alt Hacker NewsA School District Tried to Help Train Waymos to Stop for School Buses
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"A School District Tried to Help Train Waymos to Stop for School Buses. It Didn’t Work."
> A preliminary report by the NTSB published in early March found that one ensuing incident, on January 12, occurred after a Waymo remote assistant, a Michigan-based human tasked with “helping” the software when it was struggling on the road, incorrectly told the robotaxi that the school bus ahead of it didn’t have active signals on. Six vehicles passed the school bus while it was stopped, the agency said. It is still investigating.
I will let you judge for yourself here what the "right" thing for the Waymo to do was... but let's think critically about how Waymos work in the real world, benchmarked against other real drivers dealing with real life issues.
How come Waymo keeps getting to break traffic laws repeatedly but everyone else does not
Obviously unacceptable to flaut the law. I do wonder what the risk profile is. Obviously kids can be eratic and unexpected, and coming out racing from behind a flat nosed pusher bus wouldn't be totally unheard of. But also do low key wonder if the Waymo's response time and speed might be enough so that there's not much real risk. The law and expectations ought be followed! But I am low key curious too, if perhaps the Waymo's infinite attention & seeming caution would mitigate the risk adequately.
The fact that it is passing stopped school buses does rather suggest that perhaps as cautious as it is, it still isn't smart enough to be cautious in the right ways.
So I assume Waymo will be immediately banned from any residential areas until they can demonstrate the ability to follow the laws of the road?
The problem is there is zero enforcement. We know the vehicle is not safe around schoolchildren so the appropriate incentive needs to be applied to get the issue addressed.
> Waymo, Cummings says, “should not be allowed to operate around schools during school pickup and drop-off until they get this problem fixed and can demonstrate it with specific tests.”
This commentor must misunderstand the situation. School busses regularly stop to pickup and drop off students on streets near where they live; and there's generally schools all around. If Waymos can't properly respond to school bus signals, they need to not operate in areas where these pickups and drop offs happen, which is not exclusively near schools.