Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

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?

I was in a Waymo in SF last weekend riding from the Richmond district to SOMA, and the car actually surprised me by accelerating through two yellow lights. It was exactly what I would have done. So it seems the cars are able to dial up the assertiveness when appropriate.

When red-light cameras are installed at an intersection, the number of rear-end accidents typically increases as drivers unexpectedly slow down instead of speeding up at yellow lights.

The cost of these accidents is borne by just about everyone, except the authority profitably operating the red lights. (To be fair, some statistics also show a decrease in right-angle collisions, which is kinda the point of the red-light rules to begin with.)

That seems only like a temporary problem until people get used to actually stopping at red lights, as they are supposed to. After the initial acceptance phase, it should minimise accidents over the longer term.

Unless there is a warning of how long is left on the yellow light, it’s an unsolvable problem because there is an asymmetric risk of stopping vs accelerating

The lights should be designed so that if you don't have enough space to stop with a mild deceleration you should just go through. If a mild deceleration get you rear ended then of course that's an unsolvable problem