Comment by cosmic_cheese
4 days ago
A robot isn’t going to decide it doesn’t want to take my ride after accepting it and drive around aimlessly hoping I’ll get tired of waiting and cancel. I haven’t needed Uber/Lyft on a regular basis in several years, but back when I did that was a frequently recurring problem.
There's also a problem of drivers discriminating, like canceling rides if they see you have a guide dog. It's illegal and they can get banned for it, but it still happens. This wouldn't happen in a Waymo.
This happens so much now. It's infuriating. I wish they would put a stop to this. A few weeks ago, I had multiple Uber drivers do this. Eventually, I gave up and ordered a Waymo because they were the only ones who would pick me up.
Reliability was the main selling point for me ~10 years ago. You could also get a ride quickly. It's the total opposite now. I've missed a flight due to multiple cancellations. I've been left standing in dangerous areas of town for an hour late at night trying to get a ride. Now, for important things where possible, I'll take public transport. It's far more reliable.
If you want to compete with Uber, increase prices and increase reliability significantly. There are times when a lot of people will be more than happy to pay rather than risk their safety. Undo the enshittification.
A robot can be programmed to do that. As soon as they're economically incentivized to do so someone will write that code.
When the driver and the platform are different entities (like Uber) you end up with these weird incentives. How would that happen in the Waymo case?
Some analyst will figure out the robots have less billable time on task and they’ll find some way to avoid the problem.
There’s a million ways to do it. Shadow ban locations, mistakenly pull up to the wrong location, etc.