[taylorlapeyre]

Living here for the last 10 years, it's been jarring how just in the last few years, driverless taxis went from "it'll never happen" to "is this the default now?"

The Waymos are genuinely good drivers. I look forward to taking them every time.

[xeromal]

I was riding a bike yesterday with a Waymo behind me and was impressed with how much confidence it gave me that it knew I was there.

[Rebelgecko]

One thing that really impressed me about riding Waymo is that when you start to open the door, it'll give really good warnings if you're potentially opening the door into traffic. Even specifying if there's a passing car/bike/scooter

[amelius]

Good LiDAR makes the problem considerably easier.

[tomoyoirl]

I don’t look forward to taking them and choose other drivers, mostly because the price and wait time dynamics are a little funny, but I am glad I did take a ride or two. They’re much better drivers in the sense of “not interested in pushing any limits.” They navigated around a parked truck effectively, queueing and waiting their turn to go into the opposing lane behind some other cars. The perception display of surrounding people and cars was very comforting. My only moment of fear was a sudden stop because a wrong-way bicyclist had lurched out into traffic — that’d happen with any driver, unless we hit the guy. Yeah, I guess you can cone them, they’re that conservative of drivers.

It’s clear that they’re not the cars for me to worry about out there on a bike / on foot / etc.

[toss1]

This makes me wonder why this shouldn't become the default mode of public transport — i.e., subsidized by the local govt in the same way as busses/trolleys. It seems they could actually replace the busses and provide better service with a sufficient inventory of cars. Could even provide Waymo-style vans on regular++ routes, with the "++" being ability to divert to nearby residences, especially for the mobility-impaired.

Why? Why Not?

[oblio]

We do appreciate your sacrifice, here in the EU.

[GardenLetter27]

It's us in the EU who are having the sacrifice though. As we're left behind economically and technologically as a load of octogenarian bureaucrats decide to ban genetic engineering, AI, etc.

[ratg13]

calling protecting people's data, 'banning AI' is an interesting take

[GardenLetter27]

I was referring to the AI Act, not the GDPR.

[frakkingcylons]

Congrats on your breakthroughs in writing laws.

[oblio]

Do you still elect presidents with a minority of the popular vote? Are corporations still people?

Turns out, the right breakthroughs in writing laws are good, too. While the bad ones wreck you.

[sschueller]

Sitting in traffic in a taxi or your own car sucks either way. Public transportation is the only sustainable solution.

[Abroszka]

> driverless taxis went from "it'll never happen" to "is this the default now?"

That's still far away, these are not driverless cars, there is always a driver monitoring, but they monitor not one but many cars, ready to take over.

[ra7]

Highly recommend people read how Waymo's fleet response works before throwing out phrases like "remote drivers take over cars": https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/

[Abroszka]

There is someone to take over as soon as the car encounters something it cannot handle. It's not self driving. By definition it's not driverless, there is always a driver assigned who will take care of it if needed. One of the reason they cannot scale beyond small areas.

[alphabetting]

Do you think the remote operators are driving the vehicles? They can only give the car instructions (pull over, go back to depot etc). In no sense are they driving.

[ra7]

Assistance != taking over.

It's driverless by definition because... there's no driver in the seat. The car is in control and is responsible for its safety at all times.

[lucianbr]

Regardless of the definition, I can't buy and own such a "driverless car" because I don't operate a supervision center with people available to "assist" the car. Whatever "assist" means. Nor can any company that's not large enough to operate the infrastructure.

I'm sure at least some of the hype is in regards to people owning such "driverless" cars.

It's driverless by definition because it does not have a driver, but it's not autonomous by definition, because it requires outside help to function. Cool hair splitting. It's an impressive technical feat for sure. In regards to perceived benefits for society, it's part of the way there, as it reduces the number of humans required to driver from 1 per car to 0.something per car.

[ra7]

These cars are not meant to be owned. They're part of a fleet.

They are driverless and specifically L4 autonomous, which is the best autonomy you can get right now. The vehicles that can operate without any help doesn't exist. You'll be waiting for a long time if that's your expectation.

[foota]

Since the assist doesn't require real time response (e.g., the failure mode is the car not moving, not you dying unlike a tesla) it seems like a non taxi version could simply set you up as the assist monitor.

If you fall asleep or don't respond it's fine, you're just stuck.

I don't think Google plans to do this for a variety of reasons, but I don't think there's fundamentally any reason they couldn't.

[longdustytrail]

Presumably if you own the car you can act as your own “assistant”

[voxic11]

It would go against their operating license for a remote driver to completely take over control of the car. The car is always in ultimate control even when it's getting "assistance" from a remote operator.

[dventimi]

How many someones are there per active vehicle?

[Stevvo]

If you could rent/purchase a vehicle without a steering wheel, would you not want there to be someone available who can help out when the system runs into trouble? As long as there is no driver in the car, does it matter how it drives? Is that not just an irrelevant implementation detail that has no bearing on your passenger experience?

[lucianbr]

As long as it requires some humans to be available to "assist", I'm not sure anyone would sell or buy such a vehicle. Or rent in the "car rental" sense. Taxi service is what makes sense.

If I own the car, and I'm sending it to do errands for me while I work or sleep, seems like the cost of someone being available to "assist" it at short notice would be prohibitive. Unless it requires assistance once a month or so.

[dventimi]

If you're sending it to do errands, you might consider also sending it out to take riders, as a side hustle. Do that, and you're now a taxicab service.

Point being, I suspect many people don't want to own any vehicle, whatever level of automation it has (which could be none). The reason we do is that taking taxis everywhere is too expensive. If that cost can be brought down, however it's done (computer brain, cab driver, capuchin monkey, whatever), many people will be happy to forgo owning a vehicle.

[lucianbr]

I think you meant to reply to the person I replied to.

[dventimi]

At this point I have no idea who's who in this thread anymore. Sorry.

[xnx]

Where did you get this information? There are definitely people ready to respond to any requests from the car or passenger when they come up, but I've never read anything to indicate that each ride is actively monitored by a person.

[Abroszka]

Search for "driver monitoring system". As soon as there is something unexpected there is an actual driver taking care of it. Also the reason why it's not level 5, but stuck at level 4 self driving.

[bryanlarsen]

That's not "always a driver monitoring". They're not actively monitoring all of them all of the time, they're responding to requests from the car.

And they're not drivers, they're supervisors. They don't take over driving, AFAICT they issue high-level commands like "safe to proceed", "take the right lane", et cetera.

[Abroszka]

There is always somebody ready to respond. Of course they can't take full control, that would be stupid dangerous, but they can still control the car. They even have people who go to your car to get it unstuck manually when needed.

[TulliusCicero]

They can tell the car what to do like a human navigator in the front seat, but they don't directly operate the car. Those are very different things.

[JumpCrisscross]

> There is always somebody ready to respond

I mean, this is true for Uber as well.

[__loam]

Nobody is driving the car remotely, that would be an enormous liability. The car calls in and either asks the operator to make a decision for them or tell it where to go. Once they do that, the car handles the how. You're making a lot of proclamations about this stuff without a strong understanding about how it works.

[dventimi]

How many cars does each person monitor?

[__loam]

The waymo I took on Sunday didn't have a driver.