That sounds great for Waymo: I'd love to experience a ride in one and I'll make sure to catch a ride next time I am in CA.

I wonder what it does in common situations, like stop-and-go traffic with two streets joining at an angle, where one has to yield? In that case, if everyone simply followed the rules, the cars in the yielding street would never get through. While I am passive-aggressive myself as a driver, I religiously follow alternating one-by-one from either street "rule", even if I am in a street that has right of way, to ensure traffic moves for both of those and reduce chances of someone overly aggressively moving in from the yielding street.

If it is still passive aggressive in that case, it will work ok while there are other passive human drivers in the road, but would quickly fall apart when everyone drives the same.

> I wonder what it does in common situations, like stop-and-go traffic with two streets joining at an angle, where one has to yield?

Plan a better route? I can’t picture the situation you describe. Yielding traffic just… yields. When there’s an opening they take it.

On my ride the Waymo took a right turn on red. How is the situation you describe different?

Do you still yield unnecessarily when there are cars behind you?

I was talking about a case where there are cars behind me. And it's "unnecessarily" only legally, but most drivers understand this as a driving etiquette in congested traffic.

Picture two streets joining together, both with long lines of vehicles in them. One of them has right of way, the other one doesn't. When everyone drives "passively aggressively" (like Waymo is being described to), an opening never shows up, and "yielding" cars wait until the rush hour clears up, causing people in that street to go bonkers.

This happens quite frequently in many old European cities I've been to in the rush hour or when anything unusual happens (because there are no alternative routes and streets are tight: like a crash or broken-down car ahead might cause this with lots of traffic). Not sure how much it applies to Waymo and SFO, but I can imagine it certainly happens in some areas.

Ah I see, like merging on to a freeway. In Washington the law is actually to zipper merge (take turns) so I would expect Waymo to do that.

It’s a good question and I’m not sure what Waymo would do there. Based on my limited experience I expect it would navigate that situation correctly. The bias is to go (safely), not wait for perfect conditions.

Thanks for the term as well ("zipper merge") — that's what I was referring to.

Yeah, I really wonder how it'd fare in that case while differentiating between "there are just 3 cars there, no need to yield" and "it's an infinite inflow of traffic, better yield to one car"?

My Waymo ride was in LA. They aren’t operating on freeways there yet. Maybe this is one of the challenges.

Apparently they do operate on freeways in San Francisco so maybe someone who has taken a ride there can share their experience.