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by scj 95 days ago
"For example, the current cities Waymo operates in do not have appreciable snow fall, and as a result neither the Waymo nor the human benchmark data include this type of inclement weather."

I'm happy to see this acknowledged, and hope it's a sign that they appreciate the difficulties of winter driving.

4 comments

It’s wild to me how people are so fixated on this. Yes, obviously winter driving has challenges. And also obviously, the leading self-driving company has thought about that.

They’re preparing to launch and have already been testing in Chicago, detroit, Minneapolis, Denver, Philadelphia, Boston, NYC, and London. I think it’s safe to assume they’ve considered winter driving.

And they're in Pittsburgh. Seen them driving while snowing.
Our sixth generation sensor suite is intended for winter driving: https://waymo.com/blog/2025/10/creating-an-all-weather-drive... for some nice visuals.
Ooh, that's a worthy challenge. Of course, I can imagine getting enough data on all of those cities and deciding to launch everywhere else but not Boston "because your roads are garbage and you all drive like you're impaired 24/7" :-)
They're definitely aware and working on it: https://x.com/dmitri_dolgov/status/2028863520037867820
They’re in Denver now (not available to the public yet) for this exact reason. Unfortunately we’ve had our least snowy winter in recorded history this year - so they only got a few days of real snow.