* Waymo made a right turn up a steep hill. Two lanes each way. It then pulled a bit into the left lane abruptly and I didn't get why until a split second later a skateboarder was crouched down and went by on my right against traffic. There was zero chance a human would pull that off. Not enough time for a head check or mirror check. There wouldn't have been an accident but the Waymo clearly has insane reaction time and vision advantages - and uses them.
If it was a human that person would have been dead, no question.
Sometimes I'm riding in a Waymo (which I do every single day, 4x) and it does something, and I double take. Then a second later I see whatever it was it reacted to, and I'm like "dang, why did I doubt you, robotic overload?"
The best part is that it works the same way in the day time vs the night time.
Magic.
This was the turn - https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7337193,-122.4350752,3a,75y,...
They definitely pushed the "aggressive" lever up a little over the last month.
I think it's one of those cases where it's sort of obvious it can calculate trajectories and speeds much better than a human, so it's a safe manoeuvre in theory, but it "feels" bad as a passenger.
Same thing for where it can see that it can squeeze through a tight "lane" but a normal human driver would probably wait until the oncoming traffic had passed.