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US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

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Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#31

Post by d4mi3n »

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.

It’s not an unreasonable take given historic behavior. Rather than decrying the cynicism, what steps can we take to ensure companies like Tesla/Waymo/etc are held accountable and incentivized to prioritize safety?

Do we need hasher fines? Give auto regulators as much teeth as the FAA used to have during accident investigations?

Genuinely curious to see how addressing reasonable concerns in these areas can be done.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#32

Post by varenc »

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.

It's ironic given this forum began as a place for aspiring startup (Delaware C-Corp) founders.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#33

Post by trollbridge »

kotaKat wrote: post #21
trollbridge wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Out here in rural nowhere it most certainly does. The school bus driver will record your number plate, and school buses have the equivalent of dashcams now.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#34

Post by renewiltord »

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.

Are school days ever Sundays? If not, perhaps all drivers just treat every non-Sunday as school day. If so, they probably just slow every day.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#35

Post by bluGill »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #27
bluGill wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The courts get to decide that. Often it is a "I know it when I see it". The real question is did they do enough to fix all possibly safety issues before this new one happened that was different. If they did "enough" (something I'm not defining!) then they can start over.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#36

Post by renewiltord »

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.

We feared the advent of LLMs since they could be used as convincing spam tools. Little did we know that humans would often do the same.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#37

Post by kjkjadksj »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #20
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, we do. The problem is that you need to be physically present to catch and deal with those people, and you can only really deal with one party (others will do their thing while a police officer is dealing with the first driver they stop). Not to mention that drivers change their behavior if they see the police around, so it's harder to catch them in the act. So for a variety of reasons it's harder to solve the…

With how cheap high definition cameras are, I don’t see why society needs a person to be physically present.

“Wasn’t me in the car”

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#38

Post by lotsofpulp »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #37
lotsofpulp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With how cheap high definition cameras are, I don’t see why society needs a person to be physically present.

“Wasn’t me in the car”

Hence high definition camera. Most states have tints on windshield and dark tints on front windows as illegal. Also, the license plate is all that is needed, ticket the owner and they will readily give up the driver.

Other countries have no issues with camera based traffic law enforcement.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#39

Post by tanseydavid »

daseiner1 wrote: post #15
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.

> a fine that means nothing to them Yes, this is often the case. In this instance, though, endangering children is just about the worst PR possible. That's strong leverage.

This^^^ -- the impact of positive vs negative PR is unusually huge with this type of tech.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#40

Post by tanseydavid »

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.

Have you had the experience of riding in a Waymo making a left hand turn against incoming traffic -- and how it handles the eventual yellow light?

I was very impressed about the decision making in this situation. Seems very intuitive (at least superficially).

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