The self-driving cab, however, didn’t get dinged like you or us. Since there was no one operating the vehicle, the cops couldn’t issue a citation. But they did reach out to Waymo’s parent company Google to let them know about the glitch.
“Our citation books don’t have a box for ‘robot,'” the department said.
It frustrates me that Google doesn’t get a citation for this. It’s just another example of how laws don’t apply to the people pulling all the strings. They need to be just as accountable as anyone else, even if it’s robots doing the driving. Whoever is ultimately responsible for the unacceptable behavior needs to be held accountable, or they’ll learn they can keep doing unacceptable shit in new and creative ways without any real legal or financial risk for engaging in the bad behavior. If corporations are people, and corporate robots are doing things people get in trouble with the cops for, corporations need to be in trouble with the cops and the courts and feel the same heat.
Corporations are only people when it benefits them. Speech is only free when it benefits them. The market is only free when it benefits them. Congress only holds power of the purse when it benefits them. Hypocrisy is a tool the oligarchs use to express their power. Hypocrisy is the point.
From my understanding, Waymo operates under special permission from the State’s Department of Transportation. They’re requires to submit even minor traffic incidents that otherwise would be ignored, etc. to the State and a lot of data is collected that is ignored for regular drivers.
If they wanted, they could make whatever changes necessary to handle citations for these vehicles. They just haven’t.
There’s a new law coming that will start the citations in CA, at least according to local news. Not sure about the dates, but they are addressing it supposedly.
I’m assuming it refused the breathalyzer and failed the blood test, sounds like a night in the drunk tank at a minimum
Tesla goes the extra mile by having their autonomous vehicles drive like they’re drunk
Yeah there is zero chance they pulled over a Waymo expecting there to be a drunk driver in it unless they were just harassing people without even looking at the vehicles .
“Sir, what’s that on top of your car, and are all these extra devices normal?”
If it were a Tesla that doesn’t have any equipment that makes them safe enough for the roads, I could believe it because they look the same as a normal Tesla.
Playing devil’s advocate, if I somehow didn’t know robotaxis and other autonomous vehicles were a thing, I might think it was a car used for Google Street view or some sort of GIS mapping
Or if I were a paranoid cop I might think they have a bomb strapped to their roof, or cell phone jammers or some other crazy conspiracy bullshit.
True, they could be outside of their jurisdiction or new. If it were a bomb I wouldn’t want to stop it though, call for backup, let’s see a helicopter and a SWAT/Bomb squad show up to stop a Waymo, lol… That new guy would never live it down.
I would expect by this point after Waymo has been on the road for 7 years… Police should know what the fuck one looks like, especially with the dozen or so very obvious LIDAR sensors all over the thing. And especially since Waymo only operates in a handful of places under special authorization by the State DOT, the police should know what they look like by now, they are not new.
We need to stop giving police the benefit of the doubt for their ignorance. Ignorance of the law isn’t an excuse for regular people, why should we accept that ignorance and poor training is fine for the police?
It’s sf police, they have special Waymo training and everything.
30 minutes earlier…
