Waymo Will Start Operating In NYC (engadget.com) 18
Waymo will start driving its autonomous Chrysler Pacifica vans in New York City on November 4th. Engadget reports: This and a later wave of Jaguar I-Pace EVs will rely on human drivers to map streets and learn from the environment, and there aren't any immediate plans to offer driverless rides to passengers. However, Waymo clearly hopes to use this knowledge for its long-term autonomy goals in various cities. The rollout will focus on Manhattan below Central Park (aka midtown and lower Manhattan), including the financial district and a portion of New Jersey through the Lincoln Tunnel. All tests will operate during daylight.
The dry run will help Waymo's Driver AI cope with New York City's notoriously heavy traffic, of course, but the company is particularly interested in weather testing. Like many northern cities, NYC has its fair share of ice and snow, both of which remain huge challenges for driverless cars. This test will give Waymo further opportunities to test its navigation in winter conditions, not to mention the heavy rainfall more common in the region.
The dry run will help Waymo's Driver AI cope with New York City's notoriously heavy traffic, of course, but the company is particularly interested in weather testing. Like many northern cities, NYC has its fair share of ice and snow, both of which remain huge challenges for driverless cars. This test will give Waymo further opportunities to test its navigation in winter conditions, not to mention the heavy rainfall more common in the region.
Getting old (Score:1)
Every time I see the name Waymo, my brain converts it to Wham-O.
And I wonder what the hell they think they are doing.
THEN I remember it isn't 70s anymore.
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Re:Getting old (Score:4, Funny)
Every time I see the name Waymo, my brain converts it to Wham-O.
Well the other name that they were considering was Ronco Ride-O-Matic.
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Agreed. the whole strategy of trying to remember every street corner by uploading its data to the cloud is silly.
What if the data that was uploaded to the cloud suddenly changes like it often occurs?
All of that is based on the fact that real AI that can really at least mimic a human brain still doesn't exist. The hype mandates to pretend it does although.
Take that pedestrians and cyclists! (Score:2)
Re:Take that pedestrians and cyclists! (Score:4, Insightful)
Forget weather and heavy traffic testing experience, I'm looking forward to finding out how vehicles programmed to be super-conservative pansy-ass drivers deal with New York drivers. Or rather, how they get chewed up, spit out and ground into the gutters.
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I'm looking forward to finding out how vehicles programmed to be super-conservative pansy-ass drivers deal with New York drivers. Or rather, how they get chewed up, spit out and ground into the gutters.
Does New York not have elderly people driving? I'm willing to believe that a large number of New York drivers are aggressive assholes, but surely there already are plenty of human 'pansy-ass drivers' on the streets of New York. Or are these people also 'chewed up, spit out and ground into the gutters'? What does that even mean anyway?
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Been there?
Not a lot of timid drivers in Manhattan; such as do exist, tend to cause wrecks.
The de facto rules of the road in NYC are different than most of the rest of the US, and vary slightly even between boroughs, but in Manhattan, what would pass for aggression in less urbanized locales is simply how things work. It's expected, and deviating from it is more dangerous than not.
True story: exiting one of the tunnels from Jersey one day, maybe 30 years ago. Forgot which one. Older lady walks right in fr
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Been there?
Yes. Traffic seemed pretty tame to me.
Almost all the streets are at simple right angles to each other, so there are very few confusing or tricky situations.
Admittedly, I did not drive there myself, but from what I could see from Ubers and taxis it did not seem challenging at all.
Try Rome, Paris or worse: Hanoi, HCMC, or Bangkok.
Not a lot of timid drivers in Manhattan; such as do exist, tend to cause wrecks.
A quick Google search shows me that New York isn't even in the top 20 of US cities with the highest number of road fatalities or accidents. The whole 'New York traffic is crazy' meme
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These aren't Teslas you know. Waymo's safety record is much better than Tesla in that regard (granted, practically every self-driving system out there is better than Tesla's).
That, and I doubt Waymo cars have a habit of driving into emergency vehicles as normal operation.
Not in my lifetime. (Score:1)
Imagine letting 10 of the loose on the streets of Manhattan without a driver.
Have you looked at waymoâ(TM)s website? Itâ(TM)s pathetic. Lots of 20 something marketing types with way too much time on their hands.
All the aspirational special interest stories about changing peopleâ(TM)s lives if only the product could.
This will be interesting (Score:2)
Driving in central and south Manhattan requires a lot of anticipation, aggression, and interpretation of the unwritten road rules.
Heavy traffic, double parked trucks, busses, bikes, scooters, jaywalkers, crowds, cabs abruptly changing lanes and stopping to pick up and drop off people.
It will be interesting to see how the AI handles it without just freezing up
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Soon will also require something like a $50 "congestion charge." Feels to me like a huge, regressive tax on lower-income commuters from Jersey or the boroughs. I would favor exempting those folks somehow. If you have to charge it at all, charge the rich f*cks driving to Wall Street from the UWS instead of taking the subway. They can more than afford it, and the subway is likely faster anyway.
I'm a better driver than most of the robots I know, and I don't mind driving in most of NYC, but even I'm not cra
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Soon will also require something like a $50 "congestion charge." Feels to me like a huge, regressive tax on lower-income commuters from Jersey or the boroughs. I would favor exempting those folks somehow. If you have to charge it at all, charge the rich f*cks driving to Wall Street from the UWS instead of taking the subway. They can more than afford it, and the subway is likely faster anyway.
I'm a better driver than most of the robots I know, and I don't mind driving in most of NYC, but even I'm not crazy enough to drive in midtown or lower Manhattan. There are subways and cabs, which a person can take (well, at least the subways) without inordinately risking their lives.
I agree, I detest these types of taxes that limit use of something by pricing out average people.
Actually they are not operating they are mapping (Score:1)
Most interesting fact (Score:2)
What interests me the most is the question of when will the 3rd commercial city operations start.
1. Phoenix, Arizona 2018-12,
2. San Francisco - 2021-08
3. NYC - ?
From this we could see if the spreading speed is increasing or not and by how much. From this we can start to estimate how fast it will spread.