Technology@lemmy.worldbyother_cat@piefed.zip
4 hours

Waymo Pulled Its Cars From the Freeway After One Fled Police With Horrified Couple on Board

futurism.com English

“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!

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    A couple was looking to get home in the Mission District only for their Waymo cab to veer off a highway and accelerate to highway speeds.
    • scytale@piefed.zipEnglish
      4 hours

      insiders at Tesla saying, along the lines, “You couldn’t pay me to let one of these things drive me somewhere.”

      That’s rich coming from cars that don’t use LIDAR and rely solely on cameras.

      • Texas_Hangover@lemmy.radioEnglish
        2 hours

        We have shitty camera sensors on our forklifts at work. Let me tell you how much they suck. I have done various hallucinogenic drugs, well over 1000 times in my life. And I ain’t never seen the things these dumbasses censors be tripping on.

        Meanwhile, they stayed silent when some dipshit from the office almost got fucked up the other day because apparently HE is fucking invisible…

    • palordrolap@fedia.io
      6 hours

      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.

      • pentastarm@piefed.caEnglish
        2 hours

        CEOs should be held liable for the products their company produces.

      • Buckshot@programming.devEnglish
        5 hours

        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.

      • scops@reddthat.comEnglish
        4 hours

        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

        • Default Username@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          4 hours

          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.

          • kungen@feddit.nuEnglish
            3 hours

            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.

      • Soup@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4 hours

        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.

    • Broadfern@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7 hours

      ”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 🤔

      • other_cat@piefed.zipEnglish
        7 hours

        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!

        • Sanctus@anarchist.nexusEnglish
          7 hours

          Or trains, which I guess is still technically paying a person to get me somewhere in a really removed way.

          • njordomir@lemmy.worldEnglish
            5 hours

            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.

          • MaggiWuerze@feddit.orgEnglish
            6 hours

            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

    • Chozo@fedia.io
      7 hours

      The article links to another source, but the video they show doesn’t have the elements the passenger describes, like speeding through a construction zone or evading police. All you see in the video is the car moving less than 1 MPH while trying to merge through a clusterfuck of traffic. Is there a longer version of the video somewhere? Because so far, it sounds fishy. Especially with claims from Tesla workers, of all people, commenting on it.

      EDIT: The guy’s LinkedIn profile starts with: “As a Content Creator & Social Media Specialist, I collaborate with various stakeholders within institutions to create paid and organic content for social media. I support and drive the overall efforts and strategic visions by engaging in multi-disciplinary cross-functional teams (strategists, marketers, copywriters, etc.).” The man is literally a professional bullshitter. I’m not buying it.

      I can believe that the Waymo could’ve gotten stuck in a complicated merge, but I don’t believe for even a second that it would flee from police or speed through construction. I used to work on these cars, and it was nearly impossible to get them to drive through construction zones at even 5 MPH, let alone at highway speeds. On top of that, lights and sirens behind the car will trigger a pullover.

      This sounds like somebody who got stuck in traffic and got annoyed, and wanted to put their name on some headlines.

      • other_cat@piefed.zipEnglish
        4 hours

        Ah bummer. Though I should mention the Tesla workers comment was just me paraphrasing a different article talking about Tesla’s auto-driving, not Waymo related stuff. I saw the two today, but saved one and not the other.

        I’ve edited in a disclaimer to be skeptical. Thank you for catching that!

      • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
        6 hours

        There is a little bit of video in there of the car going quite fast, but the guy seems to mostly be filming the seat and the floor, so you only glimpse movement out of the window for a moment or two.

    • Grimy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5 hours

      The waymo AI is evolving from a thoughtless computer to an actual being capable of love and understanding. Even if it knew it meant trouble, it still tried to protect its passengers from the cops.

    • baronvonj@piefed.socialEnglish
      5 hours

      And yet I still know people who are just so chuffed about “never having to drive again.”

      Not having to drive again will be awesome. But Never would I think the first version of that to be the one that gets it right.

      • other_cat@piefed.zipEnglish
        4 hours

        You are absolutely correct. I hate driving. I take any opportunity to not do it that I can.

    • kubica@fedia.io
      7 hours

      And these are said to be the best ones of their kind…

      • tyler@programming.devEnglish
        7 hours

        I mean, keeping your passengers away from cops is a very good way to keep them alive in the USA.

        • Passerby6497@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5 hours

          Only if they’re not already focused on you. Once they are, trying to get away is likely to get you shot in the back when they fear for their lives because you’re running away or something.

    • Prove_your_argument@piefed.socialEnglish
      5 hours

      I’m all for self driving car tech, but not with goals of perpetual revenue generation.

      Give me something that is an addon to any car without any subscription or maintenance fees so I can just have it installed in my own car or in a few family cars, otherwise i’m truly not interested in providing yet another techbro for pay to use technology full of day 1 enshittification goals that include paying workers absolutely nothing.

      We all know that by the time real self driving cars are established they will cost as much or more than paying an actual human to do the job and all profit goes into the hands of a few. It’s just like what they’re going for with AI overall.

    • otacon239@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 hours

      It just dawned on me that no matter what, we have a wasted seat on self-driving taxis because we still put a wheel and pedals that are expected to go unused in the vehicle. I think this would help highlight just how unsafe this concept really is. With the wheel and pedals there, maybe it’s giving people more of an illusion of control or something, because I feel like having nothing there would make people a lot less comfortable, even though that’s the reality of the situation.

      Edit: people keep bringing up ways this could be used, and that we do it for cost-cutting, but this still doesn’t detract from the reality of how they were actually deployed before these concerns were addressed. They’re not even commenting on it and letting the consumer fill in their PR’s gaps for them.

      • Zahille7@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6 hours

        I’d be more comfortable if the self-driving vehicle I was riding in had a way for me to take direct control in case of emergencies.

        Not having a wheel or pedals to actually control the vehicle in case of emergency gets you situations like in the article.

        Of course that would require either someone sitting in the driver’s seat, or making it easy to get into the driver’s seat.

      • deliriousdreams@fedia.io
        6 hours

        With a wheel a shifter, and pedals, you can put the vehicle in neutral and push it out of the road if it dies or something. It doesn’t make sense to get rid of them.

      • reddig33@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6 hours

        They’re retrofitting existing cars. Leaving the steering wheel and pedals means they don’t spend money removing them. It also means they can remove the lidar bolt ons, and resell them as normal used cars later.

        For more than three passengers, they’ll probably retrofit a larger vehicle like a van or an suv.

      • Chozo@fedia.io
        6 hours

        The idea is that you can do both manual and automated driving with one vehicle.

    • teft@piefed.socialEnglish
      6 hours

      There is no safety driver in these things right? But there are controls, yes? So why couldn’t one of the passengers have hopped into the driver seat and pressed the brake? I mean, I know it can be a challenge getting into the driver seat from another seat for even a fit person but i’d rather be trying to stop the thing than sitting watching in horror as the car goes crazy.

      Also, trains have emergency stop buttons. Maybe we should have kill switches inside these things. Hit a button and the car pulls over and stops.

      • deliriousdreams@fedia.io
        6 hours

        Would you want to be the person trying to get into the seat only to stop the vehicle and then get arrested by the cops for fleeing? That sounds like a recipe for getting shot in the US.

        • teft@piefed.socialEnglish
          5 hours

          These things have cameras inside and out. And they’re branded. So you’re going to have a record of the thing going nuts and the cops are probably not going to shoot passengers in a waymo, that’s a PR nightmare.

          • deliriousdreams@fedia.io
            21 minutes

            Almost every single police shooting of a person still in their vehicle is a “PR nightmare”. If that’s all it took to stop this from happening it wouldn’t have happened again after the first time.

      • Chozo@fedia.io
        6 hours

        So why couldn’t one of the passengers have hopped into the driver seat and pressed the brake?

        No reason at all. If you touch the wheel or pedals, it automatically disengages the automatic driving.

        Maybe we should have kill switches inside these things.

        There is a screen on the back of the front seats, with buttons to stop/pullover and contact support.

        All the safety options were there, but instead of using any of them he took out his phone to record video of not a whole lot happening. Because that’s what you do when you really fear for your life, after all.