Waymo says its driverless taxis will traverse “a large portion of the city night and day,” covering spots like “the heart of downtown, Barton Hills, Riverside, East Austin, Hyde Park and more.” The company makes no mention of the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, where the taxi business is typically the most lucrative.
I don’t understand how a driverless car can work when we barely paint lines on our streets, sure as heck can’t see lanes in the rain most of the time. Also, how will these things react to the people that like to run up to the front of lines and just cut in without any regard to other’s safety, will the smart car just slam on the brakes?
Yeah. Reliability and Austin driving culture aside, a driverless car is only as good as the infrastructure it’s running on. The weird and invisible-when-wet lines, inconsistent traffic lights, poorly designed bike lanes, etc. will definitely make it harder.
Can’t wait for even the slightest rain to totally cripple the entire fleet.
I was more so commenting on how painted road lines here become nearly invisible when it rains. AFAIK, a lot of self driving tech relies on visible road lines to direct itself, but maybe the tech is good enough now to where it doesn’t really matter.
In any case, I guess it can’t be much worse than how the human drivers here handle things, lol.
Have to agree about the shitty line painting. 183 construction area will be a particularly fun ride I’m sure.
Time for the bike riders to put on the padded suits.
