Waymo might be expanding its autonomous taxi services to northern cities like Minneapolis and Detroit, but back in Santa Monica, the company’s strained relationship with local residents has reached a breaking point.
According to the Santa Monica Daily Press, the city council has issued a formal demand that Waymo end overnight operations at two charging facilities there. City counselors unanimously approved the measure, which doesn’t mention Waymo by name, but instead orders two lots the company uses to charge and dispatch vehicles to cease nighttime operations.
It’s odd that the thing that terrifies you is that nobody is able to be punished. Grandma and her dog are dead in both scenarios. We want whatever will cause that scenario to happen the least.
I’d rather 1 grandma is run over without a clearly responsible party than 10 grandmothers be killed while 10 drivers are sent to prison.
A person who’s not paying attention or drunk is always going to exist no matter how many grandmas are flattened. The software bug can be fixed and sensors can be improved.
Self-driving cars are the worst they will ever be and they will only get better. Human drivers are not going to improve.
The problem isn’t that nobody is able to be punished, its that the punishment isn’t anywhere near severe enough to incentivize fixing the issues that caused grandma to get hit.
When negligence is a small fine and a finger wag of “make sure this doesn’t happen again”, they aren’t going to do more than lip service claiming they will fix the issue, maybe fire someone at the bottom of the ladder to prove their sincerity.
Until it’s no longer more profitable to make their cars safer, companies will make their cars safer, I agree. That’s the summation of my reasoning. As companies attempt to relieve themselves of their need for humans, the math becomes murkier. “Because they’ve become safer over time, they’ll continue to do so indefinitely” doesn’t work for me.
Until it’s no longer more profitable to make their cars safer, or regulation requires they make their cars safer, or a competitor decides to take market share by making their cars safer.
That’s fine because that’s not what I said.
Which of these do you disagree with?:
Human driving capability has shown no indication of improving.
Autonomous vehicle capabilities are showing indications of improving.
It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to recognize that these measures of performance will eventually intersect (unless you think there’s something fundamentally special about human driving that is impossible to replicate).
In the specific locations and conditions that waymo is allowed to operate, they are absolutely safer! And I expect self driving cars to improve up to the point that they are economically incentivized to do so.
I’ll say again, I don’t disagree with you, I just need personal accountability to feel assured of the trend not being bucked, and I do not expect that to ever be on offer in the United States where money is equivalent to your voice
It’s a systemic issue with Waymo and any all the taxi “disruptors.” Choices are made to put people in danger in order to extract profit by using cars AT ALL that is the problem, not who or what is operating them. Technology jesus isn’t going to save grandma.
How is this any different than a person operating a cab, or a business choosing to offer food delivery?
Operating any motor vehicle in public puts people in danger and yet many people profit from the operating of motor vehicles.
What’s the difference here?