It would be cool if you can configure the ride preferences for how aggressive you'd like it to drive.
I suspect with their new permits approved, you’ll see them drive on the highway soon, which will result in much faster trips where applicable.
I am really glad it’s not aggressive at driving - they drive how humans are supposed to - cautiously. Humans kill people regularly from aggressive driving.
(There's a slight component where as primarily a cyclist I feel that Waymos are much nicer to cyclists than human drivers are and it gives me affinity to Waymos that I don't feel for human drivers in the city.)
I find Waymo the most useful to take after a concert far from a MUNI stop because usually surge pricing makes Lyft and Uber really expensive and I'm usually tired enough to not want to walk to a stop or it's late enough that MUNI headways are far apart.
As someone who lives in a city without Waymo, I'm curious -- are you allowed to ride in the front seat?
I can generally tolerate riding in the front passenger seat, as long as the driver is competent, but I suffer a bit riding in the rear. And don't get me started on what it's like riding in a limo...
So I was pretty annoyed after I got into the car and then realized that the route it selected was going through a bunch of hills and side streets that would take twice as long as the most direct route (via Google Maps) and there's nothing I could do to change that once the ride started.
When did you take it? They’ve started taking freeways in January, including for intracity trips [1].
[1] https://waymo.com/blog/2024/01/from-surface-streets-to-freew...
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/watch-waymos-self-driving...
I tried it in Phoenix in May and it wouldn’t take the freeway. And it’s definitely not generally available in the Bay area. (I take them every week or two.)
Not a special customer, can't even get access in LA. Waymo took the freeway in Phoenix in March.
Do you mean they were doing testing with employees and special customers? Or do you mean anyone who had gotten off the waitlist could ride on the freeway in Phoenix?
A big problem with Waymo in its current state is how its routes are terribly inefficient.
It purposely avoids freeways and higher speed roads, opting to take more inefficient routes without regards to the number of stop signs, hills, and other factors which will inevitably lead to a longer travel time. It's almost like it's using a worse version of the "Avoid highways" feature on Google Maps, and getting to a further destination can take almost twice the amount of time as compared to a Lyft/Uber.
Another problem is its lack of human intuition and strategies when driving in the city during some kind of event where many of the roads are blocked off. A human driver would have been navigating the blocked roads throughout the day and already know where to go to avoid the crowds, where as Waymo naively follows its navigation system getting stuck in a bunch of traffic for no reason.
It also drives very slowly which leads to human drivers constantly trying to overtake you.