Discussion

A School District Tried to Help Train Waymos to Stop for School Buses. It Didn’t Work

toast0: > 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.

ocdtrekkie: So I assume Waymo will be immediately banned from any residential areas until they can demonstrate the ability to follow the laws of the road?The problem is there is zero enforcement. We know the vehicle is not safe around schoolchildren so the appropriate incentive needs to be applied to get the issue addressed.

lokar: I would settle for a fine each time, about $1000 in CA, and a point on some employees license.

bombcar: Just impound the vehicle and crush it. The free market will solve it. ;)

appreciatorBus: https://web.archive.org/web/20260329110357/https://www.wired...

bushbaba: If 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: I 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.

ribosometronome: >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?

ocdtrekkie: $1,000 is not a meaningful amount of money to Google. Maybe if, based on the fact the entire fleet uses the same software, it is fined $1,000 per car in their fleet each time an incident occurs?Bear in mind $1,000 per incident is not enough money to justify paying a software developer to fix it.

ardacinar: Well, you can just treat them like they are anybody else. So, $1000 fine plus a point on the license of Waymo. And as suggested by another commenter in the thread, if the cars in the fleet (collectively) accumulate more than 4 points within 12 months, Waymo loses its license. As in, all cars operated by Waymo.

asdff: What would justify it? Full years salary of a developer plus their fringe benefits? Probably what $300k fine?

pavel_lishin: There 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.

lokar: Don't forget to remove the battery first

olyjohn: [delayed]

bpodgursky: > A preliminary report by the NTSB published in early March found that one ensuing incident, on January 12, occurred after a Waymo remote assistant, a Michigan-based human tasked with “helping” the software when it was struggling on the road, incorrectly told the robotaxi that the school bus ahead of it didn’t have active signals on. Six vehicles passed the school bus while it was stopped, the agency said. It is still investigating.I will let you judge for yourself here what the "right" thing for the Waymo to do was... but let's think critically about how Waymos work in the real world, benchmarked against other real drivers dealing with real life issues.

olyjohn: [delayed]

exabrial: How come Waymo keeps getting to break traffic laws repeatedly but everyone else does not

ronsor: > turn up the dials on speed and aggressivenessYou literally cannot drive on public roads unless you match the speed, flow, and maneuvering of other traffic.

ceejayoz: Never 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: I'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.

sandworm101: And 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.)

sahila: > So I assume Waymo will be immediately banned from any residential areas until they can demonstrate the ability to follow the laws of the road?Why do you apply a different standard to waymos than to humans?

vkou: Is that how any corporate fleet works?

carsoon: I 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.

disillusioned: That's Phoenix, it's here. Waymos commit to nominally keep the speed at the speed limit but it is _extremely noticeable_ that that's the case because literally NO ONE drives 65 on the freeways here. Everyone is at minimum at 74. It's a rite of passage in Arizona. It's not even a speeding ticket until 75. Goes back to the 70s with the feds trying to force speed limit laws or threatening to revoke highway funding. Arizona said "fine, but it's not a speeding ticket. it's 'misuse of a finite resource.'"So you'll see the Waymos kind of puttering along at 65 as everyone zooms around them. They DO say they'll occasionally exceed speeds when it's safer to do so, but it's obvious they don't want a narrative of them being speed demons and flying around exceeding the speed limit.

merelysounds: > when a Waymo vehicle is driving itself, Waymo may be legally considered the operator, even if a human passenger sits insideSource: https://www.vazirilaw.com/faqs/whos-liable-in-a-waymo-self-d...

Waymo_fast: Get 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.

SoftTalker: > a road that's labeled as 45MPH zone, but is treated as a 65If 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.

kube-system: Sometimes bad road design (e.g. lanes too wide) are to blame, but in miserable neighborhoods with no traffic enforcement at rush hour you can also end up in a situation where the majority of people on the road are simply aggressive drivers who are familiar with the road. At some point you do need to enforce the law if it isn't being respected. There is a growing subset of people in the US who not only disregard traffic law but pride themselves in a distain for it.

threetonesun: IDK 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: That page addresses tort liability, not liability for driving infractions or crimes.

tracerbulletx: Use 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.

zen928: People 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.

kube-system: I used to live in a place where this was common -- the issue was not just speed, but a general disregard for traffic law because traffic law was unenforced. You could be going 50 in a 35 and someone would aggressively pass you. At some point, the road is simply occupied by unsafe drivers and there's not much you can do other than hold your line and be as predictable as possible to the aggressive drivers around you.

appreciatorBus: I understand this phenomenon and experienced it when I used to drive. What I found so revealing was it ultimately meant that the people weren’t actually driving their cars.Each ostensibly independent driver was being forced to drive a certain way by the most aggressive driver behind them, and in turn they were required to force the driver ahead of them to drive in the same way.

ocdtrekkie: I don't. If a human repeatedly violates the traffic laws they loose their license. Waymo apparently doesn't.

kube-system: I 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: How would setting the max speed of a car to the speed limit be a bad idea.

thereisnospork: Humans. Humans repeatedly violate traffic laws. Humans behind the wheel are killing 10's of thousands every year. Yet we keep giving these drugged up meatbags licenses.