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Transportation Technology

Waymo To Start First Driverless Car Service Next Month (bloomberg.com) 84

Posted by BeauHD from the ready-or-not-here-they-come dept.
Alphabet's self-driving car company Waymo is planning to launch the world's first commercial driverless car service in early December. According to Bloomberg, citing a person familiar with the plans, the service "will operate under a new brand and compete directly with Uber and Lyft." From the report: Waymo is keeping the new name a closely guarded secret until the formal announcement. It's a big milestone for self-driving cars, but it won't exactly be a "flip-the-switch" moment. Waymo isn't planning a splashy media event, and the service won't be appearing in an app store anytime soon. Instead, things will start small -- perhaps dozens or hundreds of authorized riders in the suburbs around Phoenix, covering about 100 square miles.

The first wave of customers will likely draw from Waymo's Early Rider Program -- a test group of 400 volunteer families who have been riding Waymos for more than a year. The customers who move to the new service will be released from their non-disclosure agreements, which means they'll be free to talk about it, snap selfies, and take friends or even members of the media along for rides. New customers in the Phoenix area will be gradually phased in as Waymo adds more vehicles to its fleet to ensure a balance of supply and demand. The report notes that some backup drivers will be placed in the cars when the service launches, and the cars themselves will be heavily modified Chrysler Pacifica minivans.
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Waymo To Start First Driverless Car Service Next Month More

Waymo To Start First Driverless Car Service Next Month

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  • will the CEO volunteer to go jail / prison if the (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @10:33PM (#57640408)

    will the CEO volunteer to go jail / prison if the car kills someone or will the rider sign an EULA that makes them take ALL liability?

    • Re: will the CEO volunteer to go jail / prison if (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @12:53AM (#57640698) Journal
      The cars will kill someone. It's not a matter of if, but when. The hope is that they won't make horrible mistakes like Uber's car did (in addition to killing someone).
    • This is the fundamental issue with self driving cars: if a person runs someone over and kills them their life is ruined, they are in prison or in so much debt they'll never afford a car again, let alone be allowed to drive. If a megacorp owned by another megacorp as a shell company kills someone the survivors have to sue a megacorp, which they have no chance of winning against (nevermind getting a fair settlement: e.g. every board member, executive, and programmer involved going to jail for manslaughter an
    • Yup. That's the inherent flaw behind our current corporate/capitalist structure. The corporations have all of the right of individuals, and none of the liabilities. Corporations can't go bankrupt, and corporations can't go to jail. Individuals go bankrupt and go to jail every day, That's why the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer in the US (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/wealth-inequality-in-the-us-is-almost-as-bad-as-it-was-right-before-the-great-depression-2018-07-19). The US

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      will the CEO volunteer to go jail / prison if the car kills someone or will the rider sign an EULA that makes them take ALL liability?

      Do you think this is the first time industrial robots, faulty medical equipment or otherwise defective products has killed someone? The answer is neither and you're the poster boy for a false dichotomy.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Viol8 ( 599362 )

        The difference in those examples is that the automation was an improvement on the human. A self driving car OTOH is still extremely limited in scope and ability compared to a human driver and despite all the usual silicon valley techno-utopia hype and BS, exists simply to save on the cost of drivers wages. So if you cut costs expect to suffer the consequences if something goes wrong.

        • The difference in those examples is that the automation was an improvement on the human. A self driving car OTOH is still extremely limited in scope and ability compared to a human driver

          And yet, it still might do a better job — not only in spite of those limitations, but also because of them. The car isn't thinking about its mortgage, or sally in accounting. It's just handling driving.

          and despite all the usual silicon valley techno-utopia hype and BS, exists simply to save on the cost of drivers wages.

          Welcome to capitalism, where essentially everything is done for money.

    • Re:will the CEO volunteer to go jail / prison if t (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ecorona ( 953223 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @11:30AM (#57642372) Homepage
      No, and they shouldn't. If driverless cars cause only 10% of the accidents then there is a net 90% of lives saved and you want to put the behind bars for saving people from 90% of wrecks? Let's just focus on decreasing the number as much as possible. We don't expect perfect performance from machines in any other sector. We should be satisfied that they are better than any other alternative. If we don't cut 90% of accidents because we are waiting for 100% perfection that this is unethical. We're wasting human lives and causing undue hardships on familiesl

    • Amusement part rides are effectively self driving vehicle you get into. If one of them fails you could die, or it might fall on the general public milling around the ride.
      The park operators try to evade responsibility at four levels
      1. Posted warnings
      2. Submission to inspections by regulators
      3. Good faith in adhering to regulations and documenting timely repairs as needed.
      4. limited liability companies as a stop-loss from reachback in law suits

      I'd assume waymo is going to do all that, plus probably obta

    • will the CEO volunteer to go jail / prison if the car kills someone

      Why would they? More importantly why would you think the CEO ultimately ends up having any liability when there's a death of someone, and EULAs are completely irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make.

  • Finally! Driverless autonomous cars are here!!!

    "The report notes that some backup drivers will be placed in the cars when the service launches"

    Oh.

  • That's crazy talk (Score:4, Funny)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @10:52PM (#57640474)
    I have it on good authority from random posters on /. that self driving cars are 20 years away and that taxi cab and Uber drivers have nothing to worry about.

    • Well, yes, if you don't want a betting pool on how long it'll be before it ends up in court because a self-driving vehicle broke the law. Options include what law, what the damages are (dead/injured, ect), and what the claims will be made by the company regarding liability.

      I would not wish to be Waymo's insurer for this, and honestly I'm a bit surprised that it's being given the green light without it being nailed down firmly just who is legally responsible if, say, a driverless car decides to stage a vehi

    • I have it on good authority from random posters on /. that self driving cars are 20 years away and that taxi cab and Uber drivers have nothing to worry about.

      They are, but corporations are greedy and they have good lawyers.

    • Let me know when the first driverless car service launches. You missed the fact that these cars will have drivers in them. They always do. It is just hype.

      • They were giving (unpaid) rides with no safety drivers a year ago [bbc.com]. I guess you missed that fact, despite me posting this very link for you many months ago.

  • at least there's that :)

  • I'm constantly confused about the progress of self-driving cars. They're happening right now and they're decades away, to summarize. Obviously, this is proprietary information, but if I'm not part of some hand-selected group in Phoenix, AZ, when the heck can I expect to ride in a self-directed car?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The answer is "they're happening". Rollout will be slow and geography specific (each city has to be meticulously mapped), but it is coming.

      If you live in Chandler, AZ or a few other Arizona suburbs where many of these Waymo cars drive around, you see it every day. While most do have backup drivers, many of them now are truly empty vehicles (no backup driver is present). They can be annoying to drive around sometimes (they are overly cautious most of the time), but you get used to it.

      • Baloney. All Waymo cars have a backup driver present. Usually two.

    • They're decades away if you were trying to use the tools available to your average corporate Java business app developer who posts things on Slashdot like "AI is nothing more than a buzzword, it'll blow over any day now".

      We're a couple weeks away if you look at the state of the art "AI" deep learning algorithms.

    • I'm constantly confused about the progress of self-driving cars. They're happening right now and they're decades away, to summarize.

      This is a lot less complicated than you're making it, so you're only confusing yourself. They're happening right now, but broad adoption is decades away. That's how everything happens in the automotive space, and there's no inherent reason why self-driving should be any different. In fact, level 5 self-driving systems will probably remain so expensive for the next decade that even if the auto companies were willing to sell them to anyone who would buy them, they would still almost all be owned by fleets bec

  • Can't wait to hear Waymo's excuses about how their cars didn't see that man in that particular shade of purple with the sharply cast shadow with the sun 30 degrees left relative of the vehicle. Then there will be another, and another.. Eventually they will come to tems with how many driving situations there really are in the world.

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