[clay_the_ripper]

As a resident, I don’t support this at all.

Waymos are annoying to have on the road - they go extremely slowly (with good reason) and make weird traffic moves.

Do we want our roads getting clogged up with super slow taxis that steal jobs from ordinary people and give them to the tech industry?

[sbuttgereit]

I regularly drive on roads with driverless Waymo cars and they're fine, at least where I live in San Francisco. They do drive the speed limit and, as compared to other drivers, they don't take the same sorts of chances that I see typically taken... which I appreciate. The only discomfort I have with them when I'm in a driving situation (as a driver) is that I find comfort in seeing the other drivers around me see me: if I make eye contact with someone I can hope there is awareness of my presence. That might not be a completely rational thing to get comfortable with... that person may have seen you or seen right through you... but it does ease my emotional tension right or wrong. Natrually, with a Waymo, that can't happen.

But all in all I've not had a problem with them doing anything unexpected or strange when I encounter them on the road. My couple rides in a Waymo at this point over the past several weeks have been great.

Needless to say, I wholeheartedly support their presence on the road and am glad to hear the program is expanding.

[NewJazz]

This is a complicated comment.

Do they really drive that slow... Or just, like, the speed limit? Or generally safe(r) driving speeds? All things equal, slower is safer!

Why would roads be anymore clogged than they are already? Because transportation becomes cheaper? So should we jack up fuel prices or insurance prices so there are fewer cars on the road? Real questions.

And onto the "stealing jobs" comment... Under this ethos, why would anyone automate any task?

[unshavedyak]

> Do they really drive that slow... Or just, like, the speed limit? Or generally safe(r) driving speeds? All things equal, slower is safer!

So i have no idea about Waymo, but man i can only imagine how much drivers will rage over them the more of them there are. God knows they'll go the speed limit, and so many drivers absolutely loathe that.

As it is, i drive 5 over just to reduce the insanity of people passing/etc. Which, i still get aggressively passed quite a bit, but that 5mph matters. I'm used to drivers going ~10-15mph over the limit, and every mph under +10 is a significant problem for them.

I look forward to these on that point alone. The more cars there are on the road normalizing ideal speeds (whatever they may be) the better. People are far too aggressive on the road in my experience. At least as a WA native.

[w45yw45ywtg]

As a nitpick that I'm sure varies from state to state... All things can't be equal if you're going slower than the rest of traffic since by definition there's a speed differential relative to the vehicles around you. In drivers-ed in California for example the advice from the dmv is actually to go the speed limit /or/ keep with the flow of traffic. If everyone around you is doing 80 in a 65 zone then you should still speed up at least a little or move into a lane where the flow of traffic is slower. Automated vehicles interestingly are an odd case because no company is going to tell their vehicles to break the law even if social norms encourage otherwise.

[unshavedyak]

I expect it'll help - though. Ie reduce the average, making more lanes of traffic safer by body blocking the speeders.

Though, I do expect there to be an initial surge of aggression when people are forced to reduce their speeds by 15mph.

[brokensegue]

they drive conservatively but at reasonable speeds

[whimsicalism]

Not at all my experience and I get a ton of value out of Waymos.

> steal jobs from ordinary people and give them to the tech industry

technological progress is good, it is good to reallocate people's talent if we no longer need drivers

[pokstad]

That’s not how humans actually work. Driving is one of the last big job sources for millions of Americans and when it disappears there will be many people out of work. Expect more homeless and drug use when people have difficulty transitioning in a post driver world.

[OkayPhysicist]

It is not a good thing to employ a bunch of people in pointless jobs just because we don't have anything else for them to do. That's not labor, that's toil.

[mavhc]

Were you also against the introduction of the plough?

[mindstorms6]

Driving the speed limit is a feature not a bug - and crucially all of the Uber drivers I've had in SF drive terribly. It's like I'm in Mario Kart.

We should be excited about not having humans drive and automating them out of this task they clearly don't want to do.

[gkoberger]

They’re much safer, and tech has already stolen from drivers (via 50% cuts). Yes, we do want safer transportation. Evolving as a society is important.

[Supermancho]

NIMBYs don't want progress if it makes their lives more difficult, even if it's only in their mind.

[kriiuuu]

Show me indenpendant research that they are safer. I can’t find any.

[pkaye]

Waymo worked with Swiss Re a reinsurer to evaluate the data. I think they have a paper that is going through peer review.

https://waymo.com/blog/2023/09/waymos-autonomous-vehicles-ar...

[Aloisius]

If they were less safe than human drivers, one would there would be more accidents where Waymo was at fault than another party.

Having personally gone through several years of AV collisions reports to California a few months back, that wasn't the case. Indeed, in most of the small number of cases where Waymo was at fault, there was human driver in control of the vehicle.

The were a four cases where the Waymo was at fault. One hit a chain strung across parking lot. There was a minor collision with a parked car. One ran over and killed a dog. One hit a vehicle while trying to reverse.

There were dozens where the other party was at fault (lots of rear ends).

[subarctic]

Now that you put it that way, it's probably tough to get in an accident with a waymo without being found at fault. How often does a car stop suddenly and unexpectedly, get rear ended, and get found at fault?

[Aloisius]

Never. If you rear end someone because you were following too closely to stop without hitting them, you're at fault. There's a reason why the three second rule is taught.

There are some rare exceptions like if someone's tail lights are out, but nothing that would apply here.

[ilaksh]

They have been submitting data to the DMV for some time. Do you believe they are falsifying their data?

[rufus_foreman]

>> Do we want our roads getting clogged up with super slow taxis

Can't we just pass some laws that require Waymos to drive above the speed limit at all times, like normal drivers?

[fragmede]

Or, we could recognize how farcicle it all is, and abolish the limits and make them guidelines, with tickets still being given for being reckless. If we're all safely doing 79 mph anyway, because it's not the 1950's and technology has advanced, just let us do that without risking a ticket.

Speed limits in a school zone should be 15 mph, but we care more that the children are safe than some number. If we have robots that are able to react inhumanly fast and are proven to be able to stop and not run people over, then they should be able to go at whatever speed that has them not running people over.

[dragonwriter]

> Can't we just pass some laws that require Waymos to drive above the speed limit at all times

A law that sets the legal maximum speed as also the legal "must not meet or fall below" speed.

I dunno, seems problematic.

[1970-01-01]

How about this: Since they are statistically better than average drivers, we study the results of sending them around town 10% faster than the speed limit.

[dragonwriter]

It's well known that speed differences on the road are a major cause of safety problems, so unless you are going to have segregated self-driving corridors, having them operate at a higher speed than other traffic is dangerous even if the speed would be safe for them if the other traffic was also self-driving at similar speeds and safe for the non-self-driving traffic if the other traffic was non-self-driving at the lower speed.

[1970-01-01]

>It's well known that speed differences on the road are a major cause

the speed differences you are referring to are road design situations such as highways dumping traffic into downtown traffic. delta V isn't recognized as a severe problem by IIHS nor DOT. speeding very much is.

source: https://highways.dot.gov/media/13876

--What is the effect of speed differences? In addition to absolute speeds, the speed differences between vehicles also have an effect on the crash rate. This effect is studied in two ways. The first type of studies are those that compare the crash rates between roads that have a large speed variance (large differences in vehicle speeds during a 24 hour period) and roads that have a small speed variance. These studies mostly conclude that roads with a large speed variance are less safe (Aarts & Van Schagen, 2006). The second type of studies are those that concentrate on the speed differences between the individual vehicles that were involved in a crash and all the other vehicles. The first studies of this type were conducted in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, e.g. Solomon (1964). These studies always found a U-curve: the slower or faster a car drives compared with most of the vehicles on that road, the more the risk of being involved in a crash increased. However, more recent studies, especially those carried out in Australia (e.g. Kloeden et al., 1997; 2001; 2002) that used more modern measuring instruments and used a more accurate research design, reached a different conclusion. They still indicate that vehicles that drive faster than average on that road have a higher crash rate; vehicles that drive slower, however, were found not to have an increased risk (Figure 3)

[NewJazz]

Please be irony.

[JumpCrisscross]

I don’t think our speed limits are universally set to be obeyed. If they were set at 25 with the expectation of 30 to 35, it does make sense to acknowledge that if autonomous vehicles will actually do 25.

[NewJazz]

Yeah, they are actually. They do research and surveys into traffic speeds. Just because it is difficult to enforce doesn't make it any more justified to go 35 in a 25. That is a big difference, by the way. Almost twice as fast. The fastest humans can run at 25 mph (albeit at short distances). Zero humans can run at speeds of 35 mph. So not just a mathematical difference but a physiological difference as well. Suddenly only the fastest dog breeds can outrun your car... Sorry Lil corgi (they top out at 25 mph typically). Or I dunno, old people, kids, disabled people...

Slower is safer!

[JumpCrisscross]

> do research and surveys into traffic speeds

I know, I’m asking if they adjust for how humans actually drive. There are places in America (funny enough, Phoenix and LA) where going 25 in a 25 will subject you to aggressive driving from others.

[dragonwriter]

> 35 in a 25. That is a big difference, by the way. Almost twice as fast.

1.4 times as fast is not "almost" twice as fast. 50 is twice as fast as 25; 49 is 1.4 times as fast as 35 which is 1.4 times as fast as 25.

[TulliusCicero]

You're correct, but it is true that 35 mph would be roughly double the kinetic energy, which probably matters for accidents.

[rufus_foreman]

>> Yeah, they are actually

Wait, you are asserting that speed limits are set expecting that everyone will obey them?

[sobellian]

While we're at it, do we really want our textile mills getting clogged up with dangerous mechanized looms that steal jobs from ordinary people and give them to the capitalists?

[Kronopath]

Yes.