8 ms·

While this is tragic, undeniably so, it’s worth knowing that a head on collision in Malibu two days ago killed a 50 year old man when a 20 year old crossed over

by erulabs 10mo ago

While this is tragic, undeniably so, it’s worth knowing that a head on collision in Malibu two days ago killed a 50 year old man when a 20 year old crossed over the double yellow line. It was obvious seeing the car that the young person was racing and driving dangerously. It barely made the news. I only know it happened because I drove past the wreck. Tragic about the cat - and Waymo must improve - but we cannot lose sight of the greater good.

butvacuum 10mo ago
No, We should be fighting tooth and nail against these companies. They're not here to save us from ourselves. They're using public streets to Alpha (beta if you want to be generous) test autonomous lethal weapons, and then profit off of it when it works. I can't find anything saying waymo has a thermal camera. They aren't expensive- certainly not compared to the LIDAR- and provide extremely discriminated input on "am I about to kill something?" They're not perfect as foul weather and fog are likely to blind thermal- but they shouldn't be driving in suboptimal conditions until they have a track record of safety in optimal ones.
- AlotOfReading 10mo ago
  What criteria would you consider sufficient for deployment on public streets? My experience is that people opposed to AV technology usually aren't familiar with the level of validation that's been done and tend to have expectations that are either impossible or are already met. Waymo has experimented with thermal imaging in the past. I've never seen experiments indicating it's a particularly valuable modality for AVs, and high resolution thermal cameras exceed the price of decent LIDAR these days. You can easily spend $10k+ on a FLIR sensor with a pixel count higher than 4 digits.
- simianwords 10mo ago
  > They're using public streets to Alpha (beta if you want to be generous) test autonomous lethal weapons, and then profit off of it when it works. Sounds good? It’s exactly working as it should.
- SR2Z 10mo ago
  Considering that they're already safer than human drivers, I don't think you could say that they're the ones using the streets to learn.
- tim333 10mo ago
  Waymo was started partly to save lives by Sebastian Thrun who lost a friend to a car accident when he was 18. They have about 1/3 the accident rate of human drivers. Calling this stuff evil is kind of sad.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
lelanthran 10mo ago
> but we cannot lose sight of the greater good. The greater good is not served by allowing profit-making machines to use public infrastructure to test lethal machines in.
- leobg 10mo ago
  So tell me where to find a not-profit-seeking human. I’d say a government employee just seeks profit by doing as little as possible for the fixed paycheck they get. _Everyone_ has a profit motive. The question is how their profit aligned with that of others.
  - salawat 10mo ago
    Reporting. I try to solve problems just to get them solved. I don't seek to enrich myself. By the way, living in your world of profit-seeking-at-all-costs maximalism is the cruelest fate imaginable, but assholes normalizing maximized greed are a dime a dozen, ruining things for everyone else. Sorry to burst your bubble.
    - SR2Z 10mo ago
      Reasonable human beings can put a value on being able to sleep at night while still trying to make a profit. It's insane to suggest otherwise.
  - littlestymaar 10mo ago
    > tell me where to find a not-profit-seeking human. Easy, most people fit that description actually. And that's fortunate because otherwise the world would collapse pretty quickly from lack of midwifes and gynecologists. In fact, the neoliberal cult that neglects the human nature and pretends everything is shaped by monetary incentives is slowly destroying our societies…
    - Whoppertime 10mo ago
      Most people I know have jobs they do for money not for free.
moralestapia 10mo ago
It doesn't work like that. You imply all human driving is like that one example which is the worse one can come up with, which is not true. You imply Waymos on the street will take the 20 year old irrational driver out of the road, which is also not true. And "I did bad but others do worse" is a terrible premise to live by.
- simianwords 10mo ago
  But it has to be relative right? If Waymo cars are statistically safer than normal cars then it is fine. What is your alternative? Edit: you could have an issue with the statistical power itself
altairprime 10mo ago
In some countries, drivers are expected to prove their ability to operate heavy machinery safely, held that promise, and governments prioritize zero deaths in their spending and policy making. In the U.S., billions of dollars that could be spent on proven ways of solving the problem are instead spend on speculative robotic car development. Robotic cars are not the only solution. They may eventually be as effective as proven solutions that are offensive to U.S. car supremacists, but as of today, robotic cars have proven only to be better than untrained, inattentive U.S. drivers and the life-threatening domestic policies that enable them. Robotic cars aren’t trying to solve the problem; they’re trying to capture spending on the problem. If transportation policy magically changed overnight to force immediate, funded implementation of proven safety processes from other countries, the excuses given for Waymo and others to beta-test their “these fatalities are a necessary accident in service of zero deaths” robotic vehicles would no longer hold water.
- AlotOfReading 10mo ago
  Autonomous vehicles don't impede transit advocacy, and they genuinely can be massive accessibility improvements to disabled and disadvantaged populations. Unless you have a magic wand to make those changes, it seems like AVs are an improvement over the current situation?
  - altairprime 10mo ago
    > Autonomous vehicles don't impede transit advocacy. Transit changes are not required to implement the safety changes made by other countries. The cause and effect is reversed here: safety changes make transit more appealing because safety changes tend to decrease peak vehicle capacity, but transit does not make safety more appealing to untrained and overconfident (or willfully unsafe) drivers. You can’t just focus on transit while ignoring drivers and expect people to stop dying. I remember during the first days of Covid lockdown how 99% of the cars on the busy hill outside my apartment were replaced by transit, with a commute distance of zero miles. The people who liked to do downhill racing on that hill during the day sped up from their usual brake-screech limits of 40mph to as high as 70mph, in a 35mph residential with an unsignaled busy crosswalk. And they continued doing this until the end of the lockdown when other cars got in their way again. Transit might reduce total car volume but it would increase the mean kill rate per roadway vehicle without safety culture and spending shifts.
enaaem 10mo ago
Robo-drivers won't fix reckless driving because reckless drivers want to drive recklessly.

by erulabs 10mo ago

butvacuum 10mo ago

No, We should be fighting tooth and nail against these companies. They're not here to save us from ourselves. They're using public streets to Alpha (beta if you want to be generous) test autonomous lethal weapons, and then profit off of it when it works. I can't find anything saying waymo has a thermal camera. They aren't expensive- certainly not compared to the LIDAR- and provide extremely discriminated input on "am I about to kill something?" They're not perfect as foul weather and fog are likely to blind thermal- but they shouldn't be driving in suboptimal conditions until they have a track record of safety in optimal ones.

AlotOfReading 10mo ago
What criteria would you consider sufficient for deployment on public streets? My experience is that people opposed to AV technology usually aren't familiar with the level of validation that's been done and tend to have expectations that are either impossible or are already met. Waymo has experimented with thermal imaging in the past. I've never seen experiments indicating it's a particularly valuable modality for AVs, and high resolution thermal cameras exceed the price of decent LIDAR these days. You can easily spend $10k+ on a FLIR sensor with a pixel count higher than 4 digits.
simianwords 10mo ago
> They're using public streets to Alpha (beta if you want to be generous) test autonomous lethal weapons, and then profit off of it when it works. Sounds good? It’s exactly working as it should.
SR2Z 10mo ago
Considering that they're already safer than human drivers, I don't think you could say that they're the ones using the streets to learn.
tim333 10mo ago
Waymo was started partly to save lives by Sebastian Thrun who lost a friend to a car accident when he was 18. They have about 1/3 the accident rate of human drivers. Calling this stuff evil is kind of sad.

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

lelanthran 10mo ago

> but we cannot lose sight of the greater good. The greater good is not served by allowing profit-making machines to use public infrastructure to test lethal machines in.

leobg 10mo ago
So tell me where to find a not-profit-seeking human. I’d say a government employee just seeks profit by doing as little as possible for the fixed paycheck they get. _Everyone_ has a profit motive. The question is how their profit aligned with that of others.
- salawat 10mo ago
  Reporting. I try to solve problems just to get them solved. I don't seek to enrich myself. By the way, living in your world of profit-seeking-at-all-costs maximalism is the cruelest fate imaginable, but assholes normalizing maximized greed are a dime a dozen, ruining things for everyone else. Sorry to burst your bubble.
  - SR2Z 10mo ago
    Reasonable human beings can put a value on being able to sleep at night while still trying to make a profit. It's insane to suggest otherwise.
- littlestymaar 10mo ago
  > tell me where to find a not-profit-seeking human. Easy, most people fit that description actually. And that's fortunate because otherwise the world would collapse pretty quickly from lack of midwifes and gynecologists. In fact, the neoliberal cult that neglects the human nature and pretends everything is shaped by monetary incentives is slowly destroying our societies…
  - Whoppertime 10mo ago
    Most people I know have jobs they do for money not for free.

moralestapia 10mo ago

It doesn't work like that. You imply all human driving is like that one example which is the worse one can come up with, which is not true. You imply Waymos on the street will take the 20 year old irrational driver out of the road, which is also not true. And "I did bad but others do worse" is a terrible premise to live by.

simianwords 10mo ago
But it has to be relative right? If Waymo cars are statistically safer than normal cars then it is fine. What is your alternative? Edit: you could have an issue with the statistical power itself

altairprime 10mo ago

In some countries, drivers are expected to prove their ability to operate heavy machinery safely, held that promise, and governments prioritize zero deaths in their spending and policy making. In the U.S., billions of dollars that could be spent on proven ways of solving the problem are instead spend on speculative robotic car development. Robotic cars are not the only solution. They may eventually be as effective as proven solutions that are offensive to U.S. car supremacists, but as of today, robotic cars have proven only to be better than untrained, inattentive U.S. drivers and the life-threatening domestic policies that enable them. Robotic cars aren’t trying to solve the problem; they’re trying to capture spending on the problem. If transportation policy magically changed overnight to force immediate, funded implementation of proven safety processes from other countries, the excuses given for Waymo and others to beta-test their “these fatalities are a necessary accident in service of zero deaths” robotic vehicles would no longer hold water.

AlotOfReading 10mo ago
Autonomous vehicles don't impede transit advocacy, and they genuinely can be massive accessibility improvements to disabled and disadvantaged populations. Unless you have a magic wand to make those changes, it seems like AVs are an improvement over the current situation?
- altairprime 10mo ago
  > Autonomous vehicles don't impede transit advocacy. Transit changes are not required to implement the safety changes made by other countries. The cause and effect is reversed here: safety changes make transit more appealing because safety changes tend to decrease peak vehicle capacity, but transit does not make safety more appealing to untrained and overconfident (or willfully unsafe) drivers. You can’t just focus on transit while ignoring drivers and expect people to stop dying. I remember during the first days of Covid lockdown how 99% of the cars on the busy hill outside my apartment were replaced by transit, with a commute distance of zero miles. The people who liked to do downhill racing on that hill during the day sped up from their usual brake-screech limits of 40mph to as high as 70mph, in a 35mph residential with an unsignaled busy crosswalk. And they continued doing this until the end of the lockdown when other cars got in their way again. Transit might reduce total car volume but it would increase the mean kill rate per roadway vehicle without safety culture and spending shifts.

enaaem 10mo ago

Robo-drivers won't fix reckless driving because reckless drivers want to drive recklessly.