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Transportation Technology

Waymo To Customers: 'Completely Driverless Waymo Cars Are On the Way' (techcrunch.com) 69

Posted by BeauHD from the mark-your-calendar dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Waymo, the autonomous vehicle business under Alphabet, sent an email to customers of its ride-hailing app that their next trip might not have a human safety driver behind the wheel, according to a copy of the email that was posted on Reddit. The email entitled "Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way" was sent to customers that use its ride-hailing app in the suburbs of Phoenix.

Both the early rider program and Waymo One service use self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans to shuttle Phoenix residents in a geofenced area that covers several suburbs including Chandler and Tempe. All of these "self-driving rides" have a human safety driver behind the wheel. A driverless ride is what it sounds like. No safety driver behind the wheel, although a Waymo employee would likely be present in the vehicle initially.
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Waymo To Customers: 'Completely Driverless Waymo Cars Are On the Way' More

Waymo To Customers: 'Completely Driverless Waymo Cars Are On the Way'

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  • and when someone dies then what? and will the customer be at any risk of an lawsuit or even jail / prison time?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Lanthanide ( 4982283 )

      Are train passengers liable when someone gets killed? Are bus passengers? Are plane passengers? Are ferry passengers?

      Maybe engage your brain next time.

      • Are train passengers liable when someone gets killed? Are bus passengers? Are plane passengers? Are ferry passengers?
        But they are passenger with an real driver in place.

        But with this the EULA will make waymo not an fault for anything. also if they even an red stop button then the passenger may be at fault if they don't hit it before it hits the next Elaine Herzberg

        • But they are passenger with an real driver in place.

          Several airports have automated shuttle buses/trains without drivers. Are the passengers liable there ?

        • Are train passengers liable when someone gets killed? Are bus passengers? Are plane passengers? Are ferry passengers? But they are passenger with an real driver in place.

          But with this the EULA will make waymo not an fault for anything.

          Since whomever the car hits doesn't sign the EULA, it can't be used to avoid Waymo's liability.

          also if they even an red stop button then the passenger may be at fault if they don't hit it before it hits the next Elaine Herzberg

          Most trains have emergency stop buttons or levers, but as previously noted, train passengers are not considered legally at fault for failing to hit it. There is no reason to expect that Waymo passengers would be liable.

          • "By bleeding on this car you have agreed to abide by the rules and stipulations as follows..."

          • Most trains have emergency stop buttons or levers, but as previously noted, train passengers are not considered legally at fault for failing to hit it. There is no reason to expect that Waymo passengers would be liable.

            But cars are not trains so that passengers may have to spend $$$$ to set that precedent in court will PD have the time / cash to do that or will they say take the 3 year min deal.

        • Are train passengers liable when someone gets killed? Are bus passengers? Are plane passengers? Are ferry passengers?
          But they are passenger with an real driver in place.

          Of course, they can be.

          Take the example of unmanned elevators for instance.

          They kill people. These days, they kill mostly elevator repair people, but those people still have families that may be eager to sue.

          If there was a flaw with the elevator itself or the elevator manual, I'm sure a manufacturer can be sued.

          Or if the building owner/manager didn't properly maintain the elevator according to the manual, I'm sure that the negligent building owner can be sued.

          Or if the elevator repair person showed up to wo

          • Because the occupants of driverless cars owned and rented out by Waymo have no responsibility in maintaining our servicing them, or generally any say in how they operate apart from choosing a destination.

          • What makes you think that driverless cars will be treated any differently than unmanned elevators?

            None of those are passengers though, at least not in the role they're being sued under. You listed the owner, passengers aren't owners in this case. They aren't responsible for the maintenance, they aren't doing maintenance, etc...

            A passenger, in this case, is somebody who has requested the service, be it elevator, plane, train, or unmanned Waymo vehicle, to take them somewhere else. They are not in control of the specific route taken, the speeds, specific movements, etc...

            In short, Joe is asking that th

      • Train passengers are not in control of the person who is actually operating the train, so nothing in your analogy is like driverless cars.

        Unless they drive like the automated trains, operated by a central system and on physically separate roads.

        Maybe disengage your brain autonomous driving next time?

        • You realise that a driverless car doesn't have anyone in charge? That's the whole point.

          • well under the EULA the renter or owner is in charge. and we do have an big red button that they can push in case of something going bad.

      • Is the train conductor? Yes. Is the bus driver? Yes. If the ferry captain? Yes.

    • and when someone dies then what? and will the customer be at any risk of an lawsuit or even jail / prison time?

      Google will argue that everyone in Phoenix is extremely elderly and it was inevitable the victim was going to die soon anyway.

      • Google will argue that everyone in Phoenix is extremely elderly and it was inevitable the victim was going to die soon anyway.

        That sounds more like the sort of "aggressively shoot ourselves in the foot until the problem goes away" tactic Uber would use.

        Cases against Google will just sort of stall until the statute of limitations runs out, for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the DA being really into furry porn and worried Google might sync his personal search history to every Chrome instance at city hall.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vlad30 ( 44644 )
      No problem we need a few guinea pigs before I personally will trust autonomous cars

  • I will never get in one of these robo-taxis! I have absolutely no plans to go to Phoenix, and if I did I'm sure I would stay in the city proper and wouldn't go into the nearby suburbs.

    • Re:Never (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Thursday October 10, 2019 @12:48AM (#59290986) Journal

      I will never get in one of these robo-taxis!

      Never? What if they worked demonstrably better than human-taxis?

    • The small cute two-seater cars they use for Google employees in Mountain View already work this way.

      They have no safety driver, or more accurately, the passengers are the safety drivers since they have a big red button that can stop the car, and one of the passengers has to sit in front of the steering wheel. Although technically those cars don't come to you, you have to go them and you need a valid driver's license if you want to get picked up because they won't drive on public roads without someone who's

    • Re:Never (Score:5, Interesting)

      by stephanruby ( 542433 ) on Thursday October 10, 2019 @04:32AM (#59291310)

      I'm sure people felt the same way about unmanned elevators.

      Even the first gas-powered cars were initially required not to go above 5 MPH on public roads and needed a guy walking in front of them with a flag.

      • "I'm sure people felt the same way about unmanned elevators."

        Lifts don't have other lifts pulling into their path or stopping suddenly in front or swerving at the same time as a 40 ton freight lift is coming the other way. Nor do they have people wandering into the shaft or kids running out from behind a parked lift.

        Yes, I'm sure people were nervous about automatic lifts - many like myself still don't like being essentially trapped in a small box 20 floors up, but self driving cars are a whole other

        • Yes, I'm sure people were nervous about automatic lifts - many like myself still don't like being essentially trapped in a small box 20 floors up, but self driving cars are a whole other level of potential failures.

          That they're a simpler problem explains why we've had automatic lifts* my entire life, and why we're only seeing very limited deployment of self driving vehicles. Doesn't actually change the fear.

          For example, if you google you can find incidents of elevators suddenly dropping or rising out of control, and yes, you do actually get the occasional idiot wandering into the shaft.

          *Though I actually HAVE used a manual elevator. One ancient building downtown still had one where you used a lever to control up/dow

      • I don't have to operate my elevator in the same shaft as an unmanned one!

        • I don't have to operate my elevator in the same shaft as an unmanned one!

          It has taken approximately forever, but the last few years I've been reading about multiple automatic elevators in a single shaft. The space elevators take up adds up quick when you start having several dozen floors, and as you get more floors you need more elevators to service all the people looking to get to their floor.

          Multiple elevators is one solution before you go full paternoster [wikipedia.org], which is basically the elevator equivalent of a Ferris wheel.

    • Yeah! Did we learn nothing at all from the 1880s? People used to get around in safe, fast, fuel efficient technology with powerful collision avoidance technology, and the fools chucked it all away for automobiles. I will never get inside one of those death traps. They run off of explosions for Christ's sake! That's why I only ride horse or bicycles, because we all know that technology can't improve, and the horse and buggy will ALWAYS be a viable form of transport! Now if you will excuse me, I feel a

  • Not sure they can get the cost down lower than Uber, since Uber drivers are subsidizing the wear-and-tear on their own cars, and Waymo won't.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )
      Uber will go belly up soon. They can't bleed that much money forever. They have no way of getting profitable. If I was a gambling man, I'd short.

    • That doesn't make sense.

      Assume Uber drivers get paid $50/hour. Assume they "subsidise" the wear and tear on their car, to the point that they are netting $10/hour after wear and tear, gas, expenses etc.

      That's still $10/hour more that Uber is ultimately paying them that they would not be paying to a driverless car.

      It's only if Uber drivers were actively losing money driving that you'd have a point, and the vast majority of Uber drivers are not losing money. They aren't making as big a profit once you conside

      • Why would you assume something totally wrong and then base your argument on it? You could look up the real numbers, you know that right? Then you don't look like a lunatic arguing something based on a fantasy starting point.

        • The numbers are irrelevant, that's entirely the point I am making.

          Unless Uber drivers are making a straight up loss - and the majority aren't - Uber are paying money to the drivers that they would not need to pay if the car were driverless.

      • Do you think the self-driving part is free?

        • No, but I was responding to your specific claim that it would not be cheaper for uber because they would now have to pay the wear and tear instead of the driver paying it.

          Talking about how much the driverless tech and sensors cost is a completely separate discussion.

    • Google can afford to lose billions to own the taxi market. They'll subsidize the rides. Hell, they only charge money because that makes it less obvious they're dumping to kill Uber/Lyft.

  • Somewhere between now and *the end of all time*.

    Any day now. Aaany day...

  • Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way ...

    ... driven to their service areas/cities by people.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rei ( 128717 )

      I just don't get the Waymo approach. Take their recent announcement that they're considering expanding to Los Angeles. It was supposed to be some big congratulatory, "Look, our biggest city yet!" announcement. But apparently the process of moving to LA - or even deciding on whether to move to LA - involves months of pre-mapping efforts by Waymo teams.

      How on Earth is this supposed to be scalable? Do they plan to do this for every city and road on Earth? And keep an ever-growing database of premade 3d map

      • A similar argument can be made for the use of LIDAR. It's making the easy things even easier, but doesn't do much to help the really difficult things. I like Tesla's approach better: starting on the path where you want to end.

      • Do they plan to do this for every city and road on Earth?

        They don't need to. Here, something is better than nothing.

        If they can recoup the cost of the mapping endeavor with the rides they then as the sole self-driving taxi provider in a city can reliably provide, it makes total financial sense. Beyond that, (if successful of course) it builds a name, it builds trust in the concept and provides a shitload of real world research and training data. I agree that using premade maps is a crutch, but they may very well be able to drop the crutches at some point due to t

        • I'd also assume that Waymo incorporates every vehicle's sensor readings into the maps to allow them to change over time.

  • at a certain moment in the future.

  • Rather than an advertising... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LordHighExecutioner ( 4245243 ) on Thursday October 10, 2019 @03:03AM (#59291174)
    ...sounds like a warning!
  • People were also afraid to jump in cars when they replaced the horses and boggies.
  • My city has a major intersection that changed at least 5 years ago and still has yet to appear in google's maps. Not sure how automated driving will be feasible here.
  • Is this a threat?

    Or is this just Wayne's World [canadathroughmyeye.com] coming our way with the hosers passed out in the back seat: "Well, we WOULD be driving, but we're all drunk and don't want to get a ticket."

  • If it does, I can see why you would need a Waymo employees to make sure passengers don't fuck with them.

    If it's going to be truly driverless it either can't have a steering wheel, pedals, etc, or they have to be able to be completely locked out.

    Would not want random strange people getting any ideas about that empty seat sitting there.

  • No safety driver behind the wheel, although a Waymo employee would likely be present in the vehicle initially.

    Initially? Are they going to leap out the door and tuck and roll while the vehicle is in motion?

  • Till it's actually available, it's vaporware.
    "In the computer industry, vaporware (or vapourware) is a product, typically computer hardware or software, that is announced to the general public but is never actually manufactured nor officially cancelled. Use of the word has broadened to include products such as automobiles."
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • And yesterday the AAA criticized pedestrian detection systems, and said they were insufficient. I admit I don't remember if Waymo was on their list, but several were. And if it wasn't, that may just mean they didn't have access to a sample to test.

    Of course, there are lags in reporting, development has been pushing ahead rapidly, etc. So perhaps the AAA criticism is obsolete. But I don't think I'd bet that way.

  • "although a Waymo employee would likely be present in the vehicle initially."
     
    Uh huh. More "autonomous" driving. Can't wait.

  • Just a couple weeks ago Morgan Stanley reduced their valuation of Waymo by 40% in response to their investigation into just how close Waymo and other companies are to providing a viable public product.

    “Over the past year, there have been a series of hurdles relating to the commercialization and advancement of autonomous driving technology,” the analysts wrote. “Most notably, we underestimated how long safety drivers are likely to be present within cars and the timing of the rollout of auto

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