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.
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?
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.
Though, I do expect there to be an initial surge of aggression when people are forced to reduce their speeds by 15mph.
> 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
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).
There are some rare exceptions like if someone's tail lights are out, but nothing that would apply here.
https://waymo.com/blog/2023/09/waymos-autonomous-vehicles-ar...
Can't we just pass some laws that require Waymos to drive above the speed limit at all times, like normal drivers?
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.
A law that sets the legal maximum speed as also the legal "must not meet or fall below" speed.
I dunno, seems problematic.
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)
Slower is safer!
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.
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.
Wait, you are asserting that speed limits are set expecting that everyone will obey them?
We should be excited about not having humans drive and automating them out of this task they clearly don't want to do.
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?