Waymo blocking ambulance during deadly Austin shooting

https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/austin/article/waymo-austin-shooting-21948947.php

by clydethefrog • 5 months ago

129 205 5 months ago

xvxvx2• 5 months ago

We continue to inch closer to these dumb buckets costing someone their life. Hell, they may already have.

afavour3• 5 months ago

Human driven cars cost people their lives multiple times every day, though. So I don't think the calculation can be quite as simple as that. As self driving cars are rolled out I think each incident like this needs to be studied to see how avoidable it was, whether a human would have been able to resolve it, and what changes can be made.

There are always going to be fuck ups at some level. The question is whether we’re moving from a world of more fuckups to fewer or not.

jeffbee2• 5 months ago

"Multiple" being stretched to the absolute limit in this comment.

amelius• 5 months ago

The argument that as long as they cause less incidents than human drivers they are a win has to go. Because that only works if the statistics of the environment are stationary.

Noaidi• 5 months ago

But in the case of self driving cars, who do we find at fault? Have we even answered that question? I mean did the Waymo car even get a ticket for blocking the ambulance?

cj• 5 months ago

If you are to believe Waymo’s safety stats, they have less accidents/injuries per mile driven.

But whether or not reducing injuries at a statistical level outweighs the downside of autonomous vehicles causing accidents (even at lower rates) is a bit of a dilemma.

SecretDreams• 5 months ago

I think the style of incidents and circumstances are probably neglected. But, even if they're not, I think there's other reasons we notice waymo issues more. Akin to how nuclear and airplane travel are safer than coal and car travel. This might be true, but when something does go well in those aforementioned fields, we notice.

furyofantares• 5 months ago

The human side of those stats, whenever I've seen them presented next to self-driving car stats, has always been an aggregate of all human driving, a vast amount of which is in environments or conditions that Waymo doesn't operate in.

dyauspitr2• 5 months ago

No, we’re finding edge cases that come up once every like million miles these things are putting on the road. Which means they are pretty damn good given how many are on the road right now.

josefx• 5 months ago

These "edge cases" were required knowledge to get a license in my home country. You make room for any emergency vehicles, you don't try to score an ultra kill when passing a school bus and you certainly don't drive on rail tracks.

screye• 5 months ago

It's the reverse. Every Waymo on the road saves more lives. The average driver is a bufoon

stbtrax• 5 months ago

The 'smart' buckets kill about 40K a year, so there's that. No point in abandoning this

xvxvx2• 5 months ago

Now there will be a single company to sue instead of lots of individuals. If you want to be rich, start a law firm that focuses on autonomous vehicle accidents, like all the truck crash firms out there.

4d4m4• 5 months ago

Wild! Who wrote legislation to allow this?

bgun• 5 months ago

You mean cars being allowed to endanger human lives? Enshrined by law, urban infrastructure and cultural notions of independence for over a century? Why is it just now seen as a problem because robots are driving, instead of the stupid, reckless, poorly trained, often intoxicated humans who have been driving up until now?

4d4m4• 5 months ago

Lol no, way to discuss something not mentioned - do you work at one of these reckless companies? I'm talking about self-driving legislation, written by those wanting to test on an unsuspecting public.

prhn• 5 months ago

At the risk of sounding ignorant, why didn't the various police cruisers and even the ambulance itself just push the damn thing out of the way? That's what the push bars attached to the front of their vehicles are for.

johnnyApplePRNG• 5 months ago

My thoughts exactly.

What an embarrassment.

"Authorities" paralyzed by politeness when lives are in the balance.

AdrianB12• 5 months ago

Ambulances can be seriously damaged by attempting to do it. Police cruisers can do it, but then they may be sued for damages. I know that cars blocking fire hydrants were a serious problem in the past and owners sued firemen for pulling water hoses through their cars after breaking the windows - the law was not allowing it even if the line through the car was the only option.

zephen3• 5 months ago

owners sued firemen for pulling water hoses through their cars after breaking the windows - the law was not allowing it even if the line through the car was the only option.

I'll bet anything you have no citation for this.

Sovereign immunity and necessity combine to make sure that firefighters and cops can do whatever the fuck is required.

The aftermath is even more brutal. You will receive multiple tickets for this, you will receive a bill for damages to the hose they had to thread through your windows (or to the police car that rammed you out of the way), and your car insurance will point to a clause in their policy that says that you are personally on the hook for all of this.

You may even face civil or even criminal liability for any damages to whatever is on fire, or loss of life, that a good prosecutor or plaintiff's lawyer can convince a jury is directly traceable to your egregious conduct in parking your precious car in front of the damn fire hydrant.

ibejoeb4• 5 months ago

Sounds like trolling, but the idea of Waymo suing a responder to a terrorist attack is too ridiculous.

xoxxala• 5 months ago

When my mom was a firefighter, and a car was blocking a hydrant, she happily broke windows and pushed the hose right through the car. Didn't happen a lot, but did happen more than once.

dangus• 5 months ago

Ambulances aren’t exactly designed to act as battering rams.

They ram a car and the radiator goes bust and now you’ve got an ambulance with no engine.

Or you just hurt the passengers inside the Waymo and now you’ve got two emergencies.

vineyardmike• 5 months ago

A human police over eventually got into the drivers seat to move the car. They sat around for minutes before doing so. They could’ve gotten into it immediately.

But yea they absolutely could’ve also just slammed it and moved on too.

snickerbockers5• 5 months ago

Because its not a trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6.

AngryData5• 5 months ago

The cops only do that if they can be sure they will be able to charge someone else for the damages. For their vehicle, for their "injuries", and also adding in to their department bonuses, but they get none of that if they can't charge somebody with a crime easily. Ambulances aren't really made to do that and are crazy expensive, plus the drivers would likely be taking on a bunch of the liability from the crash, although the ambulance itself likely would survive just fine because they are tough. The fire department are the only ones that have the trifecta of vehicles made to push other vehicles out of the way, are not paid by the extent that they can extort people for money, and are not going to be held liable for damages.

mxfh• 5 months ago

Cars block the street all the time, there is ample place to pass the waymo car on the left in the opposing lane, yet those SUV driving humans don't care to move out of the way either, and police just blocks the maneuver area too.

That silver car in the front could also just pass in front and make space. Situational awareness has room to be improved for a lot of entities in this short video.

Nueces Street is 3 and half lanes wide there plus massive sidewalks, apparently to narrow for even more massive ambulances.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/74jF9iDUCXmm9jVE7

tapoxi• 5 months ago

You can arrest a driver for not making space for an emergency vehicle. Who do we arrest here?

KennyBlanken3• 5 months ago

The person who was ultimately responsible for a defective robot operating on our public streets, at a bare minimum.

aduty• 5 months ago

Start disabling and towing their cars and watch a solution magically appear.

wnevets5• 5 months ago

You can arrest a driver for not making space for an emergency vehicle. Who do we arrest here?

That's the best part, no one! We have finally managed to invent a system that widely disperses accountability so much no one can be held liable when something goes wrong.

musicjerm• 5 months ago

The passenger

glennpratt• 5 months ago

Nobody gets arrested, you get a ticket.

cameldrv• 5 months ago

Since corporations are people, presumably you’d arrest Waymo.

seanmcdirmid2• 5 months ago

You can arrest a driver for not making space for an emergency vehicle. Who do we arrest here?

I get that it is technically possible, but that doesn't happen in practice.

porridgeraisin• 5 months ago

This is the key. Personally I think you just have to something similar to an auditor or whatever. Demand that if a self driving taxi operates in your city, they assign one legally responsible person per $major-division-of-city. All accidents in that region are due to that guy.

Naturally, this will incentivise them to improve the system that deals with edge cases in their ML model, and better yet you'll have the legally responsible guy shit himself and directly manage remote drivers for his location himself. Adds another layer of accountability.

hulitu3• 5 months ago

The CEO

briandw• 5 months ago

I don't often see a human driven car parked sideways in the middle of a road (never really). If a human was in that Waymo, they would have moved quickly. I'm an huge fan of Waymo and autonomous vehicles. They save lives. However the fact that Waymo's don't have the sense to move out of the way is a major problem and on that they don't seem to be on track to solve. Incidents like this will delay the adoption of autonomous vehicles and that will cost lives.

bryanlarsen• 5 months ago

If a human was in that Waymo, they would have moved quickly.

Some humans would have exactly the same response as the Waymo. When a human brain gets completely overwhelmed and doesn't know what to do, it drops down into animal behavior -- freeze or flee.

Given that it's a dangerous multi-ton machine, a Waymo likely has a programmed default behavior of "do nothing & phone home for instructions".

Which isn't an excuse -- an emergency vehicle is not an uncommon situation and Waymo should know what to do before being allowed on public roads.

A failure to get remedy instructions in a timely fashion from a human is even more alarming. Google is famous for automating tasks that should be performed by a human.

throw4f3234• 5 months ago

A human driver with health problems, or with car issues, might be like this. Similar to the Waymo having an equipment failure.

pigbearpig• 5 months ago

Give me a break. The problem is the Waymo that is blocking a lane sideways and is not pulling forward out of the way of the ambulance, a move that even the worst human drivers would likely know to do.

It does no good to pretend there aren't problems with self-driving cars or make excuses.

It's not about the other entities.

tt244• 5 months ago

Why are we focusing on entity A when the parent comment correctly pointed out entities B and C are not blameless either?

tokyobreakfast• 5 months ago

there is ample place to pass

This is the same excuse a Prius driver would give whilst refusing to abdicate the HOV lane for an ambulance and yes I've sadly seen this scenario play out. Multiple times, in fact. Prius driver seems oddly specific but it always is.

fennecbutt5• 5 months ago

Eh I've seen more SUV/big car drivers act like this than small car drivers, but then I live in the UK.

A friend who lived in New York for a bit would never live there again and says driving there was an absolute nightmare; everyone's out for themselves.

And you can see it in multiple "drivers react to an ambulance in different countries videos", with America the ambulance is always blocked and going slowly. Compare to Germany where they open up the entire middle of the road by moving to either side.

happytoexplain• 5 months ago

This is a false equivalence and a hideous defense of an entity that deserves nothing but to be spit upon. There is absolutely nothing calling upon you to take this path.

steve-atx-76003• 5 months ago

The ambulance driver rightly hesitates because he can’t know how the wamyo will behave. The wanyo is acting suss as hell.

zadikian3• 5 months ago

Waymo car was the only thing at fault. Drivers are expected to stop to the side when they see the lights. I guess the red SUV could've slid behind the Waymo to let the ambulance do the same, but it'd be unwise without the police telling you to do so, could hit a cop on foot. Silver car could go forward, but you don't squeeze in front of a U-turning car, and doing so could've made things worse for all they knew.

croes• 5 months ago

So AI drives as bad as humans. Waste of resources.

N_Lens• 5 months ago

Nowaymo!

dangero5• 5 months ago

The problem we will encounter with self driving cars is that while they will make less mistakes than humans, they will make different mistakes.

Humans will continue to have a hard time accepting this tradeoff.

I live in LA where Waymos are now on every street. My experience is that they don’t respect human courtesy, so for example if I need to cross a lane of busy traffic, a human may brake as a courtesy to let me through. Waymos have fucked me over where a human probably would have shown some level of community and empathy.

NewJazz3• 5 months ago

Humans will continue to have a hard time accepting this tradeoff.

Are you asserting that humans should accept these, currently not fully known, tradeoffs?

dangero5• 5 months ago

If it results in less deaths then it seems likely to me

tt244• 5 months ago

Yes. They're safer than human drivers. Clearly the tradeoff is worth it.

fragmede• 5 months ago

Waymo's are not about to run a person or bicyclist over. Just walk in front of them and they'll stop for you to cross. You can always start livestreaming if you don't believe it, the insurance payout would be amazing. (Subject to the laws of physics, naturally.)

Source: Haven't been run over yet by one, and I live in one of their current markets.

macintux2• 5 months ago

Good luck making eye contact with the Waymo to gain confidence that it sees you.

SlinkyOnStairs3• 5 months ago

Waymo's are not about to run a person or bicyclist over.

This has only introduced more novel problems. People can completely immobilize the vehicles by standing in front of them, or placing a traffic cone. (And while this is kind of funny when done to unused vehicles to bother a multi-trillion dollar corporation. It is not funny when it's done to harass women.)

This in turn spirals into a whole new set of political problems, because drivers are collectively quite intolerant of the pedestrians and especially cyclists they share the road with. There is a lot of pedestrian and cyclist behaviour that is curtailed by motorist bullying, which autonomous cars don't really do. (Your walking in front of them being a fine example)

Things like cyclists "taking the lane" are deeply unpopular despite being entirely legal and good road safety practice. Increased rollout of AVs will only make this more prevalent and then you'll have a whole new demographic of angry people mad that their waymo is slow because it's behind a cyclist.

steve-atx-76003• 5 months ago

You can’t expect someone to not be afraid of an autonomous vehicle that appears to be acting irrationally.

ibejoeb4• 5 months ago

That courtesy is almost always bad practice and is generally unlawful. You must yield right of way to a pedestrian at a legal crossing, but california has codes that prohibit impeding normal traffic flow, including stopping in the street to wave across a pedestrian where there is no such crossing. It's especially dangerous on multi-lane roads because the stopped vehicle can blind the pedestrian to other traffic.

rfrey• 5 months ago

In many places, traffic would not function if drivers did not e.g. make space for other drivers to change lanes. It's an extraordinary claim to say such behaviour is bad practice (or even illegal??)

noduerme2• 5 months ago

I think the comment you're responding to was referring to needing to cross a backed up lane of traffic in their car, not on foot.

rogerrogerr4• 5 months ago

"Courtesy causes confusion; confusion causes crashes"

AngryData5• 5 months ago

I would dispute saying it is almost always bad practice. Sometimes it is, people do dumb stuff, but in many cases it solves problems before they become a problem to start with because most humans are pretty good at predicting how others around them will react.

Stopping in the middle of the road to save a pedestrian 3 seconds while costing 5 cars on the road to wait 10 seconds is obviously dumb, but what about recognizing the gap near you in the line of cars is the only gap around for the pedestrian waiting ahead, and either slowing down or speeding up a little bit to open that gap wider which makes everybody safer and eliminates any real braking events.

You might not notice all the things people do now to make traffic move smoothly, either intentionally or not, but something as simple as a line of robot cars spreading out on a road can cause problems when traffic levels that normally leave large gaps for easier left turns, pedestrians, poor visibility crossings, etc, instead becomes a steady spaced stream of traffic that has to be disrupted to fit those other options. Very small things can result in large traffic bottlenecks. Humans aren't immune to it, we cause out own problems with things like traffic waves, but we also solve many problems ourselves without really thinking about it.

nunez• 5 months ago

I also hate that "courtesy." It blocks traffic behind the yielding car and is often done without considering that driver's surroundings (like impatient drivers switching lanes and speeding up to overtake the yielding car, increasing the chances of a collision with the crossing car).

_DeadFred_• 5 months ago

A lot of our society works/has less friction because of human courtesy. Systemically stamping it out of every interaction for optimization will not result in a better society.

Our systems don't cover every case, and it's better when we use human courtesy to solve the edge cases.

KennyBlanken3• 5 months ago

The problem we will encounter with self driving cars is that while they will make less mistakes than humans

This is only true for certain self-driving cars. Tesla and Uber are among the worst, and are far worse than human drivers. Something like 10x, I believe, in terms of miles driven?

kyleee2• 5 months ago

Maybe there is a new product for a little robot on a leash that you send out into traffic and any autonomous vehicles will stop, and then you can proceed safely.

orliesaurus2• 5 months ago

This is my town, wow - cant believe someone filmed this whole interaction while there was a shooting a couple of blocks from there... If the ambulance was in a hurry they could have rammed the Waymo, I am sure Google wouldn't have sued for damages.

AFAIK when a Waymo detects emergency vehicle lights and sirens, it is designed to pull over and stop, unlock its doors, and roll down its windows. Also: First responders can put the vehicle into a manual mode to move it if needed.

snickerbockers5• 5 months ago

If the ambulance was in a hurry

i believe they were.

they could have rammed the Waymo

Not an expert but i think the goal is to get the ambulance and its occupants to a specific location and then make an egress to a nearby medical facility? Also I'm not confident ambulances are designed to execute the pit maneuver.

I am sure Google wouldn't have sued for damages.

Oh well if that's the case i guess it's all alright.

First responders can put the vehicle into a manual mode to move it if needed.

I really feel like you're missing the point of why you're supposed to pull over and yield right-of-way for emergency vehicles.

rogerrogerr4• 5 months ago

Can't pit a stationary vehicle.

comrh• 5 months ago

Isn't it making an illegal u-turn over a double yellow line?

hansvm• 5 months ago

Kind of. The thing making it illegal is that it's blocking traffic in the process (and potentially missing some visibility requirement or something; it's hard to tell from just the video).

pimlottc• 5 months ago

I honestly think u-turns should be illegal is most situations. They are highly unpredictable and block multiple lanes of traffic for the benefit of a single vehicle. It’s especially unnecessary for a GPS-guided vehicle that should easily be able to determine an alternate route.

KennyBlanken3• 5 months ago

I've never understood why everyone acts like this is some bizarre legal quagmire.

If I make a robot and it goes and kills someone, nobody sits around navel gazing wondering how they're going to prosecute a robot.

If I make a device that pulls the trigger of a gun aimed at someone tied to a chair when I click a button on my cell phone, or something green appears in the camera attached to the device, or time reaches 11:24:42pm - nobody sits around navel gazing wondering how they're going to prosecute an electronic device.

In both cases, I would be prosecuted.

These cars are robots. They are designed, constructed, programmed, and monitored/supervised by humans. The humans are responsible for anything the robots do that cause damage, violate civil regulations, or criminal laws.

The solution here is very simple. Seize all the corporate email records, code, etc. and charge everyone involved in the production of the code that caused the "behavior", along with anyone whose negligence in supervision or review failed to catch the defect, or anyone who knew the car would or could do what it did, and failed to blow the whistle or failed to stop the car hitting the road.

Maybe then SV will stop "beta testing" fatal devices on the general public.

himata41133• 5 months ago

I can feel like a lot of people will disagree with you, but this is a pretty fair comparison. The people will disagree the most is the waymo users and I see their POV as well since as they have said: "much better than uber and always on time".

zephen3• 5 months ago

A few years ago I would have believed this.

But then, I would have also believed that youtube would have been sued into oblivion before it even got established, and that uber and lyft would not have been able to sidestep all the municipal regulations, and that we would have photographic evidence of bigfoot by now.

sashank_1509• 5 months ago

This is ridiculous. We don’t send surgeons to jail if they mistakenly kill their patient.

AngryData5• 5 months ago

We can and do if they are shown to be negligent or irresponsible, and at the very least are responsible for damages, hence medical malpractice insurance to ensure people get paid even if the surgeon is bankrupt.

17186274403• 5 months ago

If they should/could have known better, then we do?

orliesaurus2• 5 months ago

Someone on Austin's subreddit said the following and I think it's the correct take/lens:

I might get downvoted for expressing my feelings but whatever. I hate seeing my coworkers being ridiculed for simply doing the right thing and moving on with their work. I’ve been abused and called an idiot on here for stating our reality. I’m a paramedic. We will NOT attempt to move or hit a vehicle, person, or object to go to a call or transport a patient. Especially if there’s an option for an alternate route. People cut us off, don’t move, flick us off, and generally don’t regard us even with our lights and sirens on. Is it frustrating? Absolutely. Do we like it? Hell no. But getting in trouble or under investigation for a collision or possibly causing unnecessary harm simply isn’t worth it. I know this was high profile, tragic, and absolutely dire. But you have to remember, we live this everyday and this is not the first time a vehicle, object, or person has gotten in this paramedic or EMTs way and it won’t be the last. Don’t even get me started on the amount of verbal abuse and assaults we deal with. This is a very hard job and we are under constant scrutiny but I promise you we try and do our very best every day. So please do us a favor next time you see us out on the streets and give us some grace.

wongarsu• 5 months ago

He makes an excellent job describing all lots of systematic issues here

- a collision causes an investigation that is "not worth it"

- even in this case that was "high profile, tragic, and absolutely dire"

- vehicles, objects, or people get in paramedics' or EMTs' way on a daily basis, apparently without consequences

- EMTs are subject to high levels of verbal abuse and assaults, apparently without consequences

- yet they are the ones under constant scrutiny

Now don't get me wrong, I am not against oversight. But compare this with American cops, who seem authorized to do far more damage to vehicles and people for often far less immediate benefit, have much laxer oversight, and do not have to endure abuse without recourse (well, technically they do have to do that, but it's not advisable to test this)

alwaysdoit• 5 months ago

Mostly agree, but choosing not to risk a new collision in order to maybe get there slightly faster (what if you damage the ambulance and are unable to continue?) to maybe help someone does seem like the right call

jrnichols• 5 months ago

As another paramedic that has worked in Texas, they are absolutely correct.

What we lack in EMS is the same qualified immunity that law enforcement continues to have.

snickerbockers5• 5 months ago

I think the most important problem here is that this is an ambulance not a monster truck. It never ceases to amaze me how people on this site will always insist that the onus should be on society to deal the fallout from silicon valley's poorly-tested and poorly-designed bullshit. In a truly just world we'd be able to charge Google's leadership as an accessory to homicide for this.

steve-atx-76003• 5 months ago

Exactly. The wamyo behavior looks fucking nuts. It makes no sense for an ambulance to get damaged or hurt someone on the way to a call.

dzhiurgis• 5 months ago

where's the lidar bois now?

himata41133• 5 months ago

Everyone is downvoted in the comments 80% are grey? Even the ones that sound perfectly reasonable? Upvoted one and it was still greyed out which makes me think there's more to it, but maybe I am missing something really obvious.

hoppyhoppy2• 5 months ago

Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

himata41133• 5 months ago

I've been on the site for years and have never seen something like that even with heated topics, the guidelines are there as a guide, but this was completely out of the ordinary (at least for me).

escapegoat• 5 months ago

My kneejerk, not thought through notion: why not require an emergency override protocol be builtin to road using robots? No thoughts on how this would work exactly, but it would let emergency workers move robot vehicles out of the way.

aaomidi• 5 months ago

How do you propose to build something like that where it’s actually limited to just emergency workers?

This is like the fire keys for elevators. You can find them on eBay.

gruez9• 5 months ago

It's not too hard to implement them with cryptographic protocols to prevent duplication and apply time/location restrictions to them. Moreover if you really wanted to steal a car, there are much easier ways of doing that, like buying a replica gun on aliexpress then going to your nearest intersection.

dylan604• 5 months ago

First thought would be to have the remote human over watching to engage with an emergency responder when the override is used. The remote human can then decide whether it is a real emergency or not. Either way, if any one uses an override system, a remote human should get involved. But instead, computer devs will suggest crypto/public/private keys/blahblahblah. This is one of those where the best answer will be to boot up the bio computer running the latest software

geor9e• 5 months ago

It doesn't sound difficult to solve. The sensors can classify firetruck, ambulance, red&blues, uniformed police, badge, siren, etc. At a certain criteria, they can unlock the driver door for normal human driving, perhaps for a very limited speed and distance. The officer can move it to the side, and if they crash it's not waymo crashing it. This override should send the an alert to the remote command center, so a human can watch the video and also decide how much further they can drive it. Since passenger safety is a concern, if there is a passenger inside who chooses to remain inside, the car should remain locked and not allow any driver in. The human can decide to follow police orders to exit the car, or remain inside, but at that point a human becomes responsible for obstructing. The whole freezing waymo trend seems driven by legal liability - not engineering. They know if they always freeze, their million miles with no accidents stats are safe.

grayhatter3• 5 months ago

And every single day you hear about someone abusing them right? Or no?

snickerbockers5• 5 months ago

Theres already an emergency override protocol, you see the lights or hear the siren and then get out of the ambulance's way.

ekianjo• 5 months ago

I thought Lidar solved everything?

Janicc• 5 months ago

This comment section surely would look the same if it had been a Tesla, right?

ikiris• 5 months ago

Since teslas have drivers.... no?

rogerrogerr4• 5 months ago

Heisenberg's Tesla - if it is doing something good, it has a driver. If it is doing something bad, it's autonomous.

indecisive_user• 5 months ago

Austin has Tesla robotaxis with no driver.

small_model3• 5 months ago

Yes it would, it would have been an electrek link with a damning EDS headline then a pile on. Cleary shows the bias HN posters have (most have some sort of EDS)

4d4m4• 5 months ago

the astroturfing from employees in here is a bit much

snickerbockers5• 5 months ago

It's actually rather telling that HN's greatest fear is accountability.

UltraSane• 5 months ago

The neat thing about self driving fleets is that when you fix a issue like this ALL the cars start driving better.

tim-tday• 5 months ago

First responders need the ability to say get the fuck out of here, don’t come back, tell your friends.

small_model3• 5 months ago

Another example of Waymo betting wrong, lots of expensive sensors vs Tesla with cameras and NN trained on billions of real miles (i.e. human like autonomy). A Tesla would have moved as it's trained to recognise this situation.

dabinat• 5 months ago

Tesla’s FSD has a storied history of problems with emergency vehicles.

bastawhiz• 5 months ago

My model 3 routinely recognized blue tinted street lights as "emergency vehicles" and would slow down on the highway for them. And to the best of my knowledge, a Waymo has never plowed into a stopped truck or barrier, killing the occupants.

zadikian3• 5 months ago

Possibly, but it's apples and oranges because the Tesla isn't self-driving yet. They get to take different risks given someone is behind the wheel.

small_model3• 5 months ago

I meant the Robotaxi's in Texas that have no driver, which will soon be all in Bay Area and Austin, then roll out to more cities over the year.

paganel• 5 months ago

The tech-bros never learn any humility, we have here an actual example of one of their hellish AI darlings blocking the first responders in their way to the aftermath of a terrorist attack, and what do those tech-bros' do? They continue supporting their hellish AI darling. Ellul was always right about things.

reenorap• 5 months ago

I was using Tesla Summon in my car parking lot. It had pulled out of the spot and started to turn to leave the spot when a truck entered the row. My Tesla couldn’t move because of the truck and I couldn’t do anything else so it was a deadlock. Normally if a person was caught in this situation they would have just parked back into the spot or reverse and straighten out but it had already started moving forward so I guess it just froze instead of reacting and there was no option to park back to get out of the way and unblock. Sure the truck could have pulled out but I think the guy was confused why the car was moving with someone in there and just stayed where he was.

Luckily the range of Summon isn’t very far so I ran over, apologized and took control of the car but it just goes to show how many real edge cases there are in real life and software can’t account for many of them.

kshacker• 5 months ago

but I think the guy was confused why the car was moving with someone in there and just stayed where he was.

Wait till Tesla starts driverless delivery of cars

gbin• 5 months ago

I'd LoVE to look into it but the news website is pure cancer ads before the video, no sound clock on sound that triggers another ad to you clock back, it restart an ad and you scroll a little bit and a top ad pops up while the bottom one is still there with like 3 words of the article readable.

I am sorry I am out.

kyleee2• 5 months ago

It’s so perplexing to hear about people seeing ads - do you really not use an ad blocking solution?

xnx2• 5 months ago

Options are limited on mobile

no-name-here• 5 months ago

If you’re blocking ads from the news site and suggesting everyone should, are you donating to the organization to ensure the news remains available?

IAmBroom• 5 months ago

Those of us at work, or on our phones, have some limitations.

Tech elitism isn't cool.

lupire2• 5 months ago

What's happening in that situation? When was the remote assistant engaged?

mvdtnz• 5 months ago

Americans will blame anything but the guns for shooting deaths.

xnx2• 5 months ago

The police officer definitely delayed the clearing of the vehicle. It was 20 seconds away from completing its maneuver.

Waymo blocking ambulance during deadly Austin shooting

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