I-Like-To-Bike

Looks like some of the residents of Phoenix are being invited to be volunteer test pilot "customers." As well as the non-volunteer general public who will share their "test" track.

scratchpaddy

???
I see several Waymo vans every single day. They're all over the east Valley. I just got back from lunch, and I saw two of them on the way back. They're out on very busy roads, not all well-marked, some under construction, and they're out there even at rush hour.

The other morning, I was coming up to a red light when a Waymo van came up from behind me with its blinker on, wanting to get into the right turn lane, but not going fast enough to comfortably pass me before it reached the other cars waiting at the light. It was one of those intersections when the bike lane briefly disappears when the turn lane starts. I ignored the van and continued on. I would never do that with a human-driven car, but I knew the van's LIDAR sensors knew exactly where I was, even when I was in what would be a human's blind spot. I trust the Waymo vans a lot more than human cars, and that trust comes from lots of shared experiences on the road. They're always respectful of bikes. Uber's self-driving Volvos in Tempe are OK, too.

Ninety5rpm

Cool. How fast are they relative to other motor traffic?

And are you signing up for the driverless ride program? I would!

genec

Love that movie... note the date 2019... Uh, LA is nothing like that, even today. Spinner cars only make sense if you take the dumb humans out of the equation.

Give the human a steering stick/wheel/paddles/yoke, but only so they can "suggest" where the vehicle should go... the actual driving is done by the AI, with input from the dumb human. More of a "fly by wire" with a smart interpreter.

BTW I know this is out of the thread, but I still have not seen "2049" yet. Maybe LA will look like the 2019 version in another 30 or so years. But I doubt it.

noisebeam

Same speed as everyone else, even a few mph above PSL if that is what other traffic is doing. In rush hour. On freeways. In shopping districts. In light rain. Thru a construction zone with two lanes going to one with a dirt section on my commute.

Many people locally don't 'see' them anymore since they are so common. I saw two on the commute in this morning. There were probably more, but two were direct interactions with me.

I'm not signing up as I cycle everywhere.

scratchpaddy

They blend with traffic just fine. If it weren't for all the sensors, you'd only know they were autonomous because they always do things like use blinkers and change lanes smoothly, stop on the line and not in the crosswalk at lights, slow down for mid-block crosswalks, and never cut through the opposing lanes on left turns at intersections.

I've seen them occasionally get flustered, though. One was making a left turn on a green arrow when it found a car which had never cleared the intersection, sitting way out past the crosswalk. The Waymo van jerked the wheel rapidly left and right, stopped, then slowly steered around the car blocking its way. A human driver would have just swung wide from the start, but I guess the vans are programmed to turn left into the left lane.

Sign-up for passengers started more than a year ago, but I never did. Like noisebeam, I have no use for it. I only use my car two or three times a month.

Ninety5rpm

@I-Like-To-Bike, how do you reconcile your skeptical views about the viability of autonomous vehicles with the eyewitness accounts from @noisebeam and @scratchpaddy?

Ninety5rpm

Waymo sees incidents like that too. I bet they load their simulators with these situations, plus a multitude of variants, and ensure the cars learn how to handle these with aplomb.

These are the "edge cases" so many hand wring about. The reality is they simply get a little flustered, and learn.

I-Like-To-Bike

Their "eyewitness accounts" of vehicles being seen somewhere doing something don't mean much to me, they saw them, so what?
Who knows how they are being operated or if those vehicles are ready for prime time beyond the stretch of street and weather conditions that that has been selected for the test.

I'll let you select the confirmation of your imagination from wherever you can, it seems to make you happy to confirm your visions of the future.

Ninety5rpm

Earlier:

They're operating today in all those conditions. Not in ideal carefully selected "extremely limited conditions". Unless you consider the Phoenix metro area, with its 4.5 million population, to be an ideal carefully selected "extremely limited condition".

350htrr

WOW, dude... You dismiss actual, real life accounts from different people... Video's that show AV navigating normal streets, interacting with normal drivers who F'Up all the time and yet the AV vehicles don't seem to be causing any/many accidents...

I think you are living in the world you describe others on here living... A Make believe world, in which this (AV driven vehicles) is not going to work... world... JMO

jefnvk

Heh. You dismiss the firsthand evidence of others based on, nothing? You haven't seen it, so it can't possibly exist? Your own preconceptions of something you know little about?

I guess in this day and age, I don't know why I expect anything else. We can argue about when exactly they'll be here, but regardless of what your mind thinks, they will be here sooner than later.

I-Like-To-Bike

Evidence of what? Certainly not a ready for prime time vehicle capable of picking up, transporting and dropping off passengers anywhere they might currently go with conventional vehicles. Do these eyewitness follow the test vehicles and watch them take passengers all over downtown Phoenix, school zones, Walmart lots, shopping centers, drive up windows for ATMs, food, etc.?

Well that narrows down the timeline a whole lot doesn't it? Somewhere between now and just short of never.

Ninety5rpm

Isn't the main question for bicyclists this? When will AVs dominate the traffic we have to navigate?

For that occur, it's not necessary for AVs to be "capable of picking up, transporting and dropping off passengers anywhere they might currently go with conventional vehicles"

Picking them up and dropping them off anywhere taxis typically go should be more than enough. And they're already doing that in at least the bay area and Phoenix.

I-Like-To-Bike

Save 2 hours and 49 minutes of your time. I just wasted that much time waiting to see if there was one minute that had the quality of the first Blade Runner; it doesn't. Luckily the BluRay disk was free from the library which I picked up by bicycle today, so no wasted gas and the time spent in bicycle transportation is always quality time.

Ninety5rpm

Another related business model to consider is that of Zipcar. Imagine if all the Zipcars parked around here and there are autonomous. So instead of walking to the nearest Zipcar, it comes to you, drives you where ever you want to go, drops you off, and then goes on to its next fare, or parks and waits.

If it's economically viable to leave Zipcars parked unused, it's viable to do so with autonomous ones too.

Rollfast

I wonder whatever happened to the OP here?

SHBR

You've missed my point completely.

Just imagine if the standards for acceptable driving were raised?

Commercial drivers have consequences for unsafe driving, yet most of the public can continue to drive even if there are fatalities, or injuries caused by unsafe driving practices. (texting while driving for example)

Human life isn't worth much anymore, the introduction of AV technology will only make us less human, and more careless.

SHBR

Good point.

This happens far too often here.

The original question gets answered early on and the OP moves on, or worse, the thread gets buried with useless replies that have nothing to do with the original question.

Its a pissing match, and its never going to end.

Ninety5rpm

I think most of the discussion in this thread remains driven by the OP's question. Whether AVs will make it safe for cyclists can only be answered right now based on what one believes about how AVs will work and what effect they will have, and when. So folks here have been sharing their beliefs accordingly, and the reasons for holding those beliefs.

Ninety5rpm

I don't follow this at all.

The main motivation for AV technology is saving human lives, because we value human life. Human drivers are notoriously fallible - AV drivers will be much less so. I also think AV presence on the road will set a new higher standard for normal driving behavior, and so human drivers should get safer too.

Why do you think AV technology will make us less human?

noisebeam

humans evolved to walk, run & sit, not drive. not driving makes us more human.

Ninety5rpm

Ninety5rpm

This is a surprise to me:

Uber’s boss has predicted that driverless cars are at least a decade away, despite the ride-hailing app putting millions into developing the technology.

Speaking at a technology conference in Germany, Dara Khosrowshahi said it would take 10 to 15 years for “full autonomy” to happen.

He said the high cost of sensors such as the “lidar” receivers used by driverless cars, as well as the need to map cities with centimetre-precision, meant completely self-driving vehicles would take longer than many are predicting.

...

Uber boss says driverless cars are at least a decade away


That said, this may be true for their approach. The Waymo approach seems far more impressive, and they've partnered with Lyft...

I-Like-To-Bike

You are "impressed" by every PR piece that predicts the imminent arrival of self driving cars into the transportation mix available for passenger use, and apparently are "surprised" when reality rears its ugly head.

Be prepared for more "surprises" when the reality of economics concerning building, selling, owning, and operating these vehicles does not match or come even close to your dreamy predictions of great cost savings for the owners or users of fleet or individually owned self driving vehicles.