ATM self driving has two issues - the places where it fails in safety are not yet well enough known, and it causes major disruptions for the other cars on the road while turning, parking, or anything that involves interaction / guessing the bahavior of human drivers for something more complex than staying in a lane.
If we would ONLY have self driving cars (no human drivers) and there was some standard they would use to communicate cross company, than self driving would be MUCH faster, not inconvenient, safer and what not else.
As time goes by, there are more and more cars that are being built with the sensors to do self driving, even if they don't have the capability or legal rights.
We will find ourselves in a few years where the majority of cars in certain areas will have the capabilities built in. At that point, some cities will start requiring self driving only, and the software will be built on that assumption. And then suddenly all this effort that Waymo is putting into coexisting with humans will be redundant.
> And then suddenly all this effort that Waymo is
> putting into coexisting with humans will be redundant
I can't imagine this will ever be removed. Take rural UK, there are still steam powered traction engines on the road (occasionally), pony and traps, horses, cyclists.
India will never be 100% AI cars .... not even in the cities.
Suburban US maybe. The rest of the world, you gotta wait a long time.
The thing is, there are plenty of roads that are complicated.
There are plenty of vehicles that are not cars: bikes, motorbikes, trucks, buses, mega transporters, construction / fixing machines, tractors, etc.
Plus of course, you share the road occasionally with protests, parties, events...
And of course criminals won't want self driving cars. And so cops won't. Fire fighters won't. Ambulance driver won't. Anything that needs to get in and out quickly, and each time changing direction, or park in weird locations.
Eventually privacy conscious people will also tilt on how dangerous for society those cars are: you can be spied on, it collects data, it's easy to kill you if you are a political dissident with a simple switch. So a small group of people will also want to opt out.
So while I'm all for as much as self driving car as we can, Waymo effort will still be worth for a long, long time.
ATM self driving has two issues - the places where it fails in safety are not yet well enough known, and it causes major disruptions for the other cars on the road while turning, parking, or anything that involves interaction / guessing the bahavior of human drivers for something more complex than staying in a lane.
If we would ONLY have self driving cars (no human drivers) and there was some standard they would use to communicate cross company, than self driving would be MUCH faster, not inconvenient, safer and what not else.
As time goes by, there are more and more cars that are being built with the sensors to do self driving, even if they don't have the capability or legal rights.
We will find ourselves in a few years where the majority of cars in certain areas will have the capabilities built in. At that point, some cities will start requiring self driving only, and the software will be built on that assumption. And then suddenly all this effort that Waymo is putting into coexisting with humans will be redundant.