“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!
TFW The Blues Brothers sneaks into your training data.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
“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
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.
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.
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
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?
Consent just isn’t a concept to the people who make these things.
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.
Sounds like they need to change the name to Delamain and market it as a feature.
BEEP BEEP MOTHER FUCKER!
I was surprised these things were allowed on public streets without first being certified by some strict regulatory body.
I WAS surprised, since I used to suffer under the delusion that someone, somewhere was looking out for public safety, at least on some basic level. Like the FDA, USDA, OSHA, etc. But, these institutions were so easily gutted and pushed aside, and the traffic laws we do have aren’t nearly enough for regulating self-driving cars. We’ve always just allowed shit to happen as long as there are no existing laws to challenge it.
They kicked corporate money out of politics in Hawaii, that can’t happen fast enough in every other state. Imagine having common sense measures put before the people, like “should we allow self-driving cars on public streets before there are laws to regulate them?” and NOT having corporate money flow into the state to shift public opinion and buy off local politicians.
I work in transportation regulation. I understand your fear and frustration. What is happening with self driving cars is probably as stupid as you believe. However regulations are pretty reactive and in some ways good regulations should be. You can’t regulate what you don’t understand and you can’t understand what has never been done before.
The best approach is to start small and work directly with a regulator to create an initial trial and evolve the regulatory framework that ensures safety for the trial period. Then that framework can be used for future trials by other companies before being finessed into an official regulation. Then you have something which you know CAN be successfully implemented by companies AND does produce good safety outcomes.
Is that what’s happening? It probably was, initially. But as you said the public service is gutted and now corpos are having a wild west free run at this AI car thing. Good luck on the streets, we’re soon all gonna need it.
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
And yet I still know people who are just so chuffed about “never having to drive again.”
I mean, I think that part is 100% understandable. I get that many people in fact enjoy driving, but likewise, many people do not. For many a driving commute is the most anxiety inducing part of their day, and they’d be happy to be rid of it.
That’s the promise that self driving cars present. They just aren’t actually capable enough yet. From what I gather though, waymo is probably the farthest along of any of these companies. I don’t think I’d trust them for complicated Boston area driving though. To many narrow, winding roads complete with active road work, aggressive drivers, rotaries, etc…
You know what else solves that problem that isn’t a fascist wet dream, public transportation, like trains and buses.
Do you have a problem with cars in general? Because I really don’t see anything inherently worse about a car you don’t have to operate manually, that’s just a technical achievement.
I agree that whenever it’s feasible public transportation is a better option than individual vehicles, no argument there. But, it’s also not always feasible.
I don’t know how fascism factors in besides perhaps a tangential connection to Elon musk. I think this is really more of an ecological and economical issue than an ideological one.
Yeah, I enjoy driving and am fond of my car. But offer me the opportunity to spend my 90 mins commuting time sitting back and reading a book, and I’d probably take it.
Of course the tech is not ready and shouldn’t have been deployed in its current state. Government is letting big business use us all as crash test dummies.
Isn’t that what taxis and publec transit is for?
Yes, those are both valid solutions.
However, in some cities public transit isn’t very good, there aren’t enough lines to actually get you where you need to go consistently. Outside of cities, public transit is mostly non-existent, so you need something else. Taxis can work, but they’re also expensive and you have to rely on others, which can also be anxiety inducing. What if my taxi doesn’t show up, or shows up late? What if the taxi driver makes me feel unsafe? I expect some people would like to be more in control of the situation, just without having to actually drive.
Hey, these things may not apply to you, and that’s fine, I’m glad there are simpler solutions for most people. But having used public transit every day for many years, I can honestly say that while it is usually the cheapest and most efficient solution, I can still understand why people might want something else.
The solution is to tax the shit out of cars and funnel the money into public transport. Starting with the massive trucks.
Do that all you want, there’s not going to be enough money (nor would it be ecologically sound) to create a robust public transportation system in every small Nebraska town.
I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, it’s just that it’s only part of a solution.
What I hear is “not taxing gender affirming vehicles high enough”
I drive through Austin regularly and see Tesla and Waymo automated taxis all the time.
The Waymos are just about the best, most-predictable drivers on the road. The Teslas are like toddlers pretending they can drive by randomly spinning a steering wheel.
”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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
But they’re fine with being payed to do it to other people. Typical tech bro attitude.
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?
“Holy s***, dude,” Slade can be heard saying in the clip.
Hard hitting journalism.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
And yet I still know people who are just so chuffed about “never having to drive again.”
Did they not heard about public transport or it doesn’t count because it isn’t choke-full of fancy tech and isn’t pushed by techbro?(it is choke-full of fancy tech but never pushed by techbro)
Public transit in the US simply isn’t good enough in many cases. Years ago I lived in a suburb north of Boston and worked in another suburb west of Boston. It was about a 40 minute drive during rush hour. Trying to do that same commute by public transit likely would have taken me 4+ hours and involved a bus to a subway into Boston followed by a commuter train and another bus. It would have been a nightmare.
Like the point is, if people are giving a “this thing isn’t good enough now but will be great in the future” for this lobotaxi thing, they sure can give the same treatment to public transport as well. Of course it isn’t great now, the government spend little to nothing on it to make it good. But what if people start pushing for more public transport development? It will be better in the future, everyone win.
Yeah, but that would require raising taxes, which the billionaires have convinced the masses is a terrible thing because socialism, and look where that’s gotten third world socialist countries.
The only solution, according to the billionaires, and the brainwashed masses, is to give even more money to the billionaires so that they can privatize things even more and throw cutting edge technology at the problem instead of proven solutions like light rail, etc.
