[ethnt]

Sounds more like a great reason to stay away from some of the most chaotic traffic in the US until it can be considered safer. There are far, far more pedestrians in NYC than in Phoenix, and I do not trust a Waymo car to not hit some of them.

[wepple]

When I got my NYC drivers license, the full end to end test was 8 minutes (I got a printout) on empty roads.

I’d take a high quality autonomous vehicle over a tired Uber driver any day as a pedestrian

[dml2135]

Well I think "high quality" is doing a lot there. Obviously autonomous vehicles would be safer if they work perfectly -- the concern is that they will not.

[ridethebike]

Yeah, approximately 10 minutes for me to pass driving test (from second attempt). And then around a year of driving (effectively training myself) in city to get more or less comfortable with traffic.

[darkwizard42]

In the article (only a few paragraphs btw) it specifically says the goal is to map and have safety operators manually controlling all the vehicles.

[deegles]

I trust a Waymo car way-more than Tesla's autopilot...

[GuB-42]

Generally, self driving cars are very safe, too safe actually. There are some high profile accidents, most of them involving Tesla because of the scale and way they approach the problem, plus an infamous one by Uber, but generally, self driving cars will not go anywhere unless they are sure the way is clear.

And this is the problem, self driving cars don't force their way, and they break when anything is vaguely in a collision course. If there is a problem putting them in NYC traffic is that they will stop all the time and create traffic jams, maybe get rear ended by other (human) drivers and fail to get their passengers to the destination because of some minor obstruction.

[mpalmer]

There are people behind the wheel.

[whimsicalism]

And as evidence for that, you use ... an example of Waymo being overly cautious?

I routinely drive and walk near these vehicles, they do not seem in danger of hitting anyone.