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Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

(www.cnbc.com)
597 points achristmascarl | 3 comments | 22 Aug 25 17:02 UTC | HN request time: 0.771s | source
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vinkelhake ◴[22 Aug 25 17:40 UTC] No.44987373[source]▶
I live in the bay and occasionally ride Waymo in SF and I pretty much always have a good time.

I visited NYC a few weeks ago and was instantly reminded of how much the traffic fucking sucks :) While I was there I actually thought of Waymo and how they'd have to turn up the "aggression" slider up to 11 to get anything done there. I mean, could you imagine the audacity of actually not driving into an intersection when the light is yellow and you know you're going to block the crossing traffic?

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Sohcahtoa82 ◴[22 Aug 25 18:13 UTC] No.44987773[source]▶
My wife and I took a road trip that included time in SF last year and seeing a Waymo was pretty neat.

To save some money, we stayed in downtown Oakland and took the BART into San Francisco. After getting ice cream at the Ghirardelli Chocolate shop, we were headed to Pier 39. My wife has a bad ankle and can't walk very far before needing a break to sit, and we could have taken another bus, we decided to take a Waymo for the novelty of it. It felt like being in the future.

I own a Tesla and have had trials of FSD, but being in a car that was ACTUALLY autonomous and didn't merely pretend to be was amazing. For that short ride of 7 city blocks, it was like being in a sci-fi film.

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kjkjadksj ◴[22 Aug 25 18:16 UTC] No.44987811[source]▶
Why does tesla pretend to be autonomous? My friends with tesla fsd use it fully autonomously. It even finds a spot and parks for them.
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Sohcahtoa82 ◴[22 Aug 25 19:09 UTC] No.44988569[source]▶
If I can't use the center console to pick a song on Spotify without the car yelling at me to watch the road, it's not autonomous.
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1. kibwen ◴[22 Aug 25 19:19 UTC] No.44988711[source]▶
No, rather, if the manufacturer of the self-driving software doesn't take full legal liability for actions taken by the car, then it's not autonomous. This is the once and final criterion for a self-driving vehicle.
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2. Sohcahtoa82 ◴[22 Aug 25 19:25 UTC] No.44988766[source]▶
Sounds like we're in agreement then.

Right now, Tesla skirts legal liability by saying that the driver needs to watch the road and be ready to take control, and then uses measures like detecting your hand on the wheel and tracking your gaze to make sure you're watching the road. If a car driving on FSD crashes, Tesla will say it's the driver's fault for not monitoring the drive.

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3. FireBeyond ◴[22 Aug 25 22:39 UTC] No.44990772[source]▶
Hell, they'll even hold a press conference touting (selective data from) telemetry to say "The vehicle had been warning him to pay attention prior to the accident!"

And then four months later when the actual accident investigation comes out, you'll find out that yes, it had. Once. Eighteen minutes prior to the accident.

And then to add insult to that, for a very long time, Tesla would fight you for access to your own telemetry data if, for example, it was needed in a lawsuit against someone else for an accident.