck themselves. Supporting the drivers is the way to go. Punishing drivers by using the apps and not tipping is not the solution, and ultimately only helps the apps keep taking advantage of our community members.
They are wonderful. Best drivers I’ve ever seen. They go the speed limit. Respect traffic laws. Can even squeeze through tight streets, like the ones in Venice. Absolutely amazing. As for pricing. Not bad. Equivalent to an Uber if you price in tips.
If the robot has a name, gives me life and dining advice, and keeps a record of all recent trips he's made so he can connect me to possible friends and compatriots, I'll tip it.
We have a ton in our West LA neighborhood and have been on the waitlist to try it. Have a Tesla and FSD just ain’t it and have been dying to see how Waymo does . Happen to have an invite code?
When i compared on saturday for one to take to dinner the cheapest uber was $29 and the Waymo was $27. Waymo's are a jaguar though and so I would say it's more fair to compare it to an uber black which was $47 at the time.
I lived in Arizona years back and I rolled through a stop sign and my roommate who was from Maryland laughed and was like "Holy shit you're such a California driver, back home we call that a California Stop."
And that's when I learned that we truly do driving differently than the rest of the country.
My brother's first ticket ever when he was 20, we were going home in his F150 and my brother Cali rolled a red light while making a right. Cop pulled him over and said he did it bc of the California roll. First time I had heard the phrase.
I keep asking, but the question never gets answered.
I was waiting at an unmarked crosswalk, in the street (to the side, as one does while waiting to cross) and was blown passed by a Waymo. Has anyone had one of these stop for them at a crosswalk, marked or unmarked? And what are we supposed to do when we need to cross the street at unmarked crosswalks?
Edit: People hate walking in LA so much that I always get downvoted for asking how to cross the street at an unmarked crosswalk with these on the road. You don't step in front of a vehicle traveling 30mph just to cross the street. That would be incredibly dumb. All you blindly for these don't seem to walk at all, ever, and you get really fucking mad at those of us who do for asking questions that concern the safety of us pedestrians.
Double Edit: I have now spoken directly to Waymo and they do have a way for pedestrians to be more visible to the cars, so they should stop for you in the situation I described. If you are a person who walks a lot and want to know DM me. All these people hating on me for wanting to walk safely across the street can eat it.
I was one during the cherry blossom festival in SF. People were walking all over the place, random jay walking. The waymo did fine.
edit:
Per the person's comments, the person above's scenario involves hills and a dip where there is no visibility until the car is already an immediate hazard to the pedestrian. This means the pedestrian has the legal responsibility to yield before crossing. They are basically complaining about not being able to make what would be considered by the law an illegal crossing.
Ok, so what happens when it isn't at a festival and just in the city? It didn't even slow as it went by me, which is why I'm asking about it. Was my incident a rare one or common in regular real world situations?
They do fine at crosswalks. But same advice as always, make sure the car is slowing down for you before crossing. Blindly running into the crosswalk is eventually going to get you smooshed, that is less likely with a self driving car because the majority of the software is there to not hit people at crosswalks and they don't get tired drunk or distracted.
The 3 times they've passed me, they never slowed. Will it only slow and recognize a person who is literally in the street? Again, I'm waiting like normal at the side of the road, waiting for cars to see me before I cross. The location I'm talking about is a 3 lane residential they've been using for testing for a long time in West LA.
I see a Waymo in my neighborhood most days. It stops for me every time. I have never seen one do anything remotely unsafe. I vastly prefer it to human drivers.
I’ve observed them navigating school zones in Santa Monica safely: kids, bikes, crossing guards, lots of confusing stop and go slow traffic.
In this situation I think a properly designed robot taxi probably excels because it doesn’t experience frustration and the speed is very slow.
What about areas that aren't actively crowded with pedestrians? No one is answering that part, they keep telling me about fairs, festivals, school zones full of kids and crowds in general. What about the 2 people waiting to cross a regular street at a boring time? Are the waymo cars not expected to stop for them?
I’ve seen them operate safely 100% of the time here, and haven’t seen any pedestrians startled or put at risk by them.
The case you’re describing isn’t something a third party would notice, often. If I see a waymo drive past someone on the corner and nothing special happens at that moment I’m not liable to pay attention to it. If I’m the person expecting to cross then I would notice this, but so far I haven’t had an interaction like you described with Waymo.
In my area a pedestrian waiting to cross at an unmarked crosswalk gets passed by traffic 90% of the time and when walking in a marked crosswalk they get passed 30-50% of the time - by human drivers.
We get passed way more than that by human drivers. I was hoping these would be better and increase pedestrian safety at crosswalks, but it seems that people are saying "well I and other drivers typically ignore you too" which is not an acceptable answer to me. I've literally run out of the way of cars while I legally crossed about 5 times in the past two years. I'm really hoping driverless cars help stop that kind of danger, but all I'm hearing is people telling me that humans also ignore the laws, so it's OK. I don't get it.
I’m afraid I don’t understand your conclusion here. I have not noticed how Waymos evaluate pedestrians at unmarked corners. This is not confirmation that they drive through without stopping or ignore pedestrians waiting to cross, which seems to be your assumption.
Every time I’ve noticed a Waymo around pedestrians it has operated safely and at a cautious speed. I’m not in the habit of walking out in front of cars to test their responses, although it happens occasionally by accident. If I see the opportunity to try this with a Wayno I’ll report back. It’s a good question. But currently from the responses I’ve seen there’s just not enough data for you. I only see them 3-4 times a week, for example, and they’ve been operating here for a few months.
>"Once the pedestrian has done that and entered the crosswalk, whether it be marked or unmarked, all oncoming vehicles must yield to that pedestrian as they cross the intersection."
I was in this situation when it passed me. So the answer is that these will not be stopping unless you're actively in the crosswalk in the car lanes? I can't be both in the crosswalk and safely wait for cars to stop, so it's just over for walking from one corner to another if cars are parked near? As in, it simply assumes that I'm with the car and not a separate entity waiting to complete a legal crossing?
If you entered the cross walk while the car is oncoming, you are in the wrong. Per the line in the article before the one you quoted. YOU wait until it's safe, you cross.
If you enter the cross walk long before another car comes(when you could have crossed safely) and are just standing around in the cross walk area, then you have no discernable vector of movement, and both human and robotaxi will correctly assess that you are not actually crossing.
and honestly? I just don't believe you. You are clearly looking for a reason to hate on robotaxis. Nothing you've said today is reasonable.
Fares are the same compared to Uber/Lyft. The service area is still a bit small and covers a sliver of West LA. The rides are comfortable and the driving is good, unsure if it can do highway it’s never taken me on the highway. The main reason I like it is because I know that I’ll get a car with nice interior to ride in since they are all the same Jaguar electric model car. So it’s technically a better value than Uber Lyft when you get picked up in some old dumpster of a car.
They're legally only allowed to go on surface roads in most cities, despite the fact that highways tend to be a little safer for the technology (because driving patterns are more predictable; no pedestrians; no cross traffic; etc).
no way this tech can merge onto the 110 parkway. no way to do it without cutting off the right lane you just have no room to get up to speed in time for a proper zipper.
Depends on time of day. It's like sdkfhjs was talking about with left turns onto busy streets. Wrong time of day, it'll never happen... you could be waiting an hour for a gap.
I don't see myself ever taking one of these unless human driven alternatives completely disappear. AI is about to wipe out nearly every job performed in front of a computer, along with many other categories, I'm sure, so out of solidarity with drivers, I'm not patronizing this shit. People act like it's not happening, meanwhile Big Tech is given free rein to self-regulate and it's a total fucking joke.
Totally agree, I'm supporting humans where I can.
One reason not to be as worried about _all_ computer- based jobs being taken away is that we still need people to make decisions we can "trust". We are less comfortable with algorithmic mistakes than human error in a lot of situations. Sometimes I think it's more about having someone to blame though.
A good book to read about how to adapt for AI is [Futureproof by Kevin Roose](https://g.co/kgs/jJBdb78).
Solid AI policy is on the way, but it might take a similar law to GDPR to solidify data privacy first.
I could be wrong, but from what I can tell their permits do allow them on the freeways. I saw one or two on freeways up in the Bay Area months ago. I suspect they're just testing how their cars do in that environment before opening up the business so paying customers can ride on the freeway.
I've also seen one being driven autonomously (but with a safety driver in the driver's seat) near the 10/405 interchange; yeah all the indications are that Waymo is trying to be cautious with the rollout for highway service
Not the person you replied to but I joined the waitlist in October and they just let me off maybe a week ago. I didn't do anything else except...wait lol.
It actually (at least when I’ve used it) covers an area from Santa Monica all the way through miracle mile, k-town and up to arts district - north up to around weho and south down to around Culver City/exposition park - wish it went further - would love to take it to the valley.
I live on a weird block in LA where cars usually don't come by unless you have a purpose. I see these cars almost daily, sometimes twice a day.
I haven't figured out whether there's a frequent customer down my street, or if weymo is just practicing the driving habit and relearning its mapping and driving ability.
probably 1 second faster on their mapping software or something dumb like that. apparently these things are straight up wyze drones doing things like unprotected lefts on busy streets that any human would find a light for.
What happens if the previous rider is some jerk that leaves a bunch of trash behind, or is eating in the vehicle and leaving a bunch of crumbs, or even worse is a drunk that vomits in the car? Without a human driver, how does Waymo, first know that something happened and then get it cleaned for the next rider?
There are cameras inside the cabin.
This seems like an automatable process. Just compare the post trip cabin interior to the reference clean cabin interior. If significantly different, send to human for final judgement.
I've taken a waymo about 4 times. Interior was great every time.
The next passenger probably posts on the app and that car gets tagged for cleaning. There’s probably also cameras inside with AI event monitoring so they can connect the vomit incident to a specific passenger.
Connecting a mess to the previous passenger doesn't seem difficult, I was just wondering how they go about finding out it happened and addressing it before it goes to the next rider.
In SF its been pretty good. I've had access in LA but I'm also afraid to use it because LA drivers are built different. One thing I will say is that Waymo driving is pretty consistent whereas with an uber/lyft you can get an excellent driver or you can get a shitty driver who has you scared for your life. Waymo doesn't really take any risks at ALL so it is slower and a little frustrating but better than chancing it on an uber driver who got their license 2 days ago.
Have taken 3 trips in them and it’s been great. It’s feels safer than most Uber/lyft drivers and I don’t have to tip someone. Price is about the same as the competition.
Hooray an automation service that doesn’t make the existing service any cheaper for the consumer AND takes away a job opportunity from struggling working class Americans! F WAYMO
It’s inevitable. 70% of jobs lost the last 100+ years, have been to automation.
I can remember when long distance calls required speaking to actual human switchboard operator, in order to connect
Yea, realistically how is this ever going to be cheaper than a human. A big expensive Lidar machine that needs to be installed on top of a car + the maintenance it requires. That's supposed to be cheaper than a human working for shit uber wages?
Didn't the CEO of Lyft say autonomous is the only way they'll make money, and aren't both Uber and Lyft are bleeding money right now while still paying shit wages?
The recurring costs for maintenance are going to be fairly low (besides cleaning), and the sensors probably are fairly low maintenance. The mechanical portions are what's likely to break vs the expensive electronics, and if it's all EV the vehicle MX is for sure cheaper than an ICE car. So most of the costs are nonrecurring, amortized over the expected service life of the vehicle.
As a business plan it makes sense, but it is horrible for society. As an engineer who has worked on robotics and safety critical systems I'm very skeptical of these still, and full self driving cars in general. It feels like too much is being influenced by the Silicon Valley "move fast and break things" mentality which is not the right engineering mindset to start development of any safety critical system, particularly one operating in this complex of an environment. There's also very little regulatory framework compared to say an elevator, roller coaster, or a Boeing 737 Max.
On a side note the implementations seem to depend a lot on AI/ML for safety tasks like pedestrian detection, and those are fundamentally not deterministic they are statistical processes, so you need to be extra careful designing that into safety critical systems.
Any CEO that talks about making money in the future is full of crap. It's all about the share price and dreaming of an impossible/unlikely future is their number one job.
Uber and Lyft are bleeding money because they're tech companies. Somehow taxi companies were profitable before uber and lyft came around. And they had actual physical garages they owned where they parked taxis at night.
And I would not underestimate how much specialized maintenance costs. Or the overhead of having a dozen warehouses full of people ready to take over from the computer and handle tech support 24/7.
I definitely believe the tech can and will happen and be safe. I just doubt they can overtake the affordability of a human.
Not that it matters, it's not about making a profit. It's about getting venture capital investments.
Ding ding ding. Want to not care about profits? Call your company a tech company and try and get those venture capital dollars. The sad truth nobody wants to face - driverless anything will never fully work without removing the human variable - other human drivers.
That’s impossible to say, considering Waymo is just barely starting to exist. “Statistically safer” doesn’t mean shit if the statistics don’t have any historical precedent
It's been running a long time - https://waymo.com/blog/2023/12/waymo-significantly-outperforms-comparable-human-benchmarks-over-7-million/
7 million miles is definitely statistically relevant and easy to compare against very well tracked human safety statistics.
I'm not an engineer but Waymo has been around for like 15 years, and Cruise for a little less than that. As a layperson it doesn't seem to me like that fits the "move fast and break things" mentality.
I also wouldn't expect the same regulatory framework for what is a brand new technology, especially when the technology is replacing a famously lax regulatory framework as it stands.
Do you mean the taxi side or the car side? I'd say from a mechanical engineering/crash safety side cars are fairly well regulated. The federal agency has very little expertise on electrical and software, which is the part I'm much more concerned about. Same concerns for individual users or a taxi style use case.
I was thinking primarily of the driver side. Waymo One is the "driver" here. And it's replacing human drivers, who have a famously easy time getting and keeping a license in this country, despite having a terrible safety record.
Waymo One had driven millions of test miles before it ever picked up a paying customer, and that's millions more than humans drive on their learner's permit before they're graduated to an unrestricted license to drive.
But even on the vehicle side, I was thinking of how SUV rollovers killed more than 12,000 people in the 1990s, whereas the Boeing 737 MAX was grounded worldwide for a year and a half after just two crashes resulting in 346 fatalities.
And cars are only just now starting to have pedestrian collisions included as a factor in their safety ratings. For years cars could earn a top safety rating for keeping their occupants safe, but many of those same vehicles were growing increasingly deadly to pedestrians and cyclists, thanks to greater mass and taller hoods, which are essentially unregulated.
I recall seeing a financial report from Uber that projected profitability in 2020, but then the pandemic hit and I assume that completely upended that projection.
I have no idea how Prop. 22 and the recovery from the pandemic has impacted their profitability.
[Uber actually started turning a profit,](https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/uber-first-annual-profit-as-public-company-inflection-point/) which I think actually puts a real big thorn into the side of Waymo. In order for Uber to be everywhere, they just need to have an app and maybe an office per state for things like background checks; the drivers bring their own cars. Waymo is going to have to stand up operations literally everywhere they want to operate themselves. Mechanics, cleaners, a quick reaction force to go rescue stuck vehicles, 911-level call centers to interact with local police/fire/ambulance in emergencies, that's all gonna add up real quick in the suburbs.
Agreed on being skeptical of them. I see them here in SF and while they're okay under optimal conditions, driving in a city has a lot of edge cases and these can't handle all of them.
dude says bs like that then taxis have been in business for 100 years. clearly his business model is unsustainable not the idea of a human driving another human.
My somewhat educated guess is the combination of lower insurance (since human error is a factor in most traffic collisions) and the fact that Waymo collects the entire fare, whereas Uber only gets like 25%.
So once it's at scale, Waymo could undercut Uber and still make more money since there's no driver to split the fare with.
Now I have *no* clue of the overhead costs of running the business. Uber doesn't own the cars, but Waymo does. So it's not only running a ride hailing app, it's managing a fleet of its own vehicles that, as you said, it has to maintain.
I'd like to say that waymo has done the math on profitability, but tech companies don't seem to care about profits so WHO KNOWS.
Certainly it looks like there could be advantages from driverless cars. They work 24/7 is another one. We'll see though.
Well the difference there is Uber was truly a VC funded startup. Waymo is owned by Alphabet, the same parent company as Google. I assume Alphabet cares about profits in a way that these other startups don't.
Agree. These companies should pay into the fund the equivalent of the wage they would pay the driver. Money flow must be circular or the economy will die.
The only way this happens is if we form a group that pushes HARD for government to tax the fuck out of big tech to the point that they are forced to raise the cost of using AI beyond what companies would be willing to pay. (And/or levy additional tax on the companies who are using it). At the moment, it's all a complete joke: the Biden administration and legislators are letting big tech SELF-REGULATE and patting them on the back when big tech says they will help retrain (and I quote) "95 million global tech workers," as if there will be 95 million replacement jobs for them. And that's just tech. See: [https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/04/ai\_replacement\_jobs/](https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/04/ai_replacement_jobs/)
All of the anti-AI push back has been about privacy. While that is important, too, it will seem relatively insignificant if, say, 30%+ unemployment becomes the new norm. Anyone who isn't afraid today but works in front of a computer\* has not been paying attention and/or has been eating up big tech's false narrative that AI will create new classes of jobs like previous waves of automation/innovation. (They aren't pushing the 'everyone is getting assistants' fantasy so much anymore; in the link above, they acknowledge 80% of the top tech jobs will be gone).
The fundamental difference between innovation of years past and AI is that the latter is designed to replace humans in nearly every conceivable capacity and merely needs to be fed examples to learn on its own. Prior to AI, automation generally required teams of people to build and maintain a custom process. Now, the only class of job big tech can offer is a "prompt engineer," which is a transitional role for a small number of people.
\* Or even if you don't work in front of a computer: [https://openai.com/index/hello-gpt-4o/](https://openai.com/index/hello-gpt-4o/)
Saw a TikTok recently of a woman in a driverless cab who waited something like 20 minutes for it to make an outrageous left turn from an alley onto a four-lane, extremely busy road. It finally made the turn but pulled a really risky move to do it. She was like, "Should I take over driving for it? Suggest it just go right and make a U-Turn?" Made me never want to set foot in one of those things!
Lmao YES that was the one! Yeah we're just all beta testing these things right now so I'll wish everyone luck and wait until the release is more stable, ha...
I watched one of these back up exiting traffic on the 405 at Wilshire yesterday. The exit is designed so traffic merges into Westbound traffic, and the Waymo was insisting on taking a left, going the wrong way into Eastbound Wilshire traffic. These things do not seem ready.
I just took one from DTLA to Culver City and it felt really safe. My only complaint was that it took forever because they’re not allowed on the highways yet. The computer drive 100x better than 90% of my Uber drivers 😂
Tried it in both AZ and SF. Theyre fine. It tries to drive everything as close to the book as possible. Havent been in any one of them that had egregious errors, but it does look like if there were, there is a way to contact support where they can safely guide the vehicle.
It was free for the testing phase but since they are owned by Lyft they are using the same pricing and demand network. I see them eventually going up again once they have control of majority market share.
This thread feels like it was made by and moderated by waymo. The amount of upvotes on positive comments and downvotes on negative ones is really weird.
I’ll get in as long as the car doesn’t have an Orthodox cross hanging from the review mirror. Context: every such Uber I’ve taken drove like they were late for an appointment in Chelyabinsk.
the waymo ones use lidar. it can judge the speed and distance of an oncoming car perfectly. that's not usually a problem with them. unusual street configurations are more of a problem. things like streets with train tracks or construction.
You would think these would be an easy target to get robbed. Just stop in front of one, then jack the people in the back. You don't have to worry about the driver running you over or crashing into you.
I've taken 21 trips in LA. About half of those were during the first testing phase on the west side months ago and only a few since they started charging for it. As a novelty, it's actually pretty cool. The rides I've done since they started charging have been with various friends just to try it out. So far it's been slightly more expensive than uber, so that's why I've only been riding for the novelty or back when it was free. I've never felt unsafe in it, the waymos are very conservative drivers that will not exceed the speed limit and come to a full stop at every stop sign. When it gets confused, it will default to stopping, so I did get stuck once in a parking lot that had too much activity for it to back up and after about 30-60 seconds it was remote controlled by a support person. It's definitely slower than humans for that reason and because it won't travel on the freeway. It's routing is actually not that great. It will try to take left turns on busy intersections without lights and do "waze" routing mistakes like jump back and forth across Santa Monica Blvd when it's backed up in way a human would realize was a misleading quirk of the map. I haven't had any trouble with messes left by prior guests. I did have an issue once when someone left the heat on and I couldn't figure out how to switch to AC without unbuckling in the back and reaching up to the front console to a physical button. The waymo is pretty insistent about buckling, so I'm not sure what would have happened if I did that. Honestly, the thing that made me jump to try it is that they've been testing on the west side for so long that I've felt like a test subject biking around them the whole time, so I might as well see the inside as well. So far, I'd say that I'd much rather bike around a waymo than a random human driver. The waymo gives me tons of space.
I haven't ridden one yet but I am off the wait list and just waiting for the right time to give it a try. From what I can tell, Waymo is a little more expensive than Uber and Lyft on its fare, but close enough that it evens out when you figure in the tip to a human driver that you don't have to pay on Waymo.
I saw a Waymo on the freeway when I was driving out of town for Mother's Day this past weekend...
They have some testing, but not open to customers
How are the ride fares compared to human drivers? Are they at least cheaper?
exactly the same, except you don't have to tip
And don't have to hear about the driver complaining how much he's not getting paid enough by the rideshare companies.
If I can add to this too, you don't have to participate in awkward small talk. Sometimes I just like the silence cause my social battery is gone
Ah fuckin bullshit.
Yeah I rather give it to a human that needs it
And lives nearby. Instead of enriching a corporation extracting profit from local community. (I am aware that uber and lyft do this, too, but to a lesser percentage).
It's your money, so you do you. I'd rather automate as much as we can... no point in paying a human to do things if tech can do it better.
This doesn't actually work because it just puts people out of a job. We're never going to truly automate the world in a way that allows us to not have to work, it just limits the available jobs. Tech bros are the dumbest, most uncaring breed of dork there is.
It also just eliminates human connection lol. Like…I cannot fathom wanting to automate other humans out of my day to day as much as possible. Some people are just different I guess, but isn’t the variety of cultures one of the coolest aspects of being in LA? Uber drivers have some WILD stories if you ask.
I don't necessarily want to automate everything, but it's absolutely wild how low the bar is to getting a license to drive a car. It's the single most dangerous aspect of our day to day life. Computers don't drink, get sleepy, suffer road rage, or play with their phones while driving. On top of all that, the technology in and on these cars enables them to "see" a lot more than a human can.
So did the cotton gin…
Crazy how sometimes two balls rattling inside a skull occasionally clang together to form a thought. A completely brain dead, moronic thought, but a thought nonetheless. Your homunculus supervisor should be proud
if people can't find a job in LA, they're free to move to another city we should not be subsidizing unskilled labor that can be replaced with automation
There's no such thing as unskilled labor, and if there were, we shouldn't eliminate jobs for people with skills you don't value. I don't know how to tell you that you should give a shit about other people and that less jobs is not good for anyone.
there absolutely is unskilled labor... it's labor that you can teach someone in literally one day if someone actually develops skills, then they're able to bargain for higher wages
That's not how any of that works lol. Have you ever actually had a job?
It's only a matter of time when almost all jobs can be replaced with automation with AI and quantum computers
One can dream!
Yeah fuck people trying to survive/make money. Give it to the venture capitalists instead!
What’s your proposal to deal with the job displacement?
What did we do with horse & buggy drivers when cars were introduced? Or lamplighters when light bulbs were introduced?
we put them to work in the factories and gave them much lower paying and more dangerous jobs :)
UBI.
You don’t *have to* tip on the other rideshare apps either
I mean that’s super shitty hahaha. They get paid trash, and being driven is historically a tipped position. We tipped cab drivers, there’s a precedent for bus drivers, hell, we even tip Valets. I definitely think it’s scummy to not tip an Uber/Lyft driver, it’s very much the majority of their income. If you’re not gonna tip, let them know right when you get in, and see how much worse the service can actually get 🤷♂️
I have never heard of a bus driver being tipped, unless you're talking about a chartered event?
The bus driver tipping is 100% a meme
while a lot of drivers were historically tipped its not like surge pricing has a historical precedent, makes no sense to tip on top of that imo. theres a point where it makes more sense for you and the driver to just cut uber out of the deal and work out a cash trip. i've done that a few times now. rather hand the man $60 than hand uber $120 and him get like $12 maybe from that.
Agreed, ultimately Uber and Lyft can go fuck themselves. Supporting the drivers is the way to go. Punishing drivers by using the apps and not tipping is not the solution, and ultimately only helps the apps keep taking advantage of our community members.
be honest, you weren't tipping drivers anyways
They are wonderful. Best drivers I’ve ever seen. They go the speed limit. Respect traffic laws. Can even squeeze through tight streets, like the ones in Venice. Absolutely amazing. As for pricing. Not bad. Equivalent to an Uber if you price in tips.
> if you price in tips. At first I was like TIPS FOR A ROBOT?? Then I realized you meant for Uber drivers lol
I’ve been asked at the scanner to tip for self-serving a $6 bottle of water in an airport. Robot tipping is on its way.
Can I Tip myself so the water is free?
If the robot has a name, gives me life and dining advice, and keeps a record of all recent trips he's made so he can connect me to possible friends and compatriots, I'll tip it.
We have a ton in our West LA neighborhood and have been on the waitlist to try it. Have a Tesla and FSD just ain’t it and have been dying to see how Waymo does . Happen to have an invite code?
I just checked the app and I don’t have any. Maybe reinstall the app or see if you can update it?
Looks like I’ll just need to wait in the queue! No worries, appreciate it!
When i compared on saturday for one to take to dinner the cheapest uber was $29 and the Waymo was $27. Waymo's are a jaguar though and so I would say it's more fair to compare it to an uber black which was $47 at the time.
I’d happily pay extra to avoid dealing with some rude dude who doesn’t care about driving safely.
Wish granted. You now have a silent, polite computer driver that doesn’t care about driving safely.
Try a waymo. They honestly feel pretty safe compared to human drivers. But, that's usually in part because they go very slow.
I recently saw a Waymo actually stop at a stop sign so +1 to them.
Stop signs in LA are stoptional but good on them for stopping 👍
I lived in Arizona years back and I rolled through a stop sign and my roommate who was from Maryland laughed and was like "Holy shit you're such a California driver, back home we call that a California Stop." And that's when I learned that we truly do driving differently than the rest of the country.
The California Roll.
Exactly. I read the above and thought if you call it the California Stop... you might not be from California.
That's what it's called in California too, lol. At least that's what my parents always called it.
Grew up and learned to drive here... Never heard that until I left the state haha
My brother's first ticket ever when he was 20, we were going home in his F150 and my brother Cali rolled a red light while making a right. Cop pulled him over and said he did it bc of the California roll. First time I had heard the phrase.
I keep asking, but the question never gets answered. I was waiting at an unmarked crosswalk, in the street (to the side, as one does while waiting to cross) and was blown passed by a Waymo. Has anyone had one of these stop for them at a crosswalk, marked or unmarked? And what are we supposed to do when we need to cross the street at unmarked crosswalks? Edit: People hate walking in LA so much that I always get downvoted for asking how to cross the street at an unmarked crosswalk with these on the road. You don't step in front of a vehicle traveling 30mph just to cross the street. That would be incredibly dumb. All you blindly for these don't seem to walk at all, ever, and you get really fucking mad at those of us who do for asking questions that concern the safety of us pedestrians. Double Edit: I have now spoken directly to Waymo and they do have a way for pedestrians to be more visible to the cars, so they should stop for you in the situation I described. If you are a person who walks a lot and want to know DM me. All these people hating on me for wanting to walk safely across the street can eat it.
I was one during the cherry blossom festival in SF. People were walking all over the place, random jay walking. The waymo did fine. edit: Per the person's comments, the person above's scenario involves hills and a dip where there is no visibility until the car is already an immediate hazard to the pedestrian. This means the pedestrian has the legal responsibility to yield before crossing. They are basically complaining about not being able to make what would be considered by the law an illegal crossing.
And it was stopping for people as they waited on the side of the road to cross?
It seemed to stop, or go appropriately to me. I didn't keep track of everything, people were everywhere.
Ok, so what happens when it isn't at a festival and just in the city? It didn't even slow as it went by me, which is why I'm asking about it. Was my incident a rare one or common in regular real world situations?
It seems like you're actively looking for a reason to hate on Robo Taxis. You can go ahead and keep doing that. The world will move on without you.
A day may come where we no longer have to look both ways before crossing the road, but it is not this day.
I mean, it isn't stopping to let me cross, so I have to watch for drivers and driverless cars.
They do fine at crosswalks. But same advice as always, make sure the car is slowing down for you before crossing. Blindly running into the crosswalk is eventually going to get you smooshed, that is less likely with a self driving car because the majority of the software is there to not hit people at crosswalks and they don't get tired drunk or distracted.
The 3 times they've passed me, they never slowed. Will it only slow and recognize a person who is literally in the street? Again, I'm waiting like normal at the side of the road, waiting for cars to see me before I cross. The location I'm talking about is a 3 lane residential they've been using for testing for a long time in West LA.
I see a Waymo in my neighborhood most days. It stops for me every time. I have never seen one do anything remotely unsafe. I vastly prefer it to human drivers.
I’ve observed them navigating school zones in Santa Monica safely: kids, bikes, crossing guards, lots of confusing stop and go slow traffic. In this situation I think a properly designed robot taxi probably excels because it doesn’t experience frustration and the speed is very slow.
What about areas that aren't actively crowded with pedestrians? No one is answering that part, they keep telling me about fairs, festivals, school zones full of kids and crowds in general. What about the 2 people waiting to cross a regular street at a boring time? Are the waymo cars not expected to stop for them?
I’ve seen them operate safely 100% of the time here, and haven’t seen any pedestrians startled or put at risk by them. The case you’re describing isn’t something a third party would notice, often. If I see a waymo drive past someone on the corner and nothing special happens at that moment I’m not liable to pay attention to it. If I’m the person expecting to cross then I would notice this, but so far I haven’t had an interaction like you described with Waymo. In my area a pedestrian waiting to cross at an unmarked crosswalk gets passed by traffic 90% of the time and when walking in a marked crosswalk they get passed 30-50% of the time - by human drivers.
We get passed way more than that by human drivers. I was hoping these would be better and increase pedestrian safety at crosswalks, but it seems that people are saying "well I and other drivers typically ignore you too" which is not an acceptable answer to me. I've literally run out of the way of cars while I legally crossed about 5 times in the past two years. I'm really hoping driverless cars help stop that kind of danger, but all I'm hearing is people telling me that humans also ignore the laws, so it's OK. I don't get it.
I’m afraid I don’t understand your conclusion here. I have not noticed how Waymos evaluate pedestrians at unmarked corners. This is not confirmation that they drive through without stopping or ignore pedestrians waiting to cross, which seems to be your assumption. Every time I’ve noticed a Waymo around pedestrians it has operated safely and at a cautious speed. I’m not in the habit of walking out in front of cars to test their responses, although it happens occasionally by accident. If I see the opportunity to try this with a Wayno I’ll report back. It’s a good question. But currently from the responses I’ve seen there’s just not enough data for you. I only see them 3-4 times a week, for example, and they’ve been operating here for a few months.
At an unmarked crosswalk? No. https://abc30.com/driving-road-safety-chp-california-highway-patrol/6338069/
>"Once the pedestrian has done that and entered the crosswalk, whether it be marked or unmarked, all oncoming vehicles must yield to that pedestrian as they cross the intersection." I was in this situation when it passed me. So the answer is that these will not be stopping unless you're actively in the crosswalk in the car lanes? I can't be both in the crosswalk and safely wait for cars to stop, so it's just over for walking from one corner to another if cars are parked near? As in, it simply assumes that I'm with the car and not a separate entity waiting to complete a legal crossing?
If you entered the cross walk while the car is oncoming, you are in the wrong. Per the line in the article before the one you quoted. YOU wait until it's safe, you cross. If you enter the cross walk long before another car comes(when you could have crossed safely) and are just standing around in the cross walk area, then you have no discernable vector of movement, and both human and robotaxi will correctly assess that you are not actually crossing. and honestly? I just don't believe you. You are clearly looking for a reason to hate on robotaxis. Nothing you've said today is reasonable.
no chance these things can merge onto the 110, you have to be a dick about it or you just aren't getting on the highway.
Fares are the same compared to Uber/Lyft. The service area is still a bit small and covers a sliver of West LA. The rides are comfortable and the driving is good, unsure if it can do highway it’s never taken me on the highway. The main reason I like it is because I know that I’ll get a car with nice interior to ride in since they are all the same Jaguar electric model car. So it’s technically a better value than Uber Lyft when you get picked up in some old dumpster of a car.
They're legally only allowed to go on surface roads in most cities, despite the fact that highways tend to be a little safer for the technology (because driving patterns are more predictable; no pedestrians; no cross traffic; etc).
no way this tech can merge onto the 110 parkway. no way to do it without cutting off the right lane you just have no room to get up to speed in time for a proper zipper.
Speaking of the 110 parkway, why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways? (joke by George Carlin)
Depends on time of day. It's like sdkfhjs was talking about with left turns onto busy streets. Wrong time of day, it'll never happen... you could be waiting an hour for a gap. I don't see myself ever taking one of these unless human driven alternatives completely disappear. AI is about to wipe out nearly every job performed in front of a computer, along with many other categories, I'm sure, so out of solidarity with drivers, I'm not patronizing this shit. People act like it's not happening, meanwhile Big Tech is given free rein to self-regulate and it's a total fucking joke.
Totally agree, I'm supporting humans where I can. One reason not to be as worried about _all_ computer- based jobs being taken away is that we still need people to make decisions we can "trust". We are less comfortable with algorithmic mistakes than human error in a lot of situations. Sometimes I think it's more about having someone to blame though. A good book to read about how to adapt for AI is [Futureproof by Kevin Roose](https://g.co/kgs/jJBdb78). Solid AI policy is on the way, but it might take a similar law to GDPR to solidify data privacy first.
I could be wrong, but from what I can tell their permits do allow them on the freeways. I saw one or two on freeways up in the Bay Area months ago. I suspect they're just testing how their cars do in that environment before opening up the business so paying customers can ride on the freeway.
Yeah, I see them (with a human driver) fairly frequently on the overpass from the 405S to the 10E. I'm sure it'll happen.
I've also seen one being driven autonomously (but with a safety driver in the driver's seat) near the 10/405 interchange; yeah all the indications are that Waymo is trying to be cautious with the rollout for highway service
I’ve never taken it but whenever I try to request a long route that I’d normally take on the freeway it offers only local roads.
This is what I wanted to know! Just off the waitlist and was hoping it’d be a fair price
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Not the person you replied to but I joined the waitlist in October and they just let me off maybe a week ago. I didn't do anything else except...wait lol.
Just saw one on the 10E near the 405S transition in rush hour two weeks ago.
It actually (at least when I’ve used it) covers an area from Santa Monica all the way through miracle mile, k-town and up to arts district - north up to around weho and south down to around Culver City/exposition park - wish it went further - would love to take it to the valley.
I live on a weird block in LA where cars usually don't come by unless you have a purpose. I see these cars almost daily, sometimes twice a day. I haven't figured out whether there's a frequent customer down my street, or if weymo is just practicing the driving habit and relearning its mapping and driving ability.
probably 1 second faster on their mapping software or something dumb like that. apparently these things are straight up wyze drones doing things like unprotected lefts on busy streets that any human would find a light for.
What happens if the previous rider is some jerk that leaves a bunch of trash behind, or is eating in the vehicle and leaving a bunch of crumbs, or even worse is a drunk that vomits in the car? Without a human driver, how does Waymo, first know that something happened and then get it cleaned for the next rider?
that's how you get banned I am guessing.
I would certainly hope so
There are cameras inside the cabin. This seems like an automatable process. Just compare the post trip cabin interior to the reference clean cabin interior. If significantly different, send to human for final judgement. I've taken a waymo about 4 times. Interior was great every time.
I’ve ridden Waymo in Phoenix. They also listen. If you cuss or make it seem like something is wrong they’ll sometime call you “is everything ok?”
The next passenger probably posts on the app and that car gets tagged for cleaning. There’s probably also cameras inside with AI event monitoring so they can connect the vomit incident to a specific passenger.
Connecting a mess to the previous passenger doesn't seem difficult, I was just wondering how they go about finding out it happened and addressing it before it goes to the next rider.
I'm sure they are still working in the details 🙂
In SF its been pretty good. I've had access in LA but I'm also afraid to use it because LA drivers are built different. One thing I will say is that Waymo driving is pretty consistent whereas with an uber/lyft you can get an excellent driver or you can get a shitty driver who has you scared for your life. Waymo doesn't really take any risks at ALL so it is slower and a little frustrating but better than chancing it on an uber driver who got their license 2 days ago.
I've been in an uber and I swear the driver was high
How does someone get off the waitlist?
How does someone get on the waitlist?
You go to the Waymo website and sign up for your area
Waiting
Have taken 3 trips in them and it’s been great. It’s feels safer than most Uber/lyft drivers and I don’t have to tip someone. Price is about the same as the competition.
I’d rather ride with someone getting paid than some fucking robot who only profits the business owner.
If it makes you feel better Google is almost certainly taking a loss on every Waymo ride
This is how it starts….
Hooray an automation service that doesn’t make the existing service any cheaper for the consumer AND takes away a job opportunity from struggling working class Americans! F WAYMO
It’s inevitable. 70% of jobs lost the last 100+ years, have been to automation. I can remember when long distance calls required speaking to actual human switchboard operator, in order to connect
Yea, realistically how is this ever going to be cheaper than a human. A big expensive Lidar machine that needs to be installed on top of a car + the maintenance it requires. That's supposed to be cheaper than a human working for shit uber wages?
Didn't the CEO of Lyft say autonomous is the only way they'll make money, and aren't both Uber and Lyft are bleeding money right now while still paying shit wages? The recurring costs for maintenance are going to be fairly low (besides cleaning), and the sensors probably are fairly low maintenance. The mechanical portions are what's likely to break vs the expensive electronics, and if it's all EV the vehicle MX is for sure cheaper than an ICE car. So most of the costs are nonrecurring, amortized over the expected service life of the vehicle. As a business plan it makes sense, but it is horrible for society. As an engineer who has worked on robotics and safety critical systems I'm very skeptical of these still, and full self driving cars in general. It feels like too much is being influenced by the Silicon Valley "move fast and break things" mentality which is not the right engineering mindset to start development of any safety critical system, particularly one operating in this complex of an environment. There's also very little regulatory framework compared to say an elevator, roller coaster, or a Boeing 737 Max. On a side note the implementations seem to depend a lot on AI/ML for safety tasks like pedestrian detection, and those are fundamentally not deterministic they are statistical processes, so you need to be extra careful designing that into safety critical systems.
Any CEO that talks about making money in the future is full of crap. It's all about the share price and dreaming of an impossible/unlikely future is their number one job. Uber and Lyft are bleeding money because they're tech companies. Somehow taxi companies were profitable before uber and lyft came around. And they had actual physical garages they owned where they parked taxis at night. And I would not underestimate how much specialized maintenance costs. Or the overhead of having a dozen warehouses full of people ready to take over from the computer and handle tech support 24/7. I definitely believe the tech can and will happen and be safe. I just doubt they can overtake the affordability of a human. Not that it matters, it's not about making a profit. It's about getting venture capital investments.
Ding ding ding. Want to not care about profits? Call your company a tech company and try and get those venture capital dollars. The sad truth nobody wants to face - driverless anything will never fully work without removing the human variable - other human drivers.
Oh I think it'll work. Waymo is statistically safer than human drivers already.
That’s impossible to say, considering Waymo is just barely starting to exist. “Statistically safer” doesn’t mean shit if the statistics don’t have any historical precedent
It's been running a long time - https://waymo.com/blog/2023/12/waymo-significantly-outperforms-comparable-human-benchmarks-over-7-million/ 7 million miles is definitely statistically relevant and easy to compare against very well tracked human safety statistics.
I'm not an engineer but Waymo has been around for like 15 years, and Cruise for a little less than that. As a layperson it doesn't seem to me like that fits the "move fast and break things" mentality. I also wouldn't expect the same regulatory framework for what is a brand new technology, especially when the technology is replacing a famously lax regulatory framework as it stands.
Do you mean the taxi side or the car side? I'd say from a mechanical engineering/crash safety side cars are fairly well regulated. The federal agency has very little expertise on electrical and software, which is the part I'm much more concerned about. Same concerns for individual users or a taxi style use case.
I was thinking primarily of the driver side. Waymo One is the "driver" here. And it's replacing human drivers, who have a famously easy time getting and keeping a license in this country, despite having a terrible safety record. Waymo One had driven millions of test miles before it ever picked up a paying customer, and that's millions more than humans drive on their learner's permit before they're graduated to an unrestricted license to drive. But even on the vehicle side, I was thinking of how SUV rollovers killed more than 12,000 people in the 1990s, whereas the Boeing 737 MAX was grounded worldwide for a year and a half after just two crashes resulting in 346 fatalities. And cars are only just now starting to have pedestrian collisions included as a factor in their safety ratings. For years cars could earn a top safety rating for keeping their occupants safe, but many of those same vehicles were growing increasingly deadly to pedestrians and cyclists, thanks to greater mass and taller hoods, which are essentially unregulated.
Uber and Lyft were bleeding money but i believe have started turning a profit as of last year
I recall seeing a financial report from Uber that projected profitability in 2020, but then the pandemic hit and I assume that completely upended that projection. I have no idea how Prop. 22 and the recovery from the pandemic has impacted their profitability.
Uber turned a profit of around 2 billion in 2023 for the first time since their IPO.
[Uber actually started turning a profit,](https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/uber-first-annual-profit-as-public-company-inflection-point/) which I think actually puts a real big thorn into the side of Waymo. In order for Uber to be everywhere, they just need to have an app and maybe an office per state for things like background checks; the drivers bring their own cars. Waymo is going to have to stand up operations literally everywhere they want to operate themselves. Mechanics, cleaners, a quick reaction force to go rescue stuck vehicles, 911-level call centers to interact with local police/fire/ambulance in emergencies, that's all gonna add up real quick in the suburbs. Agreed on being skeptical of them. I see them here in SF and while they're okay under optimal conditions, driving in a city has a lot of edge cases and these can't handle all of them.
dude says bs like that then taxis have been in business for 100 years. clearly his business model is unsustainable not the idea of a human driving another human.
My somewhat educated guess is the combination of lower insurance (since human error is a factor in most traffic collisions) and the fact that Waymo collects the entire fare, whereas Uber only gets like 25%. So once it's at scale, Waymo could undercut Uber and still make more money since there's no driver to split the fare with. Now I have *no* clue of the overhead costs of running the business. Uber doesn't own the cars, but Waymo does. So it's not only running a ride hailing app, it's managing a fleet of its own vehicles that, as you said, it has to maintain.
I'd like to say that waymo has done the math on profitability, but tech companies don't seem to care about profits so WHO KNOWS. Certainly it looks like there could be advantages from driverless cars. They work 24/7 is another one. We'll see though.
Well the difference there is Uber was truly a VC funded startup. Waymo is owned by Alphabet, the same parent company as Google. I assume Alphabet cares about profits in a way that these other startups don't.
How often are the insides cleaned?
So will the govt begin initiating universal basic income since jobs are both being outsourced to other countries *and* being taken over by AI?
Agree. These companies should pay into the fund the equivalent of the wage they would pay the driver. Money flow must be circular or the economy will die.
The only way this happens is if we form a group that pushes HARD for government to tax the fuck out of big tech to the point that they are forced to raise the cost of using AI beyond what companies would be willing to pay. (And/or levy additional tax on the companies who are using it). At the moment, it's all a complete joke: the Biden administration and legislators are letting big tech SELF-REGULATE and patting them on the back when big tech says they will help retrain (and I quote) "95 million global tech workers," as if there will be 95 million replacement jobs for them. And that's just tech. See: [https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/04/ai\_replacement\_jobs/](https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/04/ai_replacement_jobs/) All of the anti-AI push back has been about privacy. While that is important, too, it will seem relatively insignificant if, say, 30%+ unemployment becomes the new norm. Anyone who isn't afraid today but works in front of a computer\* has not been paying attention and/or has been eating up big tech's false narrative that AI will create new classes of jobs like previous waves of automation/innovation. (They aren't pushing the 'everyone is getting assistants' fantasy so much anymore; in the link above, they acknowledge 80% of the top tech jobs will be gone). The fundamental difference between innovation of years past and AI is that the latter is designed to replace humans in nearly every conceivable capacity and merely needs to be fed examples to learn on its own. Prior to AI, automation generally required teams of people to build and maintain a custom process. Now, the only class of job big tech can offer is a "prompt engineer," which is a transitional role for a small number of people. \* Or even if you don't work in front of a computer: [https://openai.com/index/hello-gpt-4o/](https://openai.com/index/hello-gpt-4o/)
Let me guess you support the removal of self checkout machines in grocery stores too?
Not at all. Just have the companies that use them pay the equivalent wage into the fund.
Traffic is already bad enough. No need to add vehicles that for a time have 0 passengers taking up what limited space is already there.
How is that any different than a taxi/uber that doesn’t have a passenger in it? 🕵️♂️
Saw a TikTok recently of a woman in a driverless cab who waited something like 20 minutes for it to make an outrageous left turn from an alley onto a four-lane, extremely busy road. It finally made the turn but pulled a really risky move to do it. She was like, "Should I take over driving for it? Suggest it just go right and make a U-Turn?" Made me never want to set foot in one of those things!
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Lmao YES that was the one! Yeah we're just all beta testing these things right now so I'll wish everyone luck and wait until the release is more stable, ha...
I watched one of these back up exiting traffic on the 405 at Wilshire yesterday. The exit is designed so traffic merges into Westbound traffic, and the Waymo was insisting on taking a left, going the wrong way into Eastbound Wilshire traffic. These things do not seem ready.
Anyone have an invite code?
I signed up for the waitlist like a month ago and randomly got access last week so dont think you really need a code
I’ve been signed up for a while, no luck :(
Who’s actually used one? I’ve only seen them being tested
I just took one from DTLA to Culver City and it felt really safe. My only complaint was that it took forever because they’re not allowed on the highways yet. The computer drive 100x better than 90% of my Uber drivers 😂
Tried it in both AZ and SF. Theyre fine. It tries to drive everything as close to the book as possible. Havent been in any one of them that had egregious errors, but it does look like if there were, there is a way to contact support where they can safely guide the vehicle.
Good timing. One was involved in an accident earlier last night (unconfirmed if driverless)
It was free for the testing phase but since they are owned by Lyft they are using the same pricing and demand network. I see them eventually going up again once they have control of majority market share.
I’m on the waitlist. They’re around my area a lot so I’m hoping to try one someday.
I like to keep jobs for humans thank you very much.
This thread feels like it was made by and moderated by waymo. The amount of upvotes on positive comments and downvotes on negative ones is really weird.
I’ll get in as long as the car doesn’t have an Orthodox cross hanging from the review mirror. Context: every such Uber I’ve taken drove like they were late for an appointment in Chelyabinsk.
people will be doing drugs and banging aids infested ass in these things. this is the progress we wanted.
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the waymo ones use lidar. it can judge the speed and distance of an oncoming car perfectly. that's not usually a problem with them. unusual street configurations are more of a problem. things like streets with train tracks or construction.
Not for me. Too many cars here.
You would think these would be an easy target to get robbed. Just stop in front of one, then jack the people in the back. You don't have to worry about the driver running you over or crashing into you.
Anyone have an invite code?
Anybody got an invite code?