• srasmus@slrpnk.net
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    3 days ago

    As someone who’s worked in an engineering field. This response is almost certainly saying “we currently can’t do this reliably” and hoping nobody will force them to.

  • Lodespawn@aussie.zone
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    3 days ago

    They are basically admitting their taxis can’t handle pedestrians and small vehicles. Do they see motorbikes? If they can’t be programmed to deal with bike lanes, can they also not be programmed to use slip lanes correctly? What about merge points? How do they go with English multilane 6-way roundabouts?

    • tempest@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      They could, they just don’t want to. The reality is the Uber driver dropping someone off doesn’t think twice about pulling into a bike lane and blocking a main road with the 4 ways.

      This is one of those things that exposes the fact that almost no driver drives to the letter of the law and in fact break the traffic laws pretty often.

      • Lodespawn@aussie.zone
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        3 days ago

        That’s fine because humans can be held responsible for their actions. Who is held responsible when a waymo kills 6 people in a peloton or drags some poor guy who was just on his way to work for 6 blocks? Will the company receive a mostly inconsequential fine and carry on with their fuckery?

        • njordomir@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          As an officer of the anti-clanker brigade I am preemptively ticketing them for bad vibes & bad faith in the court of common sense. If you can’t safely and legally operate a motor vehicle, you don’t belong behind the wheel of one. That holds true for humans, animals, robots, etc.

          They need to stop testing unfinished tech like this in life/death environments. I haven’t seen it done, and I certainly don’t condone it except in minecraft, but when protesters were “coning” cars, I always thought it was a wasted billboard for cross-cultural economic solidarity. If they put some labor union phone numbers on there for the outsourced overseas operators tasked with getting the car unstuck to read, their situation might be improved as well.

        • tempest@lemmy.ca
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          3 days ago

          Yeah, I’m not saying they are right or wrong it’s just that Google is in the Uber business and wants to play by the same rules.

          Uber just gets to tacitly ignore the issues and pretend like it’s the drivers fault ( which is a nice feature of the gig economy bullshit)

  • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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    2 days ago

    Now tell them how cyclists are technically entitled to the entire lane, but how that actually plays out is highly dynamic and relies on communication

  • Town@lemmy.zip
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    3 days ago

    I’m sure the waymo riders would be happy to be dropped off in the the car lane too.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      I agree with the sentiment, but friendly reminder: there is no such thing as a “car lane.” There are bus-only lanes and there are bike-only lanes, where cars are not allowed, but the other lanes are “general-purpose lanes” and are not for the exclusive use of cars. Buses and bikes are welcome there too.

      It’s an easy slip to make because it’s conveniently short, but “car lane” is car-centric loaded language and we shouldn’t cede that framing of the debate to the car-brains.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          But drivers must love having cyclists share the lane with them: obviously, they oppose bike lanes because they can’t bear to be separated from us!

      • Mac@mander.xyz
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        3 days ago

        Judging by the [lack of] consequences for the current ones: ∞

            • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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              3 days ago

              Briefly, they lied to the NHTSA about dragging a pedestrian 20 ft and pinning them after another car knocked them into the vehicle’s path, and while they just narrowly avoided criminal charges, that incident was the final straw that caused the company to unravel, fully revealing an internal culture that flouted safety, ultimately ending with parent company GM pulling funding and recycling the technology for their assisted driving efforts while scrapping AV plans.

  • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    Doesn’t this kind of lock them out from a lot of markets?

    Seems like admitting defeat on self driving, you know the one we were suppose to have 8 years ago

    • axx@slrpnk.net
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      2 days ago

      I don’t think that’s how it works. Decision-makers are rarely that principled. Instead, it’ll just part of the downsides “everyone needs to accept” as a tradeoff for this “inevitable technological progress”.

      Kranzberg’s “laws” of technology would like to say something here, but decision-makers can’t hear them over all the lobybing.

  • tangentism@beehaw.org
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    3 days ago

    Then Waymo shouldnt be surprised if cyclists destroy their vehicles because they can’t obey traffic regulations and observe basic human safety

      • axx@slrpnk.net
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        2 days ago

        They surely detect flats, all modern cars are filled with sensors and do that. The question is more how many flats do they need to detect before calling for help.

  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Total horseshit. The entire point of AVs needs to be increased safety, which is the antithesis of such an act.

    • P00ptart@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      That’s what it needs to be. But the reality is the entire point of AVs is to remove people from the expense report.

  • JigglySackles@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I said this in the other community I saw this posted. But if they can’t figure this out, then robotaxis don’t need to exist.