“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!
As a car and motorcycle enthusiast I can’t imagine never wanting to drive again, but then most people driving aren’t their just steering wheel holders using the 30 minute commute to get in their daily reels. Self driving cars are honestly probably better than half those morons that can’t be bothered to looks where they fling their 2 ton steel cage, but if they nail me on my motorcycle they have to pay. If a self driving appliance on wheels slams into me a PR firm will make sure they don’t pay dime to me. Until the people that sign off on this tech are directly responsible for everything their tech does then they should not be in the road point blank. Doesn’t matter how good or bad self driving cars are, with no responsibility to their actions they have no place roaming around the public where they can cause injury and property damage to others.
Exactly. If the only cost to the company for any death or maiming these things cause is money, then it’s just “the cost of doing business”. They’ll only make the cars as safe as the law says they must, and they’ll pay to make those laws as weak as possible, and push the responsibility to anyone else they can.
What if we kissed while being kidnapped in the Waymo being chased by the police?
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.
”never having to drive again”
Y’know I can’t put my finger on it but something tells me that there’s an alternative to that without technofascist wet-dream robocars involved 🤔
You couldn’t pay me to get into a Waymo but you COULD probably convince me to pay a person to get me somewhere. What a novel concept!
Or trains, which I guess is still technically paying a person to get me somewhere in a really removed way.
Let’s go up and keep the train driver company!
Even if there was no other person involved. Making trains self driving makes way more sense and is way more achievable than hoping to automate chaotic road behavior
Self driving trains are far safer than any other option.
Trains are me and my neighbors paying ourselves to get everyone where they’re going in an extremely efficient way!
Waymo is everyone paying tech bros for an inefficient illusion of futurism with a whole lot of negative externalities that is drawing resources away from real progress in order to enrich the few.
Or trollies! Or subways! Or rickshaws!
Even busses are relatively okay.
Where‘s that from.
What form of public transport is this and how do I apply to be the driver?
I’m in process of designing a robot rickshaw. The big difference is that it’ll be pedalled by a shitty robot instead of a human. No I don’t want a regular ebike it’s a rickshaw we do this the hard way
If you live outside of a major city I don’t see an alternative.
Because the alternatives were deliberately dismantled.
And these are said to be the best ones of their kind…
I mean, keeping your passengers away from cops is a very good way to keep them alive in the USA.
Only if they’re not already focused on you. Once they are, trying to get away is likely to get you shot in the back when they fear for their lives because you’re running away or something.
Permit me to reiterate an idea I had the last time a self-driving car did something illegal:
All of these cars are being driven by the same software “driver”. That driver is in contempt of the law. Thus it needs to be punished like any other driver in contempt of the law. All fines to be paid by its representative human or company. All incarceration to be for as long as is necessary for the driver to be rehabilitated. If no such rehabilitation is possible, the driver is permanently banned from driving.
By which I mean, all Waymos need to be taken off the road until they’re provably rehabilitated and it is certain that this won’t happen again.
And if Waymo the company thinks that would be detrimental to their business, tough. Take some responsibility and fix your damn cars.
Also when a human takes remote control, does that person have a driving licence valid in the place they are driving. Because last i heard they were in Indonesia or something. Presumably a taxi drivers licence as they are carrying passing passengers.
I’m sure Waymo’s lawyers would argue that a simple software update would make the “driver” an entirely new entity, and thus free from the fines and incarceration. You’re raising some interesting legal questions that we’d have to figure out
By that logic, I would not legally be the same person as I would be tomorrow since my brain would not have an identical cellular structure as it does today.
Your honor, my client’s largest organ has completely different cells compared to when they were arrested a few weeks ago, and so I move to dismiss the case.
That would make too much sense. They are operating a vehicle, regardless of whether or not said vehicle has a “human driver” there is a person who is allowing said vehicle onto the road and is the person at the top of the chain of authority which sent those vehicles out.
Like, if I sent out a swarm of killer drones no one would argue that it was me who killed people. Of course, in today’s world, you can have insurance companies supercede medical instruction, leading to the deaths of thousands, and that’s not even a news story.
CEOs should be held liable for the products their company produces.
I mean… If they are “people” for the purposes of buying our democracy from us, right?
They can vote now, as well–as long as they live in that one state where all the corporations reside. This shit is so stupid
The article links to another source, but the video they show doesn’t have the elements the passenger describes, like speeding through a construction zone or evading police. All you see in the video is the car moving less than 1 MPH while trying to merge through a clusterfuck of traffic. Is there a longer version of the video somewhere? Because so far, it sounds fishy. Especially with claims from Tesla workers, of all people, commenting on it.
Ah bummer. Though I should mention the Tesla workers comment was just me paraphrasing a different article talking about Tesla’s auto-driving, not Waymo related stuff. I saw the two today, but saved one and not the other.
I’ve edited in a disclaimer to be skeptical. Thank you for catching that!
Ah, I was confused what the insider quote was about and wrote a comment wry some of that ambiguity in mind. Thanks for clearing it up
There is a little bit of video in there of the car going quite fast, but the guy seems to mostly be filming the seat and the floor, so you only glimpse movement out of the window for a moment or two.
Sounds like a fucking chode. I bet he thinks moving out of the way for a cop car means he was being charged.
AI SAID FUCK THE POLICE
Comrade clanker?
NWA
Neuralnet With Attitude.
Humans crash cars all the time, and yet I still know people who are just so chuffed about “not having to drive” because they’re going in their friend’s car.
And yet I still know people who are just so chuffed about “never having to drive again.”
Not having to drive again will be awesome. But Never would I think the first version of that to be the one that gets it right.
You are absolutely correct. I hate driving. I take any opportunity to not do it that I can.
Sue the fucking ever loving shit out of waymo. Kill this fucking company.
I’m all for self driving car tech, but not with goals of perpetual revenue generation.
Give me something that is an addon to any car without any subscription or maintenance fees so I can just have it installed in my own car or in a few family cars, otherwise i’m truly not interested in providing yet another techbro for pay to use technology full of day 1 enshittification goals that include paying workers absolutely nothing.
We all know that by the time real self driving cars are established they will cost as much or more than paying an actual human to do the job and all profit goes into the hands of a few. It’s just like what they’re going for with AI overall.
theoretically comma ai does that, but i would never trust an autopilot car with the current tech.
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.
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.
There will always be idiot pedestrians and bicyclists, what about those?
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.
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.
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.
But they’re fine with being payed to do it to other people. Typical tech bro attitude.
I’d be damn proud of my waymo if it fled the police.
insiders at Tesla saying, along the lines, “You couldn’t pay me to let one of these things drive me somewhere.”
That’s rich coming from cars that don’t use LIDAR and rely solely on cameras.
Well, it was Tesla insiders saying that about Tesla Robotaxis, not waymos.
https://thenextweb.com/news/tesla-insiders-dont-trust-fsd-self-driving-reuters
We have shitty camera sensors on our forklifts at work. Let me tell you how much they suck. I have done various hallucinogenic drugs, well over 1000 times in my life. And I ain’t never seen the things these dumbasses censors be tripping on.
Meanwhile, they stayed silent when some dipshit from the office almost got fucked up the other day because apparently HE is fucking invisible…
I think that just proves your office people are all vampires.
