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

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#211

Post by bloppe » Fri, Oct 24, 2025, 11:26 PM UTC

6stringmerc wrote: post #200

atleastoptimal wrote: post #125

On net, Waymos are safer than human drivers. Really all that matters is deaths per passenger mile, and weighted far less, injury/crash per passenger mile. Waymos exceed human drivers on both metrics, thus it is reasonable to say that Waymos have reduced crashes compared to the equivalent average human driver covering the same distance. Mistakes like this are very rare, and when they do happen, they can be audited, an…

So what will these humans alternatively perish from? Old age? How is that fiscally possible?

Probably heart disease

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#212

Post by bloppe » Fri, Oct 24, 2025, 11:29 PM UTC

spike021 wrote: post #118

andoando wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont get it. It looks like it just made a left turn in front of a stopped school bus? That's illegal? In any case it seems like tiny issue. Illegal or not it didnt do anything dangerous

the point of a bus having lights flashing and the stop sign extended is that kids could be coming or going from any direction and especially when least expected. it's certainly a minor issue until the worst case scenario happens.

And it would be an even bigger issue if the driver did not have perfect 360 degree spacial awareness and could react to a child in single digit milliseconds

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#213

Post by lawlessone » Sat, Oct 25, 2025, 1:02 AM UTC

platevoltage wrote: post #132

lawlessone wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The first fines should be meaningless to the company. Why?

Fines are completely useless if they are small enough to be considered "the price of doing business".

I agree.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#214

Post by anitil » Sat, Oct 25, 2025, 2:33 AM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #139

anitil wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In NSW (Australia) that's exactly how it works. And it includes 'pupil-free' days where there are no students present. My old school even had a pedestrian bridge and barriers so that it wasn't even possible to get to the road. It's so silly, when the obvious solution is to make school zones 40km/hr (25mi/hr) at all times, or to fix the road design. Typical speeds here are 60km/hr (40mi/hr), so anyone making the argum…

> (There is one exception that I know of - our east coast highway used to go near a school, which forced a change from 110km/hr (70mi/hr) to 40km/hr. In this case I will concede the speed is not the issue, the highway location is the issue) They couldn't just put up a fence?

A fence and a pedestrian bridge would do the job. Long term I think that highway is going to bypass all the towns

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#215

Post by Stevvo » Sat, Oct 25, 2025, 3:24 AM UTC

In every other developed country, driving around school buses is not illegal, and less children are hit by motor vehicles than in the US. This is a damnation of American drivers; there should be no need need for a law forbidding passing school buses because you should be driving safely at appropriate speed. There is no suggestion the Waymo did anything unsafe here, only that it failed to follow the law.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#216

Post by oogabooga13 » Sat, Oct 25, 2025, 4:17 AM UTC

After a few rides in a Waymo I'd say I am confident they will tackle this the right way. However for companies with a track record like Tesla and their autonomous efforts idk what it means to trust "their" stack...

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#217

Post by sagarm » Sat, Oct 25, 2025, 6:40 AM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #30

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

Corporations are bad because the diffusion of responsibility and legal liability shield turns them, to a first approximation, into amoral paperclip maximizers that will employ slave labor to save nickels and dimes.

The invariably sociopathic leadership is a symptom, not a cause: they're the least encumbered by ethics, and the best fit for corporate leadership.

The cure is a strong regulatory state.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#218

Post by Earw0rm » Sat, Oct 25, 2025, 6:55 AM UTC

sdenton4 wrote: post #192

Earw0rm wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the baseline of human-operated safety is "get law enforcement to do their job of getting rid of the bad actors."

Why is that the baseline? Actual human performance as it exists today gives us tens of thousands of road fatalities per year in the US. We have not solved that problem despite decades of opportunity to introduce regulations and enforcement. Getting rid of human drivers looks like a very promising way forward.

Because failure to solve it is political and intellectual laziness and cowardice.

It's like jets falling out of the sky because the guy that bolts the wings on is only half doing his job, we can all see it and know about it and yet.. nobody wants to speak up.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#219

Post by stuaxo » Sat, Oct 25, 2025, 7:21 AM UTC

kiba wrote: post #169

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…

Road designs play an important role as well, it's not just enforcing the law. Some roads are going to be safer simply because drivers don't feel safe driving fast. Others are safer simply because there's less opportunities to get into a collision. Wide street in cities encourage faster driving which doesn't really save a lot of time while making the streets more dangerous, for example.

Most US roads do not have pedestrian safety in mind at all.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#220

Post by quickthrowman » Sat, Oct 25, 2025, 12:32 PM UTC

kiba wrote: post #169

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…

Road designs play an important role as well, it's not just enforcing the law. Some roads are going to be safer simply because drivers don't feel safe driving fast. Others are safer simply because there's less opportunities to get into a collision. Wide street in cities encourage faster driving which doesn't really save a lot of time while making the streets more dangerous, for example.

After seeing how road design calmed traffic speeds in multiple areas in my city by reducing lanes and using medians that ‘narrow’ the apparent width of the roadway, and in some places just with road paint (it’s weird but it works).

I believe that road design is the only way to control how fast people drive. Speed limits are useless for controlling speed, people drive the speed the road is designed for.