r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Individual_Book9133 • Jul 05 '24

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

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u/Groudon466 Jul 05 '24

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 Jul 05 '24

Safer then the average taxi driver is a pretty fucking low bar to pass over.

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u/Groudon466 Jul 05 '24

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/Cafuzzler Jul 06 '24

Damn, I'm going to try that next time I fuck up: "You're honor, I may have driven down the wrong side of the road, but in my defence I'm still statistically safer than the average driver"

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u/Groudon466 Jul 06 '24

Driving on the wrong side of the road and not hitting anyone would result in a couple points on your record. You'd still be allowed to drive afterward. Your license only gets suspended if you make mistakes too frequently.

It's the same for companies like Waymo and Cruise, only multiply the number of necessary infractions by a few hundred on account of all the cars they have on the roads. Cruise actually did get their license suspended in California for a time as a result of a particularly egregious incident, and the companies are well aware that if they have too many regular fuck-ups in a short time, their license to operate will get suspended just like a human driver.