Comment by fidotron
3 days ago
Will be interesting how it handles the tougher climate conditions.
Montreal would be the ultimate test, both climatically and just for navigating sheer chaos. Those Roadster jets may finally make a smooth ride throughout the whole of the city possible.
Describing Montreal as "sheer chaos" only makes sense in the north American context. Karachi and other such cities are actually chaos.
At least in Toronto traffic they’ll mostly be capped at 10km/h, doubt they’ll have any high speed collisions with the terrible traffic here lol.
I find the anarchist traffic of developing world cities to be more aligned with natural game theory principles than proscriptive protocols. For a computer it may be simpler.
Self driving is all tactics and no strategy. Waymo would freeze solid when confronted with several hundred motor-scooters and dozens of tuk-tuks.
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what point are you making?
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They don't have driving tests in Montreal? (Or Quebec?) Anyone can just drive?
Otherwise you're just being racist.
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You are confusing predictable continuous low level noise for sheer chaos. The chaotic potential Montreal has in winter, and it uses, is spectacular. The fact that it is so unpredictable in exercising this merely contributes to the problem.
Freezing rain, for example. My god.
I was thinking this too - my guess is the cars simply wouldn't offer rides on days with really poor conditions.
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.
Same thing when people tout how FSD is basically "done"... and talk about their anecdotes driving around SoCal and such.
Don't hear many anecdotes about FSD in Pittsburgh on a night in January...
This could still be a problem. Human drivers are still available on these days today, and if services like Waymo take over and theres less Uber (et al) drivers, then we'll have no support on the worst days.
Maybe, but I'd expect a good chunk of rideshare traffic still ends up leaving the city, which AFAIK Waymos still won't do.
My understanding is Uber etc. charge and pay based on demand, so if that means the (fewer) human drivers are that much more expensive on snowy days then so be it. If it's a blizzard and Uber fares work out to $100/h I'd be very surprised if drivers couldn't be found.
Compounded by the fact in winter basically everyone will be going to the airports at least twice to escape, which drives demand.
Basically if the planes are flying the robotaxis will need to work.
They have a limited presence in New Orleans, mostly rolling around the French Quarter and Uptown. The roads look bombed out in parts of Uptown, maybe not the absolute worst anywhere but it's close.
Yeah, I've seen them going around. The last one I saw at Jackson Square looked like the safety driver was driving. This is probably the worse urban environment for Waymo to be. I'm not sure how they're going to handle the roads or the people dancing in the streets (as well as mules, pedicabs, wacky bikes, scooters, drunk people and all of the wonderful chaos). Not looking forward to them becoming operational here.
>> Montreal would be the ultimate test, both climatically and just for navigating sheer chaos.
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.
I wouldn't say Montréal is more dangerous, but it is 100% more complicated for drivers. There are so many variables that change suddenly. A road is fully plowed and salted, you turn right and everything turns to shit with tons of snow on the ground. You keep going, suddenly there's ice *underneath* a layer of snow so the car starts skidding, and the plow's going the other way trying not to swallow your car whole.
You're talking about one variable I'm familiar with, but it's one variable. With snow cover in a plain, you just drive much slower and turn on your hazards.
The most complicated scenario, imho, is getting on and off a car ferry. Dark. Wet. Pedestrians. Dogs. No sidewalks. Flashing lights and lots of signs, most of which have nothing to do with car traffic. Lines on the road which you ignore in favor of following hand gestures. Then dramatic up/down ramps followed by parking way too close to other cars. And it is all in a metal box where GPS fails and internal systems are thrown off by ship movements.
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Yeah, I regularly drive from Saskatchewan to BC in the winter.
I'm generally enthusiastic for electric vehicles, but batteries and FSD don't really work in a 12 hour blizzard at -40. Doesn't match my use case. :)
Pfft, Sask is easy mode.
Try starting at the east side of pooass Manitoba if you want to contend with sketchy road conditions. By the time you get back to Regina your cortisol levels will be telling you to back out of the trip altogether
;)
I had a similar thought from my time living in Alaska. half the year there aren't any lines on the road other than the occasional tracks from the previous car that drove on it, and that's if the wind is low. It's not unusual to have half the road covered in a foot or two of snow from a drift. Humans can see them and usually avoid them, but it involves strategically using the oncoming lane. Would be interesting to see the nav system deal with that!
(well, there is Mont Real, for which the city is named... But I'll agree it's not much of a mountain.)
Ya, all mountains get names. Passes only get names if the are legendary, usually for dramatic views or as highpoints between geographic areas. If a pass has a name, drivers should expect dramatic weather changes between one side and the other.
Mont Royal. There's no such Mont Réal.
Lines on the roads in Montreal? Hahahahahah
Pothole observed. Diverting around pothole -
pothole observed. Diverting a-
pothole observed. d-
pothole.
po-
You have crashed into a cone.
Laughs in Montreal. Over here, the cones surround you, mug you and leave you naked holding nothing but a steering wheel in the middle of the street. _Then_ you fall into a pothole. During a snowstorm. BTW, your car is already in a container headed for Africa.
That or the random homeless person who decides to cross the road randomly.
You’re either dodging construction site, homeless people, or just sitting in traffic.
Recursion depth limits exceeded
> Montreal would be the ultimate test, both climatically and just for navigating sheer chaos.
The ultimate test would be Cairo or Mumbai or Lagos :-)
I remember the traffic in Cairo (1970s).
It was absolute chaos. They had "half-cars" driving around (front-wheel-drive cars, with the back end missing, and replaced with a rickety wooden cart; sometimes, just like a drag cart, with no wheels).
I'm curious about those half cars. So they start with a perfectly good car and cut off the back? Is that to carry more cargo or something?
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Not much snow in any of these, or occluded vision. Which drivers seem to struggle with, a lot.
Just traffic conflicts to the Nth power and bad/unmarked infrastructure.
Toronto gets snow! Do any other cities they operate in get snow?
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.
Denver also gets snow. Waymo has been open to the public for rides from Sept 2026 in Denver. And they started test drives in Sept 2025 I believe
So far, Denver hasn't been the proving ground people were hoping it would be. https://www.westword.com/news/how-snowless-denver-winter-aff...
Denver just launched ahead of a supposed "Super El Nino" winter. We'll see what happens.
They've been mapping, or whatever they do, Pittsburgh for almost a year now, and it was pretty funny watching the cars navigate around massive snow piles last winter. Curious to see how the rollout goes here. <Insert popcorn emoji.>
I'll giddily await the moment when a Waymo gets swallowed by a random sinkhole.
I was visiting my brother there shortly after the bus-hole happened, and the winter market had several vendors selling bus-hole related merch. I regret not buying any.
on the other hand, montreal doesn't allow right on red, and instead has an extremely strongly planned traffic grid including priority right turns. Not much ambiguity in the prescribed traffic patterns.
"montreal doesn't allow right on red".
That is not uniformly true throughout the metro area, especially in the major burbs.
There are no right turns on red on the Island of Montreal.
There is no chaos there, just traffic jams.
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