No idea. I'm just reporting on what's already actually happened in the past (my ride experiences) instead of speculating on what might happen in the future.
It's a function of the filtered population. The cars are at full capacity day and night so the increased number of users won't affect a single car's cleanliness nearly as much as the type of people that will be riding in them.
That new group is people who aren't at the frontier of trying out new tech.
The way this will manifest is the drunk idiot who'll puke all over the car. The bored asshole who carves his initials in the seat. The edgelord who gets their jollies out of destroying other people's stuff.
Good chance you had some in the original group as well, but early adopters are usually mostly people who deeply understand tech. Once that falls away, you have a less thorough understanding of tech, and a very surprised realization that booking something under your name that has cameras all over will likely result in you being held accountable for what you did. But after you did it.
How that'll play out in the long run is anyone's guess. If Waymo maintains rigorous enforcement and the courts actually play along, it might just work out. It's still going to be capital-intensive because we seem to have created a world where being a major asshole in public without consequences is kind of an entitlement people expect to have, and Waymo will need a very strong "yeah, not here" vibe to prevent that. Which requires a number of high-profile incidents.
Yes, the subtext of the question likely was "are you discriminating against the poor!?" If it was indeed, the answer to that question is "no, the ride pricing will do that".
I don't know what 'deeply understanding tech' has to do with any of that. Plenty of people who 'deeply understand tech' get drunk and puke in places. Honestly, you sound like a Victorian-era petty lord looking down his nose at 'commoners'.
You read the part where I said the understanding constrains the existing user base from antisocial behavior, right?
This isn't about "commoners". It's that any large group of people contains assholes, assholes restrain themselves depending on circumstances, and the new users might well lack that understanding.
It's fundamentally not about "commoners", but about a knowledge-based restraint falling away. (As for the "commoners", you might also want to read the last part of my comment, instead of outraging)
That person did read it, and the fact that you believe anything you wrote in the entire comment would not contribute to the notion that your are a classist snob is hilarious.
A loaded question is a trick question, which presupposes at least one unverified assumption that the person being questioned is likely to disagree with.
That's a loaded question, but sure, let's go there. The problem with public transportation is that the public is allowed to use them, and the rules, legal and social, are not well defined or enforced. Assaulting other passengers is generally tolerated by the system, depending on the type of assault. Physical assault is considered too far and doesn't go unnoticed, but chemical and audio assault on fellow passengers usually goes unreported. The types of people are those who would assault others on some fashion.
Whether this translates to Waymos smelling like meth or fentanyl when you get in them thanks to the previous rider remains to be seen. Or just needles, foil, or used condoms left behind. They record video, so Google could close the person's account so they won't be able to book Waymos with that account again, so we'll end up having to see how hard it is to create new accounts to use Waymo on to ban nuisance riders.
Breaking news, google introduces social credit system that "only applies to waymo and think of the childen". More at 9
/s
I agree with your point about the approach to the argument, but I think google has enough info to make a way to vet passengers by identifying if you are likely to trash a vehicle.
Granted in my work I've never made the attempt to smell fentanyl, but it isn't one with a reputation of having an odor. I assume you mean the smell of recreational users of fentanyl.
I Guess you must not be riding it as much as you think you do. I’m an infrequent rider and I’ve seen 2 altercations and multiple (10+) disturbances since January.
The funniest (or not if you’re not from SF) was a guy boarding a full bus with a 7 foot long dining table with the legs attached, arguing and threatening anyone who protested. Eventually he dropped the thing on someone’s foot and starting an altercation which delayed everyone by 15 mins.
I've ridden the 22 through the Mission at midnight every Tuesday for much of the last seven years. I assure you that's exactly as much as I thought I do.
You might be magic. Crazy, crazy shit goes down on Muni. I used it to commute from outer Richmond to downtown for years and the bystander effect was fully powered up on many of those rides. And it wasn't always the homeless people, little old Asian ladies could be hella scary.
I might be. I also commuted downtown from the outer Richmond for years, on the 31, the 38, the 1, and the 5. Oh, I've seen plenty of crazy stuff, but only one assault.
Okay, the point I think the poster up there was trying to make is that there are degrees of assault. I never saw anyone murdered, and only twice some sort of physical struggle. The number of times crazy yelling broke out is uncountable by me, though.
Potentially. But, with each driver exercising quality control over their own vehicles, the actual result will likely vary from hitting as good or better a standard to being worse. The Waymo standards, thus far, are pretty high, so I would expect on average Uber/Lyft/Etc. would fair worse on average.
I have no doubt that Google is waiting for more adoption before starting to cut costs everywhere and before you know it your puked out ride will direct you to www.waymo.hr/help to find an article which resolves your issue
Uber has partner drivers which have their own companies, their own rating, and can be punished for their behaviour. Once a company completely vertically integrates (like Google would like), meaning they have their own cars, they no longer want to punish themselves for bad behaviour/cars. Since they have to choose between short term cost of higher maintenance fee or long term cost of loss of quality of service their managers will start to optimize for quarterly results: cutting short term costs. What they want is to first entrench the market, push out competitors, introduce complex regulation and fees which prevents new competitors into the market and then start cutting costs everywhere they can and increase prices.
Since you mention Uber, I can definitely see in my city how the quality of cars decreased and they started using almost inclusively cheap immigrants who realistically couldn't pass a drivers exam in my country and have on multiple occasions driven into wrong directions/ran red lights etc.
Pixel phones? Nest? The Bayview hotel rooms are pretty nice. Hell even Gmail feels pretty premium to me, but I guess this word might be considered subjective.
Also, Waymo isn't even Google. You might accuse me of overstating this, but truthfully they operate as a different company.
Pixel phones have less of a brand than Samsung, much less Apple (not talking about actual product quality, just brand positioning). Nest doesn't stand out, although I don't think any of the smart home things are really established enough to know which are good or bad. I've never heard of the Bayview hotel rooms. Gmail is good but it's not a "premium" feel.
Yup. Plus, if Waymo can clean its cars with greater efficiency at lower cost than Uber can, then all other things being equal, Waymo will have cleaner cars.
The drivers are not the same people who activate their account.
There are schemes where undocumented immigrants ask someone to activate their account on their behalf. In practice, the person giving you a ride could be literally anyone.
Uber doesn't really have a way to increase profit through messier cars. But they can do things like increase prices after taking over a market, which they have not been at all shy about doing.
> Uber doesn't really have a way to increase profit through messier cars
Don't they? Allowing messier, older, and less pleasant cars would increase the supply of drivers, allowing Uber to place lower bids on those drivers, lower their prices, increase volume and revenue, and increase profit.
They can definitely have more beat up cars which over time I can observe in my city. As for prices, luckily they have a lot stronger competition with bolt and local taxi apps as creating a local taxi app is really not that hard
I would be surprised if the Waymp cars weren't exceptionally nice in this phase, while they're trying hard to gain market share and trust. Google Search was a clean and delightful experience once upon a time. The aspect I'm more interested in is what the experience will be like if they ever become a dominant transport option.
Yeah they probably pipe that video to an algorithm that does background subtraction so they're able to assert that the vehicle is clear of foreign objects, but those cameras don't detect smell. If someone defecates and wipes it somewhere the camera doesn't see, then what?
The rider reports an issue and Waymo sends a new car while they send the dirty one back to the depot back to be cleaned? Offending previous rider is charged a fee and then banned for life.
Hard for me to imagine this being a widespread problem. Probably about as much problem as there is with something similar happening in the elevator of a private building.
