A couple of weeks ago, someone posted a direct comparison of Waymo vs Tesla FSD Beta. It is important to note that the drive happens at night. Many reactions I read surely mock Waymo for its “avoiding left turns” routing. Well, while I personally would argue that the Waymo approach to self-driving is a dead end, I also understand why someone (a route planning algorithm) wants to avoid left turns. Think about driving in rush hour. Left turns, especially at crossings without traffic lights, might take significantly longer than a seemingly weird re-route that involves more right turns simply to avoid potential slow downs. Therefore, it would be interesting to see how driving times would differ during rush hour and normal hours with more traffic than at night. But yes, avoiding left turns on (almost) empty streets at night is somewhat ridiculous. And to be fair it raises questions regarding Waymo’s self-driving capabilities with respect to potentially arbitrary cities (let’s leave out mapping mania here) .