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Posted by ChrisArchitect 7 hours ago

Waymo in Toronto(waymo.com)
207 points | 313 commentspage 2
whycombilater 1 hour ago|
I would imagine Canadians aren't going to want an American company replacing their drivers atm...
rsanek 1 hour ago||
Google employs thousands of people in Canada...
Waterluvian 1 hour ago||
Oh there's going to be opinions, for sure. This is the high cost, zero returns portion though. They aren't trying to go live until 2028. In a way, it becomes a bargaining chip if they've spent all this money on mapping/testing Toronto and want to start operating in earnest. Though, ideally by 2028 we don't have to behave as low and as transactionally as the current American regime.
whycombilater 1 hour ago||
Some of the damage is permanent.
mlh496 1 hour ago||
Curious how early they're announcing this. Service won't begin until 2028.
Ericson2314 1 hour ago|
Because people will see the training vehicles?
lapkaaaa 7 hours ago||
Saw a Waymo test car in Munich recently. Guess they will start operations in EU from here soon.
jen20 6 hours ago||
London too, I believe.
shevy-java 7 hours ago||
I don't think US companies are much appreciated in the EU. It has to do with a certain orange guy, Mr. Krasnov. Just see how he sold out Ukrainians to Putin recently (again!) aka no info sharing. (Though, EU countries also suck here - why can they not compensate for the USA? This is deliberate sabotaging going on from EU countries as well, though Krasnov far outperforms them all combined, in a negative manner. He must get a lot of financial kickbacks for his family dynasty.)
lapkaaaa 7 hours ago||
Munich has been a long-standing operational base for many US companies in EU, so they might try just a pilot, but it's not only waymos I see here, also some bmw self-driving test vehicles, also nvidia(?) test vehicles etc. And trust me as a ukrainian myself I know what people think about orange man both here and back there. And europeans are largely sceptical about US companies not because of him but mostly because they're just american.
sheepscreek 7 hours ago||
The second half of the post in Canadian French is a nice touch.
Bubble1296 7 hours ago||
Canada has two official languages: Canadian English and Canadian French. This satisfies both the English-speaking population and the French-speaking population. As a result, signs, plaques, and public articles are posted with both the Canadian English version as well as the Canadian French version.
mjr00 6 hours ago|||
> As a result, signs, plaques, and public articles are posted with both the Canadian English version as well as the Canadian French version.

In general this is untrue outside of Quebec (and maybe Ontario). I'm in Vancouver and while there's some federally mandated bilingual text, the French-speaking population here is extremely low and day-to-day everything is English-only. Even local public sector things like announcements on the train. You're more likely to see signs in Mandarin than French.

julianlam 4 hours ago||||
Last time I was in Vancouver I noticed more signs with translations in Sḵwx̱wú7mesh than French...

However that might be because I am an anglophone from Ontario and my mind filters out the French language on signs if an English equivalent is present.

LawnGnome 58 minutes ago||
No, you were probably right. About the only French in Vancouver is in federal facilities: so, in practice, the airport and some parts of the port that nobody in the general public would ever go to.
nickspacek 6 hours ago|||
In New Brunswick (officially bilingual), most signs are bilingual.
senderista 7 hours ago||||
The official language is Zesty Mordant.
ChrisMarshallNY 7 hours ago||||
I believe that bilingualism is required by law. Many US product packages have repeats of the information in french.
jt2190 6 hours ago|||
Generally no. Some provinces officially operate in both English and French but some do not.

For a press release from a private company operating in Ontario there is no legal requirement to publish in both languages. Some companies might do so anyway if they have operations that are regulated by the federal government and/or they just want the goodwill.

Imported products have to meet Federal packaging laws, which do require both languages.

ipaddr 6 hours ago||
Ontario has a large French population
mjr00 7 hours ago|||
This really depends on the context, but in general bilingualism is only required for the public sector and adjacent things (such as federal standards around food packaging). A private company like Waymo certainly does not need to send out a press release in English and French.
sandworm101 7 hours ago|||
It is more complex than that. Quebec (Montreal) has additional laws over and above the national laws, often requiring that French text be bigger/longer/more prominent than the English text.

There was also controversy over proper names v. descriptions. "Macdonalds" is a proper name but should "Burger King" be translated to "Burger Roi"?

philistine 5 hours ago|||
They'll have to translate their whole site. That's usually how Canadian releases are used; it forces companies to make their operations multilingual.
semiquaver 7 hours ago||
A legally required one, natch.
semiquaver 7 hours ago||
This give me hope that other snowy midwestern cities are right around the corner.
giarc 5 hours ago||
You can see their planned locations on the map here https://waymo.com/

Includes St Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburg, Minneapolis etc.

quickthrowman 5 hours ago||
I’ve seen Waymo cars driving around Minneapolis lately.
superkuh 2 hours ago||
It'll be interesting to see how Waymo cars handle snow covering the road markings and road edges, and people flocking to new emergent lanes that do not correspond to the painted lines on the road, and people parking well into the road because of snow piles, etc, etc.
reportingsjr 2 hours ago|
In theory, Waymo should have a very up to date map of lanes and should be able to very precisely triangulate where it is, so with snow covered road markings it may still do better than humans.
hattar 1 hour ago|||
Sometimes when the snow builds up, the safest driving is to be in the “lane” made by heavy travel that blows the snow to the sides. Staying in the real lane would make for hard and likely dangerous driving.

No argument or anything here, just saying what I think is an interesting nuance as someone who has spent a lot of life driving in snowy places.

I’m in Denver now and it’ll be really interesting to see how these things handle the effects of a real storm. If I had to make a guess it would be that they’ll all just stop driving for a day or two.

superkuh 1 hour ago|||
Do you understand that what you have said, this behavior of using the absolute true position of the lanes when all the human drivers are using a different emergent from snow-paths lane, will cause accidents? Doing the "right" thing is wrong when it is different from what humans all do.
trizoza 7 hours ago||
Edinburgh next please!
smallpipe 7 hours ago|
I'd rather we left that car dependency enabler to the yanks thank you very much
kypro 7 hours ago||
Yeah, driverless cars are like something out of a sci-fi film. Modern tech like this is not going to fit with the aesthetics of European cities.

You can walk or cycle... Modern bikes are light and pretty fast too.

We need regulation to ensure they don't come here.

mech4bg 6 hours ago||
Still plenty of cars/taxis in Europe and Waymo is much safer than human drivers. IMO legislating against them is legislating against safety. As a pedestrian I feel far safer around Waymo than human drivers.
wetwater 5 hours ago||
Spoken like a true Waymo lobbyist.

IMO legislating for them is legislating against humans , their jobs, their families .

bb123 23 minutes ago||
Spoken like a true luddite. These newfangled power looms are going to be a disaster for the handloom weavers and croppers!
voidmain0001 7 hours ago||
2028 arrival date.
suddenlybananas 7 hours ago||
I'd rather have bike lines :(
blululu 7 hours ago||
Fair, but I would take Waymos over Rob Ford being allowed to drive any day. As a bicycle commuter I find that Waymos are quite pleasant to share the road with. They generally try to avoid hitting me. Never had a Waymo swerve into my lane, or try to sideswipe me, or accelerate to cut me off to make a right turn, or make overt death treats because "roads are for cars".
whynotmaybe 7 hours ago|||
Bike lines don't send Canadian money to a startup in the USA so I guess bike lines don't have financial means to lobby the government.
throw__away7391 7 hours ago|||
I'd 100% rather bike around a Waymo than a human driver.
Fricken 7 hours ago||
Toronto is embroiled in partisan politicking around bike lanes. The provincial premiere is overriding city council to have them removed, which is what I suspect is the motivation behind the parent comment.
ipaddr 5 hours ago|||
I'd rather not have any roads people can walk.
lapkaaaa 7 hours ago|||
It'd be good to have more bike lanes, and waymo-type transport being used as a part of a public transport ecosystem rather than just pure taxi.
scosman 7 hours ago|||
both?

both!

BeaverGoose 7 hours ago||
The bike lanes are being removed by our conservative government. So not both :(
throwayay58373 6 hours ago|||
I'm sure disabled or elderly people would agree with you.
preommr 7 hours ago||
Please, not this shit again.

Ford is already removing bike lanes.

Tax dollars to put in bike lanes, and then tax dollars to remove them.

tensor 38 minutes ago|||
You will never stop hearing about this until they are restored. Also enjoy your very slow commute with all the bikes now legally required to ride in the car lane and block you.
creaturemachine 6 hours ago|||
Yes, this shit again. Rolling more steel boxes through the city is not the answer.
hncbw02z5a 7 hours ago|
Winter is the real test here. Worked on lidar perception for a bit and falling snow throws returns everywhere, plus once the lane lines are under slush everyone just drives in the ruts the car ahead made. Curious how they handle those unofficial lanes.
shagie 7 hours ago||
As a driver in places where it snows... I'm curious about how it will handle:

1. Fresh unplowed snow where there are no lane markers visible.

2. Significant banks that take up half a lane with two lanes in each direction.

3. Ice (often one doesn't start going through an intersection on a green until you're 100% sure that every car has cleared - I've been on both sides of this, where you don't go because there's a car sliding through, and the car sliding through because slick ice doesn't care about brakes)

4. Hard braking (the "drive slow and use the brakes lightly for a long while")

5. Cold car things. Electric battery life in the cold (heater for the passengers). Wipers frozen to the windshield. Accumulation of snow on the window. Excess snow on top of the car (considered an insecure load).

---

Tangent for the "how do you handle lanes when you can't see any" ... old school approach: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/833362

> Driving a snowplow during whiteout condition is one such example. In order to improve the safety and efficiency of the snow removal operation, a supplemental steering guidance display was proposed and instrumented in a Caltrans snowplow. The guidance information was calculated based on the magnetic markers embedded under the roadway. Operations were successfully conducted on a 6.25 km freeway over Donner Summit on Interstate 80 in California during the 1998-1999 winter season.

https://ahmct.ucdavis.edu/advanced-snow-plow

bluefirebrand 2 hours ago||
> 1. Fresh unplowed snow where there are no lane markers visible

Forget unplowed snow. Often in Calgary where I live there's no lane markers visible under the snow for months at a time, even if it's plowed regularly

yorwba 7 hours ago|||
When all an account posts is claims of first-hand experience with various unrelated technologies, the strategy becomes a bit too obvious: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hncbw02z5a&next=5009...
Bubble1296 7 hours ago|||
True. But don't most people drive in the tracks of the car ahead? I know when it snows people sometimes make a three-lane highway into a two-way "rut railway" road, and make do.
coldpie 7 hours ago|||
They've been doing test runs here in Minneapolis for more than a year. You're right that it's a challenge, but I bet they'll do fine after a couple years of refinement.
jscott817 7 hours ago||
Yep, full launching in Denver just recently as well.
diskzero 7 hours ago|||
I worked on perception systems five years ago and we had de-noising algorithms that are much better now. We would never have dared to drive in obscured lanes, but I assume Waymo’s high resolution maps and sensor fusion are extremely good, but yeah, are the vehicles going to plow through the unofficial lanes?
lapkaaaa 7 hours ago|||
I have zero idea about lidar operational capabilities, but can you heat them to stop snow and ice from piling up?
spollo 7 hours ago|||
Parent is referring to snow in the environment, not on the lidar itself.

When snowing in Toronto you usually cannot see the painted lines on the road, there's just the lines from cars driving through the snow that you follow. Sometimes two lane roads become an unofficial one lane road depending on what feels safe.

The falling snow also bounces the laser pulses(?) back at the lidar. Snow fall can be pretty heavy and make it difficult to see objects far ahead. Not sure how well their handling of rain ports over to snow, but it will be interesting to see!

lapkaaaa 7 hours ago||
Damn, you guys have it hard over there
Rohansi 7 hours ago|||
You get used to it. I tried FSD (latest version) last winter in those conditions and it had no issues. Waymo shouldn't have any issues with it either.
jhonof 6 hours ago|||
Street parking in the core makes what would be a manageable amount of snow into a disaster like 2 weeks a year minimum because plows can't get down older streets.
SoftTalker 6 hours ago||
Sounds like someone needs to develop an autonomous snowblower for narrow streets.
shagie 5 hours ago|||
California did back in the '90s.

https://path.berkeley.edu/automation/development-advanced-ro...

It had hands free operation (still needed someone in the seat to control the plow) and lane assist in whiteout conditions when the outside edge of the lane had a cliff (much worse than driving into the ditch).

https://path.berkeley.edu/automation/development-advanced-ro...

> This project is one of the first real-world applications derived from PATH/Caltrans research in the area of automated vehicle control. A modified snowblower with add-on sensors, actuator, computer and driver interfaces was developed, and initial field tests were conducted along the 8 guardrail sections between Kingvale and Soda Springs on the shoulders of Interstate-80 near Donner Summit.

https://path.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/develop...

> Various lateral sensing and referencing technologies were investigated for this application; what was found was that machine vision does not penetrate snow, and that the GPS system does not provide sufficient reliability under possible multipath and blockage scenarios. A magnetic-marker-based sensing system was chosen for the initial implementation primarily because of its high reliability and accuracy (better than 1 cm) under all weather conditions. The mountainous highway I-80 near Donner Summit (close to Lake Tahoe) was chosen to be the first field test site. In 2001, magnets were installed along the eastbound and westbound guardrails of I-80, at 4 feet apart and 4 feet away from the guardrail. Binary coding of the magnetic markers was designed (north pole up vs. south pole up) to provide information about guardrail characteristics, such as the shoulder side (right or left of the blower) and the end of guardrail. Eight sections of the guardrail were equipped with magnets for the initial feasibility operations with a total length of 1.46 km (0.9 mile) between Soda Springs and Kingvale.

boplicity 5 hours ago|||
The problem is not plowing the streets, it is moving the snow away from the streets. After heavy snowfalls, plows create huge piles that block a significant part of the road. This is a difficult problem that simply takes a lot of resources to address.
mdurana 7 hours ago|||
Afaik the already do this. But another problem is that falling snowflakes reflect lidar pulses and heating doesn't help in that case
scosman 7 hours ago|||
that's in the FAQ. They say they have sensor cleaning tech. But they aren't launching until 2028 so 2 winters of testing should tell.
parthdesai 7 hours ago||
They will also need mother nature to co-operate. Last winter was brutal in terms of snow, we barely had any snow the year before that!
kotaKat 7 hours ago|||
They linked to https://waymo.com/blog/2025/10/creating-an-all-weather-drive... discussing the snow mitigations all the way from software down to the built-in heaters on the sensors.
fidotron 7 hours ago||
That's one of the reasons lidar will prove to be a dead end for this application. It's a temporary enabling technology on the path to the simpler multiple camera based solution.
lapkaaaa 7 hours ago|||
Best approach would be to use both lidar and cameras. They compliment each other
fidotron 7 hours ago|||
No, in the limit where everyone has lidar they end up stepping on each other too. Being a totally passive sensor system is a major benefit for mass deployment, on top of the cost advantages.

Lidar is cool when you want to get a point cloud from a fixed location, or dealing with perfectly uniform surfaces (which cars don't because humans can't do this either), but beyond that there are better ways to do things.

ButlerianJihad 2 hours ago|||
“Good morning, LIDAR! You’re looking positively radiant today!”

“Why, thank you, Camera! You are doing a wonderful job of seeing everything in your FOV!”

“Ahh, you are very flattering, LIDAR! It’s an endearing quality in you, for sure!”

LIDAR: blushes

cindyllm 1 hour ago||
[dead]
Fricken 7 hours ago|||
Camera's can't see in the dark. There is no perfect sensor. Waymo relies multiple sensor modalities: Cameras, Lidar, ultrasonics, radar, gps, inertial measurement units.
ButlerianJihad 2 hours ago|||
Also microphones. Don’t forget the (external) microphone sensors.
Rohansi 7 hours ago|||
Cars don't drive in the dark. Roads are usually lit. And every car has its own lights for seeing where you are driving.
SoftTalker 6 hours ago|||
Interstate highways and local roads are generally unlit outside of urban areas. But in fairness, Waymos don't operate in those places anyway.
triceratops 6 hours ago||||
> Roads are usually lit

Not always. Definitely not all freeways.

> And every car has its own lights for seeing where you are driving

Not always far enough. Especially at freeway speeds on unlit freeways.

fidotron 6 hours ago||
So how can humans do it?

If humans don't have lidar but can drive it's an existence proof of the viability of that approach.

triceratops 6 hours ago|||
In addition to vision, humans have proprioception and kinesthesia, hearing, inner ear receptors for balance, a sense of touch, sense of smell. We use all of these sensory inputs when we drive. And even then humans get into lots of accidents.

Lidar is superhuman vision.

Rohansi 5 hours ago||
How do you use your sense of smell to help you drive? I can't smell anything outside my car thanks to the air filter.

The real answer is very simple: safe drivers slow down to adapt to poor conditions (including visibility). Lidar might reduce how much it needs to slow down but I don't think it will be eliminated because you can't drive with only lidar.

triceratops 5 hours ago||
> How do you use your sense of smell to help you drive?

I smell smoke before I see it. Useful if there's a forest fire up ahead.

Burning rubber or smoke from the engine is an indicator of a mechanical issue.

> you can't drive with only lidar.

Nobody said you could. This is a strawman.

Tesla stans are the only ones trying to convince everyone you can only drive with cameras. Everyone else is pretty united on the usefulness of multiple inputs.

Rohansi 3 hours ago||
> Nobody said you could. This is a strawman.

Didn't mean it in that way. I meant a car with camera+lidar would realistically still slow down because of the reduced camera visibility.

> Tesla stans are the only ones trying to convince everyone you can only drive with cameras. Everyone else is pretty united on the usefulness of multiple inputs.

Ignore them. The latest Model S and X have radar again, but possibly unused right now, so they are probably going to roll that out in a refresh of the 3 and Y eventually.

bryanlarsen 6 hours ago|||
Humans can't do it safely during a proper blizzard. (Toronto doesn't really get proper blizzards, though).
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