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A comment on Waymo to begin testing on San Francisco freeways this week. Parent comment

Re:Waymo to begin testing on San Francisco freeways this week by SECProto on Monday August 12, 2024 @09:53PM (#41231399)
Freeways are much, much less forgiving of abrupt speed changes and braking, which is something waymo (used to) have quite an issue with. Moving to freeways shows they are confident that won't be an ongoing issue.
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Re:Waymo to begin testing on San Francisco freeways this week by SoftTalker on Monday August 12, 2024 @10:15PM (#41231522)
Yes I was driving on a freeway last week and traffic went from 80mph to dead stop about as fast as I could stand on the brakes. I didn't hit the car in front of me with only a few feet to spare, and fortunately the driver behind me was also paying attention. The jam eventually cleared, and there was absolutely no indication of what caused it.
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Re:Waymo to begin testing on San Francisco freeways this week by tanseydavid on Monday August 12, 2024 @11:44PM (#41232009)
>> and there was absolutely no indication of what caused it

That's the Accordion Effect.

With enough cars on the road, one little tap of someone's brakes flashes their brake lights and it ripples upstream until the 80mph column of cars is forced to go to down to zero ASAP.

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