US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety • Hacker News Board

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#21

Post by kotaKat » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 1:53 PM UTC

trollbridge wrote: post #5

GiorgioG wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to call bullshit on this. Most human drivers do not flout these rules.

No kidding. Try doing this once or twice and the driver will record your information and you’ll get a nice visit from the police.

Out here in rural nowhere it doesn’t — it just gets the sheriff on the local news begging people to stop instead of solving the actual problem at hand by placing patrols on the routes.

[1] https://www.wwnytv.com/2025/02/12/absolutely-terrifying-grow...

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#22

Post by AlotOfReading » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 1:58 PM UTC

daseiner1 wrote: post #18

izacus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, how does that work? Every person in your city needs to know the exact calendar of that school?

the sign says the hours for the reduced speed limit or, more commonly in my experience, has a light that activates during school hours.

The light and often even the sign itself are typically considered informational aids rather than strict determinants of legality. The driver is expected to comply with all the nitpicky details of the law regardless of whether the bulb is burned out or the school schedule changes.

Needless to say, most people regularly violate some kind of traffic law, we just don't enforce it.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#23

Post by daseiner1 » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 2:03 PM UTC

AlotOfReading wrote: post #22

daseiner1 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the sign says the hours for the reduced speed limit or, more commonly in my experience, has a light that activates during school hours.

The light and often even the sign itself are typically considered informational aids rather than strict determinants of legality. The driver is expected to comply with all the nitpicky details of the law regardless of whether the bulb is burned out or the school schedule changes. Needless to say, most people regularly violate some kind of traffic law, we just don't enforce it.

of course. i'm confident slowing down near a school is pretty intuitive for the vast majority of drivers, though.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#24

Post by AlotOfReading » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 2:21 PM UTC

daseiner1 wrote: post #23

AlotOfReading wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The light and often even the sign itself are typically considered informational aids rather than strict determinants of legality. The driver is expected to comply with all the nitpicky details of the law regardless of whether the bulb is burned out or the school schedule changes. Needless to say, most people regularly violate some kind of traffic law, we just don't enforce it.

of course. i'm confident slowing down near a school is pretty intuitive for the vast majority of drivers, though.

Sure, but the context here is a discussion about how a computer can know all of these "intuitive" rules humans follow.

The answer is encoded in the map data in this case, but it's an interesting category of problems for autonomous vehicles.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#25

Post by fragmede » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 2:30 PM UTC

AlotOfReading wrote: post #24

daseiner1 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

of course. i'm confident slowing down near a school is pretty intuitive for the vast majority of drivers, though.

Sure, but the context here is a discussion about how a computer can know all of these "intuitive" rules humans follow. The answer is encoded in the map data in this case, but it's an interesting category of problems for autonomous vehicles.

Now I’m imagining the Waymo Driver calling out to Gemini to determine "school hours" by looking it up on the Internet, and wondering about the nature of life.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#26

Post by slavik81 » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 2:35 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #16

jmpman wrote: post #10

I’m also curious about school zones. The one near my house has a sign, “School” “Speed Limit 35” “7:00AM to 4:00PM School Days” Now, how does a robotaxi comply with that? Does it go to the district website and look up the current school year calendar? Or does it work like a human, and simply observe the patterns of the school traffic, and assume the general school calendar? I suspect it continues in Mad Max mode.

Wait, how does that work? Every person in your city needs to know the exact calendar of that school?

Yes, that's how it works in Alberta. It's particularly confusing because not all schools have the same academic calendar (e.g., most schools have a summer break, but a few have summer classes).

Unlike the sibling comment, there are no lights or indications of when school is in session. You must memorize the academic calendar of every school you drive past in order to know the speed limit. In practice, this means being conservative and driving more slowly in unfamiliar areas.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#27

Post by AlotOfReading » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 2:39 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #19

trollbridge wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

… assuming the GiantCorp running the robotaxis cares about complying with the law, and doesn’t just pay a fine that means nothing to them.

The first fines should be meaningless to the company. If the issue isn't fixed the fines should get higher and higher. If the company fixes one issue but there is a second discovered quickly we should assume they don't care about safety and the second issue should have a higher fine than the first even though it is unrelated. Companies (and people) have an obligation to do the right thing.

What do you mean by "second issue"? A second instance of the same underlying problem, or a different underlying problem? The way you phrase it as unrelated suggests the latter to me.

It's pretty wild to jump straight to "they don't care about safety" here. Building a perfect system without real world testing is impossible, for exactly the same reason it's impossible to write bug-free code on the first try. That's not a suggestion to be lax, just that we need to be realistic about what's achievable if we agree that some form of this technology could be beneficial.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#28

Post by buckle8017 » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 2:42 PM UTC

jmpman wrote: post #10

I’m also curious about school zones. The one near my house has a sign, “School” “Speed Limit 35” “7:00AM to 4:00PM School Days” Now, how does a robotaxi comply with that? Does it go to the district website and look up the current school year calendar? Or does it work like a human, and simply observe the patterns of the school traffic, and assume the general school calendar? I suspect it continues in Mad Max mode.

They should just always observe the lower speed limit.

The difference is usually 5 or maybe 10 mph.

Which over the distance of a school zone is nothing.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#29

Post by some_random » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 3:10 PM UTC

daseiner1 wrote: post #17

some_random wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but in many cases they're not, traffic enforcement went way down during Covid and it's still down.

Most large cities I've lived in, general traffic enforcement essentially only exists on that month's/quarter's designated ticket-writing day. i.e., when highway patrol and city police just write speeding tickets all day to juice revenue

I don't know what large cities you've lived in, but that's not what any experts seems to be saying in any piece I've ever read. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/29/upshot/traffi...

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#30

Post by whimsicalism » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 3:15 PM UTC

trollbridge wrote: post #6

krisoft wrote: post #4

To be honest. I think this is one of the strengths of autonomous cars. With humans when they do this at max we can punish that individual. To increase population wide compliance we can do a safety awareness campaign, ramp up enforcement, ramp up the fines. But all of these cost a lot of money to do, take a while to have an effect, need to be repeated/kept up, and only help statistically. With a robot driver we can de…

… assuming the GiantCorp running the robotaxis cares about complying with the law, and doesn’t just pay a fine that means nothing to them.

the discourse around “corporations” has gotten absolutely ridiculous at this point, especially on this website.