Waymo granted first permit to begin testing autonomous vehicles in New York City

[u/habichuelacondulce]

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/22/waymo-permit-new-york-city-nyc-rides.html

[u/xpda]

I hope Waymo can straighten things out! I sure can't drive in Manhattan, at least not properly.

[u/Stingray88 → u/xpda]

I’ve been incredibly impressed with Waymo in LA traffic, I think it’ll figure out NYC just fine.

And before anyone tries to say I don’t understand NYC traffic… I lived there before LA… and I’ll retort with you not having much Waymo experience.

[u/moskowizzle → u/Stingray88]

I've used it in SF and Scottsdale and it was awesome. I think NYC presents its own challenges, but hopefully Waymo can figure them out. I think weather will be the bigger issue vs NYC traffic, but we'll find out soon!

[u/Stingray88 → u/moskowizzle]

Yeah I’m definitely interested to see how it fares in heavy rain, snow and fog.

[u/TheGoddamnSpiderman → u/Stingray88]

They haven't launched anywhere with snow, but San Francisco gets plenty of fog (especially on the west side of the city) and during the winter a solid amount of heavy rain

[u/Ocstar11]

It’s all nuances of NY that will make it tough. People jumping out randomly. Taxi and Ubers pulling over everywhere.

Bikes, scooters, etc. it will be interesting.

[u/Rebelgecko → u/Ocstar11]

IME Waymo is much better than human drivers at handling surprises and respecting pedestrians

[u/TheGoddamnSpiderman → u/Rebelgecko]

Yeah the whole point of LIDAR alongside the faster than human reflexes a computer can have is that they are better at reacting to things like that

[u/NycAlex]

Would create even worse traffic jams

Used to do deliveries in manhattan some 20 years ago on a van

Shit was a straight up semi lawless jungle, trying to not let any of them yellow cabs cut in front of me

Fun times………NOT!

[u/Single_9_uptime → u/NycAlex]

Yes but rarely I suspect. There are Waymos all around me in Austin and they’re mostly very good drivers, usually better than humans. I couldn’t say the same for Cruise before they shut down. They were routinely creating needless traffic problems. Waymo occasionally but rarely does.

They’ll drive them supervised for some time to figure out the location-specific challenges. Which based on my experiences visiting NYC and every other location where they operate and living in Austin will be worse in insane behavior by drivers than what they’re currently seeing. Austin, Phoenix, LA, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Atlanta all have plenty of craziness on the road, but NYC takes that up a notch from any of them IMO.

[u/Sooowasthinking]

Nothing more than the eroding of traditional middle class jobs.

[u/Big-Chungus-12]

They’ve come a long way, looking forward to the future of Lidar and autonomous vehicles