The robotaxis are coming... the driverless car, AV thread. Waymo, Zoox, and others

we should prob have a separate thread for driverless cars given the Waymo growth?

― sleeve, Wednesday, June 25, 2025 1:48 PM (five hours ago)

As someone who bikes a LOT in San Francisco, I'll say this much: the Waymos are by far and away the safest cars to bike near and around. They are very cautious, drive slow and politely, always let me move in front of them, and I generally feel super safe around them. This has NOT been the case for many years around most human drivers and especially old school cabbies when they were more of a thing prior to 2015. Nearly got run over by them a LOT. If Ubers are replaced with robots like they replaced cabbies, as a cyclist I'm all for it.

I've yet to ride in a Waymo though.

the previous discussion

As an SF pedestrian my opinion on Waymos is...neutral. But not thrilled, honestly. For a couple of years in the early pandemic, as I did my morning walk, I saw a prototype regularly out at the same time I was, with a human driver clearly putting it through its general paces, getting it used to the blocks and areas, things like that. Vaguely interesting to note. But the couple of times I've been near them when out and about is weirdly uncanny, and I can't see myself ever actually using one. As was said in the discussion sleeve linked, knowing that any accident will involve Alphabet hiding behind as many lawyers as possible to avoid either paying up or admitting fault doesn't thrill me much. (And I don't knock octobeard's point at all but my sis, who lives in the city and is a biker herself, was in an accident the other year -- while driving in this case. The other driver was very much at fault and there were recordings to readily prove it, and while it took a while for insurance claims to go through and the legal niceties to be observed, pretty much that other driver's insurance knew they'd have to pay and did, earlier this year. I half suspect if it were a Waymo then by now Alphabet would be on its twentieth motion of 'but what IS an accident really' and trying to fob my sis off with a much smaller settlement.)

I do vaguely worry about them being hacked and turned into 1.5 tonne killing machines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOVhz1PllJU

you're leaving out the part where a driverless car does not have a driver

― a (waterface), Wednesday, 25 June 2025 20:40 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I didn't really get this as a slam-dunk, is the point a) you need a soul to drive, who will be listening to Springsteen records if it's all robots or b) robots will be able to drive better than people but it's important that more people die on the roads.

it's not meant to be a slam dunk. cars should have drivers. don't know why you're being all cute with the Springsteen reference--which doesn't really make sense. i also don't recall saying anything about people dying--but if that's your point, the idea that robots can be better drivers than people, and will kill less people on the roads--is foolish

sorry, how is that foolish ?

how about we take the tactic where you explain to me and give evidence that robots will eventually be better drivers than people and that would should continue to invest time money and infastructure in cars versus other forms of public transportation

Is there anything that robots cannot do better than humans ? We're early in the technology and safety is already presented as an argument in favor of AV, so imagine in 5-10 years.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48526-4
https://citiesofthefuture.eu/driverless-cars-far-safer-than-human-drivers/

Maybe you meant more as an ethical concern though ? I certainly feel differently for Elaine Herzberg (first person to die in an AV road accident) than Bridget Driscoll (first person to die in a road accident).

Ethical is not quite the right word, I mean establishing the chain of responsibility / liability.

Of course it comes down to ethics, because people are not going to treat these cars the same. Example here, go to about 4:40. Waymos are programmed to be safe--which has a limitation when you're trying to merge on a highway and for a few seconds, a human driver would do a slightly "unsafe" thing like butting into the merge lane versus the Waymo which just sits there. I don't know how you fix that one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4ldcJmf1a0

Is there anything that robots cannot do better than humans ?

lol

make a meal
write a book
create a piece of art
love another human

also that second study you linked to WAS WRITTEN BY WAYMO

Recently saw this article about bringing these things to London

https://www.businessinsider.com/i-took-chaotic-robotaxi-ride-through-london-impressive-one-question-2025-6

The city's hodgepodge of Roman and Victorian roads are a mess of cycle lanes and pedestrian crossings, with complex road layouts that often serve more as a rough guide than a rulebook for the millions of drivers passing through the city each day.

For Wayve, that complexity is the point. The company says its AI driver — which runs on an end-to-end AI model, an approach also adopted by Tesla — is capable of generalizing and reacting to the physical world in the same way a human would, unlike rivals like Waymo, which rely on high-definition maps and sensors.

Kendall said that this allows Wayve's software to drive anywhere, even places it hasn't seen before, and deal with the kind of unexpected encounters that are an everyday occurrence on the streets of a major city like London.

"I can't wait to see another autonomy company come into London because I think it's extremely challenging," said Kendall.

"The advantage of starting in London is that we've been forced to develop a system that can operate on complex roads and deal with all of these unexpected scenarios," he added.

In the first few minutes of our drive, we encountered multiple jaywalkers, including several who darted out across the street without warning in front of the robotaxi. We also had to inch through narrow gaps between rows of parked cars.

And yeah this thing is going to cause crashes on the North Circular within hours.

Also there have by definition never been any "jaywalkers" in England and the fact that this prick doesn't know that say a lot about quite what a prick he is.

Also 'hodgepodge' instead of 'hotchpotch'

The simple reality is that while AVs might drive more safely than humans under optimal conditions, conditions are rarely optimal, either due to human, infrastructure, or environmental factors. This fact alone means that they will never be able to fully integrate into current systems.

That they also stifle investment in public transportation infrastructure and further silo people away from each other is another compelling argument against them.

And finally, I admit that I am also opposed to them because unlike many people here, I actually *enjoy* driving, and I always have. I walk and ride my bike quite a bit, and I take public transit quite often, too, but I love my little ten year old Subaru. Even in the context of Philadelphia, which has some of the worst roads and scariest drivers of any city in the US, I still love driving.

I guess this is maybe for the controversial opinions thread but my thinking is that there are way too many dangerous/distracted/bad drivers out there and it seems very likely to me that autonomous vehicles will on average be much better than humans at driving. For every suboptimal condition where an autonomous vehicle might perform worse than human drivers there are probably dozens of totally normal conditions where human drivers make mistakes or drive dangerously where a robot driver will do much better so overall I think AVs come out ahead (if not now, then eventually, inevitably).

All that being said, I of course think investing in mass transit will always be a better use of resources than investing in individual cars, no matter how they are being driven.

Aren't computers way worse than people at interpreting and making decisions about the VAST NUMBERS OF THINGS we see and interact with in everyday life?

My understanding, which might be out of date now, was that the only practical use for fully autonomous driving would be for ex long-haul trucking on optimized highways where traffic largely follows norms and drivers interact with each other much less. So trucks would drive between nexuses where freight would have to be picked up by human drivers. (Honestly I wish this would happen in NYC because full size semis regularly go down streets they're not cleared to use and get stuck.)

I guess I should make clear that I don't think a robot driver will be necessarily be better than a human driver at his best, just that a robot driver will be better than a typical tired and distracted driver who is speeding because they are late for work. Humans are very good at plenty of things, including driving, but we're just not always operating at 100%.

I don't know, maybe it's just that I live in a city with a bad driver reputation. I feel like the robots would do better even if I think they will be far from perfect.

Remember that driverless taxis are operating in multiple cities in the US right now (and have been driving around in those cities for 2+ years now). This isn't an argument about IF they can handle real-world conditions, they already are. More data is needed on their safety record vs human drivers but early signs are that while they get in more minor accidents, they cause fewer serious/fatal injuries per driver mile at their current level of ability and are getting better. Human drivers, it needs to be said, are getting worse, especially post-COVID.

it's not meant to be a slam dunk. cars should have drivers. don't know why you're being all cute with the Springsteen reference--which doesn't really make sense. i also don't recall saying anything about people dying--but if that's your point, the idea that robots can be better drivers than people, and will kill less people on the roads--is foolish

― a (waterface), Thursday, June 26, 2025 6:43 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

sorry, how is that foolish ?

― Naledi, Thursday, June 26, 2025 6:45 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

how about we take the tactic where you explain to me and give evidence that robots will eventually be better drivers than people and that would should continue to invest time money and infastructure in cars versus other forms of public transportation

― a (waterface)

airplanes

autopilot on airplanes

humans are horrible drivers, and we're getting worse

i also think ai-guided autonomous everything is bad. i also wish there were no cars, that everyone walked and biked, and that public transportation in the country i live in wasn't destroyed in order to facilitate as many cars as possible. just getting that part out there, because that counterpoint always comes.

but in the meantime, it might be fun to go back to when autopilot became a feature on airplanes and see what people said about it

(yes, i also i understand that autopilot on a plane is different than the problems of doing it on highways with cars and a million different objects and weird situations)

(but i also think it's a hilarious self-own when people jump on some self-driving car accident/death as proof that it will never work, while ignoring the tens of thousands who die every year in the u.s. from their own terrible driving, let alone the much larger number of people who get severly injured)

again not saying anything about accidents, deaths, injuries, etc. i am just saying show me where a robot is going to be a better driver than a human and show me your work.

humans are horrible drivers, and we're getting worse

https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-2023-traffic-fatalities-2024-estimates

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today released its early estimates of traffic fatalities for 2024, projecting that 39,345 people died in traffic crashes. This represents a decrease of about 3.8% compared to the 40,901 fatalities reported in 2023 and marks the first time since 2020 that the number of fatalities fell below 40,000.

The quarterly fatality declines that began in the second quarter of 2022 also continued, with the fourth quarter of 2024 marking the 11th consecutive quarterly decrease in traffic fatalities.

“It’s encouraging to see that traffic fatalities are continuing to fall from their COVID pandemic highs. Total road fatalities, however, remain significantly higher than a decade ago, and America’s traffic fatality rate remains high relative to many peer nations,” NHTSA Chief Counsel Peter Simshauser said. “To reduce fatalities further, USDOT is working closely to partner with the law enforcement community to enhance traffic enforcement on our roads, including speeding, impairment, distraction, and lack of seatbelt use.”

but there ya go, there's your accident stats. we are still high compared to other countries, but i would imagine that's because we have more drivers

AND BIGGER MORE DANGEROUS CARS

yeah, the baseline here (speaking just about the USA) is that with human-piloted cars there is a vehicle fatality about every 12 minutes. consider just some categories of fatalities that would be entirely eliminated with driverless vehicles - distracted driving, speeding, and drunk driving are the top three causes of vehicle fatalities and autonomous cars do not do those things.

what is driving off the road and into a fire hydrant if not "distracted driving"?

yeah, the baseline here (speaking just about the USA) is that with human-piloted cars there is a vehicle fatality about every 12 minutes.

There are plenty of ways to solve this problem that don't involve robot cars and making money for huge corporations to sell us cars and taxis that drive themselves

consider just some categories of fatalities that would be entirely eliminated with driverless vehicles - distracted driving, speeding, and drunk driving are the top three causes of vehicle fatalities and autonomous cars do not do those things.

sure but now replace drunk driving with a new category "a computer made an error and drove a Cybertruck onto a sidewalk and killed a bunch of pedestrians not to mention the people in the car"

xp
those aren't my accident stats. there's a lot of ways to look at stats, and a lot of ways to cite them.

check out "national statistics", here, and look at the excel sheet: https://cdan.dot.gov/tsftables/tsfar.htm#

it only goes through 2023 and back to 2010, but per capita (number of people, number of vehicle miles traveled, etc), fatalities have only gone up. injury rates have gone slightly down.
--

but again, i think all of that is pointless. is 30,000-50,000 deaths per year from cars the gold standard? plus 2 million or so injuries? is there a way to transport people that doesn't kill that many, every year? again, i fucking hate the ai stuff everywhere, i'm just saying, i wouldn't mind if less people died

sure but now replace drunk driving with a new category "a computer made an error and drove a Cybertruck onto a sidewalk and killed a bunch of pedestrians not to mention the people in the car"

well, if you include "fantasies I had about autonomous vehicles killing tons of people" in your stats then they're gonna skew towards human drivers being better but I was thinking we'd stick to those causes of vehicle fatalities that actually happen in large numbers

sure but now replace drunk driving with a new category "a computer made an error and drove a Cybertruck onto a sidewalk and killed a bunch of pedestrians not to mention the people in the car"

and sorry (this is my least popular opinion here, or one of them i think), but yeah go ahead and do that! replace the drunk driving category, which is a really high number, and replace it with "computer error", which i think will end up being a much lower number

xp

there is a way, it’s called rapid rail transport and local public transit infrastructure

xpost once again i will remind you that i agree with you that fewer people should die and that is not the argument i am having, but it seems to be the argument everyone wants to have because having robots drive cars is kind of indefensable but sure go ahead and continue to bring up the grim spectre of death and avoid the idea that you have to mount up a defense of why technology should be allowed to drive cars

there is a way, it’s called rapid rail transport and local public transit infrastructure

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

also did it occur to any of you robotstans the idea that there are fewer crashes with the robot cars because THERE ARE FEWER ROBOT CARS ON THE ROAD

i also think ai-guided autonomous everything is bad. i also wish there were no cars, that everyone walked and biked, and that public transportation in the country i live in wasn't destroyed in order to facilitate as many cars as possible. just getting that part out there, because that counterpoint always comes.

― z_tbd, Thursday, June 26, 2025 11:23 AM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

also did it occur to any of you robotstans the idea that there are fewer crashes with the robot cars because THERE ARE FEWER ROBOT CARS ON THE ROAD

yes it did waterface

jfc

why post

me, i mean

why post

like LLMs and other AI models, it comes down to people who are resigned to it and those who are dead set against it, and imho those who are resigned to it have no spiritual backbone

did anyone read anything i posted

i might ask you the same question

didn't you incorrectly cite stats in a really obviously cherry-picked fashion, ignored everything i said about wishing cars didn't exist in the first place, and then called me a robotstan?

I don't have animosity to spare for z or hazel or anyone here. I save mine for people (I have heard at least one person say this) who say "I want driverless cars because I personally dislike driving and want to be driven." INSTEAD OF LIVING SOMEWHERE ELSE OR IMPROVING TRANSIT WITH YOUR CULTURAL CAPITAL AND MONEY. Once again we see the uptake of "AI" driven by people's desire to be served, to live and feel like whatever passes for our current aristocracy.

did anyone read anything i posted

i did, z, but some of your other posts betray being resigned to AVs and okay with then in some ways.

yeah! i'm into the idea of fewer people dying

it's because of my spiritual emptiness

my understanding was that it wasn't that they were disconnected from the internet (cell towers seem pretty redundant) but the lack of working traffic lights caused them to jam up

lol

Waymo Ditched Drivers, But It’s Paying People To Close Robotaxi Doors
A Waymo robotaxi will not move if one of its doors is not closed all the way. So the company is paying at least $20 to fix the problem.
https://insideevs.com/news/783028/waymo-robotaxi-door-closing-gig/

Waymo admits robotaxis are “guided” by humans in the Philippines
https://cybernews.com/news/waymo-overseas-human-agents-robotaxi-security-concerns/

lmao

Think my continued side-eye of these things is even more justified now!

"pay no attention to the driver behind the curtain"

"“I want to start with a little-known fact about autonomous vehicles," US Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) said as he opened his questioning."

80 year olds should not have anything to do with technology policy.

Think my continued side-eye of these things is even more justified now!

and my vitriol against them feels more justified

lol indeed at the door thing. Not sure y'all actually read the remote operator article? They basically come in when the AI is like "WTF" and tell it what to do next. Not like they drive the thing. But it's def unsettling they're half a world away though.

also unsettling that they’re probably being paid terribly for their work.

also, we have no reason to believe anything these companies say. i bet we’ll soon find out that most of these vehicles are actually controlled by humans.

xp The offshored labour conditions issue is critical, yes. Plus it raises the question if AVs have a “last mile” problem and can never be fully autonomous. That’s not inherently bad, I suppose (weird job though), but worth keeping in mind

Nah, I assure you they are mostly automated. I've taken them too many times to the same 4 places, and they do the same strange moves each time. There was one stuck on my street one time, under a large branch, and it was stuck for awhile until an operator could take over.

i bet we’ll soon find out that most of these vehicles are actually controlled by humans.

― a tv star not a dirty computer man (the table is the table), Friday, February 6, 2026 7:20 PM (one hour ago)

if they are actually controlled by humans i would advise waymo to keep doing that shit because so far waymos have turned out to be safer than all other human drivers by a factor of 10

Reboot of Last Starfighter/Ender's Game except this mario kart player with the fewest collisions is recruited into remote driving armada.

I spotted a bunch of autonomous buses in Seoul last month, as you do. They are apparently some kind of trial:
https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10581662

They were stacked up at the south-western corner of Cheonggyecheon, looking rather forlorn. They apparently do a short circuit around Cheonggyecheon, along a stretch of specially-made road, although they have to share it with scooters etc. Seoul introduced driverless-but-with-a-steering-wheel buses a couple of years ago, but these were full-on Docklands Light Railway-style no-steering-wheel pod things. Although they can be optionally controlled with a mobile app.

Imagine controlling a car with a smartphone! As time goes on Tomorrow Never Dies ceases to be a competent follow-up to Goldeneye and instead becomes a warning from history.

"While the bus moved along the circular route mostly on its own throughout the 1-hour ride, the safety staff member had to intervene when traffic became tangled, such as when cars blocked the bus by stopping in the middle of an intersection. The safety officer mostly controlled the bus in this situation using a wireless controller and was able to observe traffic conditions surrounding both the front and rear of the bus through camera footage shown on a tablet near their seat."

This little anecdote might have been amusing if I had used one of the buses. But I wasn't sure if they were even operating. The whole thing seemed strangely timid for the home of Samsung and AKOM. One day they'll eliminate bus drivers entirely and replace them with elderly former fans of Truck Simulator sitting at home, using the Wikipedia / TVTropes model whereby all the work is done by people who aren't paid or even named.

https://lloydalter.substack.com/p/we-may-soon-have-70-million-boomers

These things creep me out

there was just an accident in West LA in which a 92 year old driver plowed at high speed into a market and killed three people. Our most infamous incident like this was this one of course https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Monica_Farmers_Market_crash

I generally think though that some people just don't show the temperament or ability to drive at any age and should be banned from it, bring on the Waymos for them.

boomers will make a program for boomers to be given a "free" personal waymo or something. the freemo program will only ever cover boomers, because boomers will make freemos have a sunset date-- so that younger people cannot get a freemo. continuing freemo would bankrupt the country! and it would be welfare for undeserving olds and poors!

next gen of olds will just be denied vehicle permissions altogether, which seems fine actually. stay home you geezers nobody needs to see you

I want a green waymo with gator teeth like David Carradine's in Death Race 2000

It’s almost like these things are dangerous and shouldn’t be on the road:

https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/emergency-responders-roadside-assistance-waymo

(No, I don’t care about your statistics. Fuck these things)

privatize the profits, socialize the negative effects.

hmm you mean like how actual car crashes (including those with fatalities) take up disproportionate public emergency responder resources while traditional automakers profit?

I personally do believe we should tax these stiffly.

And yeah we should do things to prevent this shifting of responsibility from happening such as collecting fines.

Unfortunately, in California the lack of local control here will make such adjustments challenging.

i see you have emergency responders— how long have you been designing and implementing emergencies? interesting…

hmm you mean like how actual car crashes (including those with fatalities) take up disproportionate public emergency responder resources while traditional automakers profit?

sounds line something a Waymo would say

there's no WAYMO that self driving cars do more to prevent emergency response than dumb people, like parking in front of fire hydrants, cluelessly not moving in front of the fire truck, etc etc...

In San Francisco there were two civilian deaths (two separate accidents hours apart) and a woman basically lost her leg in the sunset when a truck hit her while she was cycling (actually was near the scene shortly after, it was fucked), all drivers were human. Just sayin'. Maybe more of you should try biking or being around these things before posting about how they're "dangerous". They objectively aren't, at least compared to the fucked driving I see in my city on the daily.

Should have mentioned all three of those incidents happened Friday. That's one day of carnage.

i’m not anti-Waymo
i’m anti-car

In the future we will all be forced to eat dirt for every meal. But one day a billionaire will find a way to distribute high-energy rat shit bars to the populace as a source of nutrients. Best of all, there will be heated internet debates about whether it's better to eat dirt or processed rat shit

Even though me, you, and everyone we know wants a vegetable garden. And we can see the neighbor's vegetable garden, and it looks delicious

is the neighbor the billionaire?

Yeah I bike around the same city octo does and I feel *much* safer around Waymos than the average human driver.

the thing is they are 80-90% less likely to be involved in any kind of crash, injury causing or not, but they are even safer than that, as an estimated 60% of crashes with human drivers and no injuries aren't reported at all.

i'm at the point where i'm definitely not anti-Waymo, they kinda creep me out, a driverless car is quite a hurdle to get past. but living in Los Angeles I see these things and i'm not worried about them killing me. having had a friend recently killed by a red-light runner one mile from where i sit now, i'm fully onboard with getting as many people out from behind the wheel as possible. we talk about gun control but vehicle control should maybe be a thing too idk, 40k people getting killed per year in automobile accidents in this country is insane.

Tbh I was pretty neutral about these things but every close call I experience, every accident I read about or see (like Friday in the Sunset) I'm growing far more pro. To a point where I'm on board fully automating all these and even for moving to automate busses as well.

I've noticed an increased, palpable anxiety biking around human drivers in myself, something I may have just normalized now becoming more acute. Part of it is I think knowing the average person behind these vehicles is also more stressed and anxious as well.

"we talk about gun control but vehicle control should maybe be a thing too idk"

This does raise the question of whether the next generation of self-aware, fully-intelligent driverless taxis will be allowed to own and carry guns. Or will that privilege only be afforded to biological citizens? Will self-aware, fully-intelligent driverless taxis have to pass a driving test? It would be like asking a bird to pass a flying test.

Or imagine a future where the Mafia dispose of people by booking them a self-driving taxi, and just programming the taxi to drive around and around on the interstate until the passenger dies of thirst or starvation. Which is probably something that was thought of by J G Ballard or the writers of Judge Dredd.

This does raise the question of whether the next generation of self-aware, fully-intelligent driverless taxis will be allowed to own and carry guns.

this thread delivers the goods

what's cool is we're going to have autonomous guns too!

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/10/us/bart-bay-area-san-francisco-transit.html

waymos for everyone

Study: AVs Will Super-Charge VMT
Yes, robocars address many of our traffic violence troubles, but they may fail to uproot the deeper rot of car dependency that has hollowed out our society

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2026/03/05/study-academics-agree-avs-will-super-charge-vmt-driving-car-dependence-autonomous-vehicles-waymo

absolutely. and with the demand for single family homes from millennials i'm seeing i don't think that's gonna change any time soon either.

couldn't widespread AV adoption eventually reduce the need for street parking, though? that's more lanes.

I shouldn't have been but was shocked to find US gun death stats pushed past auto deaths a few years back.

and most of those is people killing themselves or their family, just tragic

Welcome to the future

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/01/china-robotaxi-outage

This isn’t the first incident involving Baidu’s robotaxis. Last December, authorities in the city of Zhuzhou suspended robotaxi operations after a Baidu-produced autonomous vehicle ran over two pedestrians, putting them in intensive care.

fukkin yikes