I live in SF, I’ve been seeing driverless cars in the Bay Area for 4 years, and recently I’ve started riding in them commercially because I’m opted into their public testing programs/commercial riding.
I don’t think they’ll have much trouble in Boston. The current Cruise service area includes a lot of steep hills, narrow roads with parking/pedestrians on each side, and some winding streets. Driverless cars are typically pretty cautious around hazards like this, sometimes a bit too much (like driving up to a stop sign too slowly), but matching what I would want a “safe driver” to do.
I took a Cruise in the rain a few days ago and the rain didn’t seem to cause any problems at all. Even though you can only take Cruise at night, between 9 and 12 pm there have still been plenty of situations where it had to deal with pedestrians walking across middle of streets, opening and closing doors of cars parked on the street, cars stopping in the middle of the road to unload pedestrians, etc. and it’s actually handled all of them well.
When the cars get stuck, I am pretty sure it’s because they are in “mapping mode”. I think it’s weird and likely unscaleable for an entire service area to need to be mapped before opened commercially, but once the cars are actually “working” they don’t get stuck much.
Anyway, I think the only real problem with Boston would be snow and ice (on the ground, I think the rains and fog in SF are close enough that cars could handle snow and ice in the air).As far as I know, no self driving car company has tested much under snowy/icy conditions.
I don’t think they’ll have much trouble in Boston. The current Cruise service area includes a lot of steep hills, narrow roads with parking/pedestrians on each side, and some winding streets. Driverless cars are typically pretty cautious around hazards like this, sometimes a bit too much (like driving up to a stop sign too slowly), but matching what I would want a “safe driver” to do.
I took a Cruise in the rain a few days ago and the rain didn’t seem to cause any problems at all. Even though you can only take Cruise at night, between 9 and 12 pm there have still been plenty of situations where it had to deal with pedestrians walking across middle of streets, opening and closing doors of cars parked on the street, cars stopping in the middle of the road to unload pedestrians, etc. and it’s actually handled all of them well.
When the cars get stuck, I am pretty sure it’s because they are in “mapping mode”. I think it’s weird and likely unscaleable for an entire service area to need to be mapped before opened commercially, but once the cars are actually “working” they don’t get stuck much.
Anyway, I think the only real problem with Boston would be snow and ice (on the ground, I think the rains and fog in SF are close enough that cars could handle snow and ice in the air).As far as I know, no self driving car company has tested much under snowy/icy conditions.