alt Hacker NewsWe already accept that it’s fine for human drivers to block emergency services and we generally refuse to build, say, bus and bike lines that can be used by emergency services.
So the uproar over AV’s blocking emergency vehicles seems incredibly manufactured or inconsistent, much like the hoopla over AI and water.
e.g. You can take anyone complaining about this and you’ll find they didn’t care about emergency vehicles or water until just now regarding one thing. I’d like to see some consistency.
The difference is blocking emergency vehicles in predictable, high traffic areas that can be intentionally avoided vs randomly blocking an entire road because you couldn’t handle a weird event.
People actually think hard about these problems. The entire point of my post is that it is trivial to mitigate.
I was in the middle of the SF blackout, and witnessed the Waymos stopped at lights and actually commended Waymo for handling the emergency so well. At the same time, I’ve seen many ambulances get blocked just seconds away from the hospital because of Waymos unable to navigate complex intersections like oak/fell and stanyan.