Self-driving Waymos secure final clearance for expansion beyond S.F

Re:Self-driving Waymos secure final clearance for expansion ... by ortusdux on Friday June 21, 2024 @02:53PM (#40752491)

I'm still surprised that they, and most of their competitors, chose to start off in such difficult to navigate regions. I would have started off in a retirement community or the like.

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Re:Self-driving Waymos secure final clearance for expansion ... by AzzyHN on Friday June 21, 2024 @03:43PM (#40752985)

They did some driving in some Arizona suburbs too, iirc. The reasoning for having so much driving in SF is twofold

1. Silicon Valley, both for the workers and the general public's willingness to embrace fancy new tech 2. SF is DIFFICULT to drive in. If you follow all driving laws & drive super defensively, you'll never get anywhere on time. If an AI can learn to effectively navigate around traffic, construction, stopped rideshare and foodshare cars, large crowds, etc etc, it can drive anywhere.

SF also gets a lot of rain and dense fog, good for testing low-visibility conditions

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Re:Self-driving Waymos secure final clearance for expansion ... by joshchaney on Friday June 21, 2024 @04:13PM (#40753334)

They did some driving in some Arizona suburbs too

I think you are really understating it. I believe Chandler, AZ has been Waymo's proving grounds for years, and according to this article (https://www.wsj.com/us-news/waymo-phoenix-arizona-self-drivi...) the Phoenix area is the leader of autonomous vehicle service.

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Re:Self-driving Waymos secure final clearance for expansion ... by thepasswordis on Friday June 21, 2024 @08:35PM (#40755222)

Waymo has almost completely replaced Uber/Lyft for everybody I know in the Phoenix area and it’s been this way for several years.

It’s just absolutely normalized here to the point of barely being a novelty anymore. Waymos are absolutely everywhere.

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Re:Self-driving Waymos secure final clearance for expansion ... by dntrkv on Friday June 21, 2024 @09:50PM (#40755535)

I mean it’s been like that in SF for a while now. Tons of people take Uber/Lyft still but I see dozens of Waymos everyday and I’ve been Waymo only for about a year now.

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Re:Self-driving Waymos secure final clearance for expansion ... by standardUser on Friday June 21, 2024 @04:35PM (#40753528)

SF gets mild rain and mild fog, which may be even better for early testing than places with more severe weather.

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Re:Self-driving Waymos secure final clearance for expansion ... by extragood on Saturday June 22, 2024 @05:28PM (#40762370)

Your 2nd point was what really sold me. I was apprehensive before my first ride but it deftly navigated around double parked cars in narrow side streets like I would have done myself. Surpassed my expectations for sure.

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Re:Self-driving Waymos secure final clearance for expansion ... by SheinhardtWigCo on Friday June 21, 2024 @03:06PM (#40752622)

They kinda did that - they were operating in the suburbs around Phoenix AZ for years before launching in SF.

Not operating in difficult areas would slow them down because progress in this domain is bound by the breadth of edge cases encountered in the wild.

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Re:Self-driving Waymos secure final clearance for expansion ... by AlotOfReading on Friday June 21, 2024 @10:07PM (#40755594)

There was actually an autonomous vehicle company focused specifically on retirement communities called voyage. They were acqui-hired by Cruise several years ago and the project shut down because there was no real viability.

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Re:Self-driving Waymos secure final clearance for expansion ... by whiplash451 on Friday June 21, 2024 @04:28PM (#40753465)

You need to work on the real problem head-on. « Solving » retirement zones might lead to a tech stack that is totally unfit to dense areas.

Also, the risk aversion of people in retirement zones does not make it a great target customer base.

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