Learning to live with Waymos (newyorker.com)
47 pointsby njrc5 days ago85 comments
blululu 5 days ago
I feel like the article is trying really hard to be cynical about one of the few technologies that is just totally an improvement in my life. I don't even really ride cabs very often (basically the airport is the only place and Waymos don't go there). But I do bike and bus into work and frankly the Waymos are just considerate to bicycles and pedestrians. I never have a sense of danger in the crosswalk with them. No risk of getting cut off. None of the borderline psychotic behavior I have personally seen from motorists. The author of the piece even admits that she totaled a car. Which is not exactly uncommon since cars are dangerous. The upsides just so heavily outweigh the bad here.
bunderbunder 5 days ago
Interesting. We don't have Waymo in my city, but we sure do have a lot of Uber drivers who can be relied upon to unleash a fusillade of angry honking when the car in front of them chooses obey traffic laws regarding pedestrians in the crosswalk.
causesothere 5 days ago
If someone honks at me for obeying traffic rules, you better believe I'm going to be extra, super fastidious about obeying traffic rules while I'm in front of them.
fugaziboutit 5 days ago
For every Uber there's a mensch!
alskdfqlkj 5 days ago
>I feel like the article is trying really hard to be cynical
I don't feel this way at all. I think you are reading it through the lens of your own personal feelings about Waymo.
I think the article is trying really hard to present a mix of positives and negatives, a "balanced" perspective. Things like talking about how some women feel safer without having to worry about a driver (positive), yet sharing a story of a woman who felt less safe from her fellow passenger because there was no driver (negative). Mentioning the story of the cat that was killed in SF (negative), but also mentioning that human drivers kill a great deal of cats too (positive, in a sense). And so on.
blululu 4 days ago
This is kind of a classic misinformation pattern to present contrasting view points side by side as if they are an order of magnitude as common. similar thing used to happen in climate change discussions where an actual scientist would be expected to debate some random guy under the pretense of neutrality. The article goes out of its way to claim that statistics can’t really capture the lived experience (which they don’t even bother to include any actual figures as some kind of insult to their reader’s intelligence). I personally had a cat killed by a human driven car (20 years ago but why not). I personally have been hit by human driven cars (before Waymo existed but still happened). Both incidents are on the rare side. Cars are fundamentally dangerous. But we could pull up the actual vehicle-mile statistics and make a honest comparison instead of going round and round about opinions.
spike021 5 days ago
I remember riding in one in SF and while it was at the curb about to merge into traffic it saw a bike coming from down the block on our side and patiently waited long enough for them to pass.
On the other hand, I've had times while walking my dog across the street or through my apartment driveway and waymo's don't really slow down and do more of a faster pass right by us than I'd prefer, especially because a dog, like a child, can be pretty unpredictable.
stasomatic 4 days ago
That's cool, I bike too, but that robos test on public roads will never sit right with me.
binlog 5 days ago
You can tell that this piece is written by someone who visited San Francisco to sit in a Waymo and then extrapolated how weird it must be for people who see them every day. In reality after the initial shock wears off these cars are just a normal, boring part of the road. Seeing them drive around town is the same as seeing any other kind of taxi. I find that the strongest opinions about Waymos come from people who live in cities where they don't operate.
7174n6 5 days ago
I used Waymo several times while in Nashville this summer. Fantastic experience. I'll choose Waymo over a human-driven vehicle everytime I have the choice.
dozerly 5 days ago
Waymo’s feel so so so much safer when walking and biking around. They actually give you priority.
jeffbee 5 days ago
I am now so Waymo-pilled that if all crossing directions are oncoming Waymos I will simply cross between them, regardless of their green signals. Works in SF; may not apply in your locale.
dozerly 5 days ago
Yep, I don’t have to worry at all, it’s so refreshing
pama 5 days ago
As a tourist in SF about two weeks ago I experienced a bit of superhuman driving from a Waymo. On one of these 30-degree downhill slopes, a long truck was stopped in the middle of the road and to its right and slightly ahead was a parked car. The space between these two was just about right so that a 45-degree-turned Waymo car would barely fit with less than an inch space on either side. This is exactly what it did, without much hesitation. As a human driver, I would have stopped, tried to squeeze back up and find another way, or stop and try to locate the truck driver and ask them to move.
nisanthan 5 days ago
Waymo does a full stop before making a right turn. I hate how people make blind right turns even though it is the pedestrian's right-of-way. The auto industry has a firm hold on US/Canada such that we will never have a city design that encourages being car-free. But Waymos do follow the city driving rules much better than fallible humans.
ryukoposting 5 days ago
It continues to bewilder me how wildly different some people's experiences with Waymo are than mine.
My very first time getting a Waymo, as soon as it got going it immediately tried to make a left turn out of a right lane. Then it decided to go 15mph down a 3-lane wide road with a 45mph speed limit for several miles. No warning beeps or anything, it just decided to do that for some reason.
I waited a few months before trying it again. This time I took it to the airport. It worked great... until it got to the airport and caused a traffic jam because it couldn't figure out how to complete a lane change in traffic. Embarrassing, for me and the car.
Waymo is bound to capture the imaginations of people who haven't seen these things before. They certainly made me smile the first time I saw one at the beginning of this year. But god help you if you actually use one.
dboreham 5 days ago
Balancing data set: I've been in many Waymo in Los Angeles and never had them do anything like this. Since you mentioned going to the airport presumably this was in Phoenix or San Antonio? Seems like the traffic on those places would be sub-LA level of difficult to navigate.
ryukoposting 5 days ago
San Jose. The 15mph incident was mid-day, broad daylight, hardly any traffic at all. Airport incident was at 3 AM at SJC.
kenhwang 5 days ago
The ones in LA just get stuck behind things because LA loves its park anywhere you want anarchy.
But also the Waymos use alleys, driveways, and private parking lots that they're really not supposed to.
Always a bit embarrassing when the Waymo decides to use a space that's not meant for public use for pickup/dropoffs. One time, mine waited for me in/blocking a fast food drive-thru lane.
cyberrock 5 days ago
In LA they make very subtle traffic infractions. For example, turning right onto the left lane of a two-lane road. But a third of human drivers probably don't know that it's not allowed and another third intentionally violate it.
ivantop 5 days ago
On my commute home there is always a street that has 5-6 Waymos trying to turn left from the middle lane because they could not successfully change lanes. Blocks traffic every single day without fail. Probably been like this for 5-6 months.
anateus 4 days ago
I read "could not successfully change lanes" as "were blocked from changing lanes by human drivers that either didn't notice the attempt or intentionally ignored it". I don't know where you are, but this is a complaint that I have about driving in the SF Bay Area as a human driver: people here just don't let you into their lane.
ryukoposting 2 days ago
Haven't had this problem in the 10 months I've been living in the Bay. Put on your turn signal and go.
And either way, turning left from a lane that isn't a left turn lane is obviously the wrong response to failing to change lanes.
michelsedgh 5 days ago
In Austin, I've never been in one but I constantly see them making weird decisions and once, it was a red on left turn a waymo ahead of me and me behind it the turn left turned green it didnt move light turned red, next time it turned green it moved. I really think they're safe cause they have learned to do what others do in front of them and when they have to make their own decisions everything falls apart. I do hope it gets better a little faster.
ryukoposting 5 days ago
This approximately lines up with my experiences with them in SV. Most of the time they drive so conservatively as to be a nuisance to surrounding traffic, and then occasionally one turns left from the wrong lane. Or makes an obviously dumb u-turn or something.
jasondigitized 5 days ago
You should see what humans do....
CircuitSeuss 5 days ago
I just love getting a full body lidar scan by a random corporation while I’m walking down the sidewalk in my neighborhood!
I can’t possibly imagine any bad stuff happening as a result of petabytes of frequent high resolution data being constantly captured in our communities!
Definitely no privacy concerns there, we love IoT connected sensors on all our vehicles! It’s not like anyone has ever used these incidental surveillance systems to target critical infrastructure or assassinate targets before, that would be crazy making. Anyway, I’m glad that Waymo constantly surveils it’s occupants too and snitches to the cops, that’s super chill.
dkga 5 days ago
Visited Atlanta last July. First time in Waymos. Now I can’t wait for this to become a reality in Brasília too, where I live.
zachwdc 5 days ago
>Human drivers make human mistakes, and robot drivers make robot ones.
This sums up a lot of what life is like these days alongside AI.
solyin 5 days ago
I don't use Waymo anymore because it has decided that my street is busy (it isn't) and so picks up at the parking lot across the street from me instead. Which is disappointing. (This is despite filing multiple feedback reports for the issue.)
dboreham 5 days ago
A family member lives on a street where a Waymo likes to park while waiting on the next ride. Initially we joked that "the Waymo is taking a cigarette break" but seeing it there led to the family using them quite often. It would never let us just walk down to its cigarette spot though -- always needed to stub out its light then drive down a narrow back alley behind the building where nobody would suspect it would decide to do its pickup.
solyin 5 days ago
how well does it handle that back alley if there's another car or other obstruction there?
ex-aws-dude 5 days ago
I love taking Waymo but you have to compare the travel times.
Sometimes it will be like 45 minutes to go somewhere 15 min away because it won’t take any highways.
hffthbcfg 5 days ago
they still can't do highways???? this thread and people I've talked to who were big fan boys did not bother to mention that and made it sound like the driving problem was essentially fully solved
now I better understand how the operators keep up with giving the cars directions from the command center, because they are semi-autonomous R/C cars that simply don't go fast enough that their handlers get overwhelmed directing a couple of them.
ex-aws-dude 4 days ago
I don’t know if it’s like that everywhere but in LA it would not go on highway
snailmailman 4 days ago
I think it varies by location. I think they can in SF and other cities where they’ve been around a while.
They can’t do highways where I am, but they only started doing public Waymos here this year, so it’s quite recent.
And while I haven’t seen any self-driving Waymos on the highways, I have seen Waymo scanning vehicles with spinning lidar things and a human driver on the highways.
kccqzy 4 days ago
My takeaway from the article is that there’s safety accidents, and then there’s plain old bad driving that didn’t hurt anyone. Waymo probably still needs work to achieve the highest driving skills comparable to the best human drivers. But it’s already safer than the average human.
The first time I rode in a Waymo, I noticed that it attempted to change lanes and cancel lane changes way too often. Not exactly unsafe, but I wouldn’t call that good driving.
mrdependable 5 days ago
I wish I could be excited about Waymos, but knowing how these things go, I have a strong feeling this will turn into something dystopian. My guess is a future where cars are much more expensive and you never get to actually own them. Couldn’t we just invest in better public transit and make it harder to get and keep a drivers license?
dabluecaboose 5 days ago
"I'm sorry, due to excessive civil unrest in the vicinity I cannot take you to that location" is the first thing that springs to mind, personally
danpalmer 5 days ago
The thing I unexpectedly like most about using Waymo is not having a stranger inserted into your conversation.
Every time I've taken a taxi in a group, the conversation ends when we get in and the driver is suddenly a part of our conversation. It's weird to have them sit there listening to your discussion but not participating, and it would be weird for them to participate. Inevitably the conversation turns to the mundane, questions about whether it's a busy day, how often do you drive in this part of town, etc.
I got a Waymo with friends and the conversation never missed a beat as we got into the car, rode for 15 minutes, and got out.
vardalab 5 days ago
Yeah, now some future LLM from Google is a partner in your conversation, lol.
"This call may be monitored or recorded for quality assurance and training purposes, and for future llm training"
danpalmer 5 days ago
They make it quite clear in Waymos that nothing/no one is listening until you call them or they have a safety need to interrupt. I've never experienced that, but from those I've spoken to that have, apparently it's very immediately obvious, as it should be, and rare.
yardstick 5 days ago
Just wait until someone installs a listening device somewhere in the cab. Doesn’t need to be Waymo doing the listening. Target Waymos that operate around financially important areas like tech and finance companies and profit.
smegma2 5 days ago
That can be done in any cab. Heck a driver would have a much easier time covertly recording you.
taneq 5 days ago
The driver might object to a passenger bugging their car, though.
yardstick 5 days ago
True. But less likely to be able to deploy at scale. Waymo cleaners I’m guessing will be far less likely than drivers to care about keeping their cab super clean and noticing these things.
Plus as per this article, the rider is way less likely to talk important business in front of the driver - hence Waymo being ideal.
solyin 5 days ago
They do record video though, so you'd have to figure out a way to install it such that you aren't suspected of installing it. Plus how do you get it back? You could put in something with a cell modem, but then how do you power it more. There are USB ports tho, so you could ride in the front seat and make it look like a charging cable or battery that you just forgot, but really it's a listening device with a cell modem. For all that effort, you'd want some serious ROI and youd want to do some math on the chances you get something actionable that isn't going to get you investigated by the SEC anyway, and then further, you can't do it a bunch of times because that's really how you get caught. Nah, better to actually get employed by a company, and the higher up you go, the bigger the crimes you can commit!
Sounds like something out of Billions.
taneq 5 days ago
They also made it quite clear that their AI speaker thingy’s microphone was physically disconnected when the switch was off. Turned out the switch only physically disconnected the ‘mic active’ LED.
snailmailman 5 days ago
It’s not clear the circumstances that they do record and monitor, but they definitely do monitor sometimes. They’ve reported crimes that happen in the Waymos, like this incident where they reported some teenagers that had an illegal firearm: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49672549
That same story mentions another instance where some kids had alcohol and toy guns. So maybe there is AI that detects firearms? And then a human intervenes? Its not very clear.
wilg 5 days ago
They always have video, but audio until theres some kind of emergency situation and they call you.
drivers99 5 days ago
The conversation was about audio recording (conversation). That was determinable by video, not audio.
voxic11 5 days ago
recording conversations can be eavesdropping very easily in all party consent states but there aren't generally laws against secretly video recording people (besides in specific intimate situations like bathrooms).
mckfkfkfj 5 days ago
no they have a call center like setup where workers monitor the cars and make adjustments when the cars make stupid decisions, but they're monitoring inside the cars all the time. I could tell you how I know but then I'd have to.. you know
kjs3 5 days ago
Yes...given the spotless record of these sorts of companies in zealously guarding our privacy it would be unthinkable that Waymos is listening in to our conversations. /s
ivantop 5 days ago
Seriously.. how are people so gullible? This is how it always starts…
kjs3 5 days ago
Considering the rate I'm being downvoted, gullible seems too kind.
taneq 5 days ago
If you be extra polite fire to this, does that makes it Google’s Basilisk?
Then again I recently told a friend of mine to stop saying mean things about China because it might offend my car, soooo…
wilg 5 days ago
This also makes it a lot nicer to take a call or FaceTime.
danpalmer 5 days ago
Absolutely! Or even just be alone with your thoughts.
I always felt weird alone in a taxi – having someone serve you that directly in that way, particularly if you're sitting in the back seat, just feels a little uncomfortable. But in a Waymo it's just me.
hffthbcfg 5 days ago
no, it's not, there's an operator watching and listening to you on a camera and with microphones. potentially redirecting your car to wherever the authorities want you, based on what you say, how you look, or whatever. you're not alone at all. it's the illusion of solitude while actually being less alone than in a taxi. the difference is only that you are not faced with interacting with the service worker. it is isolation without privacy.
and you should interact with the driver. it's good for you and cabbies are full of stories. and it's important not to forget about others labor. the labor still happens with waymo; the autonomous nature is half baked and you are absolutely still being watched, listened to, and served directly.
face your privilege directly. take a normal cab. this whole thread reeks of classism from out of touch tech workers in SF
tziporahdagwood 5 days ago
They’re surely not recording your conversation. Today’s convenience is the soil of tomorrow’s turmoil.
PessimalDecimal 5 days ago
Speak truth to the powers that be at Big Convenience!
ryandrake 5 days ago
My last couple of human driven rideshares, I didn’t have to worry about that because the driver was engrossed in his own phone conversation the whole ride. Not sure what’s worse.
eclipticplane 5 days ago
My only question on interactions like this: who the heck is on the other side of these calls, and are they on the phone 24-7?!
simonw 5 days ago
There was an interesting piece in the Guardian about that recently: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/sep/30/people-are-aski...
> For anyone of an immigrant background, the question of who they are talking to is absolutely no mystery. They are talking to us; their siblings, parents, cousins and friends. Sometimes the person on the end of the line is back home, other times they are in a western city also navigating the dislocations of immigrant life. The long phone call is a regular feature of diaspora lives, and even more so for those employed in long, solitary work such as cab driving.
therein 5 days ago
It is true and accurate but such an overly romantic embellishment.
ryandrake 4 days ago
Absolutely fascinating article! So neat to have such a very specific question I Always Wanted To Ask and lo and behold someone actually did the asking and published a plausible explanation. I guess I’m not the only person witnessing and confused by this behavior!
NegativeLatency 5 days ago
Public transit works like this too
echelon 5 days ago
I want hyper personal transport.
I want high reliability driverless services we can rent for our own cars.
I want to fall asleep in the car with my family and dogs and wake up on the beach or in the mountains.
That'll be peak Americana.
pj_mukh 5 days ago
Yea do what you want outside cities. Within cities, cars are extremely space inefficient.
Signed, a certified Waymo lover.
hffthbcfg 5 days ago
it'll just drive you to the detention center. yeah let's give Trump and Musk and their friends the ability to autonomously use facial recognition on the cameras in the vehicle to identify individuals wanted by the state and to transport political prisoners directly to prison.
maybe they'll even ban human controlled cars, because they're more dangerous after all. you don't need to control your own destination. you have nothing to hide. right?
binlog 5 days ago
Have you used public transit in San Francisco?
ryukoposting 5 days ago
I've used it quite a bit since moving to the Bay at the start of the year. They take good care of the buses and trains, things are on time or reasonably close to it. I have no complaints.
causesothere 5 days ago
Yes? Sometimes buses are late or full. But it goes places and it's cheap.
danpalmer 5 days ago
It's a downside of public transport too. Possibly my reason for being sensitive to this though is that I almost exclusively use public transport, getting a taxi is relatively rare for me, and I don't own a car.
dboreham 5 days ago
Yes the "lack of a human" is a feature. That said I've learned many things from talking to Uber drivers in various parts of the world (and in the US from Uber drivers from various parts of the world) so YMMV.
tdhz77 5 days ago
Waymo has been ahead of the competition for a long time. It’s why Elon musk donates to GOP. He can’t win and jump through regulatory hurdles. He is and always has been so far behind the curve he is going even anything even if it’s criminal. (Which it is). Not shocking the first thing DOGE did was go after self driving regulatory bodies investigating his marketing terms and deadly crashes.
stasomatic 4 days ago
Are you too young to have never been in a yellow cab? A strange take... engage, don't, the driver is just making a living, they'd rather be left alone ... put your AirPods on.
danpalmer 4 days ago
I'm not sure you read my comment, certainly your comment doesn't seem to rebut the point I was making. Cabs are black in my country, but I specifically said "taxi" because this is not about Uber or modern ride-sharing, I've had the same experience with Ubers, black cabs, minicabs, booked taxis, and private drivers.
stasomatic 3 days ago
Hey, of course I read your comment. You prefer robots, that was my takeaway, and I prefer people.
danpalmer 3 days ago
Oh no you've completely misunderstood my point. I prefer people, and that's exactly why I want to continue talking to my friends.
Perhaps you're more comfortable chatting to strangers, perhaps this is a cultural thing. An analogy, if I was sitting in a restaurant with friends having a good time and a random additional person got seated at our table that would end the conversation, stop the socialising, and at best we'll have a boring, shallow conversation with the new person about who they are.
stasomatic 3 days ago
Understood. Other people bother me little, but If it happens, I’ll sit elsewhere, no big deal. It is certainly cultural but my 35 years in the US, I’ve seen most everything … I’m pretty immune.
danpalmer 5 days ago
misterflibble 5 days ago
Cheers
dang 5 days ago
Added above. Thanks!