One aspect I'd still like to see them figure out:

As a bike commuter, I share the road with Waymo often. When cycling, you're always checking the eyes of other drivers to confirm if they see you.

I've had a couple incidents where I was a little thrown/unnerved because I couldn't confirm if a Waymo was registering me. It ultimately behaved fine, but I had to put my guard way up because I just couldn't tell.

I've wondered if they could use the light/display on top to signal acknowledgment? How do you simulate the precision of a gaze with a machine that's "seeing" everything at once?

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/13/23913251/waymo-roof-dome...

They're still trying to do this weird universal signage when they need some way to replicate eye contact and 1-to-1 signaling. I feel safe biking or driving around other cars because I can directly communicate and negotiate with other traffic participants. I can't do that with an automated car as they're currently designed, and I feel like that's a huge flaw.

Waymo cars are extremely, extremely aware of their surroundings. They have a category, distance, speed, and distribution of possible future paths for all cars, pedestrians, and bicyclists within sight over 360 degrees.

> Why don't they have a (or something like a) 360 degree string of LEDs (for example on the roof) that lights up a few in the direction of human obstacles if they're close enough?

I don't think it's so obvious this helps. What is the threshold for how far away something is before it's indicated on the ring? If I'm standing just outside that distance, how will I know it's because of distance rather than because I haven't been seen? If the distance is set long, how will I know it sees me and not something behind me?

The natural way to get around these problems is for the car to "point out" everything it see using, e.g., fake eyes. But now you have a car covered in eyes surveilling the neighborhood, and people don't like that either.

I feel like this is a non-issue. The LEDs can be a certain size. They could be dimmable so their brightness can be modulated by distance.

All the things you mention are an issue with real drivers too, but we make it work because we can signal and communicate. Give these cars the same functionality and experiment. This isn't an insurmountable issue, but it is one that needs to be addressed that isn't being addressed at all. Throwing up your hands and saying it's too difficult is less than helpful. They're putting these things on the road with people. They have a responsibility to figure this stuff out. Especially if they want to go beyond a handful of cities.

No one is throwing up their hands. Human-autonomous-vehicle communication is a whole research field. Waymo has every incentive here to both make the vehicles safer and to make pedestrians feel safer (holding actual safety fixed).

The ultimate test is not your first gut reaction as to whether they have done "enough", but rather it's whether the vehicles are safer than human-driven ones, and the evidence so far strongly points to that being the case.

What do you mean by that? Do you think if their cars hurt someone or cause damage to property you can't sue them? What is the basis of this belief?

Million dollar idea right there

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3543174.3546841

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11250965/Jap...

https://videos.dailymail.co.uk/video/mol/2022/09/26/56244997...

British used a LED matrix. More "output" options (frowns and smiles, text), similar results.

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/first-ever-uk-ghost-driver...

https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/news/pedestrian-study-...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faukADr0_6g

https://theoatmeal.com/blog/google_self_driving_car

I don’t need to check if they see me. They do.

(Weird this was down voted, just sharing personal experiences)

I live right near Oracle Park where there was a big Cruise Yard, and there is a ton of traffic and cruise, zoox, etc self driving cars circling the neighborhood endlessly.

It's not as if I've had a overtly terrible single incident. It's as though they're causing unsafe driving conditions for pedestrians, cyclists and other motorists regularly.

Driving unreasonably slow and erratic, stopping in the middle of streets, blocking traffic, not responding to the need for them to move or respond as human driver would.

They're problematic. I could start a youtube channel or something it happens enough in my day to day life.

I bike by Oracle park almost every day.

They have started trialing exactly this as of about two weeks ago. [edit: But I haven’t seen it operate up close yet.]

So if they are showing an ad on the display on your side it means that either it doesn’t see you or thinks you are far enough away that it does not have to account for you in its short term planning.

If it sees you and is taking you into account it could show a diagram showing you and what it plans to do.

and this: https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/comments/17fjv1h/emoji_sph...

Making eye contact with drivers makes riding a lot easier. You know they see you.

It would be nice if there were a simple directional light on the top of robotaxis that indicates where it’s intending to go next (directional light) and how imminently it will begin moving (perhaps how fast the light blinks) when e.g. at a stop sign.

(But - twice in 20 years I’ve had the chilling experience of a driver making eye contact and pulling out in front of me anyway.)

That was more of a problem in my 'Sturm & Drang' time. These days grannys on their electically-assisted bicycles are faster than me, hence I don't surprise car drivers any more.

I was very harsh about the extremely poor interactions with Cruise, but I have yet to see anything to sour me with Waymo.

Often you can't tell if a human sees you. Even in day, they may have tinted windows, or the sun might make it impossible. At night, you definitely can't tell.

If it's someone at a 4-way stop, you can usually tell when they come to a stop far from back the crosswalk. Otherwise I don't walk out in front of them. I also try to be aware if I'm in their blind spot.

(Not really. But you never know?)

https://cdn.webshopapp.com/shops/70489/files/113563271/600x6...

Maybe they should take a note from the Apple Vision Pro and display a pair of eyes on the windshield looking at you? (/s ?) :)

The app isn't updated yet, though. I wonder how long it'll take?

[1] https://waymo.com/blog/2024/01/from-surface-streets-to-freew...

https://www.latimes.com/socal/glendale-news-press/news/tn-gn...

I do underestimate it. What are quality of life improvements? Seems to be the same thing from a customer perspective.

I guess if you are concerned for your safety from the uber driver it is an improvement but it is the only one that comes to mind.

A few drives later, I had a group dinner reservation at a restaurant downtown. I'm not a big sports person and I didn't realize I was asking to go downtown on the Saturday before the Super Bowl. Uber told me I had to wait 4 minutes for pickup, but that turned into a 20+ minute wait as driver after driver canceled on me when they saw where I was asking to go. I had to text all of the guests and apologize for being late to my own reservation.

A few drives later, I had a long conversation with a gay driver who recently fled from Iraq because his sexual identity wasn't respected there. I'm a mid-thirties, single male. The first question the driver asked me when I got in the car was if I had a family. I said no. Then he asked if I had a girlfriend. I said no. Then he slowly engaged with me in conversation for 10 minutes trying to figure out if I was a potential date for him and had trouble understanding that while I fully supported his sexual identity that that didn't mean I was an opportunity for connection.

Last weekend, as I was espousing the benefits of Waymo to a friend, they called an Uber while we were heading down from a restaurant at the top of an elevator. When we got down to the bottom floor, he was dismayed. Someone else had gotten into the Uber, the driver didn't check names, and they were now travelling on his dime.

Surely it's not that hard to envision the scenarios in which an autonomous driver might be desirable?

Not to mention the thousands of people who currently make a respectable living driving people around.

But maybe I’m just one of those extroverts who doesn’t mind being around people.

We will have to agree to disagree on whether it's a beneficial change to society to disrupt human drivers with autonomous drivers. Personally, I found the argument that artists shouldn't be disrupted by AI much more defensible than saying drivers shouldn't be disrupted. It always seemed easy to look at previously disrupted jobs, like people getting up at 4AM to act as manual alarm clocks via peashooters on windows, and say yes, we should replace this simple act of labor with technology.

Maybe. I had a very boring experience overall with mine. I wouldn't have noticed if they were replaced with bots. That could be my lack of extroversion (or maybe getting all introverts myself. Few gave a vibe of wanting to chat. Just a job, after all).

But for the short term, I'm paranoid right now about autonomous driving because it is far from technologically sound. Probably more sound than the average driver, but we know that we hold tech a lot more accountable than humans. humans hold liability in human issues, companies are liable for tech issues and have the money to spend to fight any issues that arise (as we can see in real time with Tesla).

Sometimes I want a chauffeur, usually one I have a relationship with, often I want a reliable ride. We’re all better off for having the choice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FUQYPfL0Pg

They ask for temperature and conversation preferences when you order a black car, which I find somewhat funny.

Maybe. Or you've just been "lucky" with the kinds of experiences you've had on Uber.

I've had some really annoying drivers, shitty drivers. People have reported assaults and some have ended up worse.

If this were a daily thing for people (which it could be in the future), I wouldn't want a 1on1 experience every day (twice a day) with a new driver each time, each with their own personalities, driving abilities, and needs at the moment. Forget that.

Seems dubious to me. Can't you still call an Uber in SF, where they've had Waymo for a while?

I say "near fully automated" because there's loads of operations involved, including human remote fleet management for when cars get stuck. But even that doesn't scale linearly with the amount of automated vehicles on the road, whereas Uber will always be at least 1:1 human:car.

https://archive.ph/7mPWk

So I don't see the point of theorizing, when we can get real-world feedback from customers.

I'm comparing costs in other comments in this thread.

as I said, if Waymo is actually charging money now, then real data is much more credible than a theoretical analysis like yours.

It will commit to the ride and not cancel.

Ability to scale the amount of Waymo cars to an area is immensely easier than scaling the amount of Uber/Lyft drivers available and willing to go to said area.

[1]https://www.epa.gov/environmental-economics/mortality-risk-v...

A car today at the admittedly high cost estimate of $1M will “pay itself off” versus your labor estimate in less than 8 years. Humans don’t get paid off and then work for free afterwards.

I see very little to suggest that a Waymo car costs less all-in over the course of about two years than a Prius and an Uber driver does, and that's the much more relevant comparison.

Nothing to say that this couldn't change in the future. But that's my guess for the status quo.

$190k - $80k for a jaguar ipace leaves $110k per vehicle for Waymo to work with, multiplied by the size of their fleet. How much do we want to figure a pile of sensors, computer hardware, and custom housings to cost? Minus insurance and electricity, which I don't know how much to figure and the answer is yeah I don't know. $110k over 2 years doesn't seem like that much, but multiplied across a sizable fleet it adds up. I'm sure they're scaling up as fast as they can.

* https://www.edmunds.com/toyota/prius/2022/cost-to-own/

why is 2 years the relevant timeframe?

I'm surprised there's such a staunch defense.

It's mixed. Driving is both a career and a pastime/hobby. I can certainly see a long term (30+ year) shift to AI driving being a hindrance to the latter, even if the efficiencies would be massive (e.g. there wouldn't be such thing as "stop and go city driving" to the extent of modern day driving. Stop and go is a product of inefficient human sensors and signalling).

As a career, yes. It probably won't exist in 20 years at this rate.

This is an uncharitable reading of someone wanting peace and quiet from time to time.

But yeah, taxis and Ubers can suck sometimes.

I’ve been hit on by a few Uber drivers. (Early thirties guy.) They stop talking then forget after two seconds. Unfortunately, the person who crosses the first boundary isn’t deterred by the second.

That said, I do appreciate the chutzpah of the driver who tried to invite himself to my date for a threesome.

would be nice to get that one day. In the meanwhile I guess LA is spending that budget here on Waymo for even more cars in traffic.

And Waymo is going to the same destination, just approaching from other direction.

As mentioned, the driving is sane... with other taxi and taxi-like services that can be hit or miss. But it's more than that.

When I get in taxi I can't help feel like I'm invading the driver's space in some way. The awkward conversations, the awkward silences, the music I'd never choose to listen to on my own, and that list goes on along similar lines; not to mention that many drivers feel like they have to engage in one way or another order to get a decent gratuity I feel more like I'm continuing to be "sold" something after the ride starts. It's just not pleasant.

In a Waymo, I don't feel any of that. I put something I want to listen to on the sound system or just enjoy the ride. Sure, I know there is staff somewhere watching me, but that doesn't bother me nearly so much as being in an incidental, albeit fleeting, social relationship with someone I might not otherwise chose to engage with.

So yes. A self-driving car is my first choice if my pickup/dropoff allows it.

Plus, nice and clean Jaguar I-Pace vehicles. No person to talk to and no tipping.

- No need for chit chat, you can just work / talk on the phone / play music

- No 18-hour shift sweat and deodorant smell

- No cursing at other drivers or awkward apologies because of fear of a bad rating

- Smooth, predictable driving. I have yet to have a “holy shit” moment in a Waymo, but this happens regularly in Uber / Lyft.

Also on safety, about 50% of the population has to worry a lot more about being abducted/hit on/stalked/etc. Uber and Lyft know this and have gone to great lengths to recruit female drivers, set up safety hotlines, etc. Not having to worry about the driver is a big deal.

Meanwhile the driving experience of autonomous drivers is still not at a satisfactory stage for me. Maybe it worked fine in SF, but LA has some pretty rough, unmaintained roads to navigate.

At the same time every other story involves a horror over "going to dinner." They apparently don't abhor socialities, they just abhor having to be in the presence of the "lower caste."

Consider the distribution of Uber/Lyft drivers you have had. All the way from smooth driving, well-maintained car, through to erratic behavior and unpleasant environment. Imagine if the next time you got a driver you really like, you said "this driver only from now on" and that was the consistent experience you always got out of Uber/Lyft.

That is what Waymo is like. It is the same every time I get in. I do not have to think or adapt to a new environment. It is like sitting on my own couch at home.

More importantly: the fleet is owned and maintained by Waymo. So they can achieve a higher degree of consistency. It is not the fanciness I value, it is the consistency.

Put another way: I can get a fancy car and a good driver with Uber Black. I would rate my waymo experience slightly above Uber Black.

Like I will easily pay a premium to have self-driving most of the time. I can play my music on the speakers, I can work more comfortably in the car, etc. etc.

Also, I find Uber drivers are pretty bad drivers often - comparative advantage

which would probably be the same as Uber after tip

Edit: to be clear I’m putting “best” in quotes because personal car ownership is pretty terrible in terms of value.

I drove a car into San Francisco once. Never again. Not having to worry about parking, being able to nap or work en route, not having to get stressed by traffic, etc. Massive improvement in QOL.

An affordable mid size car costs roughly $6k per year total cost for a new car, and about 2/3 that for a used car.

If you commute daily to work, that is 500 trips per year. Two weekend trips adds another 100 per year. Now we are talking about ~$10/trip if you own your car.

When you add the premium value you get from flexibility, then it's an even better deal. If you only drive 50x a year then yeah, just use services.

I'll give a rough cost with my small sedan pre-pandemic

- Gas every 2 weeks (30 mile commute to work), fillin up the car is about $60. so $120 for gas. 120/month is 1440/year

- DMV costs are $150 a year

- car wash every few months. Let's make it monthly and more expensive than my actual washes. $50/month, 600 a year

- oil change every 3 months or so (probably less, but let's be conservative here). $70/quarter, 280/year.

- occasional repairs due to being an old car. sporadic, but let's throw in maybe $300 a year total.

- Finally, $100/month for insurance. $1200/Year.

so, ~4000/year. Given that that was a daily commute along with other short travel, it's cheaper than the idea of relying on taxis. Even if it was as cheap as $10/ride, it'd cost $4800/year to get to work alone. For my commute, it'd be more like $40-50/ride. Not even close.

ofc the rub here is that these are the costs for a paid off car, so if you don't own a car you need to factor in car payments, or the one time cost grabbing a used car. I grabbed my car for $5k before the car market (and every other market) went to hell, so it still very quickly paid for itself.

A new car is $40k, a 10 year old car seems to go for about $10k, so say $3k a year. So with a brand new car, still getting "around" that $6-7k a year.

Or to put it another way - at some point it HAS to be cheaper to own, because someone owns the car that is driving you around!

That's just plain stupid.

My driving went way down during the pandemic, but it's probably a better normal metric to measure my routine before a global anamloly.

>600 a year on car washes?

I was being very generous there to prove a point. I don't do a car wash monthly and I don't get the highest tier of car wash either.

Even the "stupidest" spending on my car for daily travel and I don't come within a stone's throw of justifying taxis, financially speaking save on.

Sometime around then.

I do think my car needs a car wash. Not necessarily this month, but definitely within the next year or so. It costs $5 in quarters at the car wash. Maybe $10. Not $600 a year.

If you are spending $600 a year on car washes, I want to start a business, and I want you, specifically you, as my customer.

[0] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/antisocial

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/antisocial

[2] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/antisoci...

[3] https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/anti...

[4] https://www.etymonline.com/word/antisocial

Timothy McVeigh was trying to make the US government pay for specific things it did to "his people"; Ted Kaczynski was lashing out at the industrialised world after living in isolation in his cabin in the woods.

- Consistency: You know what you're getting.

- Privacy: Especially nice when traveling with a group.

- Instant pick-up estimate: It can take a while to find a driver with Uber/Lyft, and often the initial estimate is not fulfilled. While Waymo times are generally higher, you know before you press the button what the exact wait time will be.

- Driver started watching TikTok videos on his dashboard-mounted phone while driving

- Driver going way over the speed limit in stormy weather

- A driver was clearly sick, coughing and sniffling and sneezing the whole ride

- Got in a car and it reeked of marijuana

- Got in a car and it reeked of BO

At this point I’d probably prefer a robot driver.

I look forward to Snow Crash's self-cleaning public restrooms.

Though I'm not sure if we'll ever fully get to such a state. I can see driver's seats still being mandated in case of failure and a need to revert to manual driving.

If crash rates go down, and you have a flat surface that you’re strapped onto that is angled and has an airbag-like system to ensure as many G’s as eyeballs in or out, sure we could.

Nothing is better than being able to go about your business without have to worry about social niceties and endless other tedious things associated with human beings.

Have you never been "forced" to talk to an Uber driver? :)

Not having to tip. Having the car take a sensible route and not some idiotic detour Waze thought was clever. Having a car that’s always paying attention instead of being on a perpetual phone call. Being able to make phone calls without feeling obnoxious or worrying about one’s rating. Being in an objectively safer ride. Not having to listen to a rant about how the angel Mohamed saw was actually a demon because he was scared or get given a sermon about why being gay is evil. Not having drivers cancel on you because they don’t want to go where you need to.

In general i'd vastly prefer a non-human experience.

Something to note is that actual public transit (buses and trains) has something like 10x fewer annual deaths than private vehicles, because fatal accidents almost never happen in them.

Personal safety is a much less statistically relevant concern compared to personal injury.

I like BART. It's actually really convenient, connecting where I live, where I work, and where a bunch of my friends live. Unfortunately, I have a negative experience upwards of half the time I ride it. Sometimes, it's minor, just some person talking nonsense to themselves in the corner. Whatever, puts me on edge because I lose confidence that this person won't transgress social norms in more extreme ways, but I can live with it. Sometimes the entire car smells like a latrine. Sometimes it's a dude laying across the aisle pleasuring himself. Also not going to kill me, but also is something I'd rather avoid, and absolutely can by not riding public transit.

Uber, by contrast, I only have to worry about the driver making me uncomfortable, and that's relatively rare. Maybe 1 in 10 rides will involve a driver either driving like a maniac, or reeking of BO.

With Waymo, there are none of those issues. Hop in a vehicle, it's clean, it drives safely, and there's no naked lunatics.

You can actually be safer in a bus (aka public transit) than in Uber depending on where you live.

With Uber, every time you take a taxi, you are playing the lottery, hoping you get a normal driver, who is not tired, who is not dangerous, etc.

With Waymo, you get a private car, all for yourself.

https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics...

The distinction is absolutely important between public and private transit. However to most folks they'll be the same thing in the end. Maybe local governments can buy cars for private public transit, which could be nice depending on funding and all that.

I was specifically saying that people prefer private transit to public transit because of safety related concerns.

on a micro level, no. On a macro level, yes. People have individual fears, but those individual fears shouldn't influence the decision of multi billion dollar transport budgets. As cold as it sounds, injury or harm is built into the costs of such transportation.

With all that said, LA has indeed gotten much less safe, and public transportation has never really been "good", per se. On a micro level, I literally could not get within 2 miles of work from bus schedules one way, and 5 miles the other after work (back when work was in town). It wasted enough time that it would have been worth considering biking 15 miles a day instead of using a bus. If I wasn't in such poor shape it'd take almost the same time (which was double my driving commute).

I've never had a fent zombie wave a knife in my face on private transit, but it has happened a couple of times on public transit. I get that it is technically "safer", but we have a long way to go before normal people will feel safe on it (in the states, other countries obviously do this better by not allowing their buses and light rail to be turned into roving day centers).

How many people die of assaults on public transit every year? I’ll let you look that one up.

Fear isn’t the same as risk. Lots of people are afraid of planes. Not a single passenger died of as a result of a commercial airline incident last year in the United States.

> Fear isn’t the same as risk.

I don't think you've ever had a knife waved at you by a crazy person before. Don't be an idiot, if something looks really dangerous, it probably is.

> How many people die of assaults on public transit every year? I’ll let you look that one up.

The first one this year in our city was just 4 days ago.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/man-fa...

That article also lists out recent violence on public transit in my city (like the guy hitting people with a hammer on the train). In comparison, 36 people were killed in car crashes in 2022, 28 in 2023.

You might feel like you have more control over your fate when you're driving, but as the say in the deep bowels American political culture, "facts don't care about your feelings." The same factually-incorrect risk evaluation is used by people who prefer driving over flying on a commercial airliner.

31% of all fatal crashes in 2021 involved drunk drivers, a much more common drug which is 100% legal. You don't have control over your fate in a car when other drivers on the road make up all of the moving objects that you can run into.

Not to mention the fact that crime can still happen to you while you are driving, a common example being carjacking. [1]

Your own numbers that you provided tell us the opposite story that you want to tell. The very first transit death this year just happened almost 3 months into the year. Meanwhile, 28-36 yearly car crash deaths in Seattle averages out to over 2 deaths every single month. That means by the time someone died on transit, something like 6 people had already died in car crashes in the Seattle area.

Obviously, more people are driving than taking transit, but still, in Seattle almost half of all trips downtown involve public transit.

[1] https://mynorthwest.com/3951485/docs-mom-called-911-before-b...

I always take transit downtown despite the risks, it’s just too convenient, but that’s just occasionally. My wife takes it also, a lot more, and it’s a completely different fear factor for a woman traveling alone. However, that’s all we really use it for, for anything else we drive. This is in contrast to my experience living outside the states, where I could actually live without a car.

All of transit’s safety issues are actually preventable by just being more strict about what people can get away with on buses (eg no smoking fent on the bus) and enforcing fares (not for the revenue, but people who don’t pay fares are more likely to cause other problems). I’m pretty sure if anyone tried these things in Lausanne, multiple swat teams would be on them quickly (heck, I’ve seen that happen for just not paying fares, don’t mess with Swiss police or even Swiss transit police). If Seattle wants us to use transit more, they need to take safety more seriously. Other countries do that, they get better results. Otherwise, we will lean more heavily on private transit like Waymo.

Some people, like his mother, can't drive anymore. They might be encouraged to stay in the homes they're used to, instead of moving to assisted living.

Society will have to adapt to the advancements in AI and robotics.

The status quo is not a good option because (globally) cars cause over a million fatalities each year and over 20 million injuries. Driving, riding, or walking near vehicles is one of the most dangerous activities in modern life.

An extremely high percentage of deaths and injuries will be prevented as self-driving cars are deployed, since almost all accidents are due to human error.

no one cares until it happens to them. I guess that attitude is part of the reason why this will succeed in the end.

This quote highlights why I would trust it more. I have been an Uber that essentially tried to make that turn, and it was insane. I'm hoping Waymo would be smart enough to try alternate routes (that said, I've had Google Maps route me in West Hollywood going across major boulevards without a light during rush hour, which is basically impossible).

This announcement makes me more willing to travel to LA for work.