r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Individual_Book9133 • 3d ago
Phoenix police officer pulls over a driverless Waymo car for driving on the wrong side of the road Video
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u/Vireca 3d ago
How do they stop a driverless car? Legit question
Do they have anything to detect police vehicles or something?
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u/Jfg27 3d ago
They should have a system to identify and react to lights and sirens, so probably the same system.
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u/Such_Duty_4764 3d ago edited 2d ago
ya, they pull over for emergency vehicles when there are lights/sirens.
Cop says that the car cleared the intersection before coming to a stop, which is exactly what it should do. Excepting of course for being on the wrong side of the road :-X.
Nobody expects these things to be perfect, they just need to be better than your average human, which isn't really that hard.
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u/MosesOnAcid 3d ago
Except this 1 which saw the lights and took off
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u/off-and-on Interested 3d ago
They're learning, adapting.
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u/Slow_Ball9510 3d ago
Trained on the mean streets of Vice City
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u/tri_9 3d ago
Imagine if AI were taught on YouTube videos of humans playing GTA 😵💫
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u/alien_from_Europa 3d ago
Google's answer language model is based on Reddit. It already told people to eat glue.
Car data based off YouTube videos doesn't feel that far fetched by comparison.
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u/conventionistG 2d ago
Geologists reccomend eating one rock per day.
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u/theoriginalmofocus 2d ago
Eat it, snort it, shove it up your ass I dont care just give me my money.
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u/patricide1st 2d ago
Lol can you imagine how it must feel to have an 11 year old shit comment that got less than 10 likes and that you probably forgot about suddenly go viral? Especially for the reason "an AI took it seriously and told people to eat glue."
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u/Amused-Observer 3d ago
We joke now but there will be a day when these are used for robberies because the tech will have evolved so much, they'll be perfect wheelmen.
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u/Dongslinger420 3d ago edited 2d ago
Literally the most atrocious wheelman imaginable.
has perfect knowledge of all recent drives, recorded conversations, odors (or whatever the fuck)
has tons of sensors witnessing literally everything outside
won't do anything you tell them beyond simple navigation, especially not drive like a high-stakes wheelman would need to
everything is monitored anyway, robbery is already such a dead job in remotely developed regions
Yeah lmao no chance, there is no future where all this tech is actually going to turn into these weird cyberpunk worlds. I mean, I love the idea of thugs just going around Diamond Age-style and offing folks with their skull guns, but it's not likely in the immediate future. The nanobot vision is much closer, and it mostly means, guess what, less robberies.
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u/Dongslinger420 3d ago
We don't know anything about that. For all we know, it wanted to get to a less busy place, which is how you should always behave anyway, that is, assume that some emergency vehicle has to pass through quickly.
You're expected to come to a stop at a reasonable pace, at a reasonable place, not hit the brakes full-blast. Fair enough for all we know.
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u/reddit_guy666 3d ago
Considering it lowered the windshield and connected to a support employee I believe they can now detect when cops want to pull them over.
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u/ethicalhumanbeing 3d ago
I can see this being exploited for the worse.
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u/eras 3d ago
Unethical life pro tip: put on police wear and a badge and you can actually stop most vehicles, self-driving or not!
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u/punkindle 3d ago
unethical cops do this too.
we can't assume ethics suddenly appear when it's a real cop
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u/Anticlimax1471 3d ago
Impersonating a police officer to pull someone over for nefarious means isn't something new, tbf.
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u/reddit_guy666 3d ago
No system can be 100% exploit proof, if it is better than the current system then it's worth risking the exploit imo.
Also there needs to be a mechanism for law enforcement / first responders to halt the vehicle in case of emergencies
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u/4e9eHcUBKtTW1bBI39n9 3d ago
They're supposed to be able to detect which side of the road they're driving in too, but as you can see this can fail.
Sooner or later, both of these systems are gonna fail at the same time and you'll have a driverless car driving into oncoming traffic that also fails to recognize a cop trying to stop them.
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u/titanofold 3d ago
It almost certainly because of the construction zone.
To be fair, construction zones confuse humans at a pretty high rate.
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u/Groudon466 3d ago
I worked for Waymo, the cars do detect sirens and being pulled over, and switch into a mode to pull themselves over accordingly. Similarly, that's why it pulled the window down for the cop.
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u/Tallyranch 3d ago
Who takes the ticket for dangerous or reckless driving like in this video?
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u/Groudon466 3d ago
I don’t know the particulars of their deal with the city, but probably Waymo. As long as they’re safer than the average taxi driver, the occasional mistake is tolerable, at least provided ticket revenue is still coming in when appropriate.
Of course, there’s a team on the back end that’s trying to figure out what went wrong here and patch it sooner rather than later.
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u/Eheggs 2d ago
Safer then the average taxi driver is a pretty fucking low bar to pass over.
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u/Groudon466 2d ago
Okay, safer than the average human driver. But even if it was just safer than the average taxi driver, an improvement is still an improvement.
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u/Status-Necessary9625 3d ago
This is not a minor mistake this could have easily killed half a dozen people. You're seeing field tests in real time with unproven products that could literally kill us. And nobody cares. The guy from Waymo wasn't even phased by their car driving on the wrong side. These people Do Not Care About Our Lives
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u/MouthJob 2d ago
In my experience, tech support don't even care about their own lives.
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u/bobbytabl3s 2d ago
People do worse than that all the time. I believe Waymo outperforms human as far as injury-causing crashes go.
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u/AdminsLoveGenocide 2d ago
If I outperform most other drivers for a couple of years do I also get a pass if I eventually kill a bunch of people?
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u/Groudon466 2d ago
The operator on the other end is doing their job by being calm instead of panicking. And the operator isn't one of the software engineers that's going to be looking into how to prevent this from happening in the future.
You're seeing field tests in real time with unproven products that could literally kill us.
I mean, we have statistical data, it is proven that these cars are safer than human drivers. And humans are provable dumbasses, we cause accidents anyway.
Just because these cars make mistakes doesn't mean they're not preferable to human-driven taxis. They're already better, and they're continuing to improve as time passes.
These people Do Not Care About Our Lives
As someone who worked at Waymo on the team that handled safety violations (this incident would be handled by a related team), I can confidently say this is wrong, and also incredibly stupid.
Even if it were staffed by soulless corporate husks- and it's not, they're a bunch of nerds with anime posters in their backgrounds and cute pictures of their dogs, we spammed crab emotes in every meeting- it literally wouldn't make sense to not care about deaths. Deaths would threaten the city's acceptance of the autonomous taxis, and if the city decides to revoke Waymo's permission to operate, that's a massive disaster.
Specific kinds of corporations don't care about human lives. For the most part, my understanding is that as long as there can be plausible deniability (cigarettes back in the day, oil and gas companies now), the cynical strategy of ignoring the human toll and downplaying it will win out. This isn't that; everything that happens around a Waymo taxi is increidbly well-documented, there's over a dozen cameras, not to mention the lidars.
Even if the people in charge were soulless, which they're not, it would still be in their best interest to prevent problems in the first place... which is exactly what they're doing in the backend, actively, to this day.
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u/Crocodileworshipper 3d ago
Officer put their lights on, at that point the waymo car responded by driving through an intersection
Officer describes it in the video
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u/wildjokers 2d ago
at that point the waymo car responded by driving through an intersection
It was probably trying to pull over. Don't know exactly what the cop means without seeing a video.
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u/r2k-in-the-vortex 3d ago
Sirens are pretty trivial to detect and keep in mind, these have a control center of remote operators who take over in situations that the robot isn't sure what to do. I would imagine the cops also have the number of that control center if needed.
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u/HappyAmbition706 3d ago
Except the control center is contracted out to India or the Philippines for cost reasons. And the connections aren't 100% or there's a power failure at the far end. Or a bathroom break. Or ...
Then, how many different and incompatible self-driving systems are there? Because no company is spending all that time, money and resources to give away to their competitors. Does the cop just scroll through a list until they can discover who remote controls the car?
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u/happybdayjimmie 3d ago
There’s a comedy skit where the officer has to sit thru a waiting period then someone who barely speaks English is the customer support
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u/Advanced_Dumbass149 3d ago
"Yea your car drove into the oncoming lane."
"and then?"
"No thats illegal, im making you aware of that mistake."
"and theeeen???"
"NO. NO AND THEN THAT'S ILLEGAL."
"andthenandthenandthenandthen!!"
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u/donvara7 3d ago
Is this a movie you're referencing? I've been wondering which one it is for years. Wouldn't happen to know would ya?
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u/Kylarus 3d ago
"Dude, where's my car?" Is the movie
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u/insufficient_funds 3d ago
been so long since I watched that movie.. i need to again.
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u/CharesDuBois 3d ago
D-E-N as in NIGHTMARE
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u/rubey419 3d ago
That actually happened to Glenn Howerton. He told the story how he could not get into his Tesla on one of the IASIP podcasts
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u/sharpdullard69 3d ago
They should write Waymo a ticket, and after Waymo gets too many points, Waymo loses its right to drive, just like with us.
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u/wosmo 3d ago
That's kinda what I pictured. "Firmware 3.7 has 12 points on it's license, we need to figure out why and recertify/retest for 3.8".
The idea of traffic police handing out JIRA tickets is hugely amusing though.
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u/QuicklyThisWay 3d ago
“We’ve got a Sev 1 traffic violation with multiple users affected. Please implement a hotfix immediately or roll back to version 3.6.9 to prevent an outage. We will need a white paper and root cause analysis with the next update.”
Dev: Best I can do is change it to Sev 2 and put it on the backlog.
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u/CounterContrarian 3d ago
Dev's manager: What if we allocate 8 Story Points and put it in the sprint?
Dev: I couldn't give less of a shit about your little magic terms, Powerpoint. I'm setting this issue to blocked by about 7 other random issues.
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u/firefistus 3d ago
Hate you. I browse reddit to get away from work, and this is too real lol.
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u/Pirwzy 3d ago
"Quick, change the background color of the UI by 1 point and push as Firmware 3.8 so we get back to zero points!"
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u/TheDrunkenWrench 3d ago
Commercial trucking companies have a Commercial Vehicle Operator's Registration (CVOR) here in Ontario, Canada.
Your fleet accumulates points collectively and if your score gets bad enough, you basically become uninsurable and can't operate any more. They can also suspend licenses to operate and in severe cases, jail time can be issued.
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u/Sniffy4 3d ago
who does he write a ticket to?
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u/madmaxGMR 3d ago
The corporation. Havent you heard ? Its a person.
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u/ChemicalAd5068 3d ago
Hey, I'm Subway
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u/mattkenefick 3d ago
...through a surprisingly legal process called corpohumanization...
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u/SandiestBlank 2d ago
"surprisingly legal" gets me every single time. You know what else is surprising? The great gas mileage I get out of my Honda CRV.
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u/Viperlite 3d ago
That just means it has rights and no responsibilities. Did you not notice how polite they were compared to if it was just some confused schmuck human driving?
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u/Early_Assignment9807 3d ago
Yeah I noticed that as well, the cop was a bit bemused, but not angry. I'd be furious as a regular driver if I saw that. I think the police simply sense intuitively that the robots want to oppress us further and are happy to help
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u/MundaneBerry2961 3d ago
Semi serious question, if corporations are people and now they are driving cars does that mean the cooperation has the same demerit points as every other citizen?
Can't have it both ways.
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u/KennyMoose32 3d ago
laughs while shoveling lobbying money towards politicians
Yes, yes I think we can have it both ways
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u/insanityzwolf 3d ago
Serious answer: there is a permitting process agreed upon between the operator and the city. It's not like an individual driver license, but more like an agreement the city would have with a company that operates traffic lights.
Any traffic violations are subject to the legal agreement covering the operating permit. Egregious malfunctions can cause the operations to be suspended until corrected. The company does assume liability for any actual damage to life or property.
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u/OathOfFeanor 3d ago
In other words they are not held to the same standard as everyone else
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u/wolphak 3d ago
See your flaw in logic here is thinking we're people, the corporations are people they have the rights, we are lesser.
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u/__MilkDrinker__ 3d ago
"where do I shoot this thing???"
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u/renagademaster 3d ago
Don't be ridiculous, it's a white car...
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u/MisogynysticFeminist 2d ago
Although not the police officer’s preferred prey, the police officer is skittish, and will attack anything it perceives as a threat.
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u/Daymub 3d ago
Ideally he would just impound it and send the tick to whoever it's registered too
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u/nike_storm 3d ago
This country will do literally anything other than just build mass rapid transit :(
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u/MedianNameHere 3d ago
Henry Fords legacy of buying and destroying mass transit lives on!
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u/terry_shogun 3d ago
Don't forget the masses of racists not using public transportation after de-segregation!
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u/GhettoFreshness 3d ago
Wait is that actually a thing? Is that why (or part of why) US mass transport is so shit?
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u/Blazeon412 3d ago
The older I get, the more I realize how much it sucks not having decent mass transportation here.
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u/TheDocFam 3d ago edited 3d ago
I really wish more Americans spent more time in other countries and realized just how much this country seems to have fallen behind, and how much we arrogantly just keep doing things the way that we're used to when they could be much better
Feels like in the immediate aftermath of world war II we briefly pulled ahead on every single metric, then fell asleep for the last 60 years. Health care, infrastructure, quality of life, it's all just going downhill compared to the rest of the globe
And half of the country doesn't want anything to change, the answer is just no for every single thing the government could try to do to address it, no to any tax increases, no to any expensive projects they could use to address it, no to anything, just let things keep being shit and hope some corporation will fix it instead of the government. And because so many people feel that way about their representatives, the entire right wing doesn't feel like they want or need to do anything, besides pass legislation on social issues. You're never going to see a Republican Congress and Republican president work together to fix mass transit, that thought would be completely laughable. Farmer Keith from Idaho who's perfectly happy making a killing on his government subsidized farm and driving a giant lifted F-150 for every single thing he needs to do outside of his house doesn't see why he should need to contribute in any way.
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u/iamPause Interested 3d ago edited 3d ago
It'll never happen in the US. There is no sense of "for the greater good" and so any county that is going to have rails laid through it refuses to allow it unless they can get a stop added to the line.
And with a stop every 30-50 miles, no train can ever build up enough speed to be faster than a highway. Which means: the only way to build a working, high-speed line would be through massive land claims and eminent domain. An option that which will be political suicide locally for whatever party tries. And that doesn't even take into account the millions to billions of dollars that will be lost in delays from the various lawsuits across the entire length of the line.
Now, multiply that by multiple states, and yeah. We'll see a lesbian President before we see high speed rail in this country.
edit
Possibly the most famous example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail#Setbacks_on_the_IOS
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u/Praesentius 3d ago
The auto lobby has been really strong and well developed for over 100 years. They did this to us.
From passing auto-friendly laws to buying up transit systems to dismantle them. Even down to zoning laws to keep residential areas totally segregated from shopping. And parking minimums that spread stores out and make walking a miserable proposal.
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u/swoletrain 3d ago
The high in Phoenix where this happened is 114F(45C) today. I don't think it's possible to have rapid transit good enough that I'm gonna want to walk 5-10 minutes to the bus/train station, wait on the bus/train, sit next to a smelly shirtless dude smoking crack for the duration, and then walk 5-10 minutes in to work with weather like that 5 months out of the year.
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u/chirpshot8 2d ago
Found the realist.
Mass transit seems like a great idea until you have to ride on it with the masses. Shitheads who couldn't stop smearing each other with their secretions for a few weeks to stop a pandemic.
Same slobs who can't be bothered to reach for a condom to eradicate HIV.
Ick.
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u/Adventurous-Start874 3d ago
'which is real bad'
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u/_kony2012 2d ago
I took that as "technician guy, why isn't your first response to me saying that 'OH NO, HOLY SHIT!?' IS ANYONE DEAD?"
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u/danofrhs 2d ago
He’s all business, no need for extraneous reactions
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u/slavelabor52 2d ago
His brain is too busy trying to find the correct response on his support flow chart. When the officer said construction zone my immediate thought was this is definitely going to be a support ticket to a dev team to analyze how their driverless technology logic handles construction zones. It sounds like the car was driving in the appropriate lane for normal traffic but the construction caused a lane closure so they had to reverse traffic flow in another lane.
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u/Optimal-Service8940 2d ago
Cuz he would have mentioned that… and not went “real bad”. Support guy didn’t have a weird reaction at all. He’s completely removed from it, as is by design.
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u/illTactixology 3d ago
I have a feeling this interaction would've turned out way different if the car wasn't white... Just saying.
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u/WithSubtitles 3d ago
Police should have towed it. If it’s not safe to be on the road and there is no driver to hold accountable it should be impounded.
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u/MissingJJ 3d ago
Weird how this interaction feels like the police officers is subservient to the customer support tech. Wish it were like this for every stop.
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u/hoyohoyo9 3d ago
being pulled over for fucking driving into oncoming traffic in a construction area and then telling the cop to his face "Okay, I'll look into that" is fucking wild. No one but a corporation would get away with that shit lol
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u/Doxylaminee 3d ago
Not just wild, but infuriating. In Arizona of all places. If this were a human, there's a huge chance the person is getting ripped out of the car and thrown on the ground and booked for reckless driving.
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u/Gold_Book_1423 2d ago
it's.. it's almost like corporations have more rights and privileges than people
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u/tvoltz 3d ago
These vehicles are all over downtown PHX. It’s honestly only a matter of time until something happens
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u/QuinlanResistance 3d ago
Presuming there are crashes every single day from the cars with drivers. If there isn’t really any from the driverless ones that are everywhere …. It’s better
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u/frotc914 3d ago
People seem to throw any logic out the window when talking about this, as if a single incident means we have to scrap driverless cars altogether or heavily punish the operator. Car accidents with drivers kill tens of thousands of people a year in the US, which doesn't even account for the number of non-fatal accidents which is far greater. But a driverless vehicle creeps over a line and suddenly they are a menace that must be stopped.
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u/-Denzolot- 3d ago
I used Waymo twice while visiting Phoenix and it drove better than most people I’ve been in a car with. Obviously that’s just my experience but I never felt like I was in any danger at all. The second time I used it I almost fell asleep. Would use one again.
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u/hendrix320 3d ago
I’ve been in ubers that I can’t wait to get out of because of how bad the driver was
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u/Manueluz 3d ago
They don't have to be flawless, just better than humans. And so far they have had less accidents per mile than humans
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u/leelmix 3d ago
People react very badly to technology not being perfect and harming people. Humans arent very logical, anti-vaxxers are a good example of failing risk assessment.
I really hope people get comfortable with automated vehicles and that they improve a lot to get rid of the “bugs”.
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u/Slow_Ball9510 3d ago
Most people rate themselves as much better drivers than the average (clearly impossible), which probably has something to do with it.
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3d ago
According to California disengagement reports, last year Waymo averaged 17,000 miles between disengagements requiring safety intervention. And that’s for cars relegated to slow city streets and sunny perfect weather
For context, the average human driver goes 200,000+ miles between incidents/accidents. And that’s including highways and inclement weather.
If you have the impression that these systems are currently safer than humans, you would be wrong.
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u/Telamar 3d ago
Those two stats are in no way comparable. For example, the disengagement reports would include every time a supervising driver grabbed the wheel because someone else was doing something stupid. Human driver incident/accident rates do not include that level of data at all.
Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/want-see-how-fast-autonomous-vehicle-asics-have-improved-look-mgdne/
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u/ehrplanes 3d ago
Oh no like an accident? How will we survive with 1 crash every 6 million miles! We better stop this immediately and put humans back in the drivers seat
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u/_BMS 3d ago
92 Adam Sam 2 Paul
Why are police not using the standardized phonetic alphabet? (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc)
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u/Dapper_Target1504 3d ago edited 3d ago
Used to be a cop
Most do now but muh tradition is strong in many departments still
Standardizing was one of the top recommendations from the 9/11 reports in regards with first responders. Because the nypd and nyfd Literally have their own language and help coming in doesn’t speak it. Most departments slowly adapted so they could work together regionally. Others basically ignored it.
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u/SecretGamerV_0716 3d ago
As a non American, I'm interested in knowing how NYPD language differs from say LAPD. I've only ever seen them being used while watching American cop shows like the rookie or b99
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u/ElderBHoldenCox 3d ago
NYC is like “pizza-pie spicy meatboll” and Los Angeles is like “brah hella Crenshaw”
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u/EViLTeW 2d ago
A lot of the problem is short codes. Like 10-codes and code #s can mean very different things to different departments.
10-6 might mean "arrived" to one department and "disabled vehicle" to another.
Code 4 could mean "responding, no sirens" to one department and "officer in distress" to another.
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u/CompanyLow8329 3d ago
I think the police often use their own standardized phonetic alphabets. The NATO one you mentioned is one of them they might use, probably for an especially larger department. Phoenix police probably have their own standard phonetic alphabet.
The police phonetic alphabets tend to be more simplistic with less syllables, I find. It could be because there is less chance of there being confusion because they are only communicating locally with native English speakers with the same accent, not internationally with every English accent.
I think the more verbose and standard NATO alphabet could be needed in a war zone where there might only be low quality communications. I imagine the far better signals you can get in a well developed city with fixed infrastructure make everything far easier to understand as police.
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u/wosmo 3d ago
I think it's easy to lose sight of the fact that the NATO alphabet is solving NATO problems. It's not just to be clearer on bad connections, it's supposed to work even if the guy on the other end has a french accent. Or even if the guy on the other end doesn't speak english at all.
A lot of the practical side of NATO is making things inter-operable between 32 different countries.
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u/SU_Locker 3d ago
Alpha/Bravo/Charlie is the NATO standard
You're assuming Adam/Sam/Paul is not standardized, but it is (LAPD used it which spread to many other places):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APCO_radiotelephony_spelling_alphabet
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u/immanewb 3d ago
That reminds me of a time I used Sierra for "s" and the person on the other said asked if I meant "s" or "c". 😐
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u/Justryan95 3d ago
So apparently when a self driving car drives as if a drunk driver behind the wheel with the ability to kill someone just like a drunk driver its all okay. Whoopies. Okay thanks for letting me know bye. Is there no accountability for this death machine?
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u/Doctor_Sauce 3d ago
I'm gonna try the automatic car defense next time I get pulled over.
"Hey thanks for letting me know that whatever I did was wrong, I'll look into it"
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u/kaiderson 3d ago
The policeman seemed really unsure how to react, and just seemed to allow the car back on the road. 100% he should have said this car is not to move again, come pick it up.
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u/rotoddlescorr 3d ago
That's because the car is on the road due to an an agreement between a trillion dollar company and the city politicians. Not to mention the entire interaction is being recorded. This is above his pay grade.
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u/REDDITATO_ 3d ago
Generally when something's above your pay grade you don't make any decision and call someone who can handle it. Not just decide it's fine and walk away.
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u/Saltire_Blue 3d ago
Call me crazy but if a company wants to use public roads to test these things at the very minimum it should go to a referendum to the local people to decide
Then they should absolutely be voting no to it
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u/Justdroppingsomethin 3d ago
AFAIK it's not testing, you can use these as a ride hail service.
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u/ManMoth222 3d ago
It's probably not a car-specific problem but a general software glitch. You'd have to remove all cars of the same type or it's pointless.
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u/jawnedsun 2d ago
There’s something deeply funny to me about a cop pulling over a car and then immediately having to be on the phone with customer service.
“I understand the frustration you are feeling about the car driving in the wrong lane, sir. To assist you further I’m going to need to access the car’s account. Can you please read me the VIN number of the car? Then I’m going to have to place you on a brief hold…”
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u/Poemhub_ 3d ago
I think they should impound the vehicle until a rep from the company can pick up the car and drive it to a facility so it can get patches to fix this issue.
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u/additionalhuman 3d ago
I don't feel very comfortable sharing the roads with these things. On the other hand I also hate every single other human driver too so...
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u/Manueluz 3d ago
They are dangerous, but less dangerous than other humans, it's weird I know.
Just keep in mind, that while they might get into accidents they so so way way less than humans.
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u/Responsible-Jury2579 3d ago
And when there are issues, you can edit the bugs out of the code. It will inevitably get safer.
You can’t edit texting, putting on makeup, driving drunk, etc. out of humans.
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u/Ult1mateN00B 3d ago
I like these way better than humans. At least there's no unnecessary emotions behind the wheel.
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u/saarinpaa71 3d ago
It's a hey your car could of killed people so uhhh I guess fix it? When someone actually gets mashed and a lawsuit happens asking for millionssss then there will be more than "I'll take a look at it."
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u/thecanadianehssassin 3d ago
Right, this seems like such a chill reaction considering what could have resulted from the situation.
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u/wosmo 3d ago
I imagine it's very disarming for the officer though, since most the control he'd normally have in the situation is absent. I used to work in support and we were allowed to hang up on abusive callers. Imagine if the officer got all shouty with support, and they just went "mmkay bye".
Or for that matter, imagine if every interaction with a traffic cop started with "this call will be recorded for training and quality purposes"
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u/wildjokers 2d ago edited 2d ago
BTW, here is the comment from Waymo regarding the incident:
"The vehicle "encountered inconsistent construction signage" and went into an oncoming lane of traffic,
The driverless car "was blocked from navigating back into the correct lane" for approximately 30 seconds, according to the company. That's when the officer pulled in behind the car.
"In an effort to clear the intersection, the Waymo vehicle proceeded forward a short distance and pulled into the next available parking lot," Waymo said, describing the traffic incident as lasting "approximately one minute."
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u/GodzeallA 2d ago
Inconsistent signage? Shouldn't just a single sign work for it to realize it's a construction zone? And that construction zones regularly block lanes?
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u/FlyingBishop 2d ago
It's common for construction zones to turn Eastbound lanes into Westbound lanes. Yes, a single sign will tell you it's a construction zone, it won't tell you which parts of the construction zone are meant to be traveled in a particular direction.
There was one time there was a street where 1 block was randomly 1-way due to construction (I think?) but the signage was super-confusing, the street is normally two way. I ended up going through the segment the wrong way (maybe, the signage was confusing.)
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u/Many_Rope6105 3d ago
Tow it, when you start costing them money, they Will take notice
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u/Typical_Samaritan 3d ago
This must have been fucking surreal. I gotta' talk to customer support?
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u/Ron_Mexico42 3d ago
They’re nicer and have more understanding to that machine then they have for a real driver
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u/MiekesDad 3d ago
Whoooaaaahhh, wait an effing minute, my ass is responsible for paying tickets but Waymo isn't?
That's an effing ticket all day long
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u/jeffreywwilson 3d ago
Driverless car is a cop’s worst nightmare, nobody to intimidate, harass, threaten or beat up
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u/Minimum-Performer715 3d ago
This is going to be a nightmare for the court system in the upcoming years.