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> Waymo, Cummings says, “should not be allowed to operate around schools during school pickup and drop-off until they get this problem fixed and can demonstrate
by toast0 7mo ago
> Waymo, Cummings says, “should not be allowed to operate around schools during school pickup and drop-off until they get this problem fixed and can demonstrate it with specific tests.”
This commentor must misunderstand the situation. School busses regularly stop to pickup and drop off students on streets near where they live; and there's generally schools all around. If Waymos can't properly respond to school bus signals, they need to not operate in areas where these pickups and drop offs happen, which is not exclusively near schools.
- bushbaba 7mo agoIf a cop notices this, who gets the ticket? Asking because I’ve noticed Waymos starting to go above the speed limit now. They’re generally just matching the flow of traffic like everyone else, but it does raise the question: who gets fined? And if the fleet as a whole racks up more than 4 points in 12 months, would Waymo loose it's license similar to human drivers?
- appreciatorBus 7mo agoI remember when they told us that autonomous cars wouldn’t break laws and wouldn’t speed. I always felt this was just a strategy, and that soon enough fleet operators would turn up the dials on speed and aggressiveness. After all, the only people who can complain are the people outside the car, and they will be dead.
- asdff 7mo agoPeople are getting wise they can abuse these cars on the road, cut them off, not let them in. Waymo needs to respond like other drivers in the city if they want to merge lanes, force their way into the lane and demand space is created.
- pavel_lishin 7mo agoThere are highways in the US where drivers regularly go 10-20 over the speed limit, if not more; maintaining the speed limit on a road that's labeled as 45MPH zone, but is treated as a 65, will be dangerous for everyone involved, both the cars approaching the slowpoke at 20+ miles an hour, and the slowpoke itself. I don't know how Waymo is going to square that circle.
- SoftTalker 7mo ago> a road that's labeled as 45MPH zone, but is treated as a 65 If this is the case, then the speed limit is too low. To control speed on such a road you either need draconian enforcement or you need to change the road so people aren't comfortable driving that fast. Make the lanes narrower, introduce lane shifts or reduce the number of lanes, etc.
- threetonesun 7mo agoIDK if it's draconian but speed cameras or simply forcing cars to have modules that report speeds at certain points and issue fines automatically should be standard by now. What's the point of having smarter cars if they can't be forced to stay below the legal speed limit.
- kube-system 7mo agoI don't think building enforcement into cars would be a good idea, or even effective, but a few speed cameras work wonders for changing the overall 'temperature' of driving in an area.
- threetonesun 7mo agoHow would setting the max speed of a car to the speed limit be a bad idea.
- kube-system 7mo agoFalsehoods programmers believe about speed limits: 1. The speed limit of a road is always marked by a sign 2. The speed limit of a road is in a database 3. You can look up the GPS location of a vehicle to determine what road it is on 4. Roads have exactly one speed limit at any one moment in time 5. Speed limits rarely change 6. Well, maybe speed limits do change, but only during certain fixed times 7. Roads have speed limits 8. Cars are only driven on roads 9. There are no exceptions for following speed limits 10. Well maybe there are but we can safely ignore those without any real consequences [...] I've personally done some software experimentation with speed limit detection in vehicles. The combined accuracy of automatic-traffic-sign recognition and speed limit databases + GPS is far less than 100% in real world driving conditions.
- ribosometronome 7mo ago>After all, the only people who can complain are the people outside the car, and they will be dead. I'm not sure how you can earnestly make this claim while reading people complaining about the speed and aggressiveness. Do you suspect you're replying to ghosts?
- ronsor 7mo ago> turn up the dials on speed and aggressiveness You literally cannot drive on public roads unless you match the speed, flow, and maneuvering of other traffic.
- ceejayoz 7mo agoNever been stuck behind someone doing 45 in a 55? Really? You don’t have to speed. It’s a choice. You shouldn’t make the choice in the passing lane, though.
- ronsor 7mo agoI'm fairly certain "slower traffic keep right" is part of the expected flow. Maybe the Waymo is technically speeding, but so is everyone else, because speed limits aren't magic, and if the de-facto limit ends up being 50 when the posted limit is 40 or 45, going slower creates extra conflict points for accidents.
- Waymo_fast 7mo agoGet it straight. It is going faster than the speed limit that creates extra conflict points for accidents. That's the problem. If better enforcement is needed via cameras, radar, etc, then that's the solution....not everyone speeding. Speed kills.
- kube-system 7mo agoJust slightly over half of US states require you to move right to yield to faster traffic. In some places it is completely allowable to drive the speed limit in the left lane. https://www.mit.edu/~jfc/right.html https://www.mit.edu/~jfc/right.html
- mrgoldenbrown 7mo agoTesla specifically programmed their self driving mode to roll through stop signs without stopping. I don't think anyone has believed the claims of the self driving marketers for a long time now.
- thebigman433 7mo ago> Asking because I’ve noticed Waymos starting to go above the speed limit now Where at? Im curious because I see a lot of people say this, but Ive never seen them go more than 1mph over the limit when riding in them, and watch them do 65 on the freeway every day, even when people are passing.
- carsoon 7mo agoI saw a waymo go in a nonexistent rightmost lane at a stop light, I thought it was going to turn but it instead proceeded to go forward and force the driver in the actual rightmostlane to break to allow it to merge else it would have caused an accident as there was no lane in front of it. This was on El Camino in Santa Clara. I was highly suprised as I was under the assumption they were pretty much production ready as they have been expanding their area a lot.
- tracerbulletx 7mo agoUse statistical incidence rates and not "i saw a thing.." to make that call. I mean I'm sure most drivers regularly think "wow maybe humans shouldnt be allowed to drive" every time they go out on the road.
- antonymoose 7mo agoThe thing about human drivers is we’re all unique little stupid snowflakes. If a software powered car is vulnerable to a certain condition, presumably, all running that software system are. The rare day we can generalize a bad driving story, in fact.
- foota 7mo agoI don't think this checks out. Would the model do the same thing when presented with the exact same inputs? Yes. Is it more likely to do the same thing at the same intersection? Probably. But if you repeat a similar setup somewhere it might not. Bad behavior still exists and should be fixed, but it doesn't mean they're bad drivers in general.
- zen928 7mo agoPeople have trouble seeing outside of their own biases and understanding how different another view can be with a different background and context to the situation. I have no problem confidently saying the parent poster has definitely made worse and more questionable driving decisions under more constrained and more dangerous situations on the road, and then never thinks twice about it after that moment because it had no consequences. All they need to do is look at driver safety statistics of autonomous vehicles vs humans to immediately reject their flawed understanding, and they never will. Luckily, cars and driving in general aren't enshrined as an early amendment of the constitution (in the US) and aren't even considered a legal right, so pushback to change won't be artificially inflated several decades by heavily motivated interest groups seeking to spread misinformation about their safety. Not a bang, but a whimper.
- merelysounds 7mo ago> when a Waymo vehicle is driving itself, Waymo may be legally considered the operator, even if a human passenger sits inside Source: https://www.vazirilaw.com/faqs/whos-liable-in-a-waymo-self-driving-car-accident/ https://www.vazirilaw.com/faqs/whos-liable-in-a-waymo-self-d...
- kube-system 7mo agoThat page addresses tort liability, not liability for driving infractions or crimes. Liability for damages when a company does it is more settled of a situation. It still isn't quite as clear who or if anyone is liable when traffic laws are broken: https://web.archive.org/web/20251025055924/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/us/waymo-tickets-san-bruno.html https://web.archive.org/web/20251025055924/https://www.nytim... Often, they are simply getting away with it.
- merelysounds 7mo agoVery interesting, thanks for sharing! Sounds like the tickets should be at least more expensive than the cost of equivalent QA (and if not, self driving companies might offload QA to the police).
- sandworm101 7mo agoAnd school busses go all sorts of places carrying kids to field trips and sporting events. Along with police/fire/ambulances, school busses are just another special type of vehicle that ALL drivers must learn to deal with. If you cannot act properly around a school bus, you shouldnt be on the road. (Funny story: i was in Ottawa over the winter. There, snow plows, ambulances and fire trucks all use blue flashing lights. I thought i was being pulled over by a giant police truck ... it was a snow plow that really did not appreciate me stopping on the side of the road. Yet another special case vehicle.)