The linked article is bad. It would've been better to link to the official announcement or page (https://waymo.com/waymo-in-uk):

"select boroughs in London, including Barking and Dagenham, Brent, Camden, Ealing, Royal Borough of Greenwich, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Haringey, Islington, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Lambeth, Lewisham, Newham, Redbridge, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Wandsworth, City of Westminster, and the City of London."

> we also don't have the concept of jaywalking - you can cross wherever, whenever and there is quite the cycling infrastructure to deal with

This is true in New York and, to a lesser degree, San Francisco.

After taking both Uber and Waymo in San Francisco I think I disagree with this. Only caught a few so maybe I didn't see the bad sides, but from what I saw it was able to predict flows and navigate far more smoothly than humans in many situations. Really comfortable and overall safe feeling ride.

It's different than human drivers for sure, but to me at least it's better.

I agree with MVP part, my understanding is that there's still a lot of Wizard of Oz stuff in terms of regularly mapping and remapping its routes and having a lot of human operators remotely checking and maybe controlling the fleet, but I'm impressed personally.

> Everywhere it's rolled out people say yes it drives, but it drives like a rookie

When did you last update this hypothesis?

The Waymos I’ve been in creep, honk and modulate their aggressiveness quite naturally. In the cities they operate in, they’re a premium product to cabs.

The part where you’re right is on freeways. But my point is that tends to be ignored when folks gatekeep “real” autonomy. Instead, it’s some random peculiarity of their city which humans traverse at low speeds. Exactly the thing Waymo has mastered.

> People say yes it drives, but it drives like a rookie

I think you just made this up. Almost every anecdote I've heard, and I spend a lot of time in two cities where it's launched, is that "it drives better than most humans". Which is exactly how I would characterize it too. It doesn't drive exactly like a human. But for every subtle human behavior it doesn't do, there are probably several things it does much more skillfully than a human.

They've been operating in Tokyo for a bit now.

> it needs fundamentally new capabilities like being able to negotiate with other drivers visually and read implicit signal

This is also important in the US and is a capability the Waymo Driver has.

> it's still far more challenging than any American city.

How would you rate the difficult of London vs. Boston?

In some sense I think the "harder" roads might actually be easier since they just result in everyone moving slower and maybe worst case it gets stuck and requires manual control. While on "easier" roads when something goes wrong people are immediately killed.

> There is no road in SF that is as hard to navigate as the average suburban London two-way traffic single car width road with parking on both sides.

I think you just described the entire Bernal Heights neighborhood in SF (except with 20+ degree steepness on top of that).

Driving in London is kind of weird these days in that you feel almost stationary. It's typically wait at lights for 2 min, drive at 15-20 mph for 40 seconds, repeat. I've mostly given up on it and use an ebike instead.

Lived (and driven) both cities. 100% agree with you.

>I'm also curious to know if Waymo's are allowed to drop you slightly off from the address you specified -- in which case they can drop you at the next corner.

Yes, they do.

>Tell us where you want to go

>Choose your destination and we’ll select the safest spots to pick you up and drop you off.

https://waymo.com/rides/

Yes but thats a hack, the issue that it can’t handle those situations is still there and in my experience the car behind me was a waymo that kept trying to center but as soon as it saw cars coming it swerved. It kept going left and right. Unsafe in that situation and scared for people who were coming its way.

I live in London and have visited and driven in LA. London has more narrow streets. Many, many more.

Sadly jail time doesn't often come to those who do it (at least, from experience / hearing stories of intoxicated drivers) and the consequences are paid by those who aren't intoxicated (e.g: getting killed by a drunk driver).

It's definitely not a cure, but removing the human factor (aside from the intoxication part) is anyways a very good goal IMHO.

Oh and btw, I've seen also taxi / uber drivers that were under the influence of alcohol / cocaine. Humans are the problem.

Just based on my experience from a few visits here and there. Sorry for not fact-checking this.

As another comment pointed out, there are a few lines open during the night on weekends, and there are buses.

Should we put 2 drivers in each cab so that more taxes will be paid?

But non-motorists still benefit from roads.

I mean, some drivers do drive dangerously, but that's not what I'm talking about. With the narrow network of one way roads, going down an alley or going the wrong way down an empty one way road for 20 feet can sometimes make a 15 to 30 minute difference in trip time. And in traffic, it can be hard to get across some intersections unless you block the intersection. None of these is dangerous behaviors, per se, but they can be difference makers for riders.

> Why is freeway driving more difficult (genuine question)?

“Stopping in lane becomes much more dangerous with the possibility of a rear-end collision at high speed. All stopping should be planned well in advance, ideally exiting at the next ramp, or at least driving to the closest shoulder with enough room to park.

This greatly increases the scope of edge cases that need to be handled autonomously and at freeway speeds.

…

The features that make freeways simpler — controlled access, no intersections, one-way traffic — also make ‘interesting’ events more rare. This is a double-edged sword. While the simpler environment reduces the number of software features to be developed, it also increases the iteration time and cost.

During development, ‘interesting’ events are needed to train data-hungry ML models. For validation, each new software version to be qualified for driverless operation needs to encounter a minimum number of ‘interesting’ events before comparisons to a human safety level can have statistical significance. Overall, iteration becomes more expensive when it takes more vehicle-hours to collect each event.”

https://kevinchen.co/blog/autonomous-trucking-harder-than-ri...

> Would they delay their rollout over the capital costs of a few thousand $60,000 Jaguars?

Yes. Google, better than many others, gets scaling economics.

(And the cost is likely $100+ thousand per vehicle, after sensors and compute, with costs rising rapidly if you try and order too many too fast due to supply-chain bottlenecks nobody has bothered optimizing yet.)

You prefer more dead people and more people in prison, rather than fewer of both?

Also, the same event (e.g. someone dying in a car crash) doesn't always have the same responsibilities behind it. If I kill someone by driving recklessly, I have more responsibility than if I kill someone when a bird crashes on my windshield. There are extreme cases where someone bears full responsibility, and extreme cases where an accident is just an accident and nobody is responsible. It may be that with self driving, a larger percentage of cases lean on the "true accident" side. (It's just an idea though, I agree there's an important question here that merits careful consideration.)

Where do you live that the justice system doesn't attempt to apportion blame, and just locks up / fines the driver?

Come to Canada! Seriously injure a cyclist and you'll only get charged $110 for failure to yield.