<story><title>Waymo begins driverless rides in San Francisco</title><url>https://blog.waymo.com/2022/03/taking-our-next-step-in-city-by-bay.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jefftk</author><text>Ten years doesn&amp;#x27;t sound sarcastic to me.  With fully driverless operation starting in SF (and with several years in Phoenix), having it widely rolled out within ten years seems very plausible.</text></item><item><author>gambiting</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt;I know we&amp;#x27;ll have driverless cars within ten-years&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s sarcastic, right? Like &amp;quot;we&amp;#x27;ll have fusion power in 50 years&amp;quot;? Except that we might actually have fusion power in 50 years and I don&amp;#x27;t actually think we&amp;#x27;ll have truly driverless cars within 50 years.</text></item><item><author>moritonal</author><text>I know we&amp;#x27;ll have driverless cars within ten-years, and I know there will be benefits, but has any government yet started planning for the relatively near-instant transformation of the Trucker and Taxi industry once this &amp;quot;works&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;The fall-out is going to be intense:&lt;p&gt;* Fuel-stops are going to change completely, what&amp;#x27;s the point of half of the motels on long-haul drives when your car can drive all night and likely recharge automatically at a stop-point.&lt;p&gt;* Reduced downtime on goods movement will impact uptime in every other industry.&lt;p&gt;* Autonomous-vehicle-only lanes that line up with traffic timings creating a two-tier driving experience&lt;p&gt;* Huge influx of unemployed drivers who I guess might get &amp;quot;chauffeur&amp;quot; style jobs.&lt;p&gt;* Security issues, complex legal issues when there&amp;#x27;s accidents.&lt;p&gt;* Fake taxi&amp;#x27;s that drive a customer into a bad experience for &amp;quot;lols&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I know all this is extreme, but if history is studying the past to understand the present, science-fiction is studying the &amp;quot;future&amp;quot; to predict the problems of tomorrow.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>modeless</author><text>They just announced 500k driverless miles in Phoenix. Over several years that sounds laughably small to me. For comparison, motor vehicle fatalities in the US are around 1.5 per 100 million miles. We&amp;#x27;re several orders of magnitude away from even being able to convincingly demonstrate that these reduce (or at least do not increase) fatalities in the real world.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m glad that Cruise beat Waymo to driverless in SF because they are providing the swift kick in the butt that Waymo seems to require to actually make progress in a reasonable amount of time.</text></comment>
<story><title>Waymo begins driverless rides in San Francisco</title><url>https://blog.waymo.com/2022/03/taking-our-next-step-in-city-by-bay.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jefftk</author><text>Ten years doesn&amp;#x27;t sound sarcastic to me.  With fully driverless operation starting in SF (and with several years in Phoenix), having it widely rolled out within ten years seems very plausible.</text></item><item><author>gambiting</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt;I know we&amp;#x27;ll have driverless cars within ten-years&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s sarcastic, right? Like &amp;quot;we&amp;#x27;ll have fusion power in 50 years&amp;quot;? Except that we might actually have fusion power in 50 years and I don&amp;#x27;t actually think we&amp;#x27;ll have truly driverless cars within 50 years.</text></item><item><author>moritonal</author><text>I know we&amp;#x27;ll have driverless cars within ten-years, and I know there will be benefits, but has any government yet started planning for the relatively near-instant transformation of the Trucker and Taxi industry once this &amp;quot;works&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;The fall-out is going to be intense:&lt;p&gt;* Fuel-stops are going to change completely, what&amp;#x27;s the point of half of the motels on long-haul drives when your car can drive all night and likely recharge automatically at a stop-point.&lt;p&gt;* Reduced downtime on goods movement will impact uptime in every other industry.&lt;p&gt;* Autonomous-vehicle-only lanes that line up with traffic timings creating a two-tier driving experience&lt;p&gt;* Huge influx of unemployed drivers who I guess might get &amp;quot;chauffeur&amp;quot; style jobs.&lt;p&gt;* Security issues, complex legal issues when there&amp;#x27;s accidents.&lt;p&gt;* Fake taxi&amp;#x27;s that drive a customer into a bad experience for &amp;quot;lols&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I know all this is extreme, but if history is studying the past to understand the present, science-fiction is studying the &amp;quot;future&amp;quot; to predict the problems of tomorrow.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hwers</author><text>They told us we were supposed to have driverless cars in 5 years 10 years ago.</text></comment>