Waymo's Self-Driving Taxi Service Is Coming to LA

Waymo, Alphabet's driverless-vehicle unit, plans to expand its robo-taxi service to Los Angeles, the third region where it will be offered. From a report: The company will follow the same playbook for the service, called Waymo One, that it has elsewhere, according to an announcement Wednesday. Local employees will try the program first, followed by so-called "trusted testers" who sign nondisclosure agreements, followed by unaccompanied, paying members of the public. Waymo One is already open to the general public in the Phoenix metro area and is in the advanced testing stage in the more crowded downtown areas of Phoenix and San Francisco.

Walking in LA

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

Nobody walks in LA

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[Locke2005]

I have, and yeah... it sucks. (My girlfriend went next door to her friend's house, got drunk, and forget to pick me up from college, so I walked in the dark several miles home from Inglewood to Redondo Beach, carrying a briefcase.)

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[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

I have, and yeah... it sucks. (My girlfriend went next door to her friend's house, got drunk, and forget to pick me up from college, so I walked in the dark several miles home from Inglewood to Redondo Beach, carrying a briefcase.)

Only a nobody walks in LA ;-) https://youtube.com/watch?v=80... [youtube.com]

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[fluffernutter]

If you haven't seen the movie "Falling Down" then you should. It's about a man who walks through LA.

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[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

If you haven't seen the movie "Falling Down" then you should. It's about a man who walks through LA.

You won't see a cop walkin' on the beat https://youtube.com/watch?v=80... [youtube.com]
(Some classic scenes in that movie).

Let the games begin!

[Locke2005]

Who will be the first to come up with a disguise the Waymo AI can't recognize, so they can get hit and sue Waymo for millions?

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[Required Snark]

No disguise is needed. People will get hit anyway. Lawsuits will occur.

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[Locke2005]

I bring that up because there are apparently 2 documented cases of Teslas in self-driving mode rear-ending motorcycles, because the motorcycles had 2 low tail lights, so the optical-only Tesla guidance system assumed it was a car far away. AI can only handle what it's been trained for!

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[MrL0G1C]

:-( This stuff is happening so often now i't not even making the news. I've heard that Teslas are really bad at passing cyclists at a safe and considerate distance, they skim past instead which carries the risk of a deadly accident.

I'm not hearing about vehicle self-driving systems having to pass a long series of driving system tests and that isn't right, humans in the UK have to pass strict theory and practical tests, hard enough that people often fail and have to retry. Why should it be any different for

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[phantomfive]

You have a point, but no one has wanted to go through the effort of developing such a test.

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[MrL0G1C]

Except for the amount of effort they spent on crash test dummies and the various tests they go through in simulated car crashes: https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-c... [nhtsa.gov]

If they can go through the effort here then they can do so with self-driving cars. Maybe it'll take more accidents before anything is done, but I expect it's a matter of time before this wild-west style throw it on the roads and see what happens is over.

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[phantomfive]

I've seen enough Waymo cars in SF now that every time I see one, I roll my eyes because I know it's going to do something weird (ie, block traffic, block a crosswalk, etc).