“This is it. We’re dead. We’re going to die right here in the Waymo.”
This combined with another recent article from some insiders at Tesla saying, along the lines, “You couldn’t pay me to let one of these things drive me somewhere.”
And yet I still know people who are just so chuffed about “never having to drive again.”
EDIT: Comments have pointed out that this story is, at best, overblown and semi-fabricated otherwise. Take it with a massive grain of salt. But feel free to discuss self-driving, waymo, etc in the comments!
If only there was some kind of system, that could take multiple people from A to B, with only one dude in front to keep track of what the automated system is doing. Ideally on some form of predictable track, that makes sure that the vehicle always stays in line without the need of advanced AI. Someone should invent that.
They could even make them underground so they don’t clog up the city!
That is crazy talk. There would not be nearly enough shareholder value in such a system.
In a sane world a regulatory body pulls their fleet from the roads until they can prove they are safe to a third party. Instead they get a self imposed slap on the wrist with a promise to return soon
“Waymo offered the rattled occupant $40 worth of free rides” Time to lawyer up. I’m guessing that even in our car loving society there are cases of reckless drivers who endangers passenger lives being sued.
Also, I missed the part where Waymo was ticketed in this and every other story about these renegade cars.
Surprised they didn’t at least offer free access to gemini pro for a month, too
Machinery is required to have a big red STOP button that will immediately stop all moving parts. For emergencies. I assume these cars don’t have something like that? Maybe they should be required to; stop and unlock all doors.
/edit: I see it’s mentioned/suggested in some other comments as well.
I thought I remember reading somewhere that Waymos aren’t automated at all and are really just being driven remotely by people in the Philippines.
Found the Article: https://www.techspot.com/news/111233-waymo-admits-autopilot-often-guys-philippines.html
They claim they are just there to intervene in emergencies, but the aggressive way I’ve seen those fucking things drive on surface streets around my place, I don’t doubt they’re driving them 100% of the time.
Minimum 120ms latency added to the operator’s reaction speed.
Sounds like they need to change the name to Delamain and market it as a feature.
This combined with another recent article from some insiders at Tesla saying, along the lines, “You couldn’t pay me to let one of these things drive me somewhere.”
Was said insider talking about Teslas or were they whinging about a competitor that makes better vehicles than they do?
Tesla
Found the article! https://www.reuters.com/investigations/why-teslas-ai-trainers-dont-trust-its-self-driving-tech-or-its-safety-stats-2026-05-28/
Seven of the former data labelers told Reuters they wouldn’t trust FSD to drive them. “We have all seen it fail,” one said. Another said he wouldn’t ride in a Tesla robotaxi “if you fucking paid me.” One veteran self-driving engineer, who reviewed Tesla crash data for years, called its safety claims “bullshit.”
It was probably about Teslas given the state of Tesla’s “self driving” feature.
Still, given everything I’ve heard about how Waymos react to novel situations, I’m not too keen on trusting my life to them either.
In my limited experience they all suck. I was driving a new Ford with “driver assist” and it decided to nearly kill everyone in the immediate area while driving through a construction zone. The transition from my driving to the vehicle taking over felt similar to the time my power steering (instant horror) went out and the transition from vehicle misreading the situation to my somewhat panicked regaining control felt like performing a highly illegal driving manuever. I’m singling out Ford because that was the vehicle make, but I’m fairly certain the technology itself is undercooked. I’ll be sticking with my ancient vehicle as long as possible and maybe go buy something with a tape deck or 8-track next.
Yet. Trust your life to them… yet. All it takes is ALL vehicles to eventually be autonomous, and then you never have to worry about loss of life or injury. If all vehicles followed every rule to a “T,” there would be no issues.
I mean, if there are no humans on the road they won’t be dying there. Doesn’t seem like it would be very good for us, though, to no longer be allowed to travel.
When you look at all the edge cases, road rules are not 100% consistent. They rely on human judgement to manage the (rare) ambiguous situations, such as a misaligned road intersection. With ever vehicules following every rules to a T, there would still be issues.
There will always be idiot pedestrians and bicyclists, what about those?
The terrifying incident underlines the very real dangers of relying on autonomous vehicles for ride shares, while they still suffer from nagging technical shortcomings
I don’t care if they have a perfect driving record or not, anything autonomous MUST be equipped with clearly visible emergency stop buttons, why the fuck aren’t those there?
It would be so easy to implement a big red “oh fuck” button that, notifies customer service, puts the car into limp mode, and directs it to pull over.
All industrial equipment is required by law to have an e-stop. Not having one in a “self-driving” car is criminal.
Being trapped in an autonomous vehicle driving erratically should have never, ever been possible. Shows you how these companies value the safety of the humans involved: they don’t.
An emergency stop is better than nothing, but they should ALSO have an emergency “let me take control”. Sometimes stopping does not decrease the danger.
Example: the waymo enters a rail crossing with flashing lights, and the barriers close with the car inside. The waymo sees the barriers so it stops. What you want in that case is accelerate and get the fuck out of there. If you have a baby in the backseat, there may not be enough time to get the baby and get out of there on foot.
This is the fundamental problem with automated cars and remote (or embedded) kill switches: they can never account for the edge cases that humans can readily adapt to. People will die as a result of those edge cases. Will it save more than it costs in human life, and are we willing to make that trade as a society? I can’t answer that but neither can the people making the decisions to make Waymo profitable over public safety.
Yeah I’m pretty sure it will. Humans are also incompetent, egotistical, self-righteous drivers. Statistics say humans are in reality poor drivers and I’m confident the self-driving car will be safer overall
But there will always be those edge cases where a human could perhaps do better. They have different weaknesses. So it won’t be a clear cut decision when self-driving would be widely allowed
This was also my opinion from doing a trial of full self driving. It did an amazing job, and most of my corrections were wrong. It is already safer than a human in “normal driving” and has been for a while. But every drive had edge cases where it just wasn’t ready.
Yeah the only real solution to this problem is to put a genuinely competent AGI into the car. Which of course of course they’ve known from the start, but have never been prepared to admit.
It’s not really a solution to rely on something that doesn’t exist. The closest we can get is to have a person there to oversee and be liable for whatever happens.
Unmanned vehicles without am emergency stop button are legal at all, anywhere? WTF?
I always assumed these waymos would have had a very clearly labelled emergency stop button that would bring the car to a controlled but quick emergency stop
Come on, that can’t be legal, that can’t be okay
“Holy s***, dude,” Slade can be heard saying in the clip.
Hard hitting journalism.
I was surprised these things were allowed on public streets without first being certified by some strict regulatory body.
I WAS surprised, since I used to suffer under the delusion that someone, somewhere was looking out for public safety, at least on some basic level. Like the FDA, USDA, OSHA, etc. But, these institutions were so easily gutted and pushed aside, and the traffic laws we do have aren’t nearly enough for regulating self-driving cars. We’ve always just allowed shit to happen as long as there are no existing laws to challenge it.
They kicked corporate money out of politics in Hawaii, that can’t happen fast enough in every other state. Imagine having common sense measures put before the people, like “should we allow self-driving cars on public streets before there are laws to regulate them?” and NOT having corporate money flow into the state to shift public opinion and buy off local politicians.
I work in transportation regulation. I understand your fear and frustration. What is happening with self driving cars is probably as stupid as you believe. However regulations are pretty reactive and in some ways good regulations should be. You can’t regulate what you don’t understand and you can’t understand what has never been done before.
The best approach is to start small and work directly with a regulator to create an initial trial and evolve the regulatory framework that ensures safety for the trial period. Then that framework can be used for future trials by other companies before being finessed into an official regulation. Then you have something which you know CAN be successfully implemented by companies AND does produce good safety outcomes.
Is that what’s happening? It probably was, initially. But as you said the public service is gutted and now corpos are having a wild west free run at this AI car thing. Good luck on the streets, we’re soon all gonna need it.
And yet I still know people who are just so chuffed about “never having to drive again.”
I mean, I think that part is 100% understandable. I get that many people in fact enjoy driving, but likewise, many people do not. For many a driving commute is the most anxiety inducing part of their day, and they’d be happy to be rid of it.
That’s the promise that self driving cars present. They just aren’t actually capable enough yet. From what I gather though, waymo is probably the farthest along of any of these companies. I don’t think I’d trust them for complicated Boston area driving though. To many narrow, winding roads complete with active road work, aggressive drivers, rotaries, etc…
You know what else solves that problem that isn’t a fascist wet dream, public transportation, like trains and buses.
Yeah, I enjoy driving and am fond of my car. But offer me the opportunity to spend my 90 mins commuting time sitting back and reading a book, and I’d probably take it.
Of course the tech is not ready and shouldn’t have been deployed in its current state. Government is letting big business use us all as crash test dummies.
Isn’t that what taxis and publec transit is for?
Yes, those are both valid solutions.
However, in some cities public transit isn’t very good, there aren’t enough lines to actually get you where you need to go consistently. Outside of cities, public transit is mostly non-existent, so you need something else. Taxis can work, but they’re also expensive and you have to rely on others, which can also be anxiety inducing. What if my taxi doesn’t show up, or shows up late? What if the taxi driver makes me feel unsafe? I expect some people would like to be more in control of the situation, just without having to actually drive.
Hey, these things may not apply to you, and that’s fine, I’m glad there are simpler solutions for most people. But having used public transit every day for many years, I can honestly say that while it is usually the cheapest and most efficient solution, I can still understand why people might want something else.
I drive through Austin regularly and see Tesla and Waymo automated taxis all the time.
The Waymos are just about the best, most-predictable drivers on the road. The Teslas are like toddlers pretending they can drive by randomly spinning a steering wheel.
A 2nd robot car pulled it over.
Get the robot Air Force One ready.
“Air” force? For a land vehicle? Pffffft, get the M3 GTR (no turn signals for weight reduction)
I’m not against self driving cars for the sake of it but because I understand technology comes at a cost. The idea of pumping out cameras everywhere and centralizing all the data is giving corpos and governments unimaginable power.
I really don’t like this crystal ball dystopia they’re building and self driving cars are excellent means for surveillance and data collection.
And yet I still know people who are just so chuffed about “never having to drive again.”
Did they not heard about public transport or it doesn’t count because it isn’t choke-full of fancy tech and isn’t pushed by techbro?(it is choke-full of fancy tech but never pushed by techbro)
Public transit in the US simply isn’t good enough in many cases. Years ago I lived in a suburb north of Boston and worked in another suburb west of Boston. It was about a 40 minute drive during rush hour. Trying to do that same commute by public transit likely would have taken me 4+ hours and involved a bus to a subway into Boston followed by a commuter train and another bus. It would have been a nightmare.
Like the point is, if people are giving a “this thing isn’t good enough now but will be great in the future” for this lobotaxi thing, they sure can give the same treatment to public transport as well. Of course it isn’t great now, the government spend little to nothing on it to make it good. But what if people start pushing for more public transport development? It will be better in the future, everyone win.
Yeah, but that would require raising taxes, which the billionaires have convinced the masses is a terrible thing because socialism, and look where that’s gotten third world socialist countries.
The only solution, according to the billionaires, and the brainwashed masses, is to give even more money to the billionaires so that they can privatize things even more and throw cutting edge technology at the problem instead of proven solutions like light rail, etc.
