Even setting aside the malicious SF stuff, Waymo's have enormous advantages over humans relying on mirrors and accounting for blindspots. I never have to be concerned a Waymo hasn't seen me.
I can't wait until the technology is just standard on cars, and they won't let drivers side-swipe or door cyclists.
Dooring people aside, what do you do if someone just leaves the door open when they leave their ride?!
Continue billing them for the ride and send an app notification or phone-call to their phone.
Other potential solutions: If the door is still not closed after n minutes, plead with passers-by, or offer a passing or nearby rider the chance to earn credit by closing the door.
Waymo needs to have staff in SF anyway to pick up cars that malfunction (flat tire, or just close the door).
They're probably too stupid to think like that, though.
Of course, passing costs to all insurance companies is really the same as passing it to all people paying insurance premiums, at which point you can just use tax money to get the same effect. At which point, it's probably easier to regulate it and have the cost passed to everyone buying a car.
Tesla already has dooring prevention. If it detects a bicycle or something coming, it prevents you from opening the door the first time, and shows a warning. You can override it by trying to open it the second time, if you are sure.
https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/1gwjq4v/new_an...
Funnily enough that's exactly why I don't like them. Every time one rolls by me I know that tens of photos of me and even my 3D LIDAR scan get piled in to some fucking Google dataset where it will live forever :/
Their site is even proud of it: https://waymo.com/waymo-driver/ section titled “Keeping an eye on everything, all at once”
“The Waymo Driver's perception system takes complex data gathered from its advanced suite of car sensors, and deciphers what's around it using AI - from pedestrians to cyclists, vehicles to construction, and more. The Waymo Driver also responds to signs and signals, like traffic light colors and temporary stop signs.”
That being said, just speaking with some knowledge of current state: the scans don't live forever. At this point, all the data they collect is way too big to store even for a short period. They'll only keep data in scenarios that are helpful for improving driving performance, which is a tiny subset.
Personally identifiable information is also redacted.
You should probably be more worried about what gmail knows about you than Waymo.
Flock is the same way. For example here's the Flock privacy policy from one of SF's fine local shopping centers: https://www.stonestowngalleria.com/en/visit/lpr-privacy-poli...
> Video Clips captured by the LPR system will automatically be deleted after 30 days; although Images are deleted when no longer needed, the data obtained from the Images may be retained indefinitely. Should any information from the LPR Dashboard be needed to assist with a security or law enforcement matter, it may be retained indefinitely, in paper and electronic form, as part of the security file until it is determined it is no longer needed; in addition, it may be shared with local law enforcement who may retain it in accordance with their own retention policy.
If anyone can share a link to a similar IRL privacy policy for Waymo I would love to read it. The one on their website is conspicuously labeled Waymo Web Privacy Policy lol
For riders, there's the Waymo One privacy policy: https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9184840?sjid=5254444...
Beyond that, https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9190819?hl=en seems to be more relevant to your interests.
Your second link does mention cameras and microphones outside the car but doesn't mention what they keep (full video? stills? LIDAR? RADAR?) or for how long:
“Waymo’s cameras also see the world in context, as a human would, but with a 360° field of view. Our high-resolution vision system can help us detect important things in the world around us like traffic lights and construction zones. Our systems are not designed to use this data to identify individual people.”
The “Our view on your privacy” section links to the same page as your first link, and that page's “What we keep” section is explicitly only about riders:
“We will retain information we associate with your Waymo account, such as name, email and trip history, while your account remains active.”
That being said, I have an anecdote as a former googler: the reality with Google though is very thoughtful and favorable for users if you ask Googlers who've worked on their software products. There are audit trails that can result in instant termination if it's determined that you accessed data without proper business justification. I've known an engineer who was fired for an insufficiently justified user lookup (and later re-hired when they did a deeper look -- hilariously they made this person go through orientation again).
And safeguards / approvals required to access data, so it's not just any joe shmoe who can access the data. Wanna use some data from another Google product for your Google product? You're SOL in most cases. Even accessing training data sourced from youtube videos was so difficult that people grumbled "if I were outside of Google at OpenAI or something I'd have an easier time getting hold of youtube videos -- I'd just scrape them."
This isn't to say any of this is a fair thing to make decisions on for most people, because companies change and welp how do you actually know they're doing the right thing? Imo stronger industry-wide regulations would actually help Google because they already built so much infra to support this stuff, and forcing everyone else to spend energy getting on their level would be a competitive advantage.
I'm not afraid of employees at Google or random Google divisions obtaining unauthorised access to information at me, it's not about that. I'm certain that there's very little data that the targeted advertising part of Google can't access.
Honest question - what's the harm in being targeted by ads? Is it just scrolling youtube more often than you should? Or is there a nefarious side that I'm failing to consider?
For me the thing I hate about location tracking and the ilk is primarily about its harmful externalities (e.g. put into use by gov't, abusive users, or by Google for anticompetitive reasons), not targeted advertising itself.
That, and the existence of targeted advertising incentivises collecting and correlating as much data about people all the time. If it wasn't for targeted ads, I'm sure that Google would've actually just used data from their city-wide surveillance networks for improving their cars (at least until a government would've asked for the data, which is also an issue). But with targeted ads in the mix, there's a huge incentive to collect it and correlate it with all the other data Google has, which is creepy.
So it's not like pure evil. In many cases there's a service being provided to match users to products they want / that don't suck.
> with targeted ads in the mix, there's a huge incentive to collect it and correlate it with all the other data Google has, which is creepy.
Strongly agree that in theory this shit can be used nefariously. That said, Google is far from the scariest of the bunch despite being the biggest. Telecom for example wants to deep inspect your network packets, and they can tell where you are physically today, anywhere in the country without even having cameras driving around 5 US cities.
Stronger regulations around data rights and privacy have been proven to work by the EU. I don't really see another solution apart from a legislative one.
I'm pretty sure between traffic cameras and security cameras lots of commuters on th street are being filmed. With or without Waymos
I don’t understand why so many comments here are missing the context
Fear not, your images and recordings will get piled on somebody's dashcam to do as their heart desires.
I got a dashcam in my Camry recording front and back everytime i drive. I have no interest in preserving those images outside of an accident, but who knows what sommebody else will.
We have no expectations of privacy in public spaces and ultimately I would trust Googles IT security more than some dude with a dashcam
It's not going to be stored forever.
That would be incredibly expensive.
Those cars are taking in TB of information each daily. Scale that to 10s of millions of cars.
It's just not going to happen.
Maybe an ultra compressed representation of you that shares maybe 1 bit in 1 weight somewhere in a NN will live forever.
Maybe.
Don’t they currently have less than 1000 cars? I don’t think they will keep every recording forever but technically, they still could at the current scale.
They have plans to grow 1000s of times this size.
being concerned that a Waymo car took your picture isn't invalid, but man is it a tear drop in the rain of everything else the Googs is doing.
The system was never designed to show you relevant ads that you want to see and would like to buy a product from. The system has always been designed to show you profitable ads. Those have always been and will always be a completely distinct set, with only coincidental overlap if at all.
also some ads really are to everyone. You may not be in a place where you would think about a car, but car makers don't want you to forget you could just in case your situation changes. They also want you to think of some goods as luxuries so you are impressed when you see someone who does have it.
My favorite example of this is in the desktop web version of Google Maps. If you search for some place and try to plot directions from “Your Location” it will prompt for the browser's Geolocation API and will refuse to give directions at all if you don't consent to the prompt: https://i.imgur.com/fIQswnD.png
This is despite the fact that it opens the map with a perfectly-centered and reasonably-sized window around my current location. I have never seen this fail when not using any sort of VPN that moves my GeoIP. They could totally give a reasonable mix–max time estimate based on that window just like the one they show for variable traffic.
But car crashes are the third highest cause of death in the US (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm). As a society, I think the benefit outweighs the cost in this case, and we can (theoretically) continue to make progress on privacy as a society. Seems like much more of a step forward than a step back to me
No, that says “Accidents (unintentional injuries)” as a category are collectively the third leading cause of death, and that category contains a lot of things.
CDC “Underlying Cause of Death” dataset sez… https://wonder.cdc.gov/ucd-icd10-expanded.html https://i.imgur.com/4PB0xyC.jpeg
- “Person injured in unspecified motor-vehicle accident, traffic” is the 50th leading cause of death at 0.4% of deaths.
- “Person injured in collision between other specified motor vehicles (traffic)” is the 108th leading cause of death at 0.2% of deaths.
Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged 5–29 years.
More than half of all road traffic deaths are among vulnerable road users, including pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffi...
Why are you so worried of something snapping tens of thousands of pics of your body (mostly identicaly) that don't tell much about you while the world's biggest ad companies know you better than any single human ever will. I feel popular western sci fi has made people fear companies taking some visual data of their bodies covering minutes at max while fully overlooking the dangers of having your behavioural data covering years at a very granular level.
Yes, I know it's not a choice, both are bad. But I find people everywhere, including here in HN, are overly conscious of getting a few minute worth pictures of their bodies uploaded to some private servers while they are nowhere near as conscious when it comes to data about them (which I would argue mostly covers behavioural data imo).
And my suspicion is that insurance companies don't push for you to get one because it prevents them from fighting claims that they would've won had there been no evidence.
Maybe it's similar for self-driving or whatever we're talking about here (sensors?).
This has always bothered me about aggressive or impatient human drivers: they are probably shaving like 30 seconds off of their daily commute while greatly increasing the odds of an incident.
Now, when there's long stretch or when you have to go up hill, that's where the electric scooter begins to shine and makes the largest difference.
But people speeding, driving aggressively, driving anti-socially (by trying to speed past lines and cut in at the front), running lights and stops... this could be squashed forever, saving lives and ultimately making life more pleasant for everyone.
Ever since then my fear melted away. They see every direction, never blink, and are courteous and careful with pedestrians.
Might as well keep an automatic response even if it's not always useful.
People can have a stress-free commute to a nice house in the countryside and work in the cities. Because the car is electric, it will be inexpensive to run.
If you drive a lot (like the person in the countryside) the car that is there when you want to is worth owning vs a shared car that you might have to wait for. Plus by owning the car you can just leave your golf clubs in the trunk.
If you can stand being in a used car you will discover that shared cars are all more expensive just because at the first sign of cosmetic wear they get rid of it while seats that have been sat in a few times are still good enough for many more years. (unless you almost never drive anyway)
Because of the above I don't see much growth in the shared car market. There will be some because there are people who don't have parking, people who don't drive much, and people who demand a new car that they don't otherwise care about. However the vast majority of people will still own their own car.
I can read on the subway, but while a 20 min subway ride is fine, an hour each way is still a lot, and a two hour train commute just doesn't leave much time in your life for doing social things.
Also, I think there's going to be a huge surge in in-demand AI buses. Rideshares will take people to a random spot, you'll wait 2 minutes for a predetermined seat on a specific bus, and then switch to a rideshare van for the last 5 minute drive to your office in the city.
It's just going to be so much cheaper. With economies of scale and urban congestion pricing, you'll have to choose between dropping $45 on a dedicated hour-long door-to-door car trip, or $6 for the car-bus-van version which is only 20% slower anyways.
OTOH, if I'm in a decent-sized car (minivan?) for 45 minutes+, I can get work done. I can then stay less time at work.
You're clearly wrong.
> Late-stage capitalism will find ways to make it cost exactly as much as driving your own car.
Late-stage capitalism is a defunct theory based on Marxism.
Real, actual capitalism results in competition which drives prices down, as long as there are two or more competitors and antitrust law is enforced. Which is generally the case.
And in the case of monopolies like city buses, cities set prices directly in response to democratic pressure. By your argument, NYC subways ought to be $25 a ride... but they aren't.
I generally agree with you here, (though it's a bit simplistic for things not directly related to price: for example good luck avoiding arbitration clauses)
> Which is generally the case.
Now our opinions differ. Lina Khan was an exception, and I certainly can't imagine the current regime standing up against money.
Some recent(ish) ones I think have been less than great for competition
HBO / Discovery?
Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp?
LiveNation / Ticketmaster?
Disney / Fox?
Charter / Time Warner Cable?
AT&T / Time Warner?
CBS / Viacom?
Comcast / NBC?
JP Morgan / Chase?
CVS / Aetna?
Cigna / Express Scripts?
Sinclair Medianot with the current set of voters it wont
(And that was not the only close call I had with that geezer at that corner.)
I still remember the first time I went through a four-way stop intersection and saw a driverless car idling, waiting for its turn. It was weird and nerve-wracking. Now… I’d much prefer that to almost any other interaction at the same spot.
I've now had it happen twice that a car will fully blow through an intersection because they know a Waymo will slam on the breaks to avoid a collision. They basically abuse the car's reflexes.
Also in any sort of situation where the Waymo is being very cautious the biggest danger is the impatient people behind the Waymo who will break the law to go out and around it.
Every time the light turns green for you, you can expect 1-3 cars to keep rolling through until you can go. I've almost been rear ended by not running a light that just turned red because the person behind me also wants to floor it through. Yakety sax shit.
Then I found out in 2019, the Texas legislature outlawed the use of red-light cameras.
Muh freedum.
>Muh freedum.
To be fair you have progressives arguing against red light cameras as well, on the basis that it's a regressive tax on poor people, and that it causes more accidents through drivers slamming on the brakes on a yellow.
As for causing more accidents through slamming brakes on the yellow, I simply don't believe that. But if it helps you can extend the yellow duration by an extra half second.
The variability of how much people crash in various parts of the US is fascinating, like at least one entire order of magnitude difference in otherwise comparable cities.
Looking forward to this future.
If they keep up the slow and steady improvements and roll outs to cities worldwide it’s hard to imagine my one year old ever needing to drive a vehicle.
I imagine the weirdness of the situation (legal left on red) triggers it's "creep forward so I can see" logic but it definitely shouldn't be blocking a busy crosswalk there when there is little to know chance it will be able to turn AND peds from both sides.
Luckily, no one was hurt, and I generally trust a waymo not to plow into a pedestrian when it makes a maneuver like that. I also understand the argument that autonomous vehicles are easily safer on average than human drivers, and that’s what matters when making policy decisions.
But they are not perfect, and when they make mistakes, they tend to be particularly egregious.
I'll be happy when the average driver is a computer that does better than the average human. Deaths won't go down to 0 but at least it'll less chaotic.
Besides, this is a study on Waymo probably influenced by them too to publish on their blog.
Sometimes I am ashamed a bit how early drivers break for me as a pedestrian and let me pass, like 3m from road when they and 2-3 more cars could easily pass through without affecting my crossing.
The problem is getting used to this and then going to places where this is not the norm, potentially very dangerous especially for kids.
Basically every street could be a shared space like Exhibition Road[0]. Making the city optimized for cars is a relatively recent development in the history of cities. I say this as a car owner and driver.
[0] https://www.udg.org.uk/publications/articles/exhibition-road...
Waymo is like the most courteous, respectful driver you can possibly imagine. They have infinite patience and will always take the option which is the safest for everyone. One thing which really impressed me is how patient they are at crosswalks. When I'm jogging, a Waymo will happily wait for me to cross - even when I'm 10 feet away from even entering the crosswalk! I don't know if I even have that much patience while driving! I've had a number of near misses with human drivers who don't bother checking or accelerate for no reason after I'm already in the crosswalk. Can you imagine a Waymo ever doing that?
If I see a Waymo on the street near me I immediately feel safer because I know it is not about to commit some unhinged behavior. I cannot say enough good things about them.