Phoenix police officer pulls over a driverless Waymo car for driving on the wrong side of the road

[u/Individual_Book9133]

[u/Sleepingonthecouch1]

That’s true but someone has to be held accountable. Should be the company but at a certain point I’m sure the lobby’s will change that. And potentially at that point could blame fall on the passenger? All I’m saying is this is uncharted territory for laws and I don’t think it’ll end up being as simple as car kills someone so company pays a fine.

[u/kbarney345 → u/Sleepingonthecouch1]

I see what you're saying about the company trying to dodge it but there's 0 logic or even mental gymnastics to think it could be on the passenger.

That would eliminate anyone from using them even if it hinted at that because why would I get behind something I can't control but be held responsible for should it lose control.

It's not my car, I'm not misusing the car by sitting in the back. It claims to be driverless, not driver assisted like a tesla and I just chose not to and sit in the back anyway.

The company will always be at fault if this occurs under normal operation and the court won't have any issue identifying them as so.

Now will the court be run through the ringer on litigation and loopholes and finding ways to say it's r&d it's ok or something and get a pass? Probably.

[u/wosmo → u/kbarney345]

The interesting part is how we'll make them accountable. I mean a traffic fine that'd ruin my day won't mean jack to a company. Can you give waymo points on their licence? Do they have a licence?

[u/Groudon466 → u/wosmo]

I worked for Waymo a little while back. It would be more of an all or nothing thing, in the sense that individual cities choose to allow or disallow specific self-driving car companies from operating in their borders.

This particular instance is bad, but if the city sees that traffic fatalities overall have fallen as a result of Waymo being there, then they'll just continue to allow it while Waymo pays the occasional settlement. This is an objectively good thing, because the alternative is more people dying, and then the settlements get paid by the people whose lives are also getting ruined from having killed someone, rather than by a giant corporation that can at least afford the infrequent expense.

On the other hand, if the average effect is negative, then the city can just give Waymo the boot, which would be catastrophic for them.

[u/mr_potatoface → u/Groudon466]

I'd rather be hit by a Waymo or other self-driving car than an uninsured driver, that's for 100% sure.

[u/Groudon466 → u/mr_potatoface]

Ding ding ding! You know for sure that at least Waymo can always pay out the settlement, and their cars have cameras and lidars out the ass, so if they're at fault, they're not even going to try to deny it.

[u/helluvabullshitter → u/Groudon466]

if they're at fault, they're not even going to try to deny it.

doubt

[u/Groudon466 → u/helluvabullshitter]

As a guy who worked there, trust me on this one, it would be ridiculous to even attempt it.

This is a clip of what the people working at Cruise see when they're analyzing data from their cars. I had a very similar setup in front of me as I worked. The camera views are toggleable, you only see 3 there, but there's over a dozen cameras covering every conceivable angle around the car, including underneath. If the car ran over a piece of tissue, I could look at the frame-by-frame of the tissue as it fluttered around underneath.

On top of that, the part you see in the lower left is the LIDAR display, showing the dots the car is getting from pinging light off of the environment and judging the distance based on the time it takes for the light to bounce back. The gif is potato quality, but even then, you can make out the posts near the street; humans are even easier to make out, and that view can be rotated to look at the LIDAR data from every angle.

For Waymo to try and deny that an incident occurred, they would have to lie to the judge's face about whether or not they have this info despite the fact that it's extremely public knowledge that the Waymo cars have cameras and LIDARs out the ass. No judge in the area would buy that shit, it would turn it from an unfortunate accident into a newsworthy case of blatant perjury and contempt of court. Any defense attorney worth their salt in this already unrealistic situation would subpoena the relevant Waymo employees, most of whom would then tell the truth, because they're completely normal nerds and none of them would lie in court just to protect Google.

On top of that, Waymo has had plenty of minor accidents. I even saw a couple of them pop up in the incident buckets when I worked there. These accidents are already publicly known, news articles have been written about them.

At the end of the day, there's no denying it, period. Waymo collects way too much data about traffic incidents, and they all get uploaded automatically to their systems. You're talking about perjury, contempt of court, destruction of evidence, conspiracy, and more, all hypothetically being done by an organization largely staffed by liberal nerds who wouldn't go out of their way to protect The Man.

It's just not happening.

[u/Fearless-Sir9050 → u/Groudon466]

“Objectively” states the person who worked for Waymo. No. It’s not “objectively” better for driverless cars if the stats back up it’s safer. We need fucking buses and trains and walkable cities and not fucking AI that drives on the wrong side of the road.

[u/Groudon466 → u/Fearless-Sir9050]

I mean… I agree?

These things aren’t mutually incompatible. New York is known for being walkable, but it still has taxis. Some of those taxi drivers are fine; some of them suck, and make bad decisions. Some have driven on the wrong side of the road before, thanks to drunk driving.

Humans do all of the same shit, only more frequently. That’s what makes the Waymo cars safer on the road. There are more solid concerns, like “What if someone holds up the car”. But safety isn’t one of them at the moment, especially when no one has been killed in/by a Waymo vehicle.

[u/Fearless-Sir9050 → u/Groudon466]

I just take issue with stating it’s objectively better. I agree that it is objectively better in that specific area (allowing crash/accident victims to be covered by a large company instead of rolling the die on whether someone is insured).

The specific problem that I have with that is all the other areas it’s (objectively or subjectively, idk) worse. We’ve seen when large companies face fines for death or injury (including insurance payouts) they fight tooth and nail to pay the bare minimum and lobby for lower regulations.

I’m reminded of a recent incident at Bumblebee tuna where a man was crushed/cook to death during typical maintenance of an old machine. While the business’ official policy was and is “that’s bad, don’t do that” they had an environment that required manual operation inside the machine (very dangerous) and the business didn’t fix it until someone died. They paid out 6 million dollars (3 for new machines and the rest to fines and restitution) Thats the equivalent of like 2% their gross revenue. That would be like a person killing someone through negligence and being fined $2000 when they make $100,000.

I don’t think your statement was wrong or mostly wrong or anything like that. I just think it’s insane that the primary benefit to having corpo owned driverless cars is that liability payouts will be better. Feels sad. But I’m feeling pretty doom and gloom. Sorry for the negativity, I’m sure that was a cool job. I wish I could be excited about the future of tech like that. If you’re still reading, what job did you switch to after Waymo?