> Waymo's are not about to run a person or bicyclist over.

This has only introduced more novel problems. People can completely immobilize the vehicles by standing in front of them, or placing a traffic cone. (And while this is kind of funny when done to unused vehicles to bother a multi-trillion dollar corporation. It is not funny when it's done to harass women.)

This in turn spirals into a whole new set of political problems, because drivers are collectively quite intolerant of the pedestrians and especially cyclists they share the road with. There is a lot of pedestrian and cyclist behaviour that is curtailed by motorist bullying, which autonomous cars don't really do. (Your walking in front of them being a fine example)

Things like cyclists "taking the lane" are deeply unpopular despite being entirely legal and good road safety practice. Increased rollout of AVs will only make this more prevalent and then you'll have a whole new demographic of angry people mad that their waymo is slow because it's behind a cyclist.

Rolling out Waymo more broadly will help bring these criminals to justice, as there crimes will be recorded by an unflappably peaceful victim.

>People can completely immobilize the vehicles by standing in front of them

This is true of any vehicle lmao. Someone can stand in front of your vehicle and prevent you from proceeding and there's not a thing you can do about it.

With an angry human behind the wheel you can't be assured they won't hit you on purpose or even accidentally clip you swerving around you. With a robot car designed to maximize safety, you don't really have to worry. Even if they started making robot taxis drive like assholes, the maximum payout for suing a robo taxi company for getting hit is WAY higher than some rando on the road. The guy you pissed off and ran you over for standing in the road might have just got out from a 15 year prison sentence, hates the world, and have a net worth of -$70,000, and isn't going to earn you anything besides a life long injury.

A human driver would just get out of their car and beat the crap out of you, something that Waymo is not capable of (yet).

No they wouldn't.

I certainly wouldn't. I'm a short gay guy, plus even if I was big I don't want an assault charge; standing in front of my car doesn't give me a legal right to assault someone. From a legal standpoint (in most places) it's a deadlock.

Not every guy is big and strong and capable of or wanting to do violence.

You wouldn't, but they key is that the cyclist/pedestrian doesn't know it's you.

Say it's 5% of drivers who are maniacs, one encounters many many cars, and the cost of misjudging this situation is "grievous injury". So the end result is people will give way to cars even when they don't have to.

> Not every guy is big and strong and capable of or wanting to do violence.

This is structurally comparable to the way women treat "all men" as "potentially violent". It's not about you per-se, just a consequence of the group you cannot be immediately separated from.

Speaking of, that's the other half. Sure you're a normal guy. You don't want an assault change. The tradeoff changes when you are at risk, when violence is being done to you. (Hence the harassment-of-women example)

Sure you're not gonna try to murder the person outside like the road-raging maniacs, but when your safety is on the line, driving dangerously close past them is on the table.

With the harassment of women example are you trying to say that women are more at risk of receiving violence? Because boy do I have a (not so) surprising statistic for you.

You can’t expect someone to not be afraid of an autonomous vehicle that appears to be acting irrationally.

Do you want them to put googley eyes on it? If you can see it, it can see you. Pretty simple.

Eye contact matters for humans because they might be looking at their phones, or their McDonald's fries, or staring straight into the sun. None of these things happen with self-driving cars. It's a non-issue.

That would actually be great. Some kind of eye brow raise, a gesture, any recognition/indication that it perceives a life to preserve.

Erm, have you ever taken a Waymo and watched the detection screen?

If you can see it, it sees you. Period. I guarantee it.

It can see and gives special priority to humans. I have watched it mark people at night that I couldn't see at all.

Doing weird shit on the road? Certainly possible. Missing seeing a human? Definitely not happening.

Just because someone knows that logically, doesn't mean that it reassures them in the moment.

Especially given the fact that software bugs do happen. If it’s not Waymo, it could be some other half-assed full self driving software package.

Eye contact matters for humans, because humans can indicate that way which direction and speed they plan on moving.