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Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

latimes.com

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Re: Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

#121

Post by parineum »

kelnos wrote: post #4
MostlyStable wrote: post #2

As far as I can tell here the ghost portion is basically a non-sequiter. The waymo vehicle called the cops because it detected e passengers had a gun. The vehicle did not know or care about its status as a ghost gun or not. I'm sure that the Waymo terms of service prohibit carrying weapons into the vehicle. I'm pretty sure that if you were brandishing a realistic looking enough gun, an Uber driver would kick you out…

There's a big difference between a human present who can make a decision based on a situation literally in front of their eyes, and a computer flagging a video feed for someone in what amounts to a call center to look at and decide on. Not to mention the mass surveillance this sort of stuff continues to help enable.

Would you be upset if someone at the WalMart central data center called the local police because they saw someone with a gun in a Walmart at a remote location?

That's what happened here. A private company saw a gun inside their property and called the police.

Re: Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

#122

Post by mehjustmeh »

smt88 wrote: post #45
graemep wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A human driver would be more able to tell a toy gun from a real one.

Absolutely not. A human driver has to watch the road and can’t scrutinize a gun. And it’s also not easy to tell toys from real guns. Many cities illegalized toy guns on public transit because people were putting orange tips on real guns to make them look like toys. 3D-printed guns rarely look like they can actually fire, even though they can.

A human driver has a vested interest in determining if the person sitting behind them is holding a real gun or not.

Re: Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

#123

Post by 8note »

kelnos wrote: post #3

I'm really torn on this. This particular situation, at face value at least, sounds like a good outcome. Kids had a gun, someone noticed, called police, situation handled without escalation or violence or something tragic happening. But this doesn't generalize. Another incident described in the article was when some kids were drinking in the car and shooting toy guns. What if they hadn't been drinking? What if they we…

> What if Waymo thought the guns were real, called the cops, and the cops screwed up and shot one of the kids?

Waymo is not the one to solve your policing problem. The root issue is that your police shoot to kill first, and investigate or make stuff up to get themselves off later.

the police's job is to analyze reports and actually figure out if theyre correct or not. If theyre failing at that, the rest really doesnt matter. Theyre gonna take some other stranger's report or false report and go shoot those kids for the love of the game anyways, regardless of if waymo is involved

Re: Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

#124

Post by willsmith72 »

kelnos wrote: post #3

I'm really torn on this. This particular situation, at face value at least, sounds like a good outcome. Kids had a gun, someone noticed, called police, situation handled without escalation or violence or something tragic happening. But this doesn't generalize. Another incident described in the article was when some kids were drinking in the car and shooting toy guns. What if they hadn't been drinking? What if they we…

> What if Waymo thought the guns were real, called the cops, and the cops screwed up and shot one of the kids?

See this is only an issue because that is a plausible situation. The actual problem is on the police/cultural side, not the waymo side. No one should even have to think about this when calling the cops. And I can't think of 1 other western society where they do

Re: Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

#125

Post by t2r3121 »

mehjustmeh wrote: post #122
smt88 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. A human driver has to watch the road and can’t scrutinize a gun. And it’s also not easy to tell toys from real guns. Many cities illegalized toy guns on public transit because people were putting orange tips on real guns to make them look like toys. 3D-printed guns rarely look like they can actually fire, even though they can.

A human driver has a vested interest in determining if the person sitting behind them is holding a real gun or not.

A human driver can't tell. I've had gun guys mistake my airsoft guns for real ones. Average person who isn't familiar with both real guns and airsoft has no chance.

Re: Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

#126

Post by willsmith72 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #37
epsteingpt wrote: post #7

Shocking this isn't bigger news. It will be strange what they get you for. Maybe car ownership isn't doomed after all. At least a human usually has some judgment and discretion situationally. I guess the alternative "Juvenile Driveby Shooting takes place from Waymo" isn't a better headline though.

Google would probably be held 100% liable if it happened from their car. . What I don’t get is why Waymo allows unaccompanied juvenile riders at all? That seems like a huge risk for them.

> What I don’t get is why Waymo allows unaccompanied juvenile riders at all?

Why not? They can already take an uber. It's questionable which is safer

Re: Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

#127

Post by mckn1ght »

alt227 wrote: post #110
jplona wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a legitimate distinction between monitoring what's inside the car vs what's outside. Outside seems bad. Inside is probably necessary.

How are they supposed to drive themselves without monitoring whats going on outside the vehicle?

That’s possible to do without also sending all the captured data to police.

Re: Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

#128

Post by willsmith72 »

analog8374 wrote: post #78

I was at LOWES the other day with a used can of paint that I brought for color matching. obviously used. beat up and stained. at the checkout the computer halted the checkout process said "did you forget something in your cart?" yeah fuck that. also fucks self-checkout. are we so poverty stricken as a society now that we can't afford to pay cashiers?

have you talked to cashiers? many prefer the new ones. who are you protecting?

Re: Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

#129

Post by harshreality »

Maybe we need very clear, standardized signals for entering a surveillance zone (where someone not obviously present, possibly a corporate stooge or AI or simpler-than-AI automated detection system, is judging behavior) so that people realize that private behavior (like casually showing off guns to each other, safely, which I've seen done myself and was not cause for alarm—guns were legal) is no longer private.

The steelman -against- what waymo did is:

Guns are generally legal, even in California. This is America, not the EU. Nobody was harmed, nobody was threatened. This is like calling the cops on someone open carrying because you don't like open carry.

That is what a lot of pro-2A libertarians would argue.

The steelman -pro- what waymo did is:

Private conveyance. Even though the occupants thought they were "alone", there was someone/something else present, which felt threatened (or thought the passengers represented a potential threat to others) and called police, as most cabbies or uber drivers probably would.

I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. This is a grey area, and I think it'll likely resolve in favor of waymo, and it won't really bother anyone except the staunch libertarians. If the gun hadn't been illegally possessed, likely nothing would've happened after the cops were called.

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