The robotaxis are coming... the driverless car, AV thread. Waymo, Zoox, and others

we should prob have a separate thread for driverless cars given the Waymo growth?

― sleeve, Wednesday, June 25, 2025 1:48 PM (five hours ago)

As someone who bikes a LOT in San Francisco, I'll say this much: the Waymos are by far and away the safest cars to bike near and around. They are very cautious, drive slow and politely, always let me move in front of them, and I generally feel super safe around them. This has NOT been the case for many years around most human drivers and especially old school cabbies when they were more of a thing prior to 2015. Nearly got run over by them a LOT. If Ubers are replaced with robots like they replaced cabbies, as a cyclist I'm all for it.

I've yet to ride in a Waymo though.

the previous discussion

As an SF pedestrian my opinion on Waymos is...neutral. But not thrilled, honestly. For a couple of years in the early pandemic, as I did my morning walk, I saw a prototype regularly out at the same time I was, with a human driver clearly putting it through its general paces, getting it used to the blocks and areas, things like that. Vaguely interesting to note. But the couple of times I've been near them when out and about is weirdly uncanny, and I can't see myself ever actually using one. As was said in the discussion sleeve linked, knowing that any accident will involve Alphabet hiding behind as many lawyers as possible to avoid either paying up or admitting fault doesn't thrill me much. (And I don't knock octobeard's point at all but my sis, who lives in the city and is a biker herself, was in an accident the other year -- while driving in this case. The other driver was very much at fault and there were recordings to readily prove it, and while it took a while for insurance claims to go through and the legal niceties to be observed, pretty much that other driver's insurance knew they'd have to pay and did, earlier this year. I half suspect if it were a Waymo then by now Alphabet would be on its twentieth motion of 'but what IS an accident really' and trying to fob my sis off with a much smaller settlement.)

I do vaguely worry about them being hacked and turned into 1.5 tonne killing machines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOVhz1PllJU

you're leaving out the part where a driverless car does not have a driver

― a (waterface), Wednesday, 25 June 2025 20:40 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I didn't really get this as a slam-dunk, is the point a) you need a soul to drive, who will be listening to Springsteen records if it's all robots or b) robots will be able to drive better than people but it's important that more people die on the roads.

it's not meant to be a slam dunk. cars should have drivers. don't know why you're being all cute with the Springsteen reference--which doesn't really make sense. i also don't recall saying anything about people dying--but if that's your point, the idea that robots can be better drivers than people, and will kill less people on the roads--is foolish

sorry, how is that foolish ?

how about we take the tactic where you explain to me and give evidence that robots will eventually be better drivers than people and that would should continue to invest time money and infastructure in cars versus other forms of public transportation

Is there anything that robots cannot do better than humans ? We're early in the technology and safety is already presented as an argument in favor of AV, so imagine in 5-10 years.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48526-4
https://citiesofthefuture.eu/driverless-cars-far-safer-than-human-drivers/

Maybe you meant more as an ethical concern though ? I certainly feel differently for Elaine Herzberg (first person to die in an AV road accident) than Bridget Driscoll (first person to die in a road accident).

Ethical is not quite the right word, I mean establishing the chain of responsibility / liability.

Of course it comes down to ethics, because people are not going to treat these cars the same. Example here, go to about 4:40. Waymos are programmed to be safe--which has a limitation when you're trying to merge on a highway and for a few seconds, a human driver would do a slightly "unsafe" thing like butting into the merge lane versus the Waymo which just sits there. I don't know how you fix that one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4ldcJmf1a0

Is there anything that robots cannot do better than humans ?

lol

make a meal
write a book
create a piece of art
love another human

also that second study you linked to WAS WRITTEN BY WAYMO

Recently saw this article about bringing these things to London

https://www.businessinsider.com/i-took-chaotic-robotaxi-ride-through-london-impressive-one-question-2025-6

The city's hodgepodge of Roman and Victorian roads are a mess of cycle lanes and pedestrian crossings, with complex road layouts that often serve more as a rough guide than a rulebook for the millions of drivers passing through the city each day.

For Wayve, that complexity is the point. The company says its AI driver — which runs on an end-to-end AI model, an approach also adopted by Tesla — is capable of generalizing and reacting to the physical world in the same way a human would, unlike rivals like Waymo, which rely on high-definition maps and sensors.

Kendall said that this allows Wayve's software to drive anywhere, even places it hasn't seen before, and deal with the kind of unexpected encounters that are an everyday occurrence on the streets of a major city like London.

"I can't wait to see another autonomy company come into London because I think it's extremely challenging," said Kendall.

"The advantage of starting in London is that we've been forced to develop a system that can operate on complex roads and deal with all of these unexpected scenarios," he added.

In the first few minutes of our drive, we encountered multiple jaywalkers, including several who darted out across the street without warning in front of the robotaxi. We also had to inch through narrow gaps between rows of parked cars.

And yeah this thing is going to cause crashes on the North Circular within hours.

Also there have by definition never been any "jaywalkers" in England and the fact that this prick doesn't know that say a lot about quite what a prick he is.

Also 'hodgepodge' instead of 'hotchpotch'

The simple reality is that while AVs might drive more safely than humans under optimal conditions, conditions are rarely optimal, either due to human, infrastructure, or environmental factors. This fact alone means that they will never be able to fully integrate into current systems.

That they also stifle investment in public transportation infrastructure and further silo people away from each other is another compelling argument against them.

And finally, I admit that I am also opposed to them because unlike many people here, I actually *enjoy* driving, and I always have. I walk and ride my bike quite a bit, and I take public transit quite often, too, but I love my little ten year old Subaru. Even in the context of Philadelphia, which has some of the worst roads and scariest drivers of any city in the US, I still love driving.

I guess this is maybe for the controversial opinions thread but my thinking is that there are way too many dangerous/distracted/bad drivers out there and it seems very likely to me that autonomous vehicles will on average be much better than humans at driving. For every suboptimal condition where an autonomous vehicle might perform worse than human drivers there are probably dozens of totally normal conditions where human drivers make mistakes or drive dangerously where a robot driver will do much better so overall I think AVs come out ahead (if not now, then eventually, inevitably).

All that being said, I of course think investing in mass transit will always be a better use of resources than investing in individual cars, no matter how they are being driven.

Aren't computers way worse than people at interpreting and making decisions about the VAST NUMBERS OF THINGS we see and interact with in everyday life?

My understanding, which might be out of date now, was that the only practical use for fully autonomous driving would be for ex long-haul trucking on optimized highways where traffic largely follows norms and drivers interact with each other much less. So trucks would drive between nexuses where freight would have to be picked up by human drivers. (Honestly I wish this would happen in NYC because full size semis regularly go down streets they're not cleared to use and get stuck.)

I guess I should make clear that I don't think a robot driver will be necessarily be better than a human driver at his best, just that a robot driver will be better than a typical tired and distracted driver who is speeding because they are late for work. Humans are very good at plenty of things, including driving, but we're just not always operating at 100%.

I don't know, maybe it's just that I live in a city with a bad driver reputation. I feel like the robots would do better even if I think they will be far from perfect.

Remember that driverless taxis are operating in multiple cities in the US right now (and have been driving around in those cities for 2+ years now). This isn't an argument about IF they can handle real-world conditions, they already are. More data is needed on their safety record vs human drivers but early signs are that while they get in more minor accidents, they cause fewer serious/fatal injuries per driver mile at their current level of ability and are getting better. Human drivers, it needs to be said, are getting worse, especially post-COVID.

it's not meant to be a slam dunk. cars should have drivers. don't know why you're being all cute with the Springsteen reference--which doesn't really make sense. i also don't recall saying anything about people dying--but if that's your point, the idea that robots can be better drivers than people, and will kill less people on the roads--is foolish

― a (waterface), Thursday, June 26, 2025 6:43 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

sorry, how is that foolish ?

― Naledi, Thursday, June 26, 2025 6:45 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

how about we take the tactic where you explain to me and give evidence that robots will eventually be better drivers than people and that would should continue to invest time money and infastructure in cars versus other forms of public transportation

― a (waterface)

airplanes

autopilot on airplanes

humans are horrible drivers, and we're getting worse

i also think ai-guided autonomous everything is bad. i also wish there were no cars, that everyone walked and biked, and that public transportation in the country i live in wasn't destroyed in order to facilitate as many cars as possible. just getting that part out there, because that counterpoint always comes.

but in the meantime, it might be fun to go back to when autopilot became a feature on airplanes and see what people said about it

(yes, i also i understand that autopilot on a plane is different than the problems of doing it on highways with cars and a million different objects and weird situations)

(but i also think it's a hilarious self-own when people jump on some self-driving car accident/death as proof that it will never work, while ignoring the tens of thousands who die every year in the u.s. from their own terrible driving, let alone the much larger number of people who get severly injured)

again not saying anything about accidents, deaths, injuries, etc. i am just saying show me where a robot is going to be a better driver than a human and show me your work.

humans are horrible drivers, and we're getting worse

https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-2023-traffic-fatalities-2024-estimates

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today released its early estimates of traffic fatalities for 2024, projecting that 39,345 people died in traffic crashes. This represents a decrease of about 3.8% compared to the 40,901 fatalities reported in 2023 and marks the first time since 2020 that the number of fatalities fell below 40,000.

The quarterly fatality declines that began in the second quarter of 2022 also continued, with the fourth quarter of 2024 marking the 11th consecutive quarterly decrease in traffic fatalities.

“It’s encouraging to see that traffic fatalities are continuing to fall from their COVID pandemic highs. Total road fatalities, however, remain significantly higher than a decade ago, and America’s traffic fatality rate remains high relative to many peer nations,” NHTSA Chief Counsel Peter Simshauser said. “To reduce fatalities further, USDOT is working closely to partner with the law enforcement community to enhance traffic enforcement on our roads, including speeding, impairment, distraction, and lack of seatbelt use.”

but there ya go, there's your accident stats. we are still high compared to other countries, but i would imagine that's because we have more drivers

AND BIGGER MORE DANGEROUS CARS

yeah, the baseline here (speaking just about the USA) is that with human-piloted cars there is a vehicle fatality about every 12 minutes. consider just some categories of fatalities that would be entirely eliminated with driverless vehicles - distracted driving, speeding, and drunk driving are the top three causes of vehicle fatalities and autonomous cars do not do those things.

what is driving off the road and into a fire hydrant if not "distracted driving"?

yeah, the baseline here (speaking just about the USA) is that with human-piloted cars there is a vehicle fatality about every 12 minutes.

There are plenty of ways to solve this problem that don't involve robot cars and making money for huge corporations to sell us cars and taxis that drive themselves

consider just some categories of fatalities that would be entirely eliminated with driverless vehicles - distracted driving, speeding, and drunk driving are the top three causes of vehicle fatalities and autonomous cars do not do those things.

sure but now replace drunk driving with a new category "a computer made an error and drove a Cybertruck onto a sidewalk and killed a bunch of pedestrians not to mention the people in the car"

xp
those aren't my accident stats. there's a lot of ways to look at stats, and a lot of ways to cite them.

check out "national statistics", here, and look at the excel sheet: https://cdan.dot.gov/tsftables/tsfar.htm#

it only goes through 2023 and back to 2010, but per capita (number of people, number of vehicle miles traveled, etc), fatalities have only gone up. injury rates have gone slightly down.
--

but again, i think all of that is pointless. is 30,000-50,000 deaths per year from cars the gold standard? plus 2 million or so injuries? is there a way to transport people that doesn't kill that many, every year? again, i fucking hate the ai stuff everywhere, i'm just saying, i wouldn't mind if less people died

sure but now replace drunk driving with a new category "a computer made an error and drove a Cybertruck onto a sidewalk and killed a bunch of pedestrians not to mention the people in the car"

well, if you include "fantasies I had about autonomous vehicles killing tons of people" in your stats then they're gonna skew towards human drivers being better but I was thinking we'd stick to those causes of vehicle fatalities that actually happen in large numbers

sure but now replace drunk driving with a new category "a computer made an error and drove a Cybertruck onto a sidewalk and killed a bunch of pedestrians not to mention the people in the car"

and sorry (this is my least popular opinion here, or one of them i think), but yeah go ahead and do that! replace the drunk driving category, which is a really high number, and replace it with "computer error", which i think will end up being a much lower number

xp

there is a way, it’s called rapid rail transport and local public transit infrastructure

xpost once again i will remind you that i agree with you that fewer people should die and that is not the argument i am having, but it seems to be the argument everyone wants to have because having robots drive cars is kind of indefensable but sure go ahead and continue to bring up the grim spectre of death and avoid the idea that you have to mount up a defense of why technology should be allowed to drive cars

there is a way, it’s called rapid rail transport and local public transit infrastructure

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

also did it occur to any of you robotstans the idea that there are fewer crashes with the robot cars because THERE ARE FEWER ROBOT CARS ON THE ROAD

i also think ai-guided autonomous everything is bad. i also wish there were no cars, that everyone walked and biked, and that public transportation in the country i live in wasn't destroyed in order to facilitate as many cars as possible. just getting that part out there, because that counterpoint always comes.

― z_tbd, Thursday, June 26, 2025 11:23 AM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

also did it occur to any of you robotstans the idea that there are fewer crashes with the robot cars because THERE ARE FEWER ROBOT CARS ON THE ROAD

yes it did waterface

jfc

why post

me, i mean

why post

like LLMs and other AI models, it comes down to people who are resigned to it and those who are dead set against it, and imho those who are resigned to it have no spiritual backbone

did anyone read anything i posted

i might ask you the same question

didn't you incorrectly cite stats in a really obviously cherry-picked fashion, ignored everything i said about wishing cars didn't exist in the first place, and then called me a robotstan?

I don't have animosity to spare for z or hazel or anyone here. I save mine for people (I have heard at least one person say this) who say "I want driverless cars because I personally dislike driving and want to be driven." INSTEAD OF LIVING SOMEWHERE ELSE OR IMPROVING TRANSIT WITH YOUR CULTURAL CAPITAL AND MONEY. Once again we see the uptake of "AI" driven by people's desire to be served, to live and feel like whatever passes for our current aristocracy.

did anyone read anything i posted

i did, z, but some of your other posts betray being resigned to AVs and okay with then in some ways.

yeah! i'm into the idea of fewer people dying

it's because of my spiritual emptiness

what i've read about the obama cafe standards is from a car tech point of view: it's really hard to achieve the fuel economy standards mandated by carb on the car side, at least for ICE cars at the sizes that american prefer. modern start/stop engines, the move to really tight tolerances and the use of really thin oils are all a direct result of trying to meet cafe.

i think there was maybe a world in which we thought we were moving more towards european/japanese size cars in terms of size and efficiency because of theses regs, consumer preference be damned, but the automobile lobby and americans preference for texas-sized everything won out.

there is also the x-factor that is hard to quantify but reads true to me of (i) boomers being the majority buyer for new automobiles, being the group with teh most diposable cash to do so and (ii) boomers having aging hips and knees which make it harder to get in/out of sedans as opposed to SUVs and trucks

tbh the one or two times per year where i rent a car i try and get one of those smaller type SUVs. i learned to drive in a honda CR-V so that feeling of hovering over the road appeals to me, i get it. however you have people driving cars now where they can't see what's in front of them and we all just sorta act as if that's normal

But some of the pro-AV sentiment itt seems to me to be based in a sense that our terrible vehicular status quo cannot be changed, but there's a certain dynamic capitalist momentum and/or hype curve driving the adoption of AVs that could be harnessed or exploited to achieve societally beneficial outcomes that, again, seem impossible in our current political economic state.

yeah i think this is a fair summation of where i stand. you mentioned the impact of widespread adoption of AVs on mass transit and labour. i think the impact will be: this is america, get fucked on both. and to be clear, that was the american position on mass transit and labour before AVs were being rolled out: hey, get fucked, this is america.

i don't have much faith in regulations due to the power of the automobile lobby and have you seen what's happening in the white house lately? i think it's a stroke of luck that the company that's leading the AV charge right now in america is ostensibly safety-minded, although the report on them turning the 'drive like a BMW' dial up is a bit worrying to me. i don't necessarily trust waymo's data since it's self-reported but i do know that if there were to be an at-fault waymo fatality it would be news. and i do know that waymo's been open to the public since last year (and was in invite-only mode for a few years before that) and so far the most real-world incidents i've seen are the dead animals. i'm sure if there were more waterface would link us to them.

someone high up at waymo said a few weeks ago that their position on when a waymo kills a human is a when not if situation--i actually think it's a decent position for them to take on this sort of thing. and yes we are not going to regulate ourselves out of this mess, what's more likely to happen is waymo will eventually go bankrupt before any substantial regs will happen, and same with AI in general

it's a real bummer because i think investing in public transportation is so great but dayo is right this is american get fucked.

It occurs to me that our entire urban grid is still based on 1880s equestrian transport and the robo cars still fall under that same framework.. the tech is new but it's still people in their own little private transport rather than something truly transformative

waymo is owned/backed by google, they have infinite money to play with xp

waymo is owned/backed by google, they have infinite money to play with

almost added "or stop services altogether" but I thought my post was long enough and didn't want to be too pedantic. ;)

google works on lots of different projects and drops them all the time. i'm sure we all remember the google book project where they were going to digitize the world's libraries but now all that stuff is on internet archive (the stuff that's out of copyright that is, the rest of it got taken down by the Author's Guild). and no one looks at books via the google book project anyway, it's worse than useless.

anyway my point here is waymo may have lots of money and shit now but if they decide it's no longer worth it for them they will stop.

yeah that's not going to happen

what, the google book project? you're right they abandoned it years ago just like Google Plus, Google Play Movies, Google Glass and Gchat

no i meant google is just not gonna stop waymo services altogether. they're going to make a lot of money on this. other companies will jump in (already happening, uber just signed a deal to buy robotaxis from a company called avride to use in dallas) but they have a big early mover advantage

yes i was joking i know what you meant. they are not going to make enough money for this to be profitable for them they are operating on a significant profit loss as i understand it also Google has a reputation of dropping big projects when it's no longer financially/legally feasable for them to continue

https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2025/06/03/waymo-to-separate-from-google/

read the whole article tho that's just a forbes "speculation"

the doj decision they are talking about in the forbes articles happened in september, they didn't ask alphabet to divest of waymo (or chrome, which it was mostly about)

i can't tell the future but feel confident predicting that the robotaxi/AV industry will not suddenly disappear due to lack of profitability. somewhat less confident but still confident that alphabet in particular will stay in the game and not sell of waymo. as dan said, they have infinite cash, they're playing the long game to get market share, so what's the rush in terms of profitability? uber became profitable in 2023-24

the forbes article says that waymo posted a 4 billion loss the last year. google as a whole posted 100 billion of profit on 350 billion of revenue in the same year.

the antitrust angle is slightly more plausible but that's like a 10-20 year threat not a next year threat

no one looks at books via the google book project anyway

surely this was instrumental in training AI, etc? just because something doesn't have utility as a consumer-facing product doesn't mean it doesn't add value to a company

I feel the book project was a means of improving a lot of internal tech, like ORC scanning accuracy (which could be used in random photos in Google Images), Google translate, now Gemini, etc. For the big companies funding these AV endeavors, they're loss leaders that will generate residual revenue in other ways on top of simply being a ride share service, which until it was profitable was an albatross on Uber/Lyft's necks for years even after they went public.

OCR not ORC hah

It occurs to me that our entire urban grid is still based on 1880s equestrian transport

Depending what city we're taking about, a lot of it is probably based on 1890s-1920s electric streetcar transport! Huge swaths of what are now "inner-ring" suburbs are relatively high-density streetcar suburbs. Though a lot of them have suffered road-widening and other downgrades in the decades since the tram infrastructure got ripped out (or just paved over). So the good news is, the truly transformative thing already happened, and the urban landscape is there waiting to be reactivated.

not sure if this was answered but you can sit in either the front or back of a Waymo. you can sit behind the wheel, but you get a lot less gawking that way.

surely this was instrumental in training AI, etc? just because something doesn't have utility as a consumer-facing product doesn't mean it doesn't add value to a company

https://www.npr.org/2025/09/05/g-s1-87367/anthropic-authors-settlement-pirated-chatbot-training-material

If Anthropic hadn’t settled, they would have likely gone bankrupt

We were looking at a strong possibility of multiple billions of dollars, enough to potentially cripple or even put Anthropic out of business," said William Long, a legal analyst for Wolters Kluwer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2XoMKwZE3o

a lot of it is probably based on 1890s-1920s electric streetcar transport

very true, I live right above a major street that was obviously graded to allow streetcars to climb, with big sweeping curves etc. There's a big conspiracy theory about why California ditched streetcars en masse (except San Francisco & San Diego) that has to do with a consortium of oil/tire/diesel companies wanting to bring busses in to replace the electric streetcars, for their profits

That said, a lot of streetcars were originally pulled by horses so my 'equestrian' comment still stands

not sure if this was answered but you can sit in either the front or back of a Waymo. you can sit behind the wheel, but you get a lot less gawking that way.

― encino morricone (majorairbro), Wednesday, December 3, 2025 6:38 PM (one hour ago)

my sincere thanks!

There's a big conspiracy theory about why California ditched streetcars en masse (except San Francisco & San Diego) that has to do with a consortium of oil/tire/diesel companies wanting to bring busses in to replace the electric streetcars, for their profits

Wasn't Judge Doom behind this? Ended up annihilating Toon Town in the process too

General Motors, and others, absolutely stepped into the streetcar space; GM and was convicted on criminal conspiracy charges for monopolizing the market on buses (sold to cities to replace the streetcars). AIUI, the only part that's theory is whether they acquired the streetcar companies *specifically* in order to dismantle them and sell more buses. Tho it seems pretty plausible to me!

The richer question is whether the streetcars would have died out anyway. I'd say probably yeah, though it probably would have taken longer. Of course, that die-off would be due to the larger forcing of an auto-shaped America, which was very much the project of lobbying from the automobile, gas, and suburban real estate sectors - so, same diff imo. I believe Nicholas Dagen Bloom's recent book The Great American Transist Disaster explores that in depth, telling it as a story of municipal disinvestment in transit as a policy choice.

I don't know, they're still in heavy use in San Francisco... granted it's a pre-auto town, but San Diego has a pretty lively system

there is also the x-factor that is hard to quantify but reads true to me of (i) boomers being the majority buyer for new automobiles, being the group with teh most diposable cash to do so and (ii) boomers having aging hips and knees which make it harder to get in/out of sedans as opposed to SUVs and trucks

Uh, it depends on how tall someone is! My boomer mom is average height and has knees so bad she uses a walker… no way is she going to have an easier time with a vehicle with an elevated chassis. So maybe this is relevant for men, idk.Most boomers I see driving around here drive sedans. The only old people I see driving trucks/SUVs are (mostly) men who would feel the downgrade to a sedan/compact car as a loss of identity/dick. In fact, the adequacy of their dicks is less key to their sense of self as truck/SUV drivers.

But another SUV thing historically was that if they were above a certain size/weight, they were exempt from expensing limitations for vehicles on tax returns. This was the topic of many “THE IRS DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK!!” articles/youtubes

… this was back when there were still deductions for unreimbursed employee expenses and more people itemized so that it was applicable to more than just the self-employed.

Waymo coming to Baltimore: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/03/waymo-baltimore-pittsburgh-stlouis.html

guarantee that they will pull out of Philly within the year

why - you think they won't be able to navigate sansom st?

They’ll be given a warm Philly welcome I’m sure.

In August 2015, a hitchhiking robot named hitchBOT was vandalized beyond repair in Philadelphia, ending its first US tour after two weeks.

excited for these things, currently right-coded, to become left-coded. giving it 2 years, tops.

rob: you are not allowed to sit in the driver's seat (https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9059053?hl=en). the majority of single riders I've seen sit in the back. tbh I don't think I've ever seen a single rider sit in the passenger seat.

i sat in the front when i first took one, so i could take a video of the steering wheel doing its thing

away in a manger, no room for a bed

https://www.ktvu.com/news/baby-born-waymo-san-francisco-autonomous-vehicle-company-says

aaaand another one:

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — A viral video showing a man being discovered hiding in the trunk of a Waymo by a female passenger is raising concerns about the safety of the driverless taxis. The video was originally posted to TikTok under the caption, “I ordered a Waymo for my daughter and a random was in the trunk.”

In the video, the female passenger can be heard asking the man why he’s in the trunk.

The man tells the woman he was put in the trunk and couldn’t get out.

“Who put you in?” the woman asks.

“The people,” he responds.

Huh I thought the computer hardware was in the trunk wtf

Thanks for the tip on the Bloom book, DC!

so

Tesla’s Robotaxi is crashing roughly once every 40,000 miles so far in Austin, and that's with a human safety supervisor in vehicle.

For comparison, the average human driver in the US crashes about once every 500,000 miles.

https://electrek.co/2025/12/15/tesla-reports-another-robotaxi-crash-even-with-supervisor/

I wonder what the economics of deploying a fleet of riderless bike/scooters are versus developing/making $20 bikes.

xp Teslas don't use lidar right?

xp officially you can use the waymo trunk. I do often w/ my folding bike.

Obv not intended for humans though.

The power went out in SF yesterday and the waymos just stopped … cue REM Everybody Hurts

Yeah we went out and it was a shitshow. Hopefully they learn from this and address the issue. If an earthquake hits it could be a serious problem.

Oh yeah the earthquake thing is a good point. Dunno what they can do about this other than satellite uplinks - and the guy who would sell them the uplink is competing with them.

my understanding was that it wasn't that they were disconnected from the internet (cell towers seem pretty redundant) but the lack of working traffic lights caused them to jam up

lol