A stalled Waymo brought Kamala Harris' motorcade to a halt in SF
sfstandard.com
sfstandard.com
I'm more curious why stalled Waymo's aren't being immediately detected by Waymo, and remote drivers/controllers aren't immediately manually addressing the situation.
Or are they, and this would have been resolved in the next 5 minutes anyways?
There was a stuck Waymo at Mason and California near the Fairmont Hotel's main entrance on Mason. The VP was also stopping at the hotel's main entrance. From the footage it isn't even clear that the motorcade stopped, or was delayed by the Waymo since it was more or less at its destination.
No, IIRC they all have law enforcement procedures which probably include ability to move car
Waymo has an emergency team that will guide LE on taking over a Waymo. They'll shut it down, pop the doors, and give them a code to punch in on the wheel controls to disengage it and put it in manual mode to shuttle it out of the way.
Police/Fire etc should absolutely have this ability, but that is a seperate issue.
What if it’s a privately owned bus, or a taxi? Would those companies foot the bill for their disabled vehicle?
"machinery that's broken" doesn't make it ok. Where did the broken machinery come from? It's not a natural event like the weather. It came from someone who placed it there without a supervising agent to be responsible for it.
It's essentially a special form of littering.
Sometimes making an individual responsible just isn't the right call. If you have a car that you know is a bit of a clunker, and it breaks down in the middle of the road, should you be cited? I'm not saying California's decision was bad, but I could imagine a reasonable government pursuing a different strategy too.
This is not the same as knowingly driving a car that is more likely to break down. This is not meeting part of your responsibilities because emergency services will take care of it.
It's abandoning a vehicle the same as with a normal car where you didn't abandon it through no fault of your own, but because you intentionally dumped it somewhere.
Waymo didn't intentionally break a car in exactly the same way a drunk driver didn't intentionally crash a car.
"Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a bill that allows law enforcement to cite driverless car companies for traffic violations."
https://sfstandard.com/2024/09/28/waymo-halts-kamala-harris-...
The closest analogy would be when the driver of an ordinary car becomes incapacitated.
In that case, the police or someone acting on the polices behalf can and will move the vehicle and then the owner pays for that later. But there IS an operator who is responsible for the vehicle unless some misfortune happens.
A self driving car sseems more like letting other people deal with any problems you caused by letting that car loose on the road.
Basically the same as parking a regular car somewhere it's not supposed to be and leaving it.
"Oh if this car I left in front of the firehouse is in the way, just call this number and I'll tell you some instructions how to unlock the car and drive it somewhere else for me."
While I'm not against self-driving taxis I have some serious concerns over how these cars will impact emergency response in an earthquake or fire if the cars become more prevalent.
More than meatbags?
The Meatbags most certainly do not now how to get out of the way.
This is true for everywhere I have lived in North America. Outside of NYC it isn't so much people not caring, as people not realizing that the siren is mostly to tell you to clear the way. A lot of people just take it to mean "stop where you are", when the actual intention is "move out of the way, then stop". I travel along a route near a hospital frequently, and it is incredibly common for people to be stopped in front of an ambulance, blocking the path, while the ambulance blasts their horn trying to get them to move out of the way.
https://www.ktvu.com/news/cars-drive-in-munis-sunset-tunnel-...
I helped push a drivered car out of an intersection Thursday.