I've seen a lot of young people (teens especially) cross active streets or cross in front of Waymos on scooters knowing that they'll stop. I try not to do anything too egregious, but I myself have begun using Waymo's conservative behavior as a good way to merge into ultra high density traffic when I'm in a car, or to cross busy streets when they only have a "yield to pedestrian" crosswalk rather than a full crosswalk. The way you blip a Waymo to pay attention and yield is beginning to move into the intersection, lol.
I always wonder if honking at a Waymo does anything. A Waymo stopped for a (very slow) pickup on a very busy one lane street near me, and it could have pulled out of traffic if it had gone about 100 feet further. The 50-ish year old lady behind it laid on her horn for about 30 seconds. Surreal experience, and I'm still not sure if her honking made a difference.
I like Waymos though. Uber is in trouble.
Simultaneously, Waymo is adopting more human-like behavior like creeping at red lights and cutting in front of timid drivers as it jockeys for position.
I still think that Google isn't capable of scaling a rideshare program because it sucks at interfacing with customers. I suspect that Uber's long-term strategy of "take the money out of investors' and drivers' pockets to capture the market until automation gets there" might still come to fruition (see Austin and Atlanta), just perhaps not with Uber's ownership of the technology.
On the other hand Google has been hard at work trying to make its way into cars via Android automotive so I totally see it resigning to just providing a reference sensor-suite and a car "Operating System" to manufacturers who want a turnkey smart-car with L3 self-driving
>Simultaneously, Waymo is adopting more human-like behavior like creeping at red lights and cutting in front of timid drivers as it jockeys for position.
So before it was a 16yo in a driver's ed car. Now it's an 18yo with a license.
I'm gonna be so proud of them when it does something flagrantly illegal but any "decent driver who gets it" would have done in context.