As someone who is often on SF city streets without a car - I bike and run a lot - I absolutely love Waymo. I am continuously seeing human drivers cut me off, perform illegal maneuvers (i.e. run red lights when I'm going through a crosswalk), and break various other traffic laws. All these things genuinely put people in danger. Just the other day, a guy started running a "no right turn on red" lane in SF, and when I pointed it out to him he floored his car - through the red - right in front of me and laughed at me as he sped away. To say nothing of all the times when cars will honk or give me the finger for doing normal things on a street, like walking on a crosswalk.
Waymo is like the most courteous, respectful driver you can possibly imagine. They have infinite patience and will always take the option which is the safest for everyone. One thing which really impressed me is how patient they are at crosswalks. When I'm jogging, a Waymo will happily wait for me to cross - even when I'm 10 feet away from even entering the crosswalk! I don't know if I even have that much patience while driving! I've had a number of near misses with human drivers who don't bother checking or accelerate for no reason after I'm already in the crosswalk. Can you imagine a Waymo ever doing that?
If I see a Waymo on the street near me I immediately feel safer because I know it is not about to commit some unhinged behavior. I cannot say enough good things about them.
Even setting aside the malicious SF stuff, Waymo's have enormous advantages over humans relying on mirrors and accounting for blindspots. I never have to be concerned a Waymo hasn't seen me.
I can't wait until the technology is just standard on cars, and they won't let drivers side-swipe or door cyclists.
> I never have to be concerned a Waymo hasn't seen me.
Funnily enough that's exactly why I don't like them. Every time one rolls by me I know that tens of photos of me and even my 3D LIDAR scan get piled in to some fucking Google dataset where it will live forever :/
“The Waymo Driver's perception system takes complex data gathered from its advanced suite of car sensors, and deciphers what's around it using AI - from pedestrians to cyclists, vehicles to construction, and more. The Waymo Driver also responds to signs and signals, like traffic light colors and temporary stop signs.”
Dooring is so incredibly preventable with simple computer vision and some kind of actuator that adds an audible alarm and mechanical 3x resistance to the door opening when a cyclist is detected. The door should still be openable in emergency but should be hard to open until the cyclist passes.
(For cars that have both a normally-used electronic door open button and a manual emergency release (e.g. Teslas), the electronic button can use the car's existing cameras to detect cyclists first before actuating the door to open. This would be a trivial software change in the specific case of Teslas. The only thing I dislike about the Tesla setup though is that most non-owners are unaware of where the mechanical emergency release is; it is not obvious and not labelled.)
I bet that when this tech is in normal cars some will have it tuned to drive much more aggressively and/or simply have that be a setting. I suspect that would be a big selling point / driving tacitly would be an anti-selling point.
The one time I ever rode in a waymo (in Los Angeles), I had a contradictory experience. My Waymo was attempting to make a right turn at a red light. We were stopped behind a human driver who was waiting for pedestrians to finish crossing before proceeding to make the turn. This was a college campus (UCLA), so there were lots of pedestrians. After a few seconds of waiting, the Waymo decided that the driver ahead of us was an immobile obstacle, and cut left around this car to complete the right turn in front of it. There was only one lane to turn into.
Luckily, no one was hurt, and I generally trust a waymo not to plow into a pedestrian when it makes a maneuver like that. I also understand the argument that autonomous vehicles are easily safer on average than human drivers, and that’s what matters when making policy decisions.
But they are not perfect, and when they make mistakes, they tend to be particularly egregious.
I perhaps quarterly see this as a pedestrian with two human drivers.
I'll be happy when the average driver is a computer that does better than the average human. Deaths won't go down to 0 but at least it'll less chaotic.
That mistake might induce human error—which is absolutely a source of danger—but it undoubtedly had a clear path to pull around the “stopped” vehicle, and as you said, you can generally trust Wayno not to plow into pedestrians. So what made it “lucky” that no one was hurt?
Best part is that they probably have data to show that all that patience costs the typical passenger mere seconds to a minute on 99% of rides.
This has always bothered me about aggressive or impatient human drivers: they are probably shaving like 30 seconds off of their daily commute while greatly increasing the odds of an incident.
I experienced this phenomena on my electric scooter. I could always scoot faster than someone walking but ultimately it makes little difference because I just spent more time for the crossing signal to turn green. So they end up catching up to me.
Now, when there's long stretch or when you have to go up hill, that's where the electric scooter begins to shine and makes the largest difference.
I’m a fellow cyclist in SF and can only wholeheartedly second this. To add some extra anxiety, I’m usually riding a cargo bike, ferrying a child to or from daycare.
I still remember the first time I went through a four-way stop intersection and saw a driverless car idling, waiting for its turn. It was weird and nerve-wracking. Now… I’d much prefer that to almost any other interaction at the same spot.
It's really interesting seeing all the comments from cyclists regarding Waymos. I currently live in a Waymo-less city and they weren't common enough in SF when I was biking there to be a big factor but I remember some harrowing moments with human drivers (without precious cargo - that sounds extra scary!). I'd be curious to try it again and am pleasantly surprised to hear it makes such a big difference!
My favorite thing from my first Waymo ride was watching a lady walk up to the middle of the street to cross. The Waymo saw her, slowed, and waited to let her cross. She smiled and waved and immediately felt dumb because who is she waving to? Do I wave back? We laughed at each other as it drove away.
Ever since then my fear melted away. They see every direction, never blink, and are courteous and careful with pedestrians.
I am also hopeful that Waymo has other positive externalities for bikes/pedestrians: less need for parking spots, car ownership, etc. At the same time, I guess you could say the same for rideshare, so it would depend on if robo-rideshare is cheaper than ownership
My prediction is that car usage will go thought the roof when AI cars work.
People can have a stress-free commute to a nice house in the countryside and work in the cities. Because the car is electric, it will be inexpensive to run.
I've now had it happen twice that a car will fully blow through an intersection because they know a Waymo will slam on the breaks to avoid a collision. They basically abuse the car's reflexes.
Also in any sort of situation where the Waymo is being very cautious the biggest danger is the impatient people behind the Waymo who will break the law to go out and around it.
It’s really cool to read reports like this, keeping in mind that just a few years ago many people were loudly proclaiming self driving cars were decades away, and would never be safer drivers than humans.
If they keep up the slow and steady improvements and roll outs to cities worldwide it’s hard to imagine my one year old ever needing to drive a vehicle.
One night a few weeks ago I took a Waymo ride at night. Somewhere out in an unfamiliar neighborhoood, I realized that I hadn't seen a human being for dozens of blocks. The streets were full of cars, but every single one was an empty Waymo or Zoox. I spent the rest of the ride musing about what would happen if an armed mugger jumped in front of the car at the next traffic light, and the whole thing felt a little bit less safe.
I agree, to a point. Waymo has some vaguely aggressive habits that are usually for the best, like initiating their turn forcefully, but there is one specific thing I've noticed. Coming down Mason and turning left onto Bush it is a one way street turning left onto a one way street. Twice now while trying to cross with the light Waymos have crept into the crosswalk while I was already crossing. It's very unsettling.
I imagine the weirdness of the situation (legal left on red) triggers it's "creep forward so I can see" logic but it definitely shouldn't be blocking a busy crosswalk there when there is little to know chance it will be able to turn AND peds from both sides.
You just described situation in Switzerland (and some other western European countries). I don't mean some tiny isolated situation or place, I mean whole countries, anything from tiny village to biggest traffic jam-packed cities.
Sometimes I am ashamed a bit how early drivers break for me as a pedestrian and let me pass, like 3m from road when they and 2-3 more cars could easily pass through without affecting my crossing.
The problem is getting used to this and then going to places where this is not the norm, potentially very dangerous especially for kids.
I wonder how will this behaviour evolve over time? Right now waymo is definitely prioritising safety, but as the tech matures (and competition grows) will the systems start to prioritise speed and so little-by-little start cutting the margins they give to pedestrians? As with any digital platform this degradation wouldn't be explicitly chosen, but just the consequence of many little A/B tests designed to optimise some other metric
I feel like this study aligns with my experience. I don't live in a Waymo city but I do sometimes drive to the office. I find many other drivers to be impatient, short tempered, selfish and at least once a trip, borderline reckless. Computer drivers definitely aren't perfect. But from what I can tell they aren't intentionally unsafe and will probably improve over time. I wish I could say the same for humans.
They are now because winning trust is their biggest hurdle. They've got the "public risk" slider turned all the way down. Let's hope they don't later start to optimise for speed and realise that people probably won't just step out due to fear of death and it's in their best interest to nurture that fear like human drivers currently do.
Once pedestrians and cyclists figure out that Waymo cars will always stop or avoid them they will start ignoring crosswalks and signals and just cross or cut in front of them.
Which would be wonderful? (assuming all cars have similar tech at that point)
Basically every street could be a shared space like Exhibition Road[0]. Making the city optimized for cars is a relatively recent development in the history of cities. I say this as a car owner and driver.
This will surely get some skepticism as it's a Waymo study, but it's nice to see a real‐world dataset this large at 56M miles. An 85 % drop in serious‐injury crashes and 96 % fewer intersection collisions is a strong signal that Level 4 ADS can meaningfully improve safety in ride-hail settings. Still curious about how much of that comes from operational design versus the core autonomy, but it’s a big leap beyond “novelty demo.”
Really excited for autonomy to become more and more common place. People drive more and more like distracted lunatics these days it seems
There was a study a few years back that showed male uber drivers earned more than female drivers. How could this be so, when the dispatch algorithm doesn't discriminate? Turns out men just drive a little faster in the aggregate so they made iirc around 3% more money.
I think the problem is a general one about drivers, not just ride-sharers. I live in a fairly busy area and I am beset by aggressive drivers any time I need to cross a busy road. So many drivers simply ignore pedestrians by default. Not that many of them have Uber or Lyft signs in the window, if anything commercial drivers tend to be a bit more careful in my experience because the downside risk is being unable to work any driving job.
Good point: Part of Waymo's safety stats comes from settings that are probably tuned right now in favor of safety stats even if it means a longer or less-profitable ride. It doesn't care if you're going to lose your job if you're five minutes late.
So a fairer comparison would be contrasting Waymo rides to trips conducted by the Ultra Safe Even If It's Slower Chauffeur Company.
I may be out-of-date here, but I had thought the accelerometers in the phone detected if drivers were too jerky in the movements of the car and that the drivers would be informed of poor service
Humans drive in all weather conditions on all types of roads and also many types of personal vehicles of varying ages and conditions.
Waymo is limited to few specific locations with decent roads and does not drive in poor weather and is limited to a relatively large and safer expensive SUV that is maintained professionally in a fleet.
Studies like this rarely account for such factors , they are compare optimal conditions for self driving to average conditions for humans.
Even if waymo was better when accounting for these factors , if it was much worse in the conditions humans typically are expected to drive [1] they self driving is still less safe than humans on average .
A better comparison could be with professional taxi drivers for the same city (not Uber or Lyft).
I wouldn’t be surprised if Waymo is either on par or poorer than this group .
[1] no study will ever show this as they wouldn’t be able to trial it under those conditions if it is not safe enough
I saw a Waymo completely freeze in road construction and then pull off into a different lanes through cones.
This is all low speed so wasn’t a safety issue (aside from road rage it might trigger in someone), but focusing only on safety also ignores incidents like this.
Aside from the criticisms about the safety methodology outlined in another chain, I think there’s a bait and switch here where they don’t talk about negative impacts to traffic, freezes, inability to handle situations and don’t evaluate their performance against other drivers.
Don’t get me wrong. I think Waymo is doing well to being the first to truly autonomous, but they’re intentionally putting their best foot forward and trying not to draw attention to any of their shortcomings.
Literally riding in a Waymo right now in Los Angeles.
IMO they already won. The amount of stupid things you see people do here while driving is astonishing, so many people are not paying attention and looking at their phones.
I used an Uber on the way here and the car was dirtier while the service was identical (silent ride, got me where I needed to go.)
I’ve also been stuck in a Waymo that couldn’t figure out its way around parked buses, so they have edge cases to improve. But man does it feel like I’m living in the future…
> I used an Uber on the way here and the car was dirtier
To be fair, the fact that Waymos are fancy clean Jaguars is kind of ancillary to the main technology. The tech is currently expensive, so they are targeting the luxury market, which you can also get on Uber if you select a black car or whatever. The people willing to pay for that are less likely to make messes, and the drivers put more effort into frequent cleanings.
Once the tech becomes cheap, expect the car quality and cleanliness to go down. Robocars do have some intrinsic advantages in that it's easier to set up a standard daily cleaning process, but they will still accumulate more garbage and stains when they are used by a broader cross section of the population and only cleaned during charging to reduce costs. (Of course, cheaper and more widely accessible tech is good for everyone; if you want a immaculate leather seats cleaned three times a day, you'll generally be able to pay for it.)
I don't think the Jaguars are particularly spacious or nice. They just got a good deal on the platform. If anything, given the commodity nature of vehicles I'd expect car quality to improve.
Cleanliness doesn't seem that related to how expensive the tech is either - if anything it would only go down if it ceased to affect willingness to pay. As it stands, clean cars are important to their customers. If usage increases, cleaning can ostensibly increase too, no?
YMMV but for me Waymo is usually significantly cheaper than Uber Black and more comparable to UberX (within a few bucks before taking tip into consideration)
What is 1000% better about Waymo than rideshares is the liveried fleet vehicles.
Regular taxis around here are also liveried fleet vehicles. Especially the very large providers: if I summon a taxi cab, I know for sure its make and model, and its paint job will clearly indicate it's on-duty as a taxi cab. You don't understand how incredibly important this is sometimes.
For the simple yet panic-inducing task of strapping on my seat belt: I can do it in seconds with a liveried vehicle, because I know exactly what to expect. In a rideshare like an Uber, every time a car arrives, it is a new make, new model (I swear to god what the fuck is a "Polestar"???) and the owner might have wrapped on some crazy aftermarket seat covers, and finding the seat belt and its mating latch is a huge drama. I've taken to leaving the passenger seat open, until I can get the belt safely latched, because otherwise the driver will promptly take off, and panic will increase 3x as the vehicle is moving and I can't find the seat belt.
Other than that, the liveried vehicles are easier to maintain; they're easier to keep clean; they're much better for brand recognition. Hallelujah for Waymo!
A quarter of the ubers I get now absolutely reek of cigarettes. It has been mostly eastern european immigrants ridesharing as of late in my experience.
I considered getting a Waymo once in LA but I found that since it doesn't go on highways, it is incredibly slow, and cost $60 to spend the same 1 hour as riding the E line for my trip. I ended up riding the E line.
Just last week, I was able to walk to the E-line in daylight; E-line to downtown; E-line back; and take Waymo at night home. It can be useful for a "last mile" scenario.
I found I can't rely on it too much. Rain and a momentary (2-second) power blackout and suddenly my pickup in 3 minutes is cancelled and they're sending me a human driver who's 20 minutes away. Wonder what happens if the blackout occurs during the ride
Was genuinely impressed when I took my first Waymo, not only for comfort, but the small microdecisions it made as a driver. As a person whose lost a parent to a sleepy driver, and a victim to 2 texting drivers, I welcome AI driving revolution.
Anecdotally, as someone who bikes a lot in SF, Waymo's are a lot safer than human drivers simply because they follow the letter of traffic laws. Stopping at stop signs, waiting for pedestrians to clear the box, following the posted speed limits, etc.
Just following the letter of the law is so huge. Even people who think they're being nice by doing something out of the ordinary make the situation so much more dangerous because now you don't know what's going to happen. Even if they weren't great drivers, the consistency makes so much of a difference.
I was just on a business trip to San Francisco for a few days, and I observed the near opposite of this from the Waymo fleet in SoMa:
* Waymo vehicle creeping into the pedestrian crosswalk (while the pedestrians had right of way to cross), which caused someone to have to walk around the car into the intersection ahead of the Waymo.
* Waymo vehicle entering a dedicated bike lane and practically tailgating the bicyclist that was ahead of it.
These might be safer than human drivers in aggregate and normalized by kilometer driven, but they drive like humans — greedily and non-defensively. I wouldn't want one these anywhere near a high-pedestrian traffic area ever, and I feel the same about human-driven cars, too.
In California, California Vehicle Code § 21209(a)(3) expressly permits a motor vehicle to enter a bicycle lane “to prepare for a turn within a distance of 200 feet from the intersection” -- among other cases. (The vehicle must yield to cyclists in the lane.)
> I wouldn't want one these anywhere near a high-pedestrian traffic area ever, and I feel the same about human-driven cars, too.
Much of San Francisco is a "a high-pedestrian traffic area" and Waymos operate in those areas constantly and more or less flawlessly. As someone who lived carless in SF for nearly 15 years, I see nothing but upside from more Waymos and less human drivers on those busy streets.
Note that you have to enter a painted bike lane before turning, because it's safer to do it that way rather than crossing the bike lane right at the turn.
I know it can seem discourteous to cyclists, but it really is the smarter way.
Neither of the examples you cite strike me as particularly dangerous nor even illegal. The pedestrians were given the right of way. And entering bike lanes is fine for crossing or short distances where merited unless grade separated.
entering a bike lane is safer, as many others noted.
sorry but many of us live here and interact with these cars daily. they are realky good, can't really see any situation in which they initiate a pedestrian collision
This is great and there’s another area of influence that I’ve heard other traffic engineers discuss: platoon pacing. A platoon is the word that traffic engineers give to a group of cars traveling together. A platoon is most explicitly visible on a corridor with signals timed for a green wave, but occurs in many other contexts.
Human drivers often race when in a platoon— not even on purpose it’s just an instinct to go as fast or faster than other cars which has a feedback effect to increase platoon speed.
Waymos, following the exact speed limit, don’t do this. On 1 lane streets they literally set the platoon pace to the legal speed limit.
The effect of this is hard to study and quantify but it’s a real and positive impact of self driving cars on city streets. Haven’t seen research on this topic yet.
This also came up recently in a thread about speed governors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43812856 Just a few governor-equipped vehicles (e.g. from public fleets or prior speeding offenders) can reduce speeding on the whole road.
On most roads, speeding isn’t a safety issue and shouldn’t be discouraged, as road throughput is important. Speed limits are usually set too low due to standardized inflexible policies or desire for revenue.
On some roads, however, it is a massive safety issue, and everyone is driving unsafely because the road is designed badly for its intended purpose. (So-called “stroads” are the canonical example.)
I saw a Waymo stop at a crosswalk last night in the dark where there was a person standing there waiting to cross that I don't think I would have seen. The person was not standing out in the road, they were standing there patiently waiting to make sure the car actually stopped since it was dark. I was really impressed! I don't think I'm a reckless or impatient driver, but I think the Waymo's are probably better at driving than I am. I know I prefer the Waymos to the human drivers I typically see on the road.
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Waymo is like the most courteous, respectful driver you can possibly imagine. They have infinite patience and will always take the option which is the safest for everyone. One thing which really impressed me is how patient they are at crosswalks. When I'm jogging, a Waymo will happily wait for me to cross - even when I'm 10 feet away from even entering the crosswalk! I don't know if I even have that much patience while driving! I've had a number of near misses with human drivers who don't bother checking or accelerate for no reason after I'm already in the crosswalk. Can you imagine a Waymo ever doing that?
If I see a Waymo on the street near me I immediately feel safer because I know it is not about to commit some unhinged behavior. I cannot say enough good things about them.
Even setting aside the malicious SF stuff, Waymo's have enormous advantages over humans relying on mirrors and accounting for blindspots. I never have to be concerned a Waymo hasn't seen me.
I can't wait until the technology is just standard on cars, and they won't let drivers side-swipe or door cyclists.
Funnily enough that's exactly why I don't like them. Every time one rolls by me I know that tens of photos of me and even my 3D LIDAR scan get piled in to some fucking Google dataset where it will live forever :/
Their site is even proud of it: https://waymo.com/waymo-driver/ section titled “Keeping an eye on everything, all at once”
“The Waymo Driver's perception system takes complex data gathered from its advanced suite of car sensors, and deciphers what's around it using AI - from pedestrians to cyclists, vehicles to construction, and more. The Waymo Driver also responds to signs and signals, like traffic light colors and temporary stop signs.”
(For cars that have both a normally-used electronic door open button and a manual emergency release (e.g. Teslas), the electronic button can use the car's existing cameras to detect cyclists first before actuating the door to open. This would be a trivial software change in the specific case of Teslas. The only thing I dislike about the Tesla setup though is that most non-owners are unaware of where the mechanical emergency release is; it is not obvious and not labelled.)
Luckily, no one was hurt, and I generally trust a waymo not to plow into a pedestrian when it makes a maneuver like that. I also understand the argument that autonomous vehicles are easily safer on average than human drivers, and that’s what matters when making policy decisions.
But they are not perfect, and when they make mistakes, they tend to be particularly egregious.
I'll be happy when the average driver is a computer that does better than the average human. Deaths won't go down to 0 but at least it'll less chaotic.
This has always bothered me about aggressive or impatient human drivers: they are probably shaving like 30 seconds off of their daily commute while greatly increasing the odds of an incident.
Now, when there's long stretch or when you have to go up hill, that's where the electric scooter begins to shine and makes the largest difference.
Dead Comment
I still remember the first time I went through a four-way stop intersection and saw a driverless car idling, waiting for its turn. It was weird and nerve-wracking. Now… I’d much prefer that to almost any other interaction at the same spot.
Ever since then my fear melted away. They see every direction, never blink, and are courteous and careful with pedestrians.
Might as well keep an automatic response even if it's not always useful.
People can have a stress-free commute to a nice house in the countryside and work in the cities. Because the car is electric, it will be inexpensive to run.
I've now had it happen twice that a car will fully blow through an intersection because they know a Waymo will slam on the breaks to avoid a collision. They basically abuse the car's reflexes.
Also in any sort of situation where the Waymo is being very cautious the biggest danger is the impatient people behind the Waymo who will break the law to go out and around it.
If they keep up the slow and steady improvements and roll outs to cities worldwide it’s hard to imagine my one year old ever needing to drive a vehicle.
I imagine the weirdness of the situation (legal left on red) triggers it's "creep forward so I can see" logic but it definitely shouldn't be blocking a busy crosswalk there when there is little to know chance it will be able to turn AND peds from both sides.
Sometimes I am ashamed a bit how early drivers break for me as a pedestrian and let me pass, like 3m from road when they and 2-3 more cars could easily pass through without affecting my crossing.
The problem is getting used to this and then going to places where this is not the norm, potentially very dangerous especially for kids.
Besides, this is a study on Waymo probably influenced by them too to publish on their blog.
Basically every street could be a shared space like Exhibition Road[0]. Making the city optimized for cars is a relatively recent development in the history of cities. I say this as a car owner and driver.
[0] https://www.udg.org.uk/publications/articles/exhibition-road...
Looking forward to this future.
Really excited for autonomy to become more and more common place. People drive more and more like distracted lunatics these days it seems
Uber/Lyft drivers are strongly incentivized to drive as quickly and aggressively as possible.
The individual drivers are trading risk for cash.
A company like Google isn't going to make that trade because it's actually the wrong trade across millions of hours.
So a fairer comparison would be contrasting Waymo rides to trips conducted by the Ultra Safe Even If It's Slower Chauffeur Company.
Humans drive in all weather conditions on all types of roads and also many types of personal vehicles of varying ages and conditions.
Waymo is limited to few specific locations with decent roads and does not drive in poor weather and is limited to a relatively large and safer expensive SUV that is maintained professionally in a fleet.
Studies like this rarely account for such factors , they are compare optimal conditions for self driving to average conditions for humans.
Even if waymo was better when accounting for these factors , if it was much worse in the conditions humans typically are expected to drive [1] they self driving is still less safe than humans on average .
A better comparison could be with professional taxi drivers for the same city (not Uber or Lyft).
I wouldn’t be surprised if Waymo is either on par or poorer than this group .
[1] no study will ever show this as they wouldn’t be able to trial it under those conditions if it is not safe enough
This is all low speed so wasn’t a safety issue (aside from road rage it might trigger in someone), but focusing only on safety also ignores incidents like this.
Aside from the criticisms about the safety methodology outlined in another chain, I think there’s a bait and switch here where they don’t talk about negative impacts to traffic, freezes, inability to handle situations and don’t evaluate their performance against other drivers.
Don’t get me wrong. I think Waymo is doing well to being the first to truly autonomous, but they’re intentionally putting their best foot forward and trying not to draw attention to any of their shortcomings.
Dead Comment
IMO they already won. The amount of stupid things you see people do here while driving is astonishing, so many people are not paying attention and looking at their phones.
I used an Uber on the way here and the car was dirtier while the service was identical (silent ride, got me where I needed to go.)
I’ve also been stuck in a Waymo that couldn’t figure out its way around parked buses, so they have edge cases to improve. But man does it feel like I’m living in the future…
To be fair, the fact that Waymos are fancy clean Jaguars is kind of ancillary to the main technology. The tech is currently expensive, so they are targeting the luxury market, which you can also get on Uber if you select a black car or whatever. The people willing to pay for that are less likely to make messes, and the drivers put more effort into frequent cleanings.
Once the tech becomes cheap, expect the car quality and cleanliness to go down. Robocars do have some intrinsic advantages in that it's easier to set up a standard daily cleaning process, but they will still accumulate more garbage and stains when they are used by a broader cross section of the population and only cleaned during charging to reduce costs. (Of course, cheaper and more widely accessible tech is good for everyone; if you want a immaculate leather seats cleaned three times a day, you'll generally be able to pay for it.)
Cleanliness doesn't seem that related to how expensive the tech is either - if anything it would only go down if it ceased to affect willingness to pay. As it stands, clean cars are important to their customers. If usage increases, cleaning can ostensibly increase too, no?
Regular taxis around here are also liveried fleet vehicles. Especially the very large providers: if I summon a taxi cab, I know for sure its make and model, and its paint job will clearly indicate it's on-duty as a taxi cab. You don't understand how incredibly important this is sometimes.
For the simple yet panic-inducing task of strapping on my seat belt: I can do it in seconds with a liveried vehicle, because I know exactly what to expect. In a rideshare like an Uber, every time a car arrives, it is a new make, new model (I swear to god what the fuck is a "Polestar"???) and the owner might have wrapped on some crazy aftermarket seat covers, and finding the seat belt and its mating latch is a huge drama. I've taken to leaving the passenger seat open, until I can get the belt safely latched, because otherwise the driver will promptly take off, and panic will increase 3x as the vehicle is moving and I can't find the seat belt.
Other than that, the liveried vehicles are easier to maintain; they're easier to keep clean; they're much better for brand recognition. Hallelujah for Waymo!
* Waymo vehicle creeping into the pedestrian crosswalk (while the pedestrians had right of way to cross), which caused someone to have to walk around the car into the intersection ahead of the Waymo.
* Waymo vehicle entering a dedicated bike lane and practically tailgating the bicyclist that was ahead of it.
These might be safer than human drivers in aggregate and normalized by kilometer driven, but they drive like humans — greedily and non-defensively. I wouldn't want one these anywhere near a high-pedestrian traffic area ever, and I feel the same about human-driven cars, too.
In California, California Vehicle Code § 21209(a)(3) expressly permits a motor vehicle to enter a bicycle lane “to prepare for a turn within a distance of 200 feet from the intersection” -- among other cases. (The vehicle must yield to cyclists in the lane.)
Much of San Francisco is a "a high-pedestrian traffic area" and Waymos operate in those areas constantly and more or less flawlessly. As someone who lived carless in SF for nearly 15 years, I see nothing but upside from more Waymos and less human drivers on those busy streets.
I know it can seem discourteous to cyclists, but it really is the smarter way.
sorry but many of us live here and interact with these cars daily. they are realky good, can't really see any situation in which they initiate a pedestrian collision
Human drivers often race when in a platoon— not even on purpose it’s just an instinct to go as fast or faster than other cars which has a feedback effect to increase platoon speed.
Waymos, following the exact speed limit, don’t do this. On 1 lane streets they literally set the platoon pace to the legal speed limit.
The effect of this is hard to study and quantify but it’s a real and positive impact of self driving cars on city streets. Haven’t seen research on this topic yet.
On some roads, however, it is a massive safety issue, and everyone is driving unsafely because the road is designed badly for its intended purpose. (So-called “stroads” are the canonical example.)
https://waymo.com/safety/impact/#downloads
(I don't work on that team, but I've noticed a few comments that would be better served with their own analysis on top of the available data)