Waymo Launches Driverless Rides For Employees In Austin

Waymo announced that it will begin shuttling employees around 43 square miles of Austin, Texas, including the Barton Hills, Riverside, East Austin and Hyde Park neighborhoods, as well as downtown Austin. As TechCrunch notes, it's "a crucial step before the company opens the program up to the public." From the report: The step forward comes just a few days after Waymo won the ability to start charging for rides in expanded territory across both Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. Waymo didn't offer a timeline for when it plans to start offering autonomous rides to the citizens of Austin. When it does, it will become the fourth city where the company's robotaxis are officially in operation, following LA, SF and Phoenix.

Any

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Dry desert area, cool! Er, warm! Not rainy! Not snowy! Not icy!

Anyone working on this?

Re:

[Applehu Akbar]

Dry desert area, cool! Er, warm! Not rainy! Not snowy! Not icy!

Anyone working on this?

These are the obvious places to implement it first.

Waymo needs guinea pigs for their tests

[thesjaakspoiler]

Employees can't sue Waymo because they already waived all their rights in return for a free lunch and some other perks.

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[BishopBerkeley]

Yes, indeed. Clearly, hazard pay was never on the table.

Re:

[geekmux]

Yes, indeed. Clearly, hazard pay was never on the table.

Rather ironic hazard-pay employees serving in the US Military jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, feel a lot safer doing that.

Re: Waymo needs guinea pigs for their tests

[BishopBerkeley]

Damn funny. Equally true.

Better Not Hit Eric Johnson!

[BrendaEM]

I'd be pretty upset.

Driverless Test Car Nearly Ran Me Down in Austin

[pepsikid]

A couple of years back, I biked to work daily in downtown Austin. Since pea-headed twits treat the bike lane as a "just going to be a second" parking lane, I frequently have to swerve out onto the street to avoid these obstacles. A driverless test car decided to pace me one morning and rode along in the auto lane just behind me. It refused to move when I had to change lanes, forcing me to swerve back into the bike lane and screech to a halt. It actually SPED UP as I drifted left and signalled my lane change! It would have run me down if I hadn't known it was there.

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[serviscope_minor]

That still sounds better than a lot of meat based drivers.

I actually had someone pull over, park and get out of his car because he wanted to have a fight, simply because I had the gall to be in front of him on a bike. The traffic was slow moving and I wasn't in a hurry so I was just plonked in the middle of the lane, keeping pace with traffic which was probably hitting 10mph on average.

I am just astonished at the persistent stupidity of drivers and their lack of basic observational skills about the road ahe

Re: Driverless Test Car Nearly Ran Me Down in Aust

[Dantu]

Definitely some truth to that. OTOH I've had the discussion about the traffic lights resulting in you getting there at the same speed anyway. That's true on the first two or three lights but if you're moving faster it's likely that you're sometimes going to get through a light you otherwise would have missed. That saves you 2 minutes. Of course, I'm talking light or moderate traffic. When it's bumper to bumper there's not much you can do. You also have to decide how much that 2 minutes is worth to you; to

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

I mean there's an argument for that, but most of the reason I was going slow enough to overtake is because I look ahead for obstructions which will cause me to slow down, and many drivers just don't and drive in an incredibly reactive way.

They're not saving time overtaking, even potentially, since they just slam slightly faster into whatever I was looking at.

I guess there's more of a motivation on a bike since you have to put that acceleration in as effort so there's a ton of incentive to ride in a less rea

Smart way to cut costs

[CEC-P]

You don't have to pay employees if your product kills them. Absolutely brilliant.
Btw, remember all the whining when Doordash upper management had to make at least 1 delivery per month using their service. This has the same vibes. You don't know just what a defective, awful slog through hell your own product is unless you use it.