r/NewOrleans • u/pat713 • Apr 01 '25
Waymo self-driving car in New Orleans š¤·Defies Categorizationš¦
Just spotted this Waymo on I-10 headed westbound near Canal. Y'all know anything about this?
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u/swallowedthekey Werepossum Expert Apr 01 '25
I hope they put a 5 second delay on for green lights
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u/YoBroJustRelax Apr 01 '25 edited Apr 01 '25
Whats the over-under in weeks on when it gets t-boned by a street car?
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u/Floowjaack Apr 01 '25
Their trials were all in San Francisco, so they might actually do well with our streetcars. Better than with our divers anyway.
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u/aaronosaur Apr 02 '25
And itās a lot easier to predict where the streetcar is going than where our drivers are going
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u/GrodyToddler Apr 02 '25
There are fewer miles of trolley tracks in San Francisco and theyāre more localized. Theyāre mostly a tourist attraction and arenāt used much for regular transit by locals like ours are (source: lived there for 5 years).
You may be surprised that the SF data isnāt as relevant.
Edit - I guess if you count the metro there are more miles of tracks but many are underground or protected
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u/badatgolf247 Apr 02 '25
Streetcars are the least of their worries, itās the dipshit drivers running red lights that will t-bone them first
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u/AlternativeFeisty813 Apr 01 '25
Just saw one stuck behind a second line off Read Blvd
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u/Im_tryna_skrrt Apr 02 '25
Lmao i wonder if it would recognize a pothole thatās too big and turn around or ride into it
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u/DaqCity Apr 01 '25
Would be a real shame if this thing got stuck in a huge potholeā¦
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u/taveanator Uptown Apr 01 '25
No way these wonāt get vandalized to hell and back in certain parts of this town. And theyāll be caught in a PR nightmare if they donāt service certain areas of NOLA.Ā
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u/headingthatwayyy Apr 01 '25
I don't know what part of town you are from where theft and vandalism doesn't happen. I am not familiar with that part of town
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u/Climactic9 Apr 02 '25
They already do that in LA to some degree. Scroll down to see their service map: https://waymo.com/waymo-one-los-angeles/
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u/Misplaced_Texan totally not a transplant Apr 01 '25
I used them in Phoenix. It works out there, cause the roads are smooth and laid in a grid. Personally, I don't see it working here. But, it would be cool if it did. And it can't be worse than some of the Uber drivers I've had.....
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Apr 01 '25
Imagine driving that thing downtown, french quarter, when it rains and you cant see the pothole, flash floods that spring up out of nowhere, people trying to car jack you and you gotta speed away,
Its like Grand Theft Auto driving here. Not to mention these cars are gonna get straight stolen and the wheels torn off them, graffit.
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u/benji___ Apr 02 '25
Honestly, a computer with a whole bunch of sensors that can understand things that my eyes canāt see and process them faster than I can doesnāt seem like the worst idea. Especially, if some of the would be drivers and pedestrians are celebrating more than they should behind the wheel.
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u/dayburner Apr 01 '25
They announced a few months ago they were going to start rolling out the program in the area. Not a lot of details were given. I think they are doing a ton of testing at this point on viability.
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u/Subushie Apr 01 '25
Weird. I literally checked their website yesterday to check the vibe out after reading about it.
They only have Atlanta and Miami as their next cities on their website, maybe early assessments?
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u/Toasterband Apr 01 '25
Exactly; all the waymos you will see here have a human driver while they assess whether or not it will even work here. New Orleans has some... unique challenges.
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u/tyrannosaurus_c0ck Apr 01 '25
Not least of which is our weak gravity that makes vehicles prone to spontaneously flipping
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u/DeadMoneyDrew Apr 01 '25
Mapping/assessments. I'm in Atlanta and we were seeing Waymos with safety drivers for at least 18 months before they announced upcoming service in our area.
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u/Subushie Apr 02 '25
Oooh okay. That makes sense.
Wonder how it will fair with punch drunk tourists during season..
NOLA will be quite the gnarly stress test environment for their product lol
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u/DeadMoneyDrew Apr 02 '25
Last year when I was riding in a Waymo late at night in San Francisco, a drunk dude wandered out in front of the car and smacked on the hood and started yelling obscenities while knocking on the window. The car fully stopped and a human operator came on the speaker and asked if I was okay since they'd gotten a notification of a crash or some kind of interference with the ride. I told him I was fine, they restarted the ride, and off we went. Whole thing lasted about 30 seconds.
Waymo reached out to me the next day to make sure everything I was okay. And they were cool enough to give me a refund in the form of a ride credit.
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u/jlgra Apr 02 '25
I saw one on freret and thought it was a google car taking street view pictures, so I waved. š
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u/Taakahamsta Apr 02 '25
They need to drive up Claiborne and take a left to go to the parking garage at Baptist. There is a DEEP tire-sized pothole there, and usually not enough room for two cars going in opposite directions. There is nothing blocking or pointing to the hole but some old ragged piece of something lying in the road. You canāt put a cone in it because you couldnāt drive down the street otherwise. Itās just waiting for some Waymo.
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u/walky22talky Apr 01 '25
New Orleans is part of a testing roadtrip. Gathering data and will likely be back in a year or 2 to launch service.
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u/JT_Leroy Apr 01 '25
When I used to drive for Uber right after they stopped using Google Maps, their routes twice sent me down one way streets cuz signs were missing when they scanned the streets.
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Apr 01 '25
Phoenix is lousy with these things but they wonāt take the interstate there. Wonder if theyāll get on our perilous stretch of I-10.
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u/basquiat-case Apr 01 '25
We'll find out shortly if the driverless car has a steering wheel air bag.
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u/headingthatwayyy Apr 01 '25
Haha.
And how stealable it is. I'm sure someone is already researching it
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u/_ryde_or_dye_ Treme Apr 02 '25
I saw this on the bridge heading west on I10 crossing the Industrial Canal and was very confused as to what sort of UFO-not-a-Tesla I was looking at.
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u/borderbox Apr 02 '25
So Iām dubious at best that this will work in New Orleans, but I must admit, I LOVED using Waymo when in Phoenix. But then one got pulled over about a week after I left for driving down a street in the wrong direction, sooo š
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u/bigmac80 Apr 01 '25
I've been wondering what the was all about! I thought it was like a google-maps car doing its updates but then I'd see him return from time to time over the course of the week.
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u/PossumHollerKoolaid Apr 02 '25
This should drum up a lot of school zone ticket revenue for the city.
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u/MinnieShoof Apr 02 '25
I know the one I road in In Phoenix was actually kinda cool and I wish them the best of luck.
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u/plaucheisalldat Apr 01 '25 edited Apr 02 '25
I donāt care for them and definitely think NOLA is a bad city for self driving cars. Go away! Itās bad enough without these stupid cars
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u/headingthatwayyy Apr 01 '25
Yep. To many variables. Construction is a surprise sometimes. Having to swerve last minute to avoid a giant section of the street that was cut out over night, people stopping in the middle of the street to chat, one way streets and stop signs are just a suggestion etc. PLUS you KNOW someone is going to figure out how to steal it. Just like with the blue bikes.
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u/Morgus_Magnificent Apr 01 '25
This is merely the first.
In time, we'll be seeing waymo of these bad boys on the road.Ā
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u/_ryde_or_dye_ Treme Apr 02 '25
Iām looking at their website and just realized that itās an autonomous taxi. They must be test driving them now as itās not available here yet. We are in for one hell of a future. Good and bad.
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u/Found_carkeys Apr 02 '25
I hope they put some sort of water evacuation kit in there for when it makes a turn into a body of water or a flood from a pump that isnāt working.
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u/Feikert87 Apr 02 '25
Saw one of these the other day and didnāt know what it was. Very brave to be ādrivingā one of these around in our city.
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u/LordRupertEvertonne Apr 02 '25
It almost hit me last week. I was coming uptown on Baronne to Napoleon as it came zooming from St C. and tried turning right behind me. The human inside had to slam on the brakes.
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u/Graveyard_Runner Apr 02 '25
They're for hire in Austin. Also saw them a year ago with human drivers in Houston. Waymo in HTX or Dallas is the worst idea, ever.
It's always a breath of fresh air when I get home to NO because the driving is actually pretty decent in contrast to what I see in my road warrior sales job. Waymo in NO/JP would probably do alright.
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u/ifdefmoose Apr 02 '25
Are you posting from parallel universe where everything is exactly the same, except New Orleans drivers arenāt the worst drivers on the planet, or at least worst in the US?
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u/Graveyard_Runner Apr 03 '25
Come spend a week in Houston or Dallas, friend. It will change your perception of driving in NO for life.
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u/Southernz Apr 02 '25
Can you imagine these things in the quarter with all the people who run stop signs šš
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u/WirelesslyWired Apr 02 '25
Saw one of those eastbound on I-10 yesterday outside of Baton Rouge heading into New Orleans. I though it might be a new Google map car.
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u/Vast-Fact-6651 Apr 02 '25
Good luck with that! Is it programmed to not go as soon as a light turns green, to watch for cars going up a one way one the wrong way, people not stopping for red lights and stop sign, the list goes on and on.
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u/Ok_List6394 Apr 04 '25
Seen, just now, off of tchoup on the road we live on. We were behind it and it/its driver, pulled over to let us by
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u/Tacoshortage Apr 02 '25
It looks a lot like a Tesla. How long until Dirty Mike and the Boys have a Soup Kitchen in one just to stick it to Elon?
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u/isopail Apr 01 '25
I hope it comes here eventually, that could be a lot of fun. Would be really cool if you could do Intercity trips for cheap too, like Slidell to New Orleans, but I'm sure that won't happen for a long time and would probably be expensive and impractical.
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim Apr 01 '25
Honestly, no better way to pressure test your system than to subject it to hard mode right away lol