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by themafia3 hours ago |
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upvoteby bryanlarsen3 hours ago|
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Freeways are far easier for a robot to drive on than streets. Driving on freeways would significantly lower Waymo's accident per mile rate.

The difference is that accidents on a freeway are far more likely to be fatal than accidents on a city street.

Waymo didn't avoid freeways because they were hard, they avoided them because they were dangerous.

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upvoteby MBCook2 hours ago|
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> Driving on freeways would significantly lower Waymo's accident per mile rate.

Maybe. We don’t know for sure.

You seem to frame that a bit like Waymo is cheating or padding their numbers.

But I see that as them taking appropriate care and avoiding stupid risks.

Anyway as someone else pointed out they recently started doing freeways in Austin so we’ll know soon.

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upvoteby bryanlarsen58 minutes ago|
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> You seem to frame that a bit like Waymo is cheating or padding their numbers.

Not sure how you read that. I'm saying Waymo was prioritizing safety.

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upvoteby MBCook44 minutes ago|
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Oh, sorry. I thought you were arguing from the other side, saying that Waymo only looked good because they were avoiding anything difficult.

Same argument, different sentiment.

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upvoteby mikkupikku3 hours ago|
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Freeway accidents, due to their nature, are a lot harder to ignore and underreport than accidentally bumping or scraping into another car at low speeds. It's like using murder rates to estimate real crime rates because murders, unlike most other crimes, are far more likely to be properly documented.
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upvoteby phainopepla23 hours ago|
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Waymo started rolling out freeway trips in some cities late last year
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upvoteby irl_zebra3 hours ago|
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Elon definitely has this cult of personality around him where people will jump in and defend his companies (as a stand-in for him) on the internet, even in the face of some common sense observations. I don't get the sense that anything you've said is particularly reasonable outside of being lured in by Elon's personality.
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upvoteby mikkupikku3 hours ago|
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This is absolutely true. There is a flip side however, where people who dislike Elon Musk will sometimes talk up his competitors, seemingly for no good reason other than them being at least nominally competitors to Musk companies. Nikola and Spinlaunch are two that come to mind; quite blatant scams that have gotten far too much attention because they aren't Musk companies.

Tesla FSD is crap. But I also think we wouldn't see quite so much praise of Waymo unless Tesla also had aspirations in this domain. Genuinely, what is so great about a robo taxi even if it works well? Do people really hate immigrants this much?

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upvoteby largbae1 hours ago|
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It isn't about hatred of the human drivers for me. Waymo's service is so safe and consistent that I would trust my 10-yr-old to take a ride in it solo if it were permitted by the ToS. Most Uber/Lyft/etc. rides are just as safe, but due to the inconsistency I would never reach that level of trust.

I don't live in a covered area, but when I am in range I will gladly pay 10-20% more for a Waymo ride than an Uber/Lyft/etc.

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upvoteby MBCook1 hours ago|
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I think we’d see praise, but maybe not as much. Every time it’s clear Tesla screwed up it’s an incredibly obvious thing to do to compare them to the number one self driving car out there. Tesla provides such an obvious anchor point for comparisons it’s really hard for Waymo not to come out on top.

What’s so great about a robotaxi even if it works well? It’s neat. As a technology person I like it exists. I don’t know past that. I’ve never used one they’re not deployed where I live.

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upvoteby ericd1 hours ago|
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Kind of like how people maintained that LLMs were trash well past the point where it was obvious that that wasn't true anymore, I often wonder how many people who talk confidently about Tesla FSD have actually used a recent version. Because when we tried a recent FSD and Waymo, we found FSD to be excellent in handling pretty complex scenarios, including one of the worst, a busy airport loop, and we found Waymo to behave a bit weirdly (but still good). But FSD clearly isn't the dumpster fire that people try to make it out to be. v12 was a bit sketchy, and I was too nervous to use it past the first couple of times I tried it, but v14 is great.
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upvoteby UltraSane3 hours ago|
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Waymo overall has a FANTASTIC safety record and has been improving steadily. You can't say the same about Tesla's FSD and Robotaxi.

LIDAR gives Waymo a fundamental advantage.

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