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Waymo blocking ambulance during deadly Austin shooting
- 4d4m 7mo agoWild! Who wrote legislation to allow this?
- bgun 7mo agoYou mean cars being allowed to endanger human lives? Enshrined by law, urban infrastructure and cultural notions of independence for over a century? Why is it just now seen as a problem because robots are driving, instead of the stupid, reckless, poorly trained, often intoxicated humans who have been driving up until now?
- 4d4m 7mo agoLol no, way to discuss something not mentioned - do you work at one of these reckless companies? I'm talking about self-driving legislation, written by those wanting to test on an unsuspecting public.
- xvxvx 7mo agoWe continue to inch closer to these dumb buckets costing someone their life. Hell, they may already have.
- afavour 7mo agoHuman driven cars cost people their lives multiple times every day, though. So I don't think the calculation can be quite as simple as that. As self driving cars are rolled out I think each incident like this needs to be studied to see how avoidable it was, whether a human would have been able to resolve it, and what changes can be made. 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.
- jeffbee 7mo ago"Multiple" being stretched to the absolute limit in this comment.
- amelius 7mo agoThe argument that as long as they cause less incidents than human drivers they are a win has to go. Because that only works if the statistics of the environment are stationary.
- afavour 7mo agoWhat does “statistics of the environment” mean in this context? How can fewer deaths on the road not be a win?
- majormajor 7mo agoI think they're getting at something like this: If self-driving cars resulted in dramatically more miles-traveled-in-car per person they could be safer per-mile and more efficient per-mile while making some important total outcomes worse. 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.
- prhn 7mo agoAt the risk of sounding ignorant, why didn't the various police cruisers and even the ambulance itself just push the damn thing out of the way? That's what the push bars attached to the front of their vehicles are for.
- snickerbockers 7mo agoBecause its not a trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- johnnyApplePRNG 7mo agoMy thoughts exactly. What an embarrassment. "Authorities" paralyzed by politeness when lives are in the balance.
- AdrianB1 7mo agoAmbulances can be seriously damaged by attempting to do it. Police cruisers can do it, but then they may be sued for damages. I know that cars blocking fire hydrants were a serious problem in the past and owners sued firemen for pulling water hoses through their cars after breaking the windows - the law was not allowing it even if the line through the car was the only option.
- zephen 7mo ago> owners sued firemen for pulling water hoses through their cars after breaking the windows - the law was not allowing it even if the line through the car was the only option. 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.
- mxfh 7mo agoCars block the street all the time, there is ample place to pass the waymo car on the left in the opposing lane, yet those SUV driving humans don't care to move out of the way either, and police just blocks the maneuver area too. 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. https://maps.app.goo.gl/74jF9iDUCXmm9jVE7 https://maps.app.goo.gl/74jF9iDUCXmm9jVE7
- tapoxi 7mo agoYou can arrest a driver for not making space for an emergency vehicle. Who do we arrest here?
- seanmcdirmid 7mo ago> You can arrest a driver for not making space for an emergency vehicle. Who do we arrest here? I get that it is technically possible, but that doesn't happen in practice.
- nine_zeros 7mo ago[dead]
- KennyBlanken 7mo agoThe person who was ultimately responsible for a defective robot operating on our public streets, at a bare minimum.
- general1465 7mo agoA customer?
- aduty 7mo agoStart disabling and towing their cars and watch a solution magically appear.
- 7mo ago
- N_Lens 7mo agoNowaymo!
- dangero 7mo agoThe problem we will encounter with self driving cars is that while they will make less mistakes than humans, they will make different mistakes. 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.
- NewJazz 7mo agoHumans will continue to have a hard time accepting this tradeoff. Are you asserting that humans should accept these, currently not fully known, tradeoffs?
- fragmede 7mo agoWaymo's are not about to run a person or bicyclist over. Just walk in front of them and they'll stop for you to cross. You can always start livestreaming if you don't believe it, the insurance payout would be amazing. (Subject to the laws of physics, naturally.) Source: Haven't been run over yet by one, and I live in one of their current markets.
- macintux 7mo agoGood luck making eye contact with the Waymo to gain confidence that it sees you.
- orliesaurus 7mo agoThis is my town, wow - cant believe someone filmed this whole interaction while there was a shooting a couple of blocks from there... If the ambulance was in a hurry they could have rammed the Waymo, I am sure Google wouldn't have sued for damages. 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.
- snickerbockers 7mo ago>If the ambulance was in a hurry 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.
- rogerrogerr 7mo agoCan't pit a stationary vehicle.
- comrh 7mo agoIsn't it making an illegal u-turn over a double yellow line?
- hansvm 7mo agoKind of. The thing making it illegal is that it's blocking traffic in the process (and potentially missing some visibility requirement or something; it's hard to tell from just the video).
- pimlottc 7mo agoI honestly think u-turns should be illegal is most situations. They are highly unpredictable and block multiple lanes of traffic for the benefit of a single vehicle. It’s especially unnecessary for a GPS-guided vehicle that should easily be able to determine an alternate route.
- KennyBlanken 7mo agoI've never understood why everyone acts like this is some bizarre legal quagmire. 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.
- himata4113 7mo agoI can feel like a lot of people will disagree with you, but this is a pretty fair comparison. The people will disagree the most is the waymo users and I see their POV as well since as they have said: "much better than uber and always on time".
- zephen 7mo agoA few years ago I would have believed this. 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.
- sashank_1509 7mo agoThis is ridiculous. We don’t send surgeons to jail if they mistakenly kill their patient.
- 7mo ago
- orliesaurus 7mo agoSomeone on Austin's subreddit said the following and I think it's the correct take/lens: > 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.
- wongarsu 7mo agoHe makes an excellent job describing all lots of systematic issues here - 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)
- alwaysdoit 7mo agoMostly agree, but choosing not to risk a new collision in order to maybe get there slightly faster (what if you damage the ambulance and are unable to continue?) to maybe help someone does seem like the right call
- dzhiurgis 7mo agowhere's the lidar bois now?
- himata4113 7mo agoEveryone is downvoted in the comments 80% are grey? Even the ones that sound perfectly reasonable? Upvoted one and it was still greyed out which makes me think there's more to it, but maybe I am missing something really obvious.
- hoppyhoppy2 7mo ago>Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- himata4113 7mo agoI've been on the site for years and have never seen something like that even with heated topics, the guidelines are there as a guide, but this was completely out of the ordinary (at least for me).
- escapegoat 7mo agoMy kneejerk, not thought through notion: why not require an emergency override protocol be builtin to road using robots? No thoughts on how this would work exactly, but it would let emergency workers move robot vehicles out of the way.
- aaomidi 7mo agoHow do you propose to build something like that where it’s actually limited to just emergency workers? This is like the fire keys for elevators. You can find them on eBay.
- gruez 7mo agoIt's not too hard to implement them with cryptographic protocols to prevent duplication and apply time/location restrictions to them. Moreover if you really wanted to steal a car, there are much easier ways of doing that, like buying a replica gun on aliexpress then going to your nearest intersection.
- kelvinjps10 7mo agoThe problem is not really that they can get stolen, but remote control, like a bad person gaining access to the car to hit people or something like that.
- gruez 7mo ago>like a bad person gaining access to the car to hit people or something like that. 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/ https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/
- 1718627440 7mo agoNot every social problem needs a technical solution. You can steal cars now, this is solved foremost by most people not being thieves and then second the existence of police for the few people that are.
- ekianjo 7mo agoI thought Lidar solved everything?
- Janicc 7mo agoThis comment section surely would look the same if it had been a Tesla, right?
- 4d4m 7mo agothe astroturfing from employees in here is a bit much
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
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- snickerbockers 7mo agoIt's actually rather telling that HN's greatest fear is accountability.
- ikiris 7mo agoSince teslas have drivers.... no?
- rogerrogerr 7mo agoHeisenberg's Tesla - if it is doing something good, it has a driver. If it is doing something bad, it's autonomous.
- passwordoops 7mo agoDepends who's observing
- cindyllm 7mo ago[dead]
- indecisive_user 7mo ago
- UltraSane 7mo agoThe neat thing about self driving fleets is that when you fix a issue like this ALL the cars start driving better.
- tim-tday 7mo agoFirst responders need the ability to say get the fuck out of here, don’t come back, tell your friends.
- small_model 7mo agoAnother example of Waymo betting wrong, lots of expensive sensors vs Tesla with cameras and NN trained on billions of real miles (i.e. human like autonomy). A Tesla would have moved as it's trained to recognise this situation.
- dabinat 7mo agoTesla’s FSD has a storied history of problems with emergency vehicles.
- bastawhiz 7mo agoMy model 3 routinely recognized blue tinted street lights as "emergency vehicles" and would slow down on the highway for them. And to the best of my knowledge, a Waymo has never plowed into a stopped truck or barrier, killing the occupants.
- zadikian 7mo agoPossibly, but it's apples and oranges because the Tesla isn't self-driving yet. They get to take different risks given someone is behind the wheel.
- small_model 7mo agoI meant the Robotaxi's in Texas that have no driver, which will soon be all in Bay Area and Austin, then roll out to more cities over the year.
- paganel 7mo agoThe tech-bros never learn any humility, we have here an actual example of one of their hellish AI darlings blocking the first responders in their way to the aftermath of a terrorist attack, and what do those tech-bros' do? They continue supporting their hellish AI darling. Ellul was always right about things.
- reenorap 7mo agoI was using Tesla Summon in my car parking lot. It had pulled out of the spot and started to turn to leave the spot when a truck entered the row. My Tesla couldn’t move because of the truck and I couldn’t do anything else so it was a deadlock. Normally if a person was caught in this situation they would have just parked back into the spot or reverse and straighten out but it had already started moving forward so I guess it just froze instead of reacting and there was no option to park back to get out of the way and unblock. Sure the truck could have pulled out but I think the guy was confused why the car was moving with someone in there and just stayed where he was. 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.
- kshacker 7mo ago> but I think the guy was confused why the car was moving with someone in there and just stayed where he was. Wait till Tesla starts driverless delivery of cars
- gbin 7mo agoI'd LoVE to look into it but the news website is pure cancer ads before the video, no sound clock on sound that triggers another ad to you clock back, it restart an ad and you scroll a little bit and a top ad pops up while the bottom one is still there with like 3 words of the article readable. I am sorry I am out.
- kyleee 7mo agoIt’s so perplexing to hear about people seeing ads - do you really not use an ad blocking solution?
- xnx 7mo agoOptions are limited on mobile
- no-name-here 7mo agoIf you’re blocking ads from the news site and suggesting everyone should, are you donating to the organization to ensure the news remains available?
- IAmBroom 7mo agoThose of us at work, or on our phones, have some limitations. Tech elitism isn't cool.
- lupire 7mo agoWhat's happening in that situation? When was the remote assistant engaged?
- mvdtnz 7mo agoAmericans will blame anything but the guns for shooting deaths.
- xnx 7mo agoThe police officer definitely delayed the clearing of the vehicle. It was 20 seconds away from completing its maneuver.