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Comment by blululu | Hacker News Reader

I feel like the article is trying really hard to be cynical about one of the few technologies that is just totally an improvement in my life. I don't even really ride cabs very often (basically the airport is the only place and Waymos don't go there). But I do bike and bus into work and frankly the Waymos are just considerate to bicycles and pedestrians. I never have a sense of danger in the crosswalk with them. No risk of getting cut off. None of the borderline psychotic behavior I have personally seen from motorists. The author of the piece even admits that she totaled a car. Which is not exactly uncommon since cars are dangerous. The upsides just so heavily outweigh the bad here.

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Interesting. We don't have Waymo in my city, but we sure do have a lot of Uber drivers who can be relied upon to unleash a fusillade of angry honking when the car in front of them chooses obey traffic laws regarding pedestrians in the crosswalk.

If someone honks at me for obeying traffic rules, you better believe I'm going to be extra, super fastidious about obeying traffic rules while I'm in front of them.

For every Uber there's a mensch!

>I feel like the article is trying really hard to be cynical

I don't feel this way at all. I think you are reading it through the lens of your own personal feelings about Waymo.

I think the article is trying really hard to present a mix of positives and negatives, a "balanced" perspective. Things like talking about how some women feel safer without having to worry about a driver (positive), yet sharing a story of a woman who felt less safe from her fellow passenger because there was no driver (negative). Mentioning the story of the cat that was killed in SF (negative), but also mentioning that human drivers kill a great deal of cats too (positive, in a sense). And so on.

This is kind of a classic misinformation pattern to present contrasting view points side by side as if they are an order of magnitude as common. similar thing used to happen in climate change discussions where an actual scientist would be expected to debate some random guy under the pretense of neutrality. The article goes out of its way to claim that statistics can’t really capture the lived experience (which they don’t even bother to include any actual figures as some kind of insult to their reader’s intelligence). I personally had a cat killed by a human driven car (20 years ago but why not). I personally have been hit by human driven cars (before Waymo existed but still happened). Both incidents are on the rare side. Cars are fundamentally dangerous. But we could pull up the actual vehicle-mile statistics and make a honest comparison instead of going round and round about opinions.

I remember riding in one in SF and while it was at the curb about to merge into traffic it saw a bike coming from down the block on our side and patiently waited long enough for them to pass.

On the other hand, I've had times while walking my dog across the street or through my apartment driveway and waymo's don't really slow down and do more of a faster pass right by us than I'd prefer, especially because a dog, like a child, can be pretty unpredictable.

That's cool, I bike too, but that robos test on public roads will never sit right with me.

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