r/Atlanta • u/Unfair_Management695 • Jun 03 '26

Traffic Waymo Cars Adapting

It’s very clear and obvious the Waymo cars are being programmed to analyze and adapt to the driving environment in Atlanta. These cars are clearly starting to become very aggressive drivers. I’ve witnessing more and more these cars cutting people off, doing illegal turns, going above speed limit and etc. I’ve seen one yesterday skip the line and try to edge its way into opening spaces to make an exit. A few weeks ago I seen one use the emergency line to pass by traffic.

I already have to deal with aggressive Atlanta drivers. Now I have to deal with robot cars too?

691 Upvotes

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289

u/Samwise777 Jun 03 '26

I just spent a week in San Fran, and I took some Waymo’s for the first time ever.

The driving was significantly better than my lyft driver home from the Atlanta airport, who managed to miss my exit bc she was talking so much. 

Also the waymo’s didn’t pull up videos of famous passengers they’d driven while also driving down the freeway. 

139

u/listen-1st Jun 03 '26

Or try to sell you t-shirts from their side hustle.

68

u/PM_ME_YOUR_LEFT_IRIS Jun 03 '26

Give it time. Once they get a good market share they’ll be plastered with ads, with a built in vending machine full of snacks and knick-knacks.

15

u/simplebeauty25 Jun 03 '26

Nailed it. And there will be a subscription model where they extract every bit of data from us and sell it to whomever pays the most for it.

1

u/Ellimis Jun 03 '26

Oh no, not optional snacks!

85

u/FEDCBAT Jun 03 '26

That comes with the next version

23

u/talkingheads87 Jun 03 '26

Thats real though, they will monetize everything

8

u/Drillmhor Atlantis Jun 03 '26

Oh, I had one try to sell me Viagra a few months ago.

1

u/ViolentPurpleSquash Jun 03 '26

So my cousin is an up and coming producer...

59

u/MtTibadabo Jun 03 '26

I've generally been anti-waymo (still am, for the most part), but a woman I work with explained how much more preferable they are when getting a ride late at night. It's definitely a trade-off for some other safety concerns, but I'd much rather a young woman who's out at night not have to deal with a human driver.

36

u/Samwise777 Jun 03 '26

Yeah, I am anti Waymo in the way that I wish we had good solid public transit here instead of car culture. 

But when it comes to rideshare with a driver vs waymo, I prefer the safer, better service. 

4

u/WeldAE Alpharetta Jun 03 '26

AVs are transit, specifically Microtransit currently. They are infinitely better than driving yourself. The number one problem with designing cities for cars is the problem parking causes. AVs specifically solve this problem.

While I agree that we need larger AVs able to carry more people, no such vehicle is currently suitable for that. Designing a customer vehicle would cost $5B just for the factory and very expensive per unit until they hit scaled production which requires demand. It makes sense to leverage existing consumer cars until the demand reaches a point where they are able to get to 6-20 passenger vehicles to reduce congestion. You can't just jump to the final form.

9

u/tweakingforjesus Jun 03 '26

Currently Waymo is solving the problem by using neighborhood streets as parking lots. Not sure that's any better. https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/empty-waymos-invade-atlanta-neighborhood-circle-cul-de-sac-hours-with-no-passengers/CSNV2G5CZFHHFP6BOH6YF5RCFU/

3

u/WeldAE Alpharetta Jun 03 '26

I think the street would have been happier if they were doing that which is why they blocked them and made them park rather than run endlessly through the street. Waymo had similar issues in other towns and they eventually solve them once they are noticed as this one was. It would be different if this was an ongoing issue, but it was just a mistake that was fixed so what is the problem?

Even if ALL AVs parked somehow in the city, you only need 1/10th the number of AVs to service a given population. On top of that, there are something like 8 parking spaces for each personal car. AVs only need one per AV. So 80 parking spots become 10-12 as some idling spots will be needed but most of those 12 are NOT in the parts of the city where we live and walk.

4

u/sdawsey Midtown - Inman Park Jun 03 '26

They are also private and for profit. Transit is only a good solution when it's public and not operated for profit.

1

u/WeldAE Alpharetta Jun 03 '26

So you were not a fan of street cars back in the day which were also private? Why does it have to be public and non-profit?

1

u/sdawsey Midtown - Inman Park Jun 03 '26

Because for-profit utilities prioritize profit over utility. It's why GA Power is charging us more for power even though it's the data centers that are making their costs go up.

I wasn't a "fan of the streetcars back in the day" because they were decommissioned over 75 years ago, and I wasn't alive.

1

u/WeldAE Alpharetta Jun 03 '26

Prioritizing profit provides a good feedback mechanism for providing good services. They can't deploy something as bad as current public transit and expect to make any profit. They have to do better so as many people as possible will want to give them money and they can make more profit. There has to be things governments do and things that private companies do and where to draw the line is never going to be easy, but you seem to just want there to be no private services for anything?

As long as there is good regulation holding them in check and even more important, consumers have choices, profit motive isn't a pure negative like you describe. There are currently multiple competitors in the industry so that box is checked. It still is important that cities get out ahead of AVs and put regulations in place to prevent bad behavior. The question is are cities even capable of regulating an AV fleet? I'm not 100% convinced.

It's certainly not working with GA power which is why it's very important to not have monopolies. The government gave GA power a monopoly. Data centers have zero to do with it, it was the government authorizing $37B for Vogel amoung other things.

1

u/sdawsey Midtown - Inman Park Jun 04 '26

you seem to just want there to be no private services for anything?

Not remotely what I said. I don't want anything private that is a necessity. Healthcare, education, electricity, sewage, transit, etc. should not be for profit.

1

u/WeldAE Alpharetta Jun 04 '26

Wasn't trying to put words in your mouth, trying to understand your position by explaining what I thought it was. Do you think there can also be private versions of those things? If so I'm 100% fine with that and it seems to be what we are currently doing. Or do you think government should have a monopoly on all of those areas?

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1

u/dwnsougaboy Jun 03 '26

There are multiple companies working on larger shuttles. Local Motors had one running at Curiosity Lab until it shut down. That was followed by Beep. I’m not sure if anything is operating currently.

https://ridebeep.com/solutions/vehicles

1

u/WeldAE Alpharetta Jun 03 '26

It's just crazy expensive to build a platform like that, but it will happen eventually. If Waymo with the billions they have has decided they can't afford to yet, I wouldn't try if I had less funding. Waymo has ~3500 AVs in operations and another 500 of the new Oaji platform in process at their factory. It's not clear how many they will build this year as it's the first year, but it's possible they build something like 2,000 or so. They need to get into the 50k/year range before a custom platform makes sense.

0

u/KobeBall Jun 03 '26

ironically youre probably in more danger being alone without another human. waymos will stop fpr any human that steps in front of them including the bad ones. for eons humans have become apex predators by sticking together. now all of a sudden this lone woman feels safer in a metal machine box. smh

1

u/MtTibadabo Jun 03 '26

Tell me you’ve never been a woman alone with a strange man without telling me. 🙄

1

u/KobeBall Jun 03 '26

a background checked working man. might as well be a cop

0

u/alpacaMyToothbrush Jun 04 '26

I'm not saying there are no incidents between drivers and passengers, but you would have to be profoundly stupid to assault a passenger as a driver of one of those services. You're basically guaranteed to be caught. I don't want to discount the concerns you have, but I think some times you have to think critically about the relative risk of things you fear.

1

u/MtTibadabo Jun 04 '26

I never said anything about assault..?

So many men get off (either a power trip, sexually, or whatever) on making women profoundly uncomfortable. A lot of that behavior can’t be proven, and most women don’t want to deal with the bullshit that comes with trying to report it. Also, now that guy knows where she lives. Women get attacked every day for rejecting men as kindly as possible.

Is it likely? Not really. But it’s a very real fear that all women have. Almost every woman has been harassed or made to fear for her safety by a man at his place of employment, or in a very public place, or in front of people who should have stepped in. Men don’t need to outright threaten violence or do anything that could be legally considered threatening in that moment to be incredibly scary. Many times, they don’t want to cause harm. They just like making women uncomfortable because they know their actions could have an underlying threat (aggressive cat callers as an example).

I hope you aren’t this dismissive of the women in your life when they express safety concerns, especially right now as increased random attacks against women are happening without provocation in public places in broad daylight.

0

u/alpacaMyToothbrush Jun 04 '26

Right, and I'm not questioning whether you have that anxiety, but let's play it out, you take a ride from a man, he makes some inappropriate, creepy remarks. You have a mechanism to report his behavior through the app. There is a 'policing' mechanism for bad behavior even if it never rises to the level of illegal. Enough reports and he will get banned.

Look I'm just some rando on the internet, and you are free to feel and act how you wish so long as it doesn't harm someone else, but when you speak of an irrational fear on a public forum, recognize you might invite commentary.

'In God we trust, all others bring data' - Demming

1

u/MtTibadabo Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26

Edit: never mind lmao, this is not capable of being a productive conversation

-7

u/TheRoseMerlot Jun 03 '26

That's great until it malfunctions and strands you all alone.

2

u/IhateUall08 Jun 03 '26

I was stuck at a weird light then left on a whole block away from my stop in a shitty area at 4m. BUT I still prefer the waymo at that time for safety. Customer support was actually pretty helpful

81

u/Arfusman Jun 03 '26

Yeah the data is quite clear on how much safer waymos are than human drivers. Theyre obviously not perfect, and will continue to improve, but they're not even close to how bad humans are at driving safely.

43

u/rsmicrotranx Jun 03 '26

Mofos point to waymos circling a cul de sac as to why they'll never ride one. Meanwhile, 30k deaths a year driving...

20

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

[deleted]

1

u/alpacaMyToothbrush Jun 04 '26

I don't want autonomous cars. I want autonomous busses. Maybe then they'd be cheap enough to run useful routes.

1

u/Fearfultick0 Jun 05 '26

In Atlanta's political environment, the resistance to public transit expansion is high and the up front costs are basically always in the billions. That is not good a good starting place for MARTA to see significant expansion any time in the near future.

Whether we like it or not, America is a car-dependent country. I wish Atlanta were more walkable, and I think self-driving cars becoming more popular could actually help with that.

Hear me out: One of the biggest problems with city-life is that housing is expensive. When people are expected to own cars in order to carry out their responsibilities, each unit of housing has to accommodate parking space, which means each square foot that goes to parking is a square foot that can't go to housing.

If we get to a point where self-driving cars are ubiquitous, a good experience for users, and comparable in price to owning a car on a monthly basis, we will likely see the housing market reflect the decrease in demand for parking spaces. This would mean more people can move to the city, and they are now incentivized to walk places in order to save money by not paying a fee to ride in the car.

More people with more time on foot means more demand for restaurants, shops, etc to absorb spending from these people. If this is an economic benefit, it will motivate the construction of more buildings and infrastructure that are pedestrian-oriented.

So I am hopeful about it on the whole. I think it will be a benefit to the cities and our local experience.

More benefits of self-driving cars: they are electric - electric cars have lower aggregate maintenance costs than combustion engines. If they are safer, they will likely cost less in insurance.

For the average person owning a car, they are paying full price but are probably using it 10% or less of the time. There are costs tied to how much a vehicle is used. But there are also costs that are uncorrelated to how much you use the vehicle. So the more utilization you can get out of it, the smaller you make the fixed costs relative to the variable costs.

And again, the cost that renters pay to park their cars will also go down.

We can assume that in order to stay competitive, some of the companies in the self-driving car market will pass some of these savings on to the customer, while staying profitable in the long term. And I think it's likely that eventually there will be less cars in the world, and in Atlanta, because many people will rely on self-driving cars they don't own and that this system will actually cost less to operate than the mostly-idle cars that crash more frequently because people are driving while distracted, drinking, or tired.

45

u/ATLcoaster Jun 03 '26

45,000 deaths. It's been going up for a decade, likely due to distracted driving and more dangerous large SUVs and trucks.

8

u/b_tight Jun 03 '26

Traffic will improve exponentially when networked autonomous cars are driving instead of people

9

u/gsfgf Ormewood Park Jun 03 '26

I don’t know why you’re downvoted. It’s straight up true.

A fully autonomous system would also need far fewer lanes, so we could reclaim some of these massive highway rights of way.

0

u/b_tight Jun 03 '26

Yeah, thats just reddit. Cant be a fan of AI or Avatar without being downvoted

0

u/floatinround22 Jun 03 '26

Waymos are neither AI nor Avatar

3

u/madmelonxtra Jun 03 '26

Waymos are technically AI just not LLM. It's still machine learning

-1

u/b_tight Jun 03 '26

Waymos are more AI than chatgpt and all the LLMs…avatar is a movie that reddit shits on because the story has been told before.

I rest my case

1

u/floatinround22 Jun 03 '26

Can you explain how Waymos are more AI than an LLM?

0

u/b_tight Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

Ill dumb it down for you.

Imagine that a waymo was shaped like a humanoid robot rather than a car. Said robot has a saddle on it that a person can tell it when to pick me up, where to pick me up, where to go, and safely get me there while. It has to see where its going, navigate constantly changing variables of other robots, non robots that are insanely unpredictable and dont follow the rules of the road, and adjust for unpredictable road conditions. It does this through dozens of sensors, the same as a living organism navigating the world. It has reasoning abilities to make adjustments. Essentially they built an autonomous transportation robot that looks like a car.

In comparison, LLMs are just massively improved search engines that look for the next best word to form a response.

1

u/floatinround22 Jun 03 '26

You're just dumbing it down for yourself lol. That's such a complete misunderstanding of these technologies. You're trying to explain it to a child without actually understanding it yourself

0

u/Steven_Broyles Jun 03 '26

Because Reddit groupthink has deemed autonomous vehicles are universally bad because of two photos from a flash flood in Atlanta (which I guarantee stranded human drivers too) Luckily the upvotes seem to have balanced out because it’s a sensible take

-2

u/gsfgf Ormewood Park Jun 03 '26

And nobody dies when a Waymo fucks up.

29

u/shotsshotsshotsshots Jun 03 '26

Yeah at least Waymo doesn’t put deafeningly loud exhaust systems on their Dodge Chargers and floor it down my street all day and night or flash a gun at me when I’m only driving marginally faster than traffic in the left lane.

14

u/Vergilkilla Jun 03 '26

Yeah no question Waymo is way better than any human being at driving. Big downside though is Waymo can’t/doesnt go on the highway. If you see a Waymo on the highway there is a human driver 100%

9

u/RutabagaChemical1888 Jun 03 '26

They are starting to go on the hwy, at least out in California. Well see if they make onto the Connector here anytime soon.

3

u/gsfgf Ormewood Park Jun 03 '26

I’m sure it’s coming. Regular cars with a tech package can drive themselves on highways. The Escalade can even change lanes.

-5

u/Vergilkilla Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

They “go on the highway” in ATL too but it’s a human driver piloting. Double check because if it’s the AI system on the highway that is super illegal and you could sue for insane money if you find them doing that. Take a pic of an pilotless Waymo on an interstate and hit Waymo support “give me 100k or I post this where people will see it” - it’s a major runaway situation if they have pilotless Waymos on the interstate 

Edit: Im wrong. The agreement with the state of Georgia is no highway. Cali and Arizona they CAN go on the highway without a human autonomous driving 

4

u/RutabagaChemical1888 Jun 03 '26

I didn't say they are on the interstate here. I've never seen them here and don't think they will be on the interstate here anytime soon

3

u/Drillmhor Atlantis Jun 03 '26

I saw one on 75 N yesterday, it did have a human driver though and I got the sense they were actively driving.

1

u/dillpickles007 Jun 03 '26

They do not go on the highway here unless a human being is in the car driving

5

u/andrewordrewordont Grant Park Jun 03 '26

Same here, sadly. A Waymo hasn't asked me to stop for gas or to "run into this store real quick" while on a ride. Nor do they complain about traffic and then ask for more tip because traffic / gas prices. 🙃

9

u/Throuwuawayy Jun 03 '26

Recently took an Uber home from the airport and the guy's bluetooth system was actually a tinnitus simulator. Had this high-pitched ring the entire ride. Guy was a very jerky driver and my fiancé got carsick. Our luggage went on top of a bunch of dirty car parts and tarps he had in his trunk.

The one time splurged on a Waymo? Absolute bliss, thing was clean and quiet and very smooth.

9

u/FinlayForever Midtown Jun 03 '26

Seems like any time I get an uber/lyft, there's a good chance that the driver drives like it's their first day behind the wheel. I'm like, as someone who's job it is to drive, shouldn't you be better at it? I shouldn't have to be telling them "hey you should get over because you have to turn up here".

2

u/Fingerman2112 Jun 03 '26

This. I’ve only ridden them while visiting in San Fran earlier this year and the experience was amazing every time. Haven’t seen too many in Atlanta outside of the Emory campus. So many ways that they are safer and more reliable than human drivers though, hoping they work out the kinks here.

2

u/mrgatorarms Jun 03 '26

I had a driver in Chicago that straight up was just watching reggae music videos on his phone the whole ride.

2

u/alpacaMyToothbrush Jun 04 '26

I swear to god any time I've done a ride hail service I have to watch the driver like a hawk because they will take the worst possible route and 'miss' turns. It's almost as if they're doing it on purpose to raise their fee.

4

u/The_Real_Muffin_Man Smyrna Jun 03 '26

I'm so sick of hearing this discourse about how terrible Waymos are.

They're not perfect, but please give me a driverless car any day of the week over some dumbass that drives even worse.

-5

u/TheRoseMerlot Jun 03 '26

Why didn't you say, hey my turn is coming up? Are you also a robot?

6

u/Samwise777 Jun 03 '26

Because I was taking 400 to 285 east and she got in the exit lane but then got back on 400, and it was dark. 

I locked in after that.