Waymo to Launch the World's First Autonomous Car Service in December

cageymaru

cageymaru

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According to Bloomberg, anonymous sources say that Waymo is going to launch the world's first commercial driverless car service in early December 2018. The name of the service is a closely guarded secret at this time and will serve the Phoenix, Arizona area where Waymo has been testing autonomous vehicles. Some vehicles will have backup drivers initially to keep customers at ease, but the vehicles will be operated autonomously 99.9% of the time. Current volunteers in the testing program will receive cars without a backup driver to test new features. Waymo has recently been granted approval to begin testing autonomous cars in California's Silicon Valley.

Waymo is just beginning to experiment with pricing models. For now, the program is more about learning how to safely scale driverless cars than making money. At launch, Waymo will offer straightforward fares that are competitive with Uber and Lyft. Pricing may become more nuanced as Waymo collects more data from the commercial program. Once the backup safety drivers are taken out of the equation and Waymo figures out how to charge for in-ride entertainment and advertising, analysts expect base fares to drop.
 
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I wonder what kind of regulations the state of Arizona has in place regarding these vehicles. Humans have to meet certain requirements including being able to pass written and driving tests in order to legally operate a motor vehicle. Did the state perform any kind of testing on these self-driving vehicles? Did they require the hardware and software developers to adhere to industry standard processes for safety critical systems? If so, did the state audit them at any time to ensure that they were compliant with whatever standard was used? If the answers to any of these questions is no, then the state of Arizona is negligent in it's duty to protect the public.
 
PaulP said:
I wonder what kind of regulations the state of Arizona has in place regarding these vehicles. Humans have to meet certain requirements including being able to pass written and driving tests in order to legally operate a motor vehicle. Did the state perform any kind of testing on these self-driving vehicles? Did they require the hardware and software developers to adhere to industry standard processes for safety critical systems? If so, did the state audit them at any time to ensure that they were compliant with whatever standard was used? If the answers to any of these questions is no, then the state of Arizona is negligent in it's duty to protect the public.
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The Arizona guidelines are here: https://azgovernor.gov/sites/default/files/related-docs/eo2018-04_1.pdf
 
"Some vehicles will have backup drivers initially to keep customers at ease, but the vehicles will be operated autonomously 99.9% of the time."

I hope I don't get one of the driverless ones operating in the .01%

These things need to be insured to the hilt.
 
Joust said:
"Some vehicles will have backup drivers initially to keep customers at ease, but the vehicles will be operated autonomously 99.9% of the time."

I hope I don't get one of the driverless ones operating in the .01%

These things need to be insured to the hilt.
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Why? They're already safer than a human driving the vehicle statistically speaking
 
Jagger100 said:
A lot of those miles are in controlled circumstances and/or at speed which are absurdly low.
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Plenty of those miles are in real driving environments. Where I live in Arizona, you can't spend more than 5 minutes on the major surface streets (45 MHP speed limit) without seeing one or two WAYMO minivans drive by, any day, any hour. And we see them on the freeways and inside our subdivision too. I see more WAYMO minivans than I see taxis.

That said, recently I heard that WAYMO vehicles can't merge onto the freeway at rush hour. Apparently, it's impossible unless you violate the rules about safe distances beween cars and/or the speed limit, and the WAYMO vehicles won't do that. Kind of a problem, if you're late for work.
 
pcgeekesq said:
Plenty of those miles are in real driving environments. Where I live in Arizona, you can't spend more than 5 minutes on the major surface streets (45 MHP speed limit) without seeing one or two WAYMO minivans drive by, any day, any hour. And we see them on the freeways and inside our subdivision too. I see more WAYMO minivans than I see taxis.

That said, recently I heard that WAYMO vehicles can't merge onto the freeway at rush hour. Apparently, it's impossible unless you violate the rules about safe distances beween cars and/or the speed limit, and the WAYMO vehicles won't do that. Kind of a problem, if you're late for work.
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No offence but Does that matter. Until someone fairly seperates out the uncurated real world driving and gives stats for that, then any stats are meaningless. And yes the modern road system doesn't work smoothly if everyone follows all the laws and safe rules of the roads. And if you're late for work you're going to get there in the same amount of time as if you weren't late for work barring traffic outside.
 
travisty said:
The Arizona guidelines are here: https://azgovernor.gov/sites/default/files/related-docs/eo2018-04_1.pdf
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As I thought, no new laws or regulations, just an executive order to allow for development and testing on public roads. It does order the department of transportation to develop any new regulations required and report back to the governor, but there is no deadline for that. The problem with this is even if they do mandate specific software development standards and processes, it will be too late because they are already in the development phase. They will end up being grandfathered in, which is a bad idea in a safety-critical system.
 
I have been following the waymo thing out there in AZ, and it looks interesting. Look forward to it releasing to a open public thing, instead of the closed one now. Should get some good data
 
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