That wasn’t my experience, having just driven across the city and back during tonight’s outage. It was actually weirdly inspiring how well people coordinated at so many of the powerless intersections.

There was a lot of confusion, and some people took advantage of it to rush through, but for the most part it was pretty orderly. Which makes sense because in many parts of the world where there are no traffic lights or stop signs, people get on just fine.

The Waymo’s, on the other hand, were dropping like flies. While walking from Lower to Upper Haight I spotted a broken Waymo every handful of blocks. The corner of Haight & Fillmore was particularly bad, with 3 of them blocking traffic in both directions — in the path of both the 7 and 22 bus lines.

▲

rsanek 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>in many parts of the world where there are no traffic lights or stop signs, people get on just fine

Well, sort of. Road injuries / fatalities in countries without these kinds of regulations are about an 3-4x higher than in those that do have them.

https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241565684

▲

pacifika 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Number of traffic accidents went down by 50% in this town.

https://worksthatwork.com/1/shared-space

▲

tomjakubowski 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think a significant factor helping that to work is the mixing of all traffic on the street. I've noticed that in LA's Skid Row, where homeless people are constantly moving into the street on foot or on bicycle and they walk around in vehicle lanes pushing shopping cart armadas and so on, drivers are more cautious than usual and I see, if anything, less reckless driving and close calls there than in other parts of downtown, where pedestrians stick to the sidewalk and distracted or car-brained drivers don't look out for them. Just anecdotal observation, of course.

▲

viraptor 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Different things. A country with lax rules is not the same as a specific environment with shared spaces, where according to known data it's safer to eliminate some specific kind of regulation and let the remaining part take over.

	▲	difjcnwoxk18 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It’s not lax rules, in many cases it’s just alternative coordination — eg roundabouts

▲

m463 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> with 3 of them blocking traffic in both directions — in the path of both the 7 and 22 bus lines.

wow, cascading failures. I'll bet this is the tip of the iceberg.

▲

whimsicalism 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

i had essentially the opposite experience in close proximity.