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[WinterIsComing]

Well, not so fast. They will have a safety driver for the commercial rollout.

Today is a day that fans of self-driving cars have been anticipating for years. Waymo—widely seen as the industry leader—is finally launching its "Waymo One" commercial taxi service in the Phoenix metropolitan area.

The announcement fulfills Waymo's long-standing promise to offer a commercial service by the end of the year. But the launch comes with important caveats.

Initially, the new service will only be offered to Waymo's early riders—the same handpicked test passengers that have been riding in Waymo's vehicles for the last 18 months. Waymo says it hopes to make the service available to the broader public "over time."

And despite the fact that Waymo began testing fully driverless vehicles more than a year ago, Waymo has chosen to put safety drivers behind the wheel of its cars for the commercial rollout. That suggests Waymo still has doubts about whether its technology is ready for fully driverless operation.

More at the link: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/1...breaking-self-driving-taxi-service-explained/

Will you use it PhoenixGAF? If so, will you do it when (if?) they become 100% driverless?

 

[Cunth]

Look forward to one crash followed by a complete collapse in confidence

 

[WinterIsComing]

WTF, now people are attacking the self-driving cars and their safety drivers?!?

https://www.thisisinsider.com/waymos-self-driving-cars-are-getting-attacked-in-arizona-2018-12

According to police reports, there have been at least 21 instances where police were called because of people attacking the cars or threatening their human safety drivers. Tires have been slashed in traffic, guns have been pulled, and one man — fed up with the cars driving in his neighborhood — even stood in front of a van until the cops arrived.

 

[Makariel]

You can fight the future, but you can't stop it.

 

[a multicultural team of v]

Look forward to one crash followed by a complete collapse in confidence

Which is absurd when you consider how many people are killed by non autonomous cars daily.

Are there any stats on how many total miles autonomous cars have driven so far? What would it equal, half the mileage of an average US day? A quarter? 102 people a day were killed by cars in 2016. One person (afaik, the Uber one) has been killed by an autonomous car. So even at a conservative estimate, 24 less people were killed by having autonomous cars than not. And they arent even commercially available yet!

Obviously not a perfect comparison because testing is highly localized so you would need to extrapolate local accident rates, etc etc but you get my point.

 

[Jaxx_377]

This seems like an industry just waiting to be crushed under liability lawsuits.

 

[lil puff]

WTF, now people are attacking the self-driving cars and their safety drivers?!?

https://www.thisisinsider.com/waymos-self-driving-cars-are-getting-attacked-in-arizona-2018-12

Does not surprise me. People do dumb shit.

The day after they introduced testing for Stationless Bike Shares, there were reports of people throwing them everywhere, like on the beach in the sand. I think I heard (unconfirmed) people saw them down in the subway.

We might need a self driving police force to keep these things under control.

 

[iconmaster]

WTF, now people are attacking the self-driving cars and their safety drivers?!?

With guns, too. This is why we need to arm self-driving cars.

 

[lil puff]

With guns, too. This is why we need to arm self-driving cars.

LOL

These self driving cars will be driving around like the president with a motorcade around it for protection.

 

[Sqorin Hammerfarf]

"Hell of a day, innit?"

 

[zweifuss]

Came in for the total recall reference, wasn't disappointed. Thank you Gaf!