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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

I’m waiting to see how it will handle Chinese roads. A few self driving startups in China actually, although I haven’t heard anything from them recently. It would be the gold standard for a self driving car to handle Beijing roads, drivers, and pedestrians.

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Kyrgyzstan roads. I was nearly killed by a Chinese truck swerving around a donkey which was chilling in the middle of the road in the middle of the night.

I think both Baidu and pony are allowed to run no-safety-driver taxis for $$ in Beijing now (as of this year).

Oh wow. I totally want to see that on my next trip. If they are running well enough, they’ve probably already beat waymo.

Yeah especially South East Asian roads with all those motorcycles buzzing around. Actually I'd be way more impressed with self driving motorcycles.

Beirut and Manila are both crazier than Beijing from what I remember.

I’ve never been to Beirut but Manila, I just remember being stuck in traffic all the time. It didn’t seem worse than China, just a complete lack of infrastructure causing everything to seize over. China has more traffic deaths per capita (15/100k) than the Philippines (10/100k), in any case.

I haven't been to Beirut, but I have been to Beijing a bunch, and by brother has been to Beirut I think at least twice. From what he tells me, Beirut is crazier driving than Beijing. In like all respects.

The traffic fatalities are higher (18 > 15), the lack of lanes is more egregious (and people will dive across three lanes more aggressively), the amount of driving the wrong way down busy multi lane roads is more (which still happens in Beijing, but like not as often).

Beirut (or at least the outskirts) also has things Beijing doesn't: civilian enforcement of traffic etiquette via brandishing automatic rifles, traffic intersections primarily controlled by tanks instead of signals, and the annoying practice carried over from Saudis of doing that stupid angled drive-with-the-car-tilted-on-two-wheels thing in thd middle of traffic.

It's similar to Beijing in it always being slow though, so that's probably why the fatality rate isn't 30+ lol.

I spent 9 years in Beijing and saw some crazy stuff. Like a woman pulled over on the side of fourth ring by the police (weird in itself) then she gets back into her car and rams the police car in front of her by accident. Backing up in the expressway because you missed your exit is common, I saw a cyclist killed by a taxi on dongzhimen wai who was racing a green light about to turn red (the bicycle was crossing against a red). Oh, and the badly modded small car whose wheels popped off all at once while speeding on third ring. The most common traffic, though was slow without any yielding for pedestrians (the cars would just try to avoid you instead). Oh, and that’s 2016, it was already much better than my first visit in 1999 where buses hit the roads at night without their headlights turned on for some reason.

But ya, none of the drivers were armed, so we had that at least :)

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