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Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

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Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#93

Post by MBCook »

From John Ripley on Mastodon:

“Thought of the day, and I wish there were a way to get this to legislators:

Come the next Big One earthquake, all of San Francisco’s emergency services will be blocked by Waymos.”

I’m AMAZED they’re not designed to handle this better. This does indeed seem like a massive problem. “Oops we give up” right when things get the worst? How is this OK?

I’ve been very impressed by Waymo’s more cautious approach. Perhaps they haven’t fully thought through the ramifications of it though.

https://mastodon.social/@jripley/115758725115731454

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#94

Post by isodev »

alistairSH wrote: post #91

Anybody on the ground confirm if it was the traffic lights or lack of cellular that cussed the stoppages?

I think it’s clear that both use cases are a must have during an emergency. Even more, rescue services and stranded people would need all the bandwidth and reception they can get, Waymos shouldn’t be online during such times at all.

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#95

Post by jerlam »

isodev wrote: post #94
alistairSH wrote: post #91

Anybody on the ground confirm if it was the traffic lights or lack of cellular that cussed the stoppages?

I think it’s clear that both use cases are a must have during an emergency. Even more, rescue services and stranded people would need all the bandwidth and reception they can get, Waymos shouldn’t be online during such times at all.

First responders get the highest priority of cellular networks even in non-emergency situations (FirstNet).

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#96

Post by NetMageSCW »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #88

So basically no answer from Waymo other than to boast about their numbers? Why not just be transparent?

Read more carefully, Waymo didn’t boast about their numbers and that part of the story was unrelated to the issue except as a measure of impact their shutdown could have.

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#99

Post by jjav »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #87
cmurf wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans certainly are imperfect and make mistakes, but will iterate with the understanding that doing nothing at all and blocking emergency vehicles is untenable. At the least we will fall back to incentive/disincentive social behavior. People will supply ample friendly and unfriendly advice to try to unwind the knot. Waymo should lose their operating license based on this experience. It's self-evidently dangerous to…

> Waymo should lose their operating license based on this experience. Then everyone should lose their licenses as well by your draconian reasoning. Because… > There's a whole set of law driver's are supposed to follow for handling failed traffic lights. And they don’t, it’s chaos. > Why have lower expectations of an anonymous car than a human? You obviously have higher expectations for autonomous cars than humans, it…

> > There's a whole set of law driver's are supposed to follow for handling failed traffic lights.

> And they don’t, it’s chaos.

Do you live in areas where traffic lights go out regularly?

Because for human driver it is a non-issue. It becomes an all-way stop and you take turns, it is easy. Traffic throughput slows down a bit, but nothing approaching chaos about it. If waymo can't deal with this, that's a problem.

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