Comment by Natsu
18 hours ago
If you actually ride in one, you do notice some off behaviors that I didn't pick up while just driving alongside them. That said, I agree that the bad human drivers have done things far, far worse than any of the cars.
The biggest gripe with riding in one is that they're slow, both because of super cautious driving and because they won't take freeways yet.
A month ago I saw a Waymo turn left into a tiny alley in Palo Alto and continue at full 25mph speed, which was alarming. I guess the alley is marked as a regular road in the software? Highlights how even if it's safer than humans on average, they need to minimize these weird behaviors in order to get socially accepted and avoid $$$ liability when there is an accident.
New speedbumps were installed in a school zone near my housing complex recently, we're a heavy Waymo area and I watched one of them launch itself over one without slowing down.
They installed one of those near my friends house. There's a couple mechanic shops in the vicinity used it for diagnosis while driving exactly the posted speed limit. It lasted about a month until the people who complained it into existence complained it out of existence.
I have only taken a couple Waymos but I had the opposite experience. They were much faster and more decisive than I expected. They do apparently learn from surrounding drivers and this was LA so maybe that explains the difference.
It wouldn't surprise me if each Waymo has one of a pool of aggression settings - I've noticed the difference between cars as a rider.
Interesting. I hadn’t considered it but that makes a lot of sense. I wonder if that happens per car or per ride. Do aggression settings adjust to apparent passenger comfort?