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Comment by ryukoposting | Hacker News Reader

It continues to bewilder me how wildly different some people's experiences with Waymo are than mine.

My very first time getting a Waymo, as soon as it got going it immediately tried to make a left turn out of a right lane. Then it decided to go 15mph down a 3-lane wide road with a 45mph speed limit for several miles. No warning beeps or anything, it just decided to do that for some reason.

I waited a few months before trying it again. This time I took it to the airport. It worked great... until it got to the airport and caused a traffic jam because it couldn't figure out how to complete a lane change in traffic. Embarrassing, for me and the car.

Waymo is bound to capture the imaginations of people who haven't seen these things before. They certainly made me smile the first time I saw one at the beginning of this year. But god help you if you actually use one.

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Balancing data set: I've been in many Waymo in Los Angeles and never had them do anything like this. Since you mentioned going to the airport presumably this was in Phoenix or San Antonio? Seems like the traffic on those places would be sub-LA level of difficult to navigate.

San Jose. The 15mph incident was mid-day, broad daylight, hardly any traffic at all. Airport incident was at 3 AM at SJC.

The ones in LA just get stuck behind things because LA loves its park anywhere you want anarchy.

But also the Waymos use alleys, driveways, and private parking lots that they're really not supposed to.

Always a bit embarrassing when the Waymo decides to use a space that's not meant for public use for pickup/dropoffs. One time, mine waited for me in/blocking a fast food drive-thru lane.

In LA they make very subtle traffic infractions. For example, turning right onto the left lane of a two-lane road. But a third of human drivers probably don't know that it's not allowed and another third intentionally violate it.

On my commute home there is always a street that has 5-6 Waymos trying to turn left from the middle lane because they could not successfully change lanes. Blocks traffic every single day without fail. Probably been like this for 5-6 months.

I read "could not successfully change lanes" as "were blocked from changing lanes by human drivers that either didn't notice the attempt or intentionally ignored it". I don't know where you are, but this is a complaint that I have about driving in the SF Bay Area as a human driver: people here just don't let you into their lane.

Haven't had this problem in the 10 months I've been living in the Bay. Put on your turn signal and go.

And either way, turning left from a lane that isn't a left turn lane is obviously the wrong response to failing to change lanes.

In Austin, I've never been in one but I constantly see them making weird decisions and once, it was a red on left turn a waymo ahead of me and me behind it the turn left turned green it didnt move light turned red, next time it turned green it moved. I really think they're safe cause they have learned to do what others do in front of them and when they have to make their own decisions everything falls apart. I do hope it gets better a little faster.

This approximately lines up with my experiences with them in SV. Most of the time they drive so conservatively as to be a nuisance to surrounding traffic, and then occasionally one turns left from the wrong lane. Or makes an obviously dumb u-turn or something.

You should see what humans do....

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