654
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
152 comments fedilink hide all child comments
🤣 1
 

"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!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 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.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 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.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 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.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 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.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent