Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods • Hacker News Board

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#111

Post by LatencyKills » Thu, May 21, 2026, 6:08 PM UTC

bhelkey wrote: post #109

Maybe a dumb question, why do electric cars have issues with water? My understanding was that ICE cars have trouble because water get's drawn into the engine. Water in the engine causes it to stall. And the engine must have air in flow and out flow. An electric car doesn't need air in the same way (no oxygen to ignite with gasoline, no air to compress and expand). Shouldn't electric cars to much better at driving thr…

Deep water can still damage an EV by getting into connectors, sensors, wheel bearings, brakes, and cabin electronics.

They can also float just like a regular car.

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#112

Post by ACCount37 » Thu, May 21, 2026, 6:09 PM UTC

mschulkind wrote: post #84

fastball wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I personally feel like Tesla's approach is more likely to "win". The fundamental blocker to self-driving cars is not sensing / sensor fusion, it is intelligence. And the Tesla approach seems much more likely to achieve functional intelligence than Waymo's.

While I agree with basically all of this, and find the FSD on my Tesla to be quite useful, a question pops into my mind. Why can't Waymo ALSO develop the same smarts and just also solve the sensor fusion issue such that they can use the right set of sensors in the right environmental conditions, and then leapfrog Tesla's capabilities?

They could in theory. If they put at least as much emphasis on the AI side as Tesla does. Or if someone else cracked vehicle AI wide open and left it open for them to copy, and then they did exactly that, and found a way to bolt on their extra sensors in a useful fashion while at it.

As is, Waymo's playing it smarter than Cruise did, but they're not all in on AI yet. So I don't expect them to "leapfrog Tesla" in that dimension - and it's the key dimension to self-driving.

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#113

Post by levi-turner » Thu, May 21, 2026, 6:09 PM UTC

craftkiller wrote: post #52

Jabrov wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would there be less gridlock if people were in a driverless car instead of a regular car?

With human drivers: traffic light turns green. The first car starts driving. The 2nd car waits 2 seconds and then starts driving. The third car waits another 2 seconds (4 seconds total) and then starts driving. The fourth car waits another 2 seconds (6 seconds total) and then starts driving. etc. With computers driving: traffic light turns green. All cars simultaneously start driving. It'd be like a train but without…

As a sorta informed outsider, conceptually this makes intuitive sense. But in practice, how does this work? It seems a lot of the intuition breaks down if we don't assume it's network (aka 1 vendor). Fundamentally it's a bunch of external actors where we cannot verify trust and in order to solve for the needs of the individual, suboptimal choices must be made. To put it another way, even if computers can drive cars, what _else_ needs to be in place for this vision?

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#114

Post by tintor » Thu, May 21, 2026, 6:09 PM UTC

plqbfbv wrote: post #106

mschulkind wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with basically all of this, and find the FSD on my Tesla to be quite useful, a question pops into my mind. Why can't Waymo ALSO develop the same smarts and just also solve the sensor fusion issue such that they can use the right set of sensors in the right environmental conditions, and then leapfrog Tesla's capabilities?

> such that they can use the right set of sensors in the right environmental conditions Because this part is really hard, and that's why Tesla abandoned the fusion approach. You cannot possibly foresee all the conditions in which LIDAR or any active sensor will malfunction/return wrong data/return data that's only slightly off for that ONE specific time. And even if it doesn't, you need to trust it to not return nois…

There is noise on LIDAR returns too. No one considers a single LIDAR point to be a collision hazard.

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#115

Post by hamdingers » Thu, May 21, 2026, 6:10 PM UTC

bhelkey wrote: post #109

Maybe a dumb question, why do electric cars have issues with water? My understanding was that ICE cars have trouble because water get's drawn into the engine. Water in the engine causes it to stall. And the engine must have air in flow and out flow. An electric car doesn't need air in the same way (no oxygen to ignite with gasoline, no air to compress and expand). Shouldn't electric cars to much better at driving thr…

They can drive through surprisingly deep water, but you'd still rather avoid it for a lot of reasons. Dangerous loss of traction and risk of getting swept away, soaked passengers will want a refund, and a sopping wet interior will take the vehicle out of service for a while.

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#116

Post by jeffbee » Thu, May 21, 2026, 6:10 PM UTC

OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #89

retrocryptid wrote: post #86

I thought Weymo's were supposed to be "supervised" by humans in the Philippines. Maybe driving in circles in the suburbs and driving into flood waters happens only when the cars are out of mobile data range? Did Weymo pay their mobile phone bill? Does the (somewhat) autonomous system on the car decide when to flag a human for help? I would have expected a human to be watching all the time. Are they experiencing labor…

Your assumption that Waymos are "(somewhat) autonomous" is wrong, which is why your questions and conclusion don't make any sense

It's an interesting illustration of how widely and quickly misinformation spreads, though.

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#117

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 21, 2026, 6:10 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #13

Driving through an obviously flooded street thinking "I'll easily make it" and getting stuck in the middle? Yeah, these cars have achieved human level intelligence.

[deleted]

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#118

Post by b40d-48b2-979e » Thu, May 21, 2026, 6:14 PM UTC

radiorental wrote: post #49

b40d-48b2-979e wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their account is about as old as yours.

More a comment on how HN has devolved in the past 2 years, if I want snark, this isn't the place I go to find it.

Really? I find more bad faith and snark on HN than anywhere else and always have.

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#119

Post by RationPhantoms » Thu, May 21, 2026, 6:15 PM UTC

etempleton wrote: post #90

This is really my bear case against AI. I am not against it. I actually think it is really neat! But we have been working on driverless cars for how long and spent how much? And still things like a flooded roadway completely throw them. Tesla failed to deliver driverless cars but now is pivoting to the much more complex fully autonomous robots. And we can’t get AI to stop hallucinating facts, but any day we are going…

I will posit something that guides my own thinking about this; robotaxis will never drink and drive. I'll take whatever flavor of mistake they conjure over that. I can deal with stupidity, I cannot (and don't want to) deal with malice.

Re: Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

#120

Post by ACCount37 » Thu, May 21, 2026, 6:15 PM UTC

etempleton wrote: post #90

This is really my bear case against AI. I am not against it. I actually think it is really neat! But we have been working on driverless cars for how long and spent how much? And still things like a flooded roadway completely throw them. Tesla failed to deliver driverless cars but now is pivoting to the much more complex fully autonomous robots. And we can’t get AI to stop hallucinating facts, but any day we are going…

The "responsible adults" know that chasing perfection gets you nowhere fast. A part of growing up is learning to put up with "good enough".

A car that only fails in a road conditions edge case is good enough for the vast majority of cases. You accept that, and issue a manual override for when that edge case pops up. Then you add that edge case to your training sets. Then the issue never comes up again.

If you think that "flooded roadway" is a case that's handled gracefully by every human driver, and it's the AI that's uniquely prone to failure, I have news for you.

Multiple cities with uncommonly flooded roadways get surges of "water flood engine damage" cars at the repair shops in the wake of extreme weather events. Human drivers underestimate just how flooded a roadway is, try to push through it, and have their car choke, die, and float there, waiting for some good samarithan with a snorkel and a long rope to pull it out. Then someone gets to play the fun game of "is this ICE toast or will it run once you get the water out".