YHK - yet another hacker news clone

1. Fresh unplowed snow where there are no lane markers visible.

2. Significant banks that take up half a lane with two lanes in each direction.

3. Ice (often one doesn't start going through an intersection on a green until you're 100% sure that every car has cleared - I've been on both sides of this, where you don't go because there's a car sliding through, and the car sliding through because slick ice doesn't care about brakes)

4. Hard braking (the "drive slow and use the brakes lightly for a long while")

5. Cold car things. Electric battery life in the cold (heater for the passengers). Wipers frozen to the windshield. Accumulation of snow on the window. Excess snow on top of the car (considered an insecure load).

---

Tangent for the "how do you handle lanes when you can't see any" ... old school approach: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/833362

> Driving a snowplow during whiteout condition is one such example. In order to improve the safety and efficiency of the snow removal operation, a supplemental steering guidance display was proposed and instrumented in a Caltrans snowplow. The guidance information was calculated based on the magnetic markers embedded under the roadway. Operations were successfully conducted on a 6.25 km freeway over Donner Summit on Interstate 80 in California during the 1998-1999 winter season.

https://ahmct.ucdavis.edu/advanced-snow-plow

both!

Ford is already removing bike lanes.

Tax dollars to put in bike lanes, and then tax dollars to remove them.

The ultimate test would be Cairo or Mumbai or Lagos :-)

Montreal is a vacation compared to the great plains/prairies: -40 with half the road coved by blown snow. Lets see how the navigation system reacts to a total absence of painted lines and visible curbs. Or go to the rocky mountains. I doubt Montreal streets contain any mountain passes worthy of naming.

pothole observed. Diverting a-

pothole observed. d-

pothole.

po-

Toronto's winter driving is normally very reasonable compared to Montreal. My guess is the Waymos operate some ~355 days a year, taking days off after big storms.

So much of winter driving is knowing what is blocked by ice and snow, what snow is probably safe to pass, and navigating around piles of ice and snow that become temporary obstacles.

Granted Toronto gets much less accumulation than a city like Montréal.

I wonder how reliant self-driving cars are on unchanging road infrastructure.

"I will show that America first President who wants to fracture global trade...by arguing for fracturing global trade."

That gen pops tune changed with the political climate just like big corp previously going on about left wing shit is stunning

Ya'll are just LARPing what you watch on TV and read online

Orange guy may make news, but Canada has greater problems from within.

Includes St Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburg, Minneapolis etc.

Now what about a 3-drivers taxi?

The answer is always the same, people hope to lower the driver cost, which I believe is significant for a 1-driver taxi.

There are lots of reasons somebody might prefer a driverless car and lots of reasons somebody might prefer a human driver. Why not have a choice?

- can play your own weird free jazz via Spotify.

- obeys traffic rules

Imagine what cities could do with 50% higher bus frequency or more bus routes.

- Waymo vehicles don't argue about having the air conditioning on,

- They don't try and talk about local (or national) politics to you while driving,

- They don't play annoying games to try to make you cancel rides they don't want to take while collecting cancellation fees (see the /r/uberdrivers subreddit for quite how endemic this is),

- The selection of music (or not) is with the rider, not the driver,

- They smell better - an especially important point during summer when temperatures are regularly over 100 degrees. This is as much about the lack of gross air freshener trees as it is about an extra person in the car the whole day,

- The cars aren't falling apart. This has got noticeably worse for Uber and Lyft (which was always a little more flexible on the age and condition of cars) - it's not uncommon to see fault lights on human-driven ride share vehicles, or body panels duct-taped or twined in place.

There are three major disadvantages right now:

- Waymo is only available through the Uber app, and there is no preference to say you only want Waymo vehicles. This will be fixed in January 2028, which I assume is contractual rather than technical, since during the launch period the standalone app was used - but I wish they'd hurry up, or they'll likely lose my business to Zoox or similar,

- They don't use highways currently, leading to some fairly circuitous routes that take longer than they should, especially to downtown,

- They don't go to the airport. Ride sharing dynamic pricing to the airport means that for trips under a week it's often cheaper to park than to ride-share though (even from ~downtown). I have no doubt that the robotaxis will learn the tricks of late-stage capitalism once they have some market lock-in though.

One more passenger seat (once the wheel is removed); the option for privacy (once the recordings are removed); increased safety (starting now, but even more so in the future); ability to build overnight charging stations in unpopulated areas; once fully adapted you can have reduction or removal of parking spaces, eliminate commercial daytime traffic, etc. Maybe it is the ever optimist in me… I think eliminating a job that led to increased cardiovascular problems and reduced lifespan of fulltime drivers while keeping the human rate of accidents, will be seen as an obvious improvement in human civilization in the future, similar to giving up horse carriages.

I'm sure many people have had enjoyable rides with taxis. I've had many.

But I've also has rides where the drivers was obviously exhausted and driving recklessly, and I've had a few drives where the driver started going on about some insane political topics.

Some days I don't want the latter. Having that service would be a nice option.

No taxi driver union can combat the amount of money waymo is spending lobbying.

[1] https://sfstandard.com/2023/08/23/cruise-waymo-spent-million...

New York is still holding on but I dont know how long it can. https://thenextweb.com/news/waymo-new-york-city-political-ro...

I'll let you rewrite this, since as written it implies having a disease makes you in some way bad.

They really do feel like magic, and give you palpable proof that you’re living in the future.

Why would you?

This is bananas. Cops are not experts in the law. I'm sure a competent district attorney would be able to throw somebody in jail for this.

It wasn't luck though, the cars are incredibly cautious around people. Yes the car did the wrong thing here, but it wasn't driving at speed or endangering people.

When people point out "reckless" behavior of autonomous cars to me, the conversation simply isn't worth having unless you're comparing to current conditions. We're looking at 40,000 deaths per year so, endless community meetings and hand-wringing around regulations is not an option, unless we're ready to first stop all human driving and have the same process for those.

[1]:https://abc7news.com/post/80-year-old-san-francisco-driver-k...

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLLkGaKX7NI

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8gMd9XZJyg

There are drive-by-wire cars on the road. ABS systems can disable breaks.

If a malfunction is caused by the control software of that car or a mechanical malfunction by bad design it seems to me like the same thing. Do you/we don't have a solution for that already?

I would be shocked if that was the case.

I also live in Denver, and while the quote is technically true, it is misleading. A Waymo did drive into a farmers market...before there were barricades up, when other cars were still driving through as well for set-up time. Nobody would have been charged with anything.

> “It entered through our food truck area,” said Nicole Jarman, the production director of the farmers market... there was a “Road Closed” sign on one side of the street, but the other side of the street was still open to vendor traffic during set up and the Waymo followed a vendor vehicle past the sign and then turned onto the 1400 block of South Pearl Street.

> “It’s still load-in, our barricades are moved to the side, so there’s vehicular access, and it followed that traffic, went slow, and then made its way on out at Arkansas and kept going” she said.

> “It was not anything that made us nervous,” Jarman said.

[0]: https://kdvr.com/news/local/waymo-drives-through-denver-farm...

A taxi company that kept a drunk employed might be liable for damages that drunk causes, same rules should apply to your own self driving fleet.

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/westwood-99-ran...

I don't say this to suggest excusing autonomous car companies from bearing liability, but just for context.

Perhaps we should not make the regulations too punitive on the AV companies as that would reduce the speed of replacing bad human drivers who currently cause 40,000 deaths a year in the US.

> Digital sovereignty and privacy is at stake.

This is the most strongest argument, and luckily that's the first one. Many ways to solve this so not really a big problem.

> Ontarians’ jobs risk being outsourced

What jobs are being displaced by driverless cars? The best argument here is uber drivers are going to be affected. Who would you rather drive you at 3am if you're a drunk woman? An uber driver or Waymo?

> Public transit could lose riders

What is the goal here? The goal is to move people efficiently and decrease the reliance on human driving, which can cause deaths. Public transportation is vital but again, there are times when subway / buses wont work.

Also, if public transit is a major concern, shouldnt we be asking Uber (see point #2) to go away?

The last two points are super generic, it isnt even worth discussion.

Not convinced with the approach here.

This is why our standard of living is much better now than it was 150 years ago. Even though we have autoamted pretty much all of the jobs since then, except teacher and lawyer (there is another term in economics for what happens here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect)

Personally I think it's fine, even as my own profession undergoes the same transition. We now have new jobs in running the waymo fleet in various capacities - the cars still need to be serviced, cleaned, supported, scheduled, etc - and the highly compensated jobs designing what are essentially real-world robots that can safely coexist with humans on the road. This is how technology has always worked and it's always made us better off on the whole.

Also, the new product is just better. When a human is not in the car, it's ok for to leave them waiting for a few minutes to pick me up if it's not a busy street, and I don't have to deal with the risk of an unsafe or unsavory person hosting me in their personal vehicle. I can control the music and the AC, and tap a button to have the car pull over. I can and do still take Lyfts and Ubers when I need to - it's cheaper for anything involving the highway, still, and better when I need to get somewhere in a hurry.

With driving specifically - human-driven cars are perhaps the greatest danger to my life. I very much would prefer to live in a future where human beings are not in charge of piloting multi-ton vehicles at life threatening speeds in the same areas I walk around.

Personally, I work hard to minimize my car usage in general but they're something society is absolutely enamored with, so if we need to have cars around we could at least get rid of the drivers.

I live in a location that has won the top spot on "worst drivers in the country" and "worst roads in the nation" lists multiple times. By all means, put the robots in the driver's seat. Can't be any worse.

From the viewpoint of a pedestrian, having more "drivers" that don't get distracted on their phone sounds blissful.

There are real concerns about the additional pro-car lobbying we will likely experience, as Waymo will discourage people directly and indirectly from taking transit and cycle, but I hope we can coexist.

I learn this each time Apple releases a product. New iPhones could be $500, 10x the speed, half the weight and full week battery life and a fringe loud group will post and upvote some dumb complaint.

I'm sure you were already aware of that, but its easy to forget that and think you're dealing with something more real.

And HN has become a very negative hole by itself, rewarding complainers and pushing people who don't complain away (positive posts or ones that push back on needless negativity get downvoted a lot these days).

[1] https://www.thecityreporter.nyc/2026/04/06/waymo-driverless-...

On Wednesday afternoon, before school dismissal, a cross-town, 50-minute epic ride cost me $33.39. But it also cost nearly $25 to go 2 miles on that same evening.

Upon introduction here in Phoenix, Waymo had a promotion called "GoPass" which you'd purchase for $10 and it lasted for 30 days. It would give an across-the-board 10% discount on every ride, and 5 free cancellations. It was a great deal if you were a heavy user. A few months ago, they killed that off and replaced it with "Waymo Premier" which is a $29.99 monthly subscription (auto-renews) with no discount. Instead, you earn Waymo Cash at a base rate of 10%, and you get those 5 free cancellations, and you also get priority pickup. That means, if you're not paying for Premier, you cannot get priority pickup, and you may wait a lot longer, depending on demand.

I'm still saving money with Premier, but sometimes the cost is outrageous. Especially considering that I'm qualified for disabled transport in the region, and they've got a new matching app that will let me get a Lyft or Uber for $3 flat fee, no tipping.

Exactly. We could talk about the billions that Waymo has invested in developing this technology, and how much people really do like it, or how safe it is, but at the end of the day the only thing that will give us the reduced prices that this tech could deliver, is competition.

And that's how it should be.

(But they will always have to charge a bit more for this service due to the political sensitivities that require them to load up on local partners who will require a slice.)

Personalized dynamic pricing seems like something that should absolutely be illegal across the board.

In Canada, it's currently vogue to hate on all things American. (I'm making this observation as a Canadian resident)