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Waymo Pulled Its Cars From the Freeway After One Fled Police With Horrified Couple on Board (futurism.com)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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"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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[–] 33 points 5 months ago (8 children)

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.

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  • [–] 14 points 5 months ago* (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 13 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

    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.

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  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago

    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

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

    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!

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