Self-Driving Waymo Car Navigates San Francisco With NO DRIVER

Channel: Alex Kantrowitz

Published at: 2023-07-22

YouTube video id: OOyS0JFYzrE

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOyS0JFYzrE

I'm about to head into a self-driving
car for the first time in my entire life
we have a waymo that's right here about
top in come along with me
how's it going hey good to see you
likewise
um so this is it huh yeah
okay you'll take that side yeah
okay so here we go
so where is our driveways in here
pretty cool
in the door
and then so do you then say let's get
going yeah I'll let you do it you can
[Music]
all right this is pretty freaking crazy
how's it going good good to see you yeah
yeah
have we met in person yeah yeah yeah
okay I won't film the whole thing but
whatever
this is actually insane
this is like crazy
I'm freaking out we're driving on the
Streets of San Francisco right now
we got a bus in front of us and this
thing is just totally doing it without a
driver
that's nuts
can I ask you a couple questions yeah so
okay first of all you want to introduce
yourself uh Lee Edwards uh partner at
root Ventures nice so how long have you
been riding in this car these type of
cars for uh
uh to a cruise in November of
[Music]
Europe wow and you're not freaked out at
all but there's no driver here no uh I
was I think on my first ride a little
bit especially like pulling up to stop
signs or crosswalks but then honestly
it's the main way I get around when I
can
um
so I'm pretty used to it at this point
nice so how many trips do you think
you've taken on this
so here is the car
just so is it gonna just take us around
in a circle yeah I I think I gave it I
think I told it to take us to a coffee
shop oh sweet we've done 143 rides 398
miles
nice
and this is like what are they still
like in like pilot phase in San
Francisco yeah so it's complicated I'll
send you a bunch of videos about it
um
but um can I show can I show that folder
so you have like uber Lyft
and self-driving and so the name of the
folder is Uber Uber yeah and you're
tapping
so yeah do you ever get like lonely that
you don't speak to the driver anymore I
do when I go to the airport is about
yeah
um that's wild
so you can see it's yeah kind of
complicated this is a pretty Narrow
Street
um
no close calls or anything like that huh
no coming up on a street just like this
a bus was coming at us and we pulled
over into the parallel parking spot and
let the bus pass
so what do you think about that person
who
was like uh waymo almost hit me oh I
replied to him yeah
I mean it's interesting timing he's a
he's a DSA officer and Gary tan and I
put out a video linking DSA to the
AstroTurf movement against AVS and then
three days later he was almost hit so
far no one has been hit in San Francisco
by away mode there's been there were
four accidents three of them were the
fault of the human zero people had minor
injuries so they basically so I know too
much about how this stuff is regulated
now
um I've done a lot of research on this
um so yeah basically they have to kind
of categorize like crash
um injury minor injury
injury uh death so there hasn't there
actually haven't been
any humans hit by waymos in San
Francisco or cruises
it's amazing how chill you see me I'm
like freaking out you'll get used to it
by the end so I brought in a skeptic
someone from San Francisco Chronicle who
was like definitely freaking out about
it and um we rode around for about an
hour
and then she was just totally chill with
it by the end and then wrote a really
positive article interesting yeah
Emily Hoven if you remember she's great
yeah has it ever gotten close to bashing
into someone while you've been in them
no it's I mean it's pretty reliable like
the thing is it has it's
so if you look at the reporting on
Uber's lifts and yellow
incidents a huge number of them I want
to say I want to say about half of them
are related to distracted driving
drinking uh or being tired
um and uh so it obviously doesn't do
that its reaction time is nearly instant
and it has it has 360 Vision right
constantly yeah like up top here like it
doesn't have a blind spot in fact it
sees further and it sees more things
than we do in like lidar so it's not
just in like the visible Spectra it has
like a depth
um I mean these are not easy streets to
ride on no I I mean I think they picked
SF for that reason like this is a really
hard environment and California has been
very strict on the regulatory side so
there there's a lot that they're having
to do
I'm guessing their strategy is like if
they can do it here they can do it
anywhere yeah
all right Lee thanks for showing us
around yeah for sure well everybody I'm
just gonna say this is crazy first trip
ever but definitely not the last I
already trusted it's been five minutes
maybe a little bit too credulous we'll
see all right see you later