“This is it. We’re dead. We’re going to die right here in the Waymo.”
This combined with another recent article from some insiders at Tesla saying, along the lines, “You couldn’t pay me to let one of these things drive me somewhere.”
And yet I still know people who are just so chuffed about “never having to drive again.”
EDIT: Comments have pointed out that this story is, at best, overblown and semi-fabricated otherwise. Take it with a massive grain of salt. But feel free to discuss self-driving, waymo, etc in the comments!
If only there was some kind of system, that could take multiple people from A to B, with only one dude in front to keep track of what the automated system is doing. Ideally on some form of predictable track, that makes sure that the vehicle always stays in line without the need of advanced AI. Someone should invent that.
They could even make them underground so they don’t clog up the city!
Might sound crazy, but we might be able to link multiple vehicles together as needed for capacity so they’ll move as one!
Alright now you’ve crossed over into impossible science fiction
That is crazy talk. There would not be nearly enough shareholder value in such a system.
If they could be built here they would already be built. Q.E.D.
Save us Elon!
CHOO CHOO! CHUGGA CHUGGA CHOO CHOO!
Had to check which sub I was in lol
We do still have taxis even in countries where mass transit is well maintained and popular. They’re also not the perfect form of transportation for everyone as people can have disabilities causing limited mobility etc.
Automating things like trains also seems to have been a very slow process.
Accessible trains and buses exist and are commonplace
it’s a very narrow view of accessibility to think the whole problem is solved by making an accessible bus you can get on with a wheelchair. Limited mobility affects your ability to get to the bus stop and it comes in many forms. Visually impaired people also benefit.
Maybe you’ve not experienced public infra that is upto standard. What sort of disability have you got btw?
Literally every single city bus in my small German 50k home town is wheelchair accessible. The bus drivers are also required to assist. And the trains are increasingly being replaced with similarly accessible versions, including modifications to the platforms to allow easy entry. U-Bahn trains are, as far as i know, always accessible for a long, long time now. At least in the cities i’ve visited so far. For example Munich: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3CA46JXd2g
For less connected areas, we have a “Rufbus”, that can come and collect you similarly to a taxi service. They try to get multiple people if they can. And they also have cars for wheelchair users at their disposal.
In terms of automating, yes it’s slow. Regulations have to be applied or worked out to make it work. Which is reasonable. Nuremberg does have the first driverless U-Bahn, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_U-Bahn
Nuremberg driverless U-Bahn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDLpcgXLKZA
All industrial equipment is required by law to have an e-stop. Not having one in a “self-driving” car is criminal.
Being trapped in an autonomous vehicle driving erratically should have never, ever been possible. Shows you how these companies value the safety of the humans involved: they don’t.
An emergency stop is better than nothing, but they should ALSO have an emergency “let me take control”. Sometimes stopping does not decrease the danger.
Example: the waymo enters a rail crossing with flashing lights, and the barriers close with the car inside. The waymo sees the barriers so it stops. What you want in that case is accelerate and get the fuck out of there. If you have a baby in the backseat, there may not be enough time to get the baby and get out of there on foot.
This is the fundamental problem with automated cars and remote (or embedded) kill switches: they can never account for the edge cases that humans can readily adapt to. People will die as a result of those edge cases. Will it save more than it costs in human life, and are we willing to make that trade as a society? I can’t answer that but neither can the people making the decisions to make Waymo profitable over public safety.
Yeah the only real solution to this problem is to put a genuinely competent AGI into the car. Which of course of course they’ve known from the start, but have never been prepared to admit.
It’s not really a solution to rely on something that doesn’t exist. The closest we can get is to have a person there to oversee and be liable for whatever happens.
Yeah I’m pretty sure it will. Humans are also incompetent, egotistical, self-righteous drivers. Statistics say humans are in reality poor drivers and I’m confident the self-driving car will be safer overall
But there will always be those edge cases where a human could perhaps do better. They have different weaknesses. So it won’t be a clear cut decision when self-driving would be widely allowed
This was also my opinion from doing a trial of full self driving. It did an amazing job, and most of my corrections were wrong. It is already safer than a human in “normal driving” and has been for a while. But every drive had edge cases where it just wasn’t ready.
Unmanned vehicles without am emergency stop button are legal at all, anywhere? WTF?
I always assumed these waymos would have had a very clearly labelled emergency stop button that would bring the car to a controlled but quick emergency stop
Come on, that can’t be legal, that can’t be okay
I thought they did have a stop button. I recall a video James May made of a Waymo that had one. I could be wrong. But, the article doesn’t say anything about whether one was present and if the occupants tried it.
Edit: I just got home and rewatched the video. No, there’s no emergency stop button. There is a “pull over” button on the passenger touchscreen console and the app, but that’s about it. A bit concerning!
The above post is now under surveilance in Philadelphia.
The terrifying incident underlines the very real dangers of relying on autonomous vehicles for ride shares, while they still suffer from nagging technical shortcomings
I don’t care if they have a perfect driving record or not, anything autonomous MUST be equipped with clearly visible emergency stop buttons, why the fuck aren’t those there?
It would be so easy to implement a big red “oh fuck” button that, notifies customer service, puts the car into limp mode, and directs it to pull over.
Consent just isn’t a concept to the people who make these things.
“Waymo offered the rattled occupant $40 worth of free rides” Time to lawyer up. I’m guessing that even in our car loving society there are cases of reckless drivers who endangers passenger lives being sued.
Also, I missed the part where Waymo was ticketed in this and every other story about these renegade cars.
Surprised they didn’t at least offer free access to gemini pro for a month, too
In a sane world a regulatory body pulls their fleet from the roads until they can prove they are safe to a third party. Instead they get a self imposed slap on the wrist with a promise to return soon
In a sane world people would laugh at these cars and not use them until they are bankrupt
Sounds like they need to change the name to Delamain and market it as a feature.
BEEP BEEP MOTHER FUCKER!
TFW The Blues Brothers sneaks into your training data.
This combined with another recent article from some insiders at Tesla saying, along the lines, “You couldn’t pay me to let one of these things drive me somewhere.”
Was said insider talking about Teslas or were they whinging about a competitor that makes better vehicles than they do?
Tesla
Found the article! https://www.reuters.com/investigations/why-teslas-ai-trainers-dont-trust-its-self-driving-tech-or-its-safety-stats-2026-05-28/
Seven of the former data labelers told Reuters they wouldn’t trust FSD to drive them. “We have all seen it fail,” one said. Another said he wouldn’t ride in a Tesla robotaxi “if you fucking paid me.” One veteran self-driving engineer, who reviewed Tesla crash data for years, called its safety claims “bullshit.”
It was probably about Teslas given the state of Tesla’s “self driving” feature.
Still, given everything I’ve heard about how Waymos react to novel situations, I’m not too keen on trusting my life to them either.
In my limited experience they all suck. I was driving a new Ford with “driver assist” and it decided to nearly kill everyone in the immediate area while driving through a construction zone. The transition from my driving to the vehicle taking over felt similar to the time my power steering (instant horror) went out and the transition from vehicle misreading the situation to my somewhat panicked regaining control felt like performing a highly illegal driving manuever. I’m singling out Ford because that was the vehicle make, but I’m fairly certain the technology itself is undercooked. I’ll be sticking with my ancient vehicle as long as possible and maybe go buy something with a tape deck or 8-track next.
Yet. Trust your life to them… yet. All it takes is ALL vehicles to eventually be autonomous, and then you never have to worry about loss of life or injury. If all vehicles followed every rule to a “T,” there would be no issues.
When you look at all the edge cases, road rules are not 100% consistent. They rely on human judgement to manage the (rare) ambiguous situations, such as a misaligned road intersection. With ever vehicules following every rules to a T, there would still be issues.
I mean, if there are no humans on the road they won’t be dying there. Doesn’t seem like it would be very good for us, though, to no longer be allowed to travel.
There will always be idiot pedestrians and bicyclists, what about those?
But they’re fine with being payed to do it to other people. Typical tech bro attitude.
Machinery is required to have a big red STOP button that will immediately stop all moving parts. For emergencies. I assume these cars don’t have something like that? Maybe they should be required to; stop and unlock all doors.
/edit: I see it’s mentioned/suggested in some other comments as well.
Haha i just made a similar comment. I should copy past your edit.
I think I’ll just delete mine
Can some teach the KIA Boys how to steal waymos and post it on tiktok
A 2nd robot car pulled it over.
Get the robot Air Force One ready.
“Air” force? For a land vehicle? Pffffft, get the M3 GTR (no turn signals for weight reduction)
deleted by creator
I thought I remember reading somewhere that Waymos aren’t automated at all and are really just being driven remotely by people in the Philippines.
Found the Article: https://www.techspot.com/news/111233-waymo-admits-autopilot-often-guys-philippines.html
They claim they are just there to intervene in emergencies, but the aggressive way I’ve seen those fucking things drive on surface streets around my place, I don’t doubt they’re driving them 100% of the time.
Minimum 120ms latency added to the operator’s reaction speed.
.12 seconds at 65MPH is about 115 feet.
Yikes.
Spend a little time watching footage of the weird stuff Waymos sometimes do you and you’ll be easily convinced they’re absolutely not being controlled by humans all the time.
It could be possible that the remote operators take control in complex crowded situations like side streets with cars parked on both sides of the streets and 2-way traffic having to share a single lane. But you’re probably right, what I’m interpreting as aggressive driving could just be the programming doing odd things because it gets confused.
@DragonAce@lemmy.world there’s really no evidence of that at all and their support staff is much smaller compared to the size of the fleet. You can also find plenty of examples of Waymos behaving in a way that human remote controlling them would never be doing. So it’s seems very unlikely that these vehicles are some kind of “mechanical turks”.
”never having to drive again”
Y’know I can’t put my finger on it but something tells me that there’s an alternative to that without technofascist wet-dream robocars involved 🤔
You couldn’t pay me to get into a Waymo but you COULD probably convince me to pay a person to get me somewhere. What a novel concept!
Or trains, which I guess is still technically paying a person to get me somewhere in a really removed way.
Or trollies! Or subways! Or rickshaws!
I’m in process of designing a robot rickshaw. The big difference is that it’ll be pedalled by a shitty robot instead of a human. No I don’t want a regular ebike it’s a rickshaw we do this the hard way
Even busses are relatively okay.
Where‘s that from?
What form of public transport is this and how do I apply to be the driver?
Even if there was no other person involved. Making trains self driving makes way more sense and is way more achievable than hoping to automate chaotic road behavior
Self driving trains are far safer than any other option.
Trains are me and my neighbors paying ourselves to get everyone where they’re going in an extremely efficient way!
Waymo is everyone paying tech bros for an inefficient illusion of futurism with a whole lot of negative externalities that is drawing resources away from real progress in order to enrich the few.
Let’s go up and keep the train driver company!
If you live outside of a major city I don’t see an alternative.
Because the alternatives were deliberately dismantled.
Permit me to reiterate an idea I had the last time a self-driving car did something illegal:
All of these cars are being driven by the same software “driver”. That driver is in contempt of the law. Thus it needs to be punished like any other driver in contempt of the law. All fines to be paid by its representative human or company. All incarceration to be for as long as is necessary for the driver to be rehabilitated. If no such rehabilitation is possible, the driver is permanently banned from driving.
By which I mean, all Waymos need to be taken off the road until they’re provably rehabilitated and it is certain that this won’t happen again.
And if Waymo the company thinks that would be detrimental to their business, tough. Take some responsibility and fix your damn cars.
Imo all of the "self driving " features that car makers advertise should really be called driver assist if the marketing matched how the real world works. Until a car company is willing to take legal liability for accidents while using their self driving feature, what is the point?
CEOs should be held liable for the products their company produces.
I mean… If they are “people” for the purposes of buying our democracy from us, right?
They can vote now, as well–as long as they live in that one state where all the corporations reside. This shit is so stupid
Also when a human takes remote control, does that person have a driving licence valid in the place they are driving. Because last i heard they were in Indonesia or something. Presumably a taxi drivers licence as they are carrying passing passengers.
International treaty does not require that
I’m sure Waymo’s lawyers would argue that a simple software update would make the “driver” an entirely new entity, and thus free from the fines and incarceration. You’re raising some interesting legal questions that we’d have to figure out
In that case, make it wait 16 years
The software? Sure let it not be liable. What does the software own? Now, should the c suite be held responsible? Hell yes. Liability belongs to the corporation and don’t let them off the hook for their actions.
Unfortunately the legal theory behind holding executives responsible (is valid and) has never really been tried. They passed a law, hoped everyone would forget about it, everyone did, and business went back to usual.
By that logic, I would not legally be the same person as I would be tomorrow since my brain would not have an identical cellular structure as it does today.
Your honor, my client’s largest organ has completely different cells compared to when they were arrested a few weeks ago, and so I move to dismiss the case.
That would make too much sense. They are operating a vehicle, regardless of whether or not said vehicle has a “human driver” there is a person who is allowing said vehicle onto the road and is the person at the top of the chain of authority which sent those vehicles out.
Like, if I sent out a swarm of killer drones no one would argue that it was me who killed people. Of course, in today’s world, you can have insurance companies supercede medical instruction, leading to the deaths of thousands, and that’s not even a news story.
