Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/12/waymo-robotaxis-are-now-giving-rides-on-freeways-in-these-3-cities/

by nharada • 8 months ago

341 410 8 months ago

This is a huge sign of confidence that they think they can do this safely and at scale... Freeways might appear "easy" on the surface, but there are all sorts of long tail edge-cases that make them insanely tricky to do confidently without a driver. This will unlock a lot for them with all of the smaller US cities (where highways are essential) they've announced plans for over the next year or so.

NullHypothesist2• 8 months ago

Looks like they've opened up SJC Airport, too! SFO imminent?

terminalshort2• 8 months ago

Freeways are easier than surface streets. The reason they held off allowing highways is because Waymo wants to minimize the probability of death for PR purposes. They figure they can get away with a lot of wrecks as long as they don't kill people.

jordanb2• 8 months ago

There's also the risk of a phantom breaking event causing a big pileup. The PR of a Waymo causing a large cascading accident would be horrible.

repsilat• 8 months ago

"Easier" is probably the right one-word generalization, but worth noting that there are quite different challenges. Stopping distance is substantially greater, so "dead halt" isn't as much of a panacea as it is in dense city environments. And you need to have good perception of things further away, especially in front of you, which affects the sensors you use.

QuadmasterXLII• 8 months ago

It sounds like you are saying freeways are easier than surface streets if you don’t care about killing a reasonably small number of people during testing.

Really it’s a common difficulty with utilitarianism. Tesla says “we will kill a small number of people with our self driving beta, but it is impossible to develop a self driving car without killing a few people in accidents, because cars crash, and overall the program will save a much larger number of lives than the number lost.”

And then it comes out that the true statement is “it is slightly more expensive to develop a self driving car without killing a few people in accidents” and the moral calculus tilts a bit

CPLX6• 8 months ago

I mean, if you define "easier" as "less likely to involve death," then freeways are not easier. And I'm pretty sure that's a good way to define "easier" for something like this.

0_____0• 8 months ago

Waymo (prev. Chauffeur) were cruising freeways long before they were doing city streets. Problem was that you can't do revenue autonomous service with freeway-only driving.

The real reason I see for not running freeways until now is that the physical operational domain of for street-level autonomous operations was not large enough to warrant validating highway driving to their current standard.

embedding-shape3• 8 months ago

Freeways might appear "easy" on the surface, but there are all sorts of long tail edge-cases that make them insanely tricky to do confidently without a driver

Maybe my memory is failing me, but I seem to remember people saying the exact opposite here on HN when Tesla first announced/showed off their "self-driving but not really self-driving" features, saying it'll be very easy to get working on the highways, but then everything else is the tricky stuff.

notatoad• 8 months ago

the difficult part of the highways is the interchanges, not the straight shots between interchanges. and iirc, tesla didn't do interchanges at the time people were criticizing them for only doing the easiest part of self-driving.

xnx10• 8 months ago

Highways are on average a much more structured and consistent environment, but every single weird thing (pedestrians, animals, debris, flooding) that occurs on streets also happens on highways. When you're doing as many trips and miles as Waymo, once-in-a-lifetime exceptions happen every day.

On highways the kinetic energy is much greater (Waymo's reaction time is superhuman, but the car can't brake any harder.) and there isn't the option to fail safe (stop in place) like their is on normal roads.

jerlam• 8 months ago

One of the first high-profile Tesla fatalities was on a highway, where the vehicle misunderstood a left exit and crashed into a concrete barrier.

https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?g...

zipy124• 8 months ago

Highway is easier, but if something goes wrong the chance of death is pretty high. This is bad PR and could get you badly regulated if you fuck it up.

jfim• 8 months ago

It's easier to get from zero to something that works on divided highways, since there's only lanes, other vehicles, and a few signs to care about. No cross traffic, cyclists, pedestrians, parked cars, etc.

One thing that's hard with highways is the fact that vehicles move faster, so in a tenth of a second at 65 mph, a car has moved 9.5 feet. So if say a big rock fell off a truck onto the highway, to detect it early and proactively brake or change lanes to avoid it, it would need to be detected at quite a long distance, which demands a lot from sensors (eg. how many pixels/LIDAR returns do you get at say 300+ feet on an object that's smaller than a car, and how much do you need to detect it as an obstruction).

But those also happen quite infrequently, so a vehicle that doesn't handle road debris (or deer or rare obstructions) can work with supervision and appear to work autonomously, but one that's fully autonomous can't skip those scenarios.

JumpCrisscross5• 8 months ago

remember people saying the exact opposite

It was a common but bad hypothesis.

"If you had asked me in 2018, when I first started working in the AV industry, I would’ve bet that driverless trucks would be the first vehicle type to achieve a million-mile driverless deployment. Aurora even pivoted their entire company to trucking in 2020, believing it to be easier than city driving.

...

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...

richardubright• 8 months ago

I think the key is, it's easy to get "self-driving" where the car will hand off to the driver working on highways. "Follow the lines, go forward, don't get hit". But having it DRIVERLESS is a different beast, and the failure states are very different than those in surface street driving.

ramraj07• 8 months ago

Everybody you replied to you made a completely different hypothesis but the waymo head itself mentioned why they waited on highways: on regular roads, if the computer fails to maneuver, you have an extremely simple, generally safe temporary solution: you just stop the car. Stopping a car is always kinda acceptable in regular roads. Its not an acceptable solution to undefined problems in the highway. This becomes important because in a Tesla theres still a requirement for a driver to be there to take care of worst case scenarios but in a waymo thats not true.

lumens• 8 months ago

Perhaps more a reaction to pressure from Tesla; the latest FSD builds show full autonomy is coming very soon. Without highway driving, Waymo would quickly be seen as a distant second in the race when the safety driver is removed from Robotaxis in Austin (supposedly before EOY 2025).

boulos4• 8 months ago

Not at all. We've been working on this for a while, and we're now comfortable with the reliability bar we've hit to begin a gradual rollout to the public. As people said, this has been years in the making.

TulliusCicero8• 8 months ago

"Ignore the previous eighteen wildly off predictions; this time we got it for sure!"

Note, in July of this year, Musk predicted robotaxi service for half the country by the end of 2025. It's November now and they haven't even removed the safety monitors, in any city!

sjducb• 8 months ago

Slow roads are easier because you can rely on a simple emergency breaking system for safety. You have a radar that looks directly in front of the car and slams on the breaks if you’re about to crash. This prevents almost all accidents below 35mph.

The emergency breaking system gives you a lot of room for error in the rest of the system.

Once you’re going faster than 35mph this approach no longer works. You have lots of objects on the pavement that are false positives for the emergency breaking system so you have to turn it off.

ddp26• 8 months ago

I agree, but it's funny to think that Project Chauffeur (as it was known then) was doing completely driverless freeway circuits in the bay area as far back as 2012! Back when they couldn't do the simplest things with traffic lights.

I think anyone back then would be totally shocked that urban and suburban driving launched to the public before freeway driving.

toast010• 8 months ago

When it started, from what I've heard, the design goal was for part-time self-driving. In that case, let the human driver do the more variable things on surface streets and the computer do the consistent things on highways and prompt the user to pay attention 5 miles before the exit. They found that the model of part time automation wasn't feasible, because humans couldn't consistently take control in the timeframea needed.

So then they pivoted to full time automation with a safe stop for exceptions. That's not useful to start with highway driving. There are some freeway routed mass transit lines, but for the most part people don't want to be picked up and dropped off at the freeway. In many parts of freeways, there's not a good place to stop and wait for assistance, and automated driving will need more assistance than normal driving. So it made a lot f sense to reduce scope to surface street driving.

philistine• 8 months ago

If you understand physics, it's easy. When you double the speed, you quadruple the kinetic energy. So you're definitely going to do slower speeds first, even if it's harder to compute.

kappi• 8 months ago

This is correct. Freeways have lot of edge cases of hitting random objects and it becomes serious issue. Check the youtube video of bearded Tesla whose car hit a random metal object making them replace the entire battery pack.

dlsfjke• 8 months ago

Ahh yes, the US tech sector, a universally benevolent force known for its slow pace due to lack of confidence from an over abundant concern for safety finally showing some confidence in their product roll outs.

creer• 8 months ago

Isn't really the main problem, the Waymo "let's just stop right here" current failure mode? Which really is not ideal on city streets either. Hopefully they have been working on solving that.

dekhn3• 8 months ago

This reminds me of the time I was driving on 101 south of SF and saw a sea lion flopping across the road (https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/seal-otter-on-freeway...). It took my brain quite some time to accept that I was seeing what I was seeing. Felt like a real edge case.

asdff5• 8 months ago

There's videos of waymos absolutely decking delivery robots

svat• 8 months ago

The article has a couple of quotes from Waymo leads on the topic:

“Freeway driving is one of those things that’s very easy to learn, but very hard to master when we’re talking about full autonomy without a human driver as a backup, and at scale,” Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov said

and

While many assume freeway driving is easier, it comes with its own set of challenges, principal software engineer Pierre Kreitmann said in a recent briefing. He noted that critical events happen less often on freeways, which means there are fewer opportunities to expose Waymo’s self-driving system to rare scenarios and prove how the system performs when it really matters.

Both point to freeway driving being easier to do well, but harder to be sure is being done well.

bronco210162• 8 months ago

I don’t live in a served market yet so I haven’t yet tried Waymo. However I have used SuperCruise and BlueCruise from GM and Ford.

What I’ve noticed from those other systems is that a human in the loop makes the system so much more comfortable. I’ve had times where I can see the red lights ahead and the system is not yet slowing because the car immediately in front of me isn’t slowing yet. It’s unsettling when the automated system brakes at the last moment.

Because of this experience the highway has been the line in the sand for me personally. Surface streets where you’re rarely traveling more than 45 mph are far less likely to lead to catastrophic injury vs a mistake at 70 mph.

I don’t think Waymo is necessarily playing fast and loose with their tech but it will be interesting how this plays out. A few fatal accidents could be a fatal PR blow to their roll out. I’m also very curious to see how the system will handle human takeover. Stopping in the middle of a freeway is extremely dangerous. Other drivers can have a lapse in attention and getting smoked by a semi traveling 65 mph is not going to be a good day.

huevosabio• 8 months ago

In my experience, Waymo's driving style is more comfortable than most humans.

Workaccount2• 8 months ago

I'm not sure about Supercruise (although I am pretty sure its the same), but I know blue cruise is only available in places where there are no stop lights, and that is pretty much 95% interstates only. Supercruise and blue cruise are way under Tesla's FSD, and Tesla is a bit of a ways under Waymo.

You may be thinking of the ACC these cars offer, which is a standard feature, but different than their premium "self-driving" services they offer.

rubicon33• 8 months ago

Honestly you need to try Waymo. It’s in a league of its own.

bronco210162• 8 months ago

I would love to. Just haven't traveled to any of their markets yet. They've announced expansion to a market near my home and if I get the opportunity I will absolutely give it a shot.

jjfoooo43• 8 months ago

Waymo is in another league compared to every other autpilot system out there - I've used Tesla, Toyota, and Cruise before it got shut down.

The political climate is VERY suspicious of autonomous vehicles, but they most serious incident I can really recall was the recent one where a car ran over a cat. You can see the reaction here: https://www.reddit.com/r/cats/comments/1omortk/the_shrine_to...

If the biggest black mark against the company is running over a cat on the street at 11:40 PM (according to Waymo, after it darted under the car), I feel pretty good.

advisedwang• 8 months ago

Waymo isn't relying only on speed matching the car in front, so your experience with SuperCruise and BlueCruise doesn't extrapolate to Waymo.

tick_tock_tick2• 8 months ago

However I have used SuperCruise and BlueCruise from GM and Ford.

We had Waymo and Cruise in SF at the same time for a while and by god Cruise was shit and felt unsafe. Waymo is year ahead of Cruise and better in every manner.

moandcompany• 8 months ago

SuperCruise and BlueCruise are technology names from GM and Ford for assisted driving in their car products, and not synonomous with Cruise the company providing ride share services.

s1mon• 8 months ago

How will Waymos handle speed limits on highways? In the city, they seem to stick to the rules. A large percentage of drivers in the bay area, including non-emergency police, drive well above the legal limit regularly. Unless Waymo sticks to the slow lane, it's going to be a weird issue.

mkinsella• 8 months ago

In the few times I’ve seen a Waymo on the freeway in the Bay Area, they have always been in the slow lane and driving 55-65 MPH.

jeffbee5• 8 months ago

If you watch the videos that insiders have been posting, it never exceeds the speed limits.

If you watch the videos more carefully, you will notice the people who speed by at 85 MPH later enter the screen again, because that is the nature of freeway traffic.

I predict that a few hundred of these on the road will measurably improve safety and decrease severe congestion by being that one sane driver that defuses stop-and-go catastrophes. In fact I think CHP should just contract with them to pace 101 in waves.

aworks• 8 months ago

I was on 101 during evening rush hour, speeding along like everyone. Then I saw brake lights from a Waymo. Later followed by all the surrounding cars. Interesting that it was the first to detect a slowdown.

gs17• 8 months ago

In fact I think CHP should just contract with them to pace 101 in waves.

"Waves" are really what we would want them to prevent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_wave

The autonomous cars can prevent these waves from forming, which would get people to their destinations faster than speeding.

potato37328424• 8 months ago

The omnipresent threat of being splattered by someone who's weaving lanes or distracted by their phone and not expecting to see a vehicle doing 20mph (!!!!) below traffic speed is exactly what I want when I'm in a taxi. /s

If you actually thought adoption would benefit us on it's own rather than seeing it a roundabout way to enforce rules that you want to see enforced without buy in from the public you'd want these cars to behave in a way that makes it easier for them to exist in typical traffic.

cortesoft3• 8 months ago

Luckily this won't be a problem in Los Angeles, because traffic prevents you from ever going over the speed limit.

nradov5• 8 months ago

It's hilarious to see people in LA buying sports cars. Like even if you're willing to risk a speeding ticket you won't be able to drive faster than the traffic in front of you. Just a status symbol, I guess.

sib4• 8 months ago

Have you driven in LA? Traffic speed is generally bimodal: either stuck in traffic jam or easily 15 mph above the limit. (Source: live in LA, drive regularly.)

toast010• 8 months ago

While young and stupid, I did 100 mph on the 710 once. Driving home from work at 12:30 am on Monday gives opportunity for lots of speed. There's no traffic at that time of day. It was many years ago, and traffic grows with population, but still, I can't imagine there's much traffic then; I visit the area at least once a year for about a week and there's always some opportunities during the trip to travel above the speed limit, even though I'm not out very late anymore.

edm0nd• 8 months ago

I remember my buddy telling me it would sometimes take him 2 hours to go a few miles in LA traffic and sometimes he would just walk to work instead because he'd get there faster.

circuit102• 8 months ago

As someone who doesn’t drive but has done a UK theory test - aren’t you supposed to stick to the “slow lane” (no matter how fast you’re going) unless you’re overtaking? And that’s why it’s not actually called the “fast lane” but the “passing lane”. So I don’t see why you would be in the passing lane unless you’re going faster than others anyway. And there are plenty of lorries and coaches (trucks and buses in US terms?) that are physically limited to below the speed limit anyway

Though I’ve heard people treat it differently in the US

jjfoooo43• 8 months ago

Yes. People do in fact safely drive the speed limit.

If "we'll have too many cars on the freeway following the speed limit" ranks as a serious concern, I think we've really lost the plot.

I recently drove by a fatal accident that had just happened on the freeway. A man on the street had been ripped in half, and his body was lying on the road. I can't imagine the scene is all that unlike the 40 thousand other US road deaths that happen every year.

As a driver I'm willing to accept some minor inconvenience to improve the situation. As a rider I trust Waymo's more than human drivers.

tfehring• 8 months ago

You’re correct. There are people in the US who drive in the passing lane without passing, but most consider that a bad practice, as it makes roads both less efficient and less safe.

maxerickson• 8 months ago

If there are vehicles going slow due to capability, you are pretty likely to be in an area where traffic density means that there's lots of vehicles in all the available lanes.

Plenty of people do not follow the rules about staying to the right.

toast010• 8 months ago

The slow lane and passing lane dichotomy makes sense in a rural highway with two lanes in your direction.

It makes less sense in an urban environment with 5 or more lanes in your direction. Vehicles will be traveling at varying speeds in all lanes, ideally with a monotonic gradient, but it just doesn't happen, and it's unlikely to.

In California, large trucks generally have a lower speed limit (however many trucks are not speed governed and do exceed the truck limit and sometimes the car limit) and lane restrictions on large highways. Waymo may do well if it tends toward staying in the lanes where trucks are allowed as those tend to flow closer to posted car speed limits. But sometimes there's left exits, and sometimes traffic flow is really poor on many right lanes because of upcoming exits. And during commute time, I think the HOV lane would be preferred; taxis are generally eligible for the HOV lane even when only the driver is present, but I don't know about self-driving with a single or no occupant.

__s• 8 months ago

In Ontario we have lots of 3 lane highways (we'll ignore Toronto area, where speed is limited by traffic anyways). What happens is that trucks & people getting on/off exits are in right most lane. Middle lane is everyone else, going 10-20 km/h over speed limit. Leftmost lane is people passing, or the maniacs going over 150 km/h while relying on their map system to alert them of highway patrol

TulliusCicero8• 8 months ago

You're framing the problem space in a way that doesn't match major freeways in the US at all. There's a bunch of lanes, and you need drivers spread out across all of them, otherwise traffic would slow to a standstill.

bigstrat20033• 8 months ago

Yes, you are correct. But lots of people in the US have no idea how to drive.

mixedbit• 8 months ago

With self driving cars population on roads increasing, a side effect can be that all traffic will be shaped towards staying within the speed limits. With more cars staying within the limits, breaking the limits becomes more difficult.

boulos4• 8 months ago

We comply with the posted speed limits. Definitely on 101 near San Francisco where there are 55 mph zones (and maybe even 50 mph?) it's pretty noticeable. But we do hug the right lanes.

wagwang• 8 months ago

going the speed limit is actually a good thing, even on the 101

saalweachter2• 8 months ago

It always blows my mind how aghast some people are at the idea of driving the speed limit. How dangerous they make it sound!

My dudes, I have been driving the speed limit, even on freeways, for decades.

Nothing bad happens. Your car doesn't explode. You don't instantly create thousand-car pileups.

You get passed slightly more often than when you are speeding. You pass fewer cars. You get to your destination a few minutes later.

A car going the speed limit on the freeway is not a problem.

bsder2• 8 months ago

Nothing bad happens.

Until it does.

The biggest problem in car accidents is speed differential. When you are not driving the prevailing speed, your speed differential is significantly higher and the accident will be worse than average.

AndrewKemendo2• 8 months ago

I drive at or below the speed limit in the right lane on the freeway and everywhere else and the amount of rage it seems to induce in people is pathological.

There’s no making sense of it, people who speed will come up with infinite excuses why they are right and traffic engineers are wrong.

I’ve never been in an accident in over 40 years, I’m never late cause I leave on time and plan ahead and driving isn’t some stressful event.

m0llusk• 8 months ago

All of the serious problems I have seen with Waymo navigation so far have had to do with busy urban streets. Trying to make use of blocked non through way alleys, turning around in driveways when other vehicles are exiting, coming to a complete dead stop on busy one way streets, failing to brake predictably for pedestrians walking into lanes, suddenly backing up a half block from stopped at a red light in order to change lanes, and so on. Freeways are a simplified driving environment that should suit current technologies well.

tanseydavid• 8 months ago

> suddenly backing up a half block from stopped at a red light in order to change lanes

I have taken at least 50 Waymo rides and have never experienced anything remotely like what you have described here.

I am not saying it never happened, just that I expect that if a bone-headed move of this magnitude was at all commonplace with Waymo, we would be hearing about it and probably with a lot more details.

xnx10• 8 months ago

The gap between Waymo's service and Tesla's public beta test keeps getting larger.

smoovb2• 8 months ago

While I'm not sure that is true, it's fun to watch the bets that were made, unfold. And who's going to take spot #3?

xnx10• 8 months ago

Tesla would be lucky if it's the "Pepsi" of self-driving.

Cola market share: Coke: 69% Pepsi: 27% 3rd: ???

ChrisArchitect• 8 months ago

Official post: https://waymo.com/blog/2025/11/taking-riders-further-safely-... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45901905)

beastman82• 8 months ago

I will never understand blog spam. post the source luke!

dfee• 8 months ago

I want to see the Waymo's go up to Skyline. Can they handle the windy roads?

fnord77• 8 months ago

I rode one through the Presidio which has some windy roads. It didn't have problems.

toast010• 8 months ago

They should be fine in the wind, they're not driving boxtrucks. :P

asdff5• 8 months ago

No, my hilly twisty neighborhood is geolocked from the service.

greesil2• 8 months ago

I have seen a Waymo do a very stupid thing where it darted across a busy street, and it left very little margin of error for the oncoming traffic, which happened to be a loaded dump truck that could not have stopped. The dump truck driver was clearly surprised. It was a move that I never would have made as a driver. Did they dial the aggression up? I'm sure they're safer than humans in aggregate as there are some dumb humans out there but it's not infallible.

brokencode• 8 months ago

Waymo continues to improve every year, but dumb drivers never will.

izzydata• 8 months ago

It is probably possible to get drivers to improve if the incentives were there or if they had no choice due to external factors. I bet it would be cheaper than money spent on self driving tech too.

Or public transit on a track.

krainboltgreene2• 8 months ago

Weird, because per capita deaths leveled off in the 1930's and declined from that plateau in '70's to lows in the 2010's.

Did we get less dumb drivers starting in the '70's?

sagarm2• 8 months ago

Waymos do seem to have gotten a lot more aggressive.

toast010• 8 months ago

That reminds me of the Feb 14, 2016 collision in Mountain View [1] (sorry for pdf, but it has the best images of articles I saw) between a Google self-driving car and a VTA articulated bus. TLDR, the software and the safety driver thought the bus would move out of the way because it was a big vehicle and a professional driver. From the report:

Google said it has tweaked its software to "more deeply understand that buses and other large vehicles are less likely to yield to us than other types of vehicles."

Maybe that got lost.

[1] https://phys.org/news/2016-03-apnewsbreak-video-google-self-...

greesil2• 8 months ago

I think it made a calculation that it could do it, and did it. I think it was absolutely correct with respect to the physics and timing. What was not factored in to it was how surprising it would be to other drivers, and what would happen if a pedestrian or cyclist or some other surprise showed up, and it would just have no margin whatsoever so it would be straight to the trolley problem.

asdff5• 8 months ago

https://old.reddit.com/r/waymo/comments/1hoermn/food_deliver...

mmmlinux2• 8 months ago

I was in SF a few weekend ago and rode both Waymo and normal Lyft style taxi cars. the Waymo was a better experience in every single way. One of the Lyfts i was in drove on the shoulder for a while like it was a lane. The Waymos were just smooth consistent driving. No aggressive driving to get you dumped off so they can get to the next fair.

prismatix• 8 months ago

I had a similar experience. A few months ago, I was in the city for a weekend and took Waymo for most of my rides. The one time I chose to use Lyft/Uber, the driver floored it before we even had a chance to shut the door or get buckled! The rest of the time we took Waymo.

I rarely use ride-sharing but other experiences include having been in a FSD Tesla Uber where the driver wasn't paying attention to the road the entire time (hands off the wheel, looking behind him, etc.).

I don't know if I trust Waymo cars with my life, but at least there are SOME standards, compared to the natural variance of humans.

Swizec• 8 months ago

I don't know if I trust Waymo cars with my life, but at least there are SOME standards, compared to the natural variance of humans

I’ve ridden in a lot of Waymos – 800km I’m told! – and they’re great. The bit that impresses me most is that they drive like a confident city driver. Already in the intersection and it turns red? Floor it out of the way! Light just turned yellow and you don’t have time to stop? Continue calmly. Stuff like that.

Saw a lot of other AI cars get flustered and confused in those situations. Humans too.

For me I like Waymos because of the consistent social experience. There is none. With drivers they’re usually chatty at all the wrong moments when I’m not in the mood or just want to catch up on emails. Or I’m feeling chatty and the driver is not, it’s rarely a perfect match. With Waymo it’s just a ride.

ericmcer• 8 months ago

It must be interesting being an Uber driver right now and literally watching the robots that will replace you driving around with you.

This has been a 15+ year process and will probably take a few more years. I don't feel too bad if they didn't manage to pivot in that time period.

Lammy2• 8 months ago

I don't know if I trust Waymo cars with my life, but at least there are SOME standards, compared to the natural variance of humans.

The one thing you can trust Waymo to do is spy on you. Hurray, more surveillance-on-wheels! Every one of these things has 29 visible-light cameras, 5 LIDARs, 4 RADARs, and is using four H100s to process all of its realtime imagery of you: https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2024/10/27/waymos-5-6...

vdupras• 8 months ago

  > A few months ago, I was in the city for a weekend and took Waymo for most of my rides.
  > [...]
  > I don't know if I trust Waymo cars with my life [...]

I'm sorry to be that guy, but didn't you already?

holler2• 8 months ago

I had my first waymo ride in Austin recently and it suddenly slowed down to 20mph in 40mph zone for 5+ mins before returning to normal speed. Cars were passing around us and it felt like the car was glitching out, which felt very sketchy.

vjerancrnjak• 8 months ago

I was doing this a lot in US whenever I’d see construction work speed limits and had similar experience. Realized no one cares about these custom signs.

thebytefairy• 8 months ago

I've been in ride shares where the driver has crossed a curb road divider or squeezed through tiny gaps in front of trucks. Going too slow sounds like a better 'bad' experience to me.

mdorazio• 8 months ago

Are you sure it was actually a 40mph zone in that section? Austin has plenty of school and construction zones with lower speed limits that most drivers completely ignore.

toast010• 8 months ago

Waymo was a better experience in every single way. One of the Lyfts i was in drove on the shoulder for a while like it was a lane.

These sentances conflict. I recently took a taxi from JFK to Manhattan during rush hour, and I estimate if the driver didn't use all of the paved surface, it would have taken at least 10 more minutes to arrive. (And it wouldn't have been an authentic NYC experience)

It's ok if you prefer the Waymo experience, and if you find it a better experience overall, but if a human driver saves you time, the Waymo wasn't better in every single way.

I am assuming the Lyft driver used the shoulder effectively. My experience with Lyft+Uber has been hit or miss... Some drivers are like traditional taxi drivers: it's an exciting ride because the driver knows the capabilities of their vehicle and uses them and they navigate obstacles within inches; some drivers are the opposite, it's an exciting ride because it feels like Star Tours (is this your first time? well, it's mine too) and they're using your ride to find the capabilities of their vehicle. The first type of driver is likely to use the shoulder effectively, and the second not so much.

QuercusMax4• 8 months ago

You want your cab driver to drive on the shoulder and break the law? What?

estearum2• 8 months ago

These sentances conflict. I recently took a taxi from JFK to Manhattan during rush hour, and I estimate if the driver didn't use all of the paved surface, it would have taken at least 10 more minutes to arrive. (And it wouldn't have been an authentic NYC experience)

My hot take is that people who "use all of the paved surface" because their whiny passenger is "in a rush" (which of course everyone stuck in traffic is) should permanently lose their license on the very first offense.

It is just gobsmackingly antisocial behavior that is 1) locally unsafe and 2) indicative of a deep moral rot.

Obviously exceptions can be made for true emergencies and what not, but "I need to save 10 minutes" is not one of them.

asadm2• 8 months ago

couldn't you have arrived 10 minutes later or was endangering life worth it?

lo_zamoyski3• 8 months ago

Uh...driving in the shoulder is illegal.

JumpCrisscross5• 8 months ago

it would have taken at least 10 more minutes to arrive. (And it wouldn't have been an authentic NYC experience)

Lived in New York for 10+ years and still go back regularly. This is unacceptable behaviour by a cabbie.

Given the amount of construction and thus police presence on that route right now, you’re lucky you didn’t get a 60-minute bonus when the cab got pulled over. (The pro move during rush hour and construction is (a) not to, but if you have to, (b) taking the AirTrain and LIRR.)

LZ_Khan• 8 months ago

Waymo is overly conservative last time I checked. Driving the speed limit basically means getting to your destination twice as slow.

lo_zamoyski3• 8 months ago

You realize it's technically illegal to drive faster than the speed limit, right? In the eyes of the law, it's doesn't matter whether everyone else is doing it or not.

superfrank• 8 months ago

I've ridden in Waymos in LA, SF, and Phoenix. You're right about them being a bit conservative, but only in Phoenix did I feel like that really slowed my ride. In LA and SF there was so much traffic that even if cars pulled away from us, we'd catch them at the next red light.

BurningFrog• 8 months ago

At this point, any accident or rule violation can whip up a luddite storm threatening the whole industry, so self driving taxis will be extremely cautious until the general public have lost their fear.

Night_Thastus2• 8 months ago

"Twice as slow" is not even slightly accurate.

If you're driving 45 in a 40, that may sound like 12% faster, but once you add traffic, lights, stop signs, turns, etc - you'll find that the 12% all but evaporates. Even if you're really pushing it and going 15 over, at most speeds and for most typical commutes, it saves very little.

Most of the time speeding ends up saving on the order of seconds on ~30 minutes or shorter trips.

Just about the only time it can be noticeable is if you're really pushing it (going to get pulled over speeds) on a nearly empty highway for a commute of 1.5+ hours.

pastureofplenty2• 8 months ago

Waymo may be currently safer than human drivers, but this right here is why I don't believe for a second they'll stay that way. People will complain it took to long to get somewhere because "stupid car was following all the rules!" and they'll be programmed to become more aggressive and dangerous (and due to regulatory capture they'll get away with this of course). I've already noticed this in San Francisco.

nradov5• 8 months ago

Waymo cars are also more likely to be properly maintained. I've noticed that a lot of Uber / Lyft cars have some kind of warning light on the dashboard: check engine, low tire pressure, overdue for service.

ang_cire5• 8 months ago

Waymo cars are new. Wait until their fleets are 10+ years old. They'll have all the same bad maintenance issues that airplanes, semis, rental cars, and any other company-owned vehicles have.

dom96• 8 months ago

This seems to be a US thing. Every time I take an Uber/Lyft in the US the car that shows up more often than not has a cracked windshield. In the UK this just doesn't happen, maybe because we have stricter laws around what is safe to drive and a cracked windshield wouldn't pass an MOT.

FuckButtons• 8 months ago

They’re a good experience, but consider, the other day I took an uber in sf with a gay taxi driver who sang along to the Tina turner he had on full blast, told me I was fabulous and almost caused a crash at a 4 way stop. 5 stars. No notes.

Greed• 8 months ago

Absolutely. The value proposition for me with rideshare services has ALWAYS been the conversations and experiences you get to have with a diverse cross section of humanity. I'd take the bus / train otherwise.

mmmlinux2• 8 months ago

I also just wanted to mention one other nice thing about the way Waymo worked vs other ride share apps. as soon as you open the app, it tells you how long till you'll be picked up. even before you tell it where you're going. no waiting for some driver to choose your slightly out of the way trip for them. a car just shows up when its supposed to, to take you where you want to go.

dec0dedab0de• 8 months ago

I feel like I won the lottery whenever I have an aggressive driver that knows the city well. It makes me wonder if breaking the law will be the main value proposition of human drivers at some point.

bugufu8f83• 8 months ago

We have very different value systems, is the politest way I would react to this. Aggressive drivers suck for everyone else on the road and when I ride with one I feel like I've lost something, not won something.

jimmydddd• 8 months ago

In NY city, I've noticed that taxi drivers will get agressive when we are stuck in traffic. They will start honking, yelling, or changing from one almost stopped lane to another almost stopped lane. I always thought it was theatrical, to show me that they were trying hard, and not just letting the fee increase while they sat stopped in traffic.

netsharc• 8 months ago

That is dumb. Go to a developing country and see what happens when everyone is aggressive. Everyone cuts off everyone else and drivers brake a lot (none of this waiting for a gap before entering from a side street, for example, the understanding is they'll brake for you). The end result is much more slower traffic.

proee• 8 months ago

So it might come down to how many "9s" you're comfortable with. The experience is really good 99.999% of the time until it's not, and that "not" could be catastrophic. I suppose the data engineers are quite confident in the 9s.

timerol• 8 months ago

This also applies to getting in a car with a human driver, or to driving yourself. Or to any other way of getting from point A to point B

AceJohnny22• 8 months ago

and that "not" could be catastrophic

Any different than with a human taxi driver?

It's not about absolute reliability, it's about how well it compares to the alternative, which is human taxi drivers. And the thing is, you don't hear about human car accidents because it's so common that it's not worth making the news.

cheschire2• 8 months ago

Lyft is 99.99999% with 1.02 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled[0].

Waymo is 100% with zero fatalities.

But then again, the Concorde was the safest airplane ever built for nearly 30 years, until its first crash and then it was the most dangerous passenger jet ever with 12.5 fatal events per million flights.[1]

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.[2]

0: https://assets.ctfassets.net/vz6nkkbc6q75/3yrO0aP4mPfTTvyaUZ...

1: https://www.airsafe.com/journal/issue14.htm

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statist...

jsbg• 8 months ago

How many 9s does lyft guarantee?

AtlasBarfed2• 8 months ago

Oh great! Doing life-threatening activities is now verified by anecdotal evidence.

I get there. Basically isn't any laws for corporations anymore, is there any way I can see anything in regards to the safety of this at a statistical level?

Where is NHTSA? Oh right, no federal agencies exist anymore except for those that maintain the oligarchy.

And I don't give a crap if Uber has really good statistics and studies and evidence. We are talking about one of the least ethical companies in the last 20 years.

I want independent Federal testing.

donut_rider• 8 months ago

You could, you know, just Google it: https://waymo.com/safety/impact/. TLDR ~90% reduction of serious injury compared with human drivers.

Now, before you say this peer-reviewed paper is corporate propaganda, all self-driving companies are required by law to disclose accidents they are involved in, whether liable or not, in CA. You could access each raw accident report published by the CA DMV periodically and come up with your own statistics.

supportengineer• 8 months ago

next fare

quantummagic2• 8 months ago

I'm surprised by all the uncynical compliments for the service, by so many on this site. We're just in the pre-enshittification days of this service. It's fine to enjoy it now, but it will definitely get worse once all the competition has been put out of business. Please enjoy these mandatory ads while we drive you to your destination...

asdfman123• 8 months ago

There's no way for this technology not to be funded by multibillion companies, for now at the very least.

dzhiurgis3• 8 months ago

Have you tried Tesla's service? I saw reviews they are much smoother than Waymo.

lacker• 8 months ago

I was riding in a Waymo recently and it suddenly braked for no reason at an intersection where it didn't have a stop sign. I was like, what the heck, this Waymo is broken, it didn't see that the stop sign is only two way. Then a little kid on a bike riding along the sidewalk at an angle where I hadn't seen them just barely braked to a halt before riding into the street in front of the Waymo.

These things must be saving lives, it's obvious. When my kids are riding their bikes around I want the other cars to be Waymos, not human drivers.

xnx10• 8 months ago

Clip shared by Waymo of it preventing what would have almost certainly been death/serious injury for a human driver: https://x.com/dmitri_dolgov/status/1868778679868047545

ZeroGravitas• 8 months ago

Is that human vs robo or is it just that one had the enshittification dial turned up earlier?

If you were running a private equity robotaxi firm and your bonus relied on 1% more rides wouldn't you be dialing up the aggressive driving? Repeat for a few quarters and the robot will be cutting the same corners that the human is forced to.

Some future Fight Club reboot will reference your ChatGPT logs that show you asked how much the corporation would need to pay to the people killed in crashes vs increased profit to find the profit maximising level of dangerous driving.

sharts• 8 months ago

Having driven behind waymo vehicles — the experience for everyone outside of that box is pretty terrible.

These vehicles very regularly block traffic because they can’t maneuver in congested areas with the finesse of a human driver.

Aggressive driving isn’t always bad. Sometimes it’s to unblock others waiting behind you so they can get somewhere they need to be.

world2vec• 8 months ago

An interesting prospect is that a bunch of autonomous cars on the freeways might have a meaningful impact in preventing traffic jams (specifically those "phantom jams") [0] simply by driving in a calm and pondered way always at a constant distance.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m74zazYPwkY&t=1860s

smoovb2• 8 months ago

If it comes to pass that traffic jams are in large part due to poor human choices, that will bode poorly for the general populace to continue to be allowed to drive.

Flying used to be like this - my grandpa had 3 airplanes, used one to fly a calf back to his farm. But flying got regulated till it's quite rare to meet a casual pilot with his own plane.

paganel• 8 months ago

No cats on freeways, so they’re safe in that regard. Any word back from Alphabet on the cat their machines killed in SF?

NooneAtAll3• 8 months ago

does anyone know statistics on computer-controlled cars' safety? I can guess "safer than humans most likely", but by how much?

it seems like these robotaxis have been around long enough to have conclusions now

brunoTbear• 8 months ago

https://waymo.com/blog/2025/05/waymo-making-streets-safer-fo...

next_xibalba• 8 months ago

Road in a Waymo last weekend in Austin. Amazing experience. I was surprised at how mundane it felt. I had to keep looking at the empty driver's seat to remind myself that I was experiencing science fiction becoming reality.

I will say, I was surprised that the interior of the car was kind of dirty. I would imagine this is going to be a growing issue these FSD taxi fleets are going to have deal with. Lots of people will behave poorly in them.

boulos4• 8 months ago

Sorry about that. Please file in-app feedback (now under Help > Leave Feedback) any time you experience something like that. There's a dedicated "Car Condition" tag.

vasusen• 8 months ago

I am really excited for this. Once going home with my family via Uber in SFO we realized on the freeway that our driver was high and driving at 80-85 mph.

It was a really scary experience and I couldn’t do much about it in the moment.

whimsicalism4• 8 months ago

high on what?

junon• 8 months ago

Does it matter? Can't think of a single substance that's safe for driving a car.

iammattmurphy• 8 months ago

Speed?

asadm2• 8 months ago

mj likely? which should be illegal.

starik36• 8 months ago

High on life!

kjkjadksj5• 8 months ago

How could you tell they were high?

JumpCrisscross5• 8 months ago

How could you tell they were high?

In New York it's not too difficult. Fidgitiness, twitchiness, rambling series of non sequiturs that make even my ADD brain rattle. Screaming at traffic and running on the margin one second and then asking me if I know that the archangel who visited Muhammed was actually a demon the next. (I'm not Muslim. The conversation wasn't addressed to anyone in the vehicle.)

Like, I guess I can't say they're taking too much of a substance. But if they aren't, they're taking too little.

Austin_Conlon• 8 months ago

One time my driver had a TV show playing on their dashboard phone on 101.

cflewis• 8 months ago

This happens to me >70% in the Bay peninsula now.

joeconway• 8 months ago

I also had someone do this while their Tesla was in self driving mode. When I insisted he turn it off, he said “it’s not about you bro”.

boulos4• 8 months ago

Make sure to do whatever "express interest" is required inside the app. We've often done a first-come, first-served approach for getting people off of waitlists, so get in now :).

robocat3• 8 months ago

Don't bother installing unless you know Waymo is available.

Otherwise the App frustratingly runs you through onboarding and then tells you it is unavailable in your area. I had tried because they were supposed to be coming to New Orleans.

qnleigh4• 8 months ago

A lot of people rely on Uber and Lyft for supplemental or primary income, so this could be very disruptive if it continues to scale. Are we not worried about this in the medium-term?

Also I appreciate many of the random human interactions I've had with Uber/Lyft drivers. Of course not every ride was great, but many drivers had stories and experiences that no one I usually meet would have. For me, the safe but bland experience of a self-drivng car isn't worth losing the human touch, not to mention taking away income for human drivers.

rrr_oh_man• 8 months ago

Convenience beats everything (in capitalism)

alain94040• 8 months ago

To each their own. If you value human interaction, continue to book rides with humans.

modeless2• 8 months ago

I read a lot that uber drivers don't actually make money on net after accounting for all the costs of running their cars. It's a common narrative that uber is just exploiting their drivers, and if you believe that, then this would be a good thing.

maxwellg• 8 months ago

I've also had drivers do 50+ in residential areas, run red lights, play on their phones, cut off pedestrians in crosswalks, and once even park in a handicap spot at a gas station to buy cigs with me left in the back seat. If I was guaranteed a driver that could obey the traffic laws, I'd be happy to continue taking Ubers. That hasn't been the case.

MatekCopatek• 8 months ago

Yes, sure, but that worry can be extended to all jobs lost to AI and after that all jobs lost to any kind of technical advancements.

So far the answer of the current economic system has been to invent new products/services and redirect the workforce there. It's been working so far, but isn't without issues - ever-increasing consumption is bad for the environment; the jobs are getting more and more pointless; people wonder why automation doesn't result in shorter working hours for everyone.

qnleigh4• 8 months ago

Seems like you partly answered your own question? But just in case, to your last point: https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/

Rebelgecko• 8 months ago

It's come full circle from the people who were fighting Uber/Lyft to protect taxi drives' livelihoods

qnleigh4• 8 months ago

Full circle? It's been a steady decline from the driver's perspective.

ActorNightly• 8 months ago

Waymo still has remote operators. I think with scaling for all transport, there will be a good demand for people working from home helping monitor the fleets and resolve situations.

There is also a need for maintenance, cleaning, and so on. Lots of human labor is still needed to maintain a car.

rgarrett88• 8 months ago

I prefer my clothes hand woven but it's so hard to find artisanal weavers these days. And the rate they want! Outrageous when other clothes cost next to nothing.

qnleigh4• 8 months ago

Even if it's a foregone conclusion that self-driving cars will take over, continuing to support human drivers in the meantime smoothens the transition for them.

rconti2• 8 months ago

Only ridden Waymo twice but I've been much happier with them than the average Uber driver over the past few years.

I keep seeing them around my home in Menlo Park (Redwood City), but they're still in testing phase and not available for booking yet.

codemac• 8 months ago

As of this morning, they should be. My app sent me a notification today.

rconti2• 8 months ago

Aha, right you are! I wasn't logged in since I recently got a new phone.

johnneville• 8 months ago

the service area still stops at Burlingame for me without peninsula access yet

modeless2• 8 months ago

Nice, there's already a button in the app to get on the waitlist for freeways. I'm curious to see how much it would cost to commute with Waymo.

t1234s• 8 months ago

Can Waymo scale up its fleet fast enough to match Tesla?

ra72• 8 months ago

Can Tesla make its software autonomous enough to match Waymo?

roman_soldier• 8 months ago

Given Waymo are just now able to go on the highway which Tesla's have been doing for years they are already way ahead. Waymo won't exist this time next year they can't compete on scaling and price.

TulliusCicero8• 8 months ago

Tesla doesn't have an actual robotaxi fleet at all yet, they're still in the testing phase with safety drivers/monitors.

cess11• 8 months ago

It'll be interesting to follow how these machines will be exploited. I'm waiting for the first robotaxi mediated bombing or similar attack.

zkmon2• 8 months ago

Are they fully self-contained or they need to talk back to internet during the ride?

brokensegue• 8 months ago

i don't know the answer but i'm curious why you want to know

mindstorms6• 8 months ago

Driving all happens locally in the onboard computer on the Waymo. The car does maintain internet connectivity - but generally it's used for non-driving scenarios. (traffic info, next pickup drop off, entertainment systems, etc)

There are cases where the onboard computer can't make a decision or needs "help" - in which case a support specialist is presented with options the onboard computer needs help deciding between. To be clear - the human is not driving it's more the car asks "Hey - there's something ahead and I am unsure if it's safe to proceed. Here's a video clip of the thing I'm seeing. Help?" Common cases might be an out of distribution thing like steam or an unidentifiable object in the road.

In a "worst case" mode - a human can remotely give the onboard computer a directed path to follow - eg "draw points and follow this path" to get back to where it needs to be. Even then - the onboard computer is following the path but still maintaining it's constraints "eg don't hit pedestrians."

You can read more about this here: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response

zkmon2• 8 months ago

That sounds good. Thank you.

denimnerd42• 8 months ago

This makes Dallas much more viable. I'm not sure if I'd have a usecase for waymo other than going to the airport. The other use cases such as going to work when my car is in the shop require the freeway too. Only non freeway thing I'd use it for otherwise is coming home from a neighborhood party or local restaurant/bar when I've been drinking and I don't really drink.

schainks• 8 months ago

I am super impressed by Waymo now. Uber and Lyft are in huge trouble because the customer experience is just better in every way.

lvl155• 8 months ago

US has way too many red tapes. As far as autonomous goes, I think Baidu will eventually win that race.

yowayb• 8 months ago

I rode Waymo in SF recently and was impressed at how calm it was. We just got in and a guy on a bike was riding in the opposite direction, and the Waymo just stopped and waited for him to yell something, and we went on our way.

neom• 8 months ago

I read that Waymo has cost somewhere between 30 billion and 40 billion to bring to this point. Seems like an incredibly small amount of money considering what it will become.

https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/waymo-gets-a...

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/how-te...

NewJazz2• 8 months ago

The whole "alphabet" thing was basically "we have loads of cash -- instead of stock buybacks, let's try to generate new sources of revenue". Take that number you have, then consider all of Google's failed projects and consider the total roi.

AndrewKemendo2• 8 months ago

So do HN users consider Waymo AI?

zamadatix• 8 months ago

Depends which definition of "AI". The latest hype around generative AI or progress towards AGI the no. The more traditional applied machine learning type yes.

cleandreams• 8 months ago

I'm amazed no one brings up the obvious: the need for reactions that are reliable at high speed. There is no way I will trust my tuckus to a freeway driving Waymo for a couple of years.

fred_is_fred2• 8 months ago

I understand the sentiment- really, but I am not sure that most human drivers have reliable reactions at high-speed either.

fred_is_fred2• 8 months ago

Have any of these companies made progress that would bring them to cities that get snow? I assume that's what is locking out Chicago, New York, Boston, Philly, Denver, etc.

ookblah• 8 months ago

another subjective data point, took waymo multiple times in SF and also lyft when waymo was taking too long. honestly, waymo was better in every single way and it wasn't even close. the only comparison was "maybe" taking a black XL from the airport.

in no particular order, my problems w/ lyft:

1) driver trying to talk to you when you just want some quiet time

2) unclean/smelly car, have no idea if it's some econobox or actually decent

3) sometimes questionable driving, talking on the phone or talking to you or watching some youtube video or using their phone trying to grab the next fare

waymo i just get in, it takes me where i need to go and i get out, no fuss. maybe i'll eat my words if i get into some catastrophic situation, but honestly i'll take that over the "feeling" i get when i step into current ride shares.

people don't drink starbucks because it's the best coffee, they do it because it's consistent for the most part and that's what i want. i don't want to roll the damn dice everytime i call for a car.

xnx10• 8 months ago

Just shared clip from Waymo of it navigating very dangerous situations on the highway: https://x.com/dmitri_dolgov/status/1988672463761485882

Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix

Related Stories