Waymo Will Soon Offer Some (Free) Fully Driverless Rides in San Francisco (engadget.com) 39
"Waymo is one step closer to charging passengers for fully driverless rides in San Francisco," reports Engadget:
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has granted the company a Driverless Pilot permit, which allows it to pick up passengers in a test vehicle without a driver behind the wheel. It's only the second participant in the CPUC's Driverless Permit program, with Cruise being the first.
By securing the permit, Waymo now has the authority to offer driverless rides throughout San Francisco, portions of Daly City, as well as in portions of Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Mountain View, Palo Alto and Sunnyvale. Its vehicles are allowed to go as fast as 65 miles per hour and can operate 24/7, but the company can't charge for the rides just yet. Waymo told Engadget that it will begin offering free rides without a driver to select members of the public in the coming weeks. To note, the company has been offering free driverless rides to the public in Phoenix since 2020.Â
In a statement the CPUC's Commissioner said that "We are seeing momentum build in this space and are working to assure the safe expansion of the driverless pilot program." The state agency says their permit "Represents a milestone for driverless passenger service, expanding the potential availability of driverless AV rides to more Californians and increasing opportunities for public engagement in the pilot."
But the agency also points out that Waymo "may not charge passengers for any rides in test AVs." (The ability to charge for driver-less rides requires a separate permit...)
By securing the permit, Waymo now has the authority to offer driverless rides throughout San Francisco, portions of Daly City, as well as in portions of Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Mountain View, Palo Alto and Sunnyvale. Its vehicles are allowed to go as fast as 65 miles per hour and can operate 24/7, but the company can't charge for the rides just yet. Waymo told Engadget that it will begin offering free rides without a driver to select members of the public in the coming weeks. To note, the company has been offering free driverless rides to the public in Phoenix since 2020.Â
In a statement the CPUC's Commissioner said that "We are seeing momentum build in this space and are working to assure the safe expansion of the driverless pilot program." The state agency says their permit "Represents a milestone for driverless passenger service, expanding the potential availability of driverless AV rides to more Californians and increasing opportunities for public engagement in the pilot."
But the agency also points out that Waymo "may not charge passengers for any rides in test AVs." (The ability to charge for driver-less rides requires a separate permit...)
what happens if someone dies? who takes the rap? (Score:2)
what happens if someone dies? who takes the rap?
It may not be Waymo but will the blame go to the rider as app = in control.
Also can you get an DUI in one?
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what happens if someone dies? who takes the rap?
It may not be Waymo but will the blame go to the rider as app = in control.
Also can you get an DUI in one?
A number of people have already been killed by robot cars, haven't they? I assume they sue the companies that build and operate the cars. (Which so far is not two different companies.)
As to DUI, you're not behind the wheel, right? Just sitting in the back. It's not illegal to be a drunk passenger.
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What a stupid question. Someone should take the rap if the accident were caused by their deliberate action or gross negligence. Second, why does anyone have to take the rap for an accident? If a meteor falls out of the sky and hits someone, do they need to find someone to take a murder charge? Not every accident needs someone to take the rap for it. No vehicle can be guaranteed safe; shit malfunctions and unpredictable shit happens. 40,000 people die in car accidents every year in America, if driverless car
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Self-driving cars will create jobs, not displace them. Besides, if you're saying people should be made to do jobs that a robot can do more efficiently and better, why not just tax the robots and pay out their "earnings/salary" as a welfare check? That would enable more production while also not allowing humans to slow things down.
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Second, why does anyone have to take the rap for an accident?
Everything is someone's fault, unless it's an act of nature. If lightning strikes the car and kills the occupant, that was out of your control. But if there is a vehicular collision, then someone did something wrong. There was an equipment failure due to inadequate design, or inspection, or maintenance; or there was driver or pedestrian error; or a situation was created by planners which made it inevitable, etc etc. But because we live in a mechanistic universe where matter has to interact with matter to ma
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You can only be responsible to a reasonable extent. Nobody will design or manufacture anything if they can be liable for anything that wasn't caused by gross negligence. There must be room normal human error (which is not the same as gross negligence). If you made the standard that nobody could ever make a design error even when performing at the best of their ability, then nobody will agree to build a single airplane, vehicle, or medical device, or heck anything you plug in! Do you think anyone but a fool
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meant to quote from AC below.
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It is comparable. It shows the logic that someone is to blame in everything is flawed.
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well seeing on how you can get an DUI while sleepi (Score:2)
well seeing on how you can get an DUI while sleeping in an car even with the car off and on the side of the road.
Is that the way laws for cars are written there may be blame to pin on someone. And the laws may see self driving the same as cruise control.
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what happens if someone dies? who takes the rap?
Who cares? As long as the lawyers make a shitload of money from the inevitable lawsuits. (Sadly, I mean that very accurately.)
It may not be Waymo but will the blame go to the rider as app = in control.
Uh, in control would be the one driving the car. Which is not you. One would think a few decades of taxi cab legal actions would have established this?
Also can you get an DUI in one?
Can you get one in a taxi cab being a passenger? I think not, no matter how you called that service. it's also kind of the entire point of calling a driving service for drunk people in bars.
That said, getting busted for public in
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taxi cabs have an real driver in them.
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what happens if someone dies?
Product liability laws have existed for half a century, and self-driving cars have already killed people.
SDCs will kill more people in the future. What matters is that they kill fewer people than HDCs.
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Tell that to the parents of a kid that a SDC doesn't see and runs over.
No child has ever been run over by an SDC.
HDCs killed 18,000 children last year.
Re:Porta Potty, not a ride. (Score:4, Insightful)
Just call these cars what they'll become, human-fecie-mobiles. The homeless-meth-heads will pee and shit in them with impunity
How will homeless "street people" get inside the robot car whose doors are locked?
Some homeless people definitely have smartphones and credit cards and use Uber/Lyft and I guess Waymo. (Whether they will be among the special customers who Waymo is authorizing for this today is less clear, but that's a temporary thing anyway.)
But is there anything different about homeless people in taxicabs, compared to normal people in taxicabs? The problem of smelling and barfing and even shitting in taxicabs is a problem for human-operated vehicles. I don't know how the robot taxis will address this issue, since they have no way to detect that this has occurred.
Unless after each ride, the robot car goes home and is manually inspected before it is put back into service for the next rider. I bet that's what they do.
How this will be handled in the future is a big question. Because when the next customer gets in, they may not immediately notice. They will sit in the puddle or whatever before they realize what happened. And then what? How does the company know which customer did the damage - the current one reporting the claim, or some previous one?
People are also going to just straight-out vandalize the cars. For example, knifing the leather upholstry. Just for the fuck of it. This happens now, and drivers don't know it happened until way after that rider is long gone. Maybe the next day.
I guess the cameras and microphones inside the vehicles will be the key to this. Depending on how often these incidents occur, it sounds like an expensive human monitoring operation. Perhaps as expensive than having drivers!
Cuz for sure the robot cars are going to be picking up all kinds of people. A lot (most?) business will be at night, picking up drunks, for example.
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You don't have to have someone watching the cameras all the time. They record, and if damage is reported someone can go back and find where it happened much faster than watching in real-time.
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Just call these cars what they'll become, human-fecie-mobiles. The homeless-meth-heads will pee and shit in them with impunity
How will homeless "street people" get inside the robot car whose doors are locked?
Probably the same way Kia and Hyundai are battling it out for most stolen car right now. Greed being fucking cheap.
Perhaps we stop pretending that will autonomously go away.
Unless after each ride, the robot car goes home and is manually inspected before it is put back into service for the next rider. I bet that's what they do.
Really? When no licensed driver is required to do that by their insurance company, I bet Greed finds a way to be cheap. Especially when the EV manufacturer conveniently helps sell it with that whole "hardly any maintenance required!" gag.
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You are overthinking this.
a) Cameras can be use to identify who does what. Many taxis in the world have cameras already.
b) People don't generally destroy everything they see just because no one is looking.
c) VOC sensors can easily detect defecation or urination and they are dirt cheap. Want to prevent false positives when farting? Just open the window and close it again. Does the sensors still trigger? Wasn't just some gas.
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How will homeless "street people" get inside the robot car whose doors are locked?
I assume they will break the windows, the way they do now to normal cars.
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They are going to have the credit card information for at least one of the people who got in the car. All damage that can be done by somebody without using their credit card can also be done to any other vehicle whether autonomous or not and whether a taxi service or privately owned, and somehow people deal with this.
Grief mobiles (Score:1)
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How long before the griefing, vandalizing & thefts happen? Bet you could cripple one of these with some chewing gum, or render it immobile and confused just by tossing something in front of it.
If the cars are on the street, sitting in public like taxis on a stand, then entire fleets will be trivially disabled at once. If they are either in motion or waiting in a secured area, much less chance of that.
The cameras will record anyone throwing shit at the car (trying to fuck up its sensors). That's already a felony. Now there will be a video and GPS record of such crimes. And the police will get a geo-warrant for all the phones in the area and rather quickly figure out who to go arrest.
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OBTW the cameras recording everything from all angles are not just the ones on the victim car. All the other robocars are also recording everything outside all the time, too.
It's not cameras on every street corner. It's better than that: the cameras move around recording everything all the time.
Combined with the myriad stationary cameras everywhere we go these days, this is a total surveillance scenario.
So people throwing things at robo-taxis will definitely get caught,
That might not be the most interestin
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The cameras will record anyone throwing shit at the car (trying to fuck up its sensors). That's already a felony. Now there will be a video and GPS record of such crimes. And the police will get a geo-warrant for all the phones in the area and rather quickly figure out who to go arrest.
Must be such a low crime rate where you live that the police are looking for something to. In most places they won't give a shit.
Driverless Cars, DARPA's Shameful Creation (Score:2)
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Very few innocent people in SF.
But... (Score:2)
But what happens when I hop in and say "Driver, follow that car!"
Still not convinced.... (Score:2)
... that the 'driverless' cars do not need constant supervision from some poor sod behind a desk looking through the cars sensors and cameras.
That's what I would do, if i was a disruptive company faking it until I made it.
Waymo is Google (Score:2)
therefore can go fuck itself. I won't ride a Waymo vehicle even if they paid me to do it. Because the price of every free offer from Google is a little less freedom and a little less democracy.
Not to mention, driveless car-sharing services will eventually kill off the taxi industry. Yes, I know it's coming, but I also know a whole lot of people will lose their jobs.
Therefore, I will continue to pay real breathing human beings to drive me around as long as possible. Just like I continue to go to the cashier
You get what you pay for (Score:2)