Waymo blocking ambulance during deadly Austin shooting(mysanantonio.com) |
Waymo blocking ambulance during deadly Austin shooting(mysanantonio.com) |
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.
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.
I get that it is technically possible, but that doesn't happen in practice.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It does no good to pretend there aren't problems with self-driving cars or make excuses.
It's not about the other entities.
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.
Wait till Tesla starts driverless delivery of cars
> 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.
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.
I am sorry I am out.
Tech elitism isn't cool.
This is like the fire keys for elevators. You can find them on eBay.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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)
What we lack in EMS is the same qualified immunity that law enforcement continues to have.
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.
Our systems don't cover every case, and it's better when we use human courtesy to solve the edge cases.
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?
Source: Haven't been run over yet by one, and I live in one of their current markets.
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.
Are you asserting that humans should accept these, currently not fully known, tradeoffs?
But yea they absolutely could’ve also just slammed it and moved on too.
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.
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.
What an embarrassment.
"Authorities" paralyzed by politeness when lives are in the balance.
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.
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.
The road to mass adoption of autonomous vehicles probably wont happen in any poster's lifetime on this board. The reality is most people on here are quite narrow minded and can't 'understand' why it is not as easy as "hey I found a stat that shows Waymo is safer than humans!!11!".
Stopping or altering traffic isn't, though. You shouldn't stop at a green to allow another driver to maneuver for all the same reasons.
There is no way to cross unless someone yields to let you through
Personally I always let people in when they need to go. What does that cost me? A second or two? When people actively try to cut you off from merging it leads to more accidents and more road rage. Just merge peacefully and let people merge without getting your ego involved. That's more or less how LA used to be, at least before a million New Yorkers moved there who didn't know how to drive.
Relevant to this example: if people travel by car more because they care less about traffic when they're playing video games or on TikTok during it, instead of driving, overall congestion will likely go up which makes emergency services worse.
As is already the case in cities with robust public transit systems you’d need to make sure you’re applying the right incentives (i.e. taxes and charges) to make sure people are making decisions that benefit everyone. That doesn’t alter the possibility of self driving cars being much safer than human driven ones.
In Seattle, the most ritualistic abusers of the HOV lanes are large SUVs and trucks with only a driver in them.
Also, ex-paramedic, three cases fairly similar, but the one I found most egregious, was us going lights and sirens on I-5 heading to Harborview, heavy heavy rain. Traffic on the freeway slowly but steadily goes right. Cue a single-occupant Escalade accelerate up, overtake us on the inside and pull into the HOV lane to take advantage of the cleared freeway in front of us.
For bonus irony points, licence plate holder: "Don't drive faster than your angels can fly", lady, you just overtook an ambulance in emergency mode.
We actually called that one in. Some satisfaction as we rolled by her a few minutes later, pulled over with a state trooper having lit her up, who points at us and shakes his head at her.
And different country, but still thank you for having been a paramedic. World definitely needs more people like you.
That can be eliminated by not giving direct control and something closer to what Waymo "Remote Assistance Agents" have access to: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/
Eye contact matters for humans because they might be looking at their phones, or their McDonald's fries, or staring straight into the sun. None of these things happen with self-driving cars. It's a non-issue.
If you can see it, it sees you. Period. I guarantee it.
It can see and gives special priority to humans. I have watched it mark people at night that I couldn't see at all.
Doing weird shit on the road? Certainly possible. Missing seeing a human? Definitely not happening.
While the precise boundaries of liability depend on the laws of the particular jurisdiction (they aren't consistent across the whole US) police generally can take reasonable action to move vehicles obstructing the road in an emergency without liability for any damages incurred, whether or not they use a tow truck to do it.
I do think that theres needs to be better handling of emergency vehicles and autonomous vehicles. Someone needs to spend some serious time thinking through how to handle this better because this situation was not okay.
"Increase the speed limits" is a classic populist policy that keeps being reimplemented (and walked back for it's impracticality) all across the world. Policies to ban cyclists are uncommon, but certainly not unheard of. One imagines the self-driving car companies won't be too bothered to fight against laws that hurt everyone but them.
This is true of any vehicle lmao. Someone can stand in front of your vehicle and prevent you from proceeding and there's not a thing you can do about it.
I certainly wouldn't. I'm a short gay guy, plus even if I was big I don't want an assault charge; standing in front of my car doesn't give me a legal right to assault someone. From a legal standpoint (in most places) it's a deadlock.
Not every guy is big and strong and capable of or wanting to do violence.
Say it's 5% of drivers who are maniacs, one encounters many many cars, and the cost of misjudging this situation is "grievous injury". So the end result is people will give way to cars even when they don't have to.
> Not every guy is big and strong and capable of or wanting to do violence.
This is structurally comparable to the way women treat "all men" as "potentially violent". It's not about you per-se, just a consequence of the group you cannot be immediately separated from.
Speaking of, that's the other half. Sure you're a normal guy. You don't want an assault change. The tradeoff changes when you are at risk, when violence is being done to you. (Hence the harassment-of-women example)
Sure you're not gonna try to murder the person outside like the road-raging maniacs, but when your safety is on the line, driving dangerously close past them is on the table.
No, at the very least tort laws still apply even if the driver is a corporation. Do you really need someone sitting in jail to satisfy your justice boner?
By corporatizing social harms, basically nobody is ever held accountable - except for the little guy.
Again, this is false. At the very least there's financial penalties, which the shareholders are on the hook for. Moreover the corporate malfeasance that does happen don't map nicely to human crimes. If you kill a guy, you get sent to jail for decades. But what if you're a company, that makes a machine with sloppy code[1] that unintentionally kills someone? What do you do? Jail the programmer who wrote the code? Jail the manager who did the code review? Jail the CEO who had no knowledge of it but "buck stops with him" and we hate CEOs? How does the death penalty work? If you think it through it's basically a fine equivalent to the company's market cap. If Boeing does a bad that kills one person, does that mean the US government just repossesses the entire company?
Literally, and intentionally avoiding any attempt to examine the implications? No probably not.
But reasonable punishment discourages bad behavior. And software engineers have a habit of ignoring the implications of a defective design. I think apocalyptic fines applied to the companies creating the systems for automated cars would also create the correct incentives, but I find that to be less likely than imprisonment.
What I want is software and systems to not suck ass. I don't want to deal with defective... everything, because it was faster to deliver. That's especially true when it contributes to the death or injury of a person that didn't do anything wrong.
I don't care what works, but people being afraid of going to jail for hurting someone absolutely does work. And 'administrative fines' don't work.
This just feels like the "we should make the justice system harsher to deter crime" argument but applied to software engineering. If it works, why stop at criminal cases? Maybe we should dock the pay of SWEs next time they cause a prod issue?
We don't send everyone to jail either. You can run over people and get away scot free, if it's an honest mistake and you weren't being negligent.
Do they?
Do you have some examples ?
Why not software engineers too? Why are we so special that we can never be held accountable for the damage our lack of standards causes?
Ignore that feeling, it's wrong. Because it's not what I'm arguing for. Reasonable is a load bearing qualifier.
It doesn't feel like the people making the decisions that meaningfully contribute to causing harm to other people, ever have to deal with the fallout or repercussions for their unfortunate choices. Deincentivizing that behavior is my goal. And I'll unfortunately take iterative or suboptimal options at this point. I don't like it, but I do want to try to be realistic.
However there's cases where its completely proven that someone high up knew there was a systemic safety issue (they had a broad view and could see all the different areas of what was going on), they knew exactly what was causing it, and they do nothing because they want to keep the profit going. The fact those people don't go to jail just tells me that corporations have way too much leeway.
For example: https://www.owhsp.qld.gov.au/court-report/fines-imposed-fail...
Is there any indication this requirement was breached for this case? I'm all for jailing executives of companies where they specifically failed to enact safety measures, or even didn't care enough about safety, but in this case it's simply a case of a edge they didn't test. It's not for lack of trying either. Apparently they have their own AI model to generate test data, so they can train/test what happens if a hurricane hits, for instance.
https://waymo.com/blog/2026/02/the-waymo-world-model-a-new-f...
In this case it just sounds like the thought process was
> waymo did a bad
> someone doing the same would be arrested (?)
> therefore somebody needs to be arrested
Agreed. And because responsible driving is almost all edge cases, they shouldn't be held liable for any of them as long as they tried.
If i poison someone, i go to jail. If DuPont poisons thousands, "there's financial penalties".
Twitter is creating CSAM, Meta & OpenAI pirate millions of books and Nvidia is playing some sort of shell game to pump their stock price.
If a regular person committed any of those offenses once they would be lucky to just to be sued but because of "AI" nothing happens to these companies.
>Twitter is creating CSAM
It's unclear whether generated CSAM is illegal, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_fictional_porn.... Moreover x/x.ai wasn't intentionally generating the images. Yes, someone intentionally set up grok to generate images, but nobody at x/x.ai was like "yes, let's generate some CSAM". That adds an additional layer of obfuscation that makes it harder to compare to a "regular person".
>Meta & OpenAI pirate millions of books
Give me a break. People on /r/datahoarders pirate millions of books all the time. Use a VPN and basically nobody bothers going after you. If anything Meta/OpenAI are getting harsher treatment than the average person because they're juicier defendants.
>Nvidia is playing some sort of shell game to pump their stock price
That's not even something that's illegal.
Arguing that a regular person needs to conceal their real identity with a VPN to pirate books is proof these companies aren't receiving special treatment for committing the same crimes is very confusing to me.
We know the identity of the companies committing the crimes.
We both know you don't actually believe that because neither of us would post generated CSAM.
> That adds an additional layer of obfuscation that makes it harder to compare to a "regular person".
That is literally my point?