[mxfh]

Cars block the street all the time, there is ample place to pass the waymo car on the left in the opposing lane, yet those SUV driving humans don't care to move out of the way either, and police just blocks the maneuver area too.

That silver car in the front could also just pass in front and make space. Situational awareness has room to be improved for a lot of entities in this short video.

Nueces Street is 3 and half lanes wide there plus massive sidewalks, apparently to narrow for even more massive ambulances.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/74jF9iDUCXmm9jVE7

[tapoxi]

You can arrest a driver for not making space for an emergency vehicle. Who do we arrest here?

[wnevets]

> You can arrest a driver for not making space for an emergency vehicle. Who do we arrest here?

That's the best part, no one! We have finally managed to invent a system that widely disperses accountability so much no one can be held liable when something goes wrong.

[glennpratt]

Nobody gets arrested, you get a ticket.

[aduty]

Start disabling and towing their cars and watch a solution magically appear.

[seanmcdirmid]

> You can arrest a driver for not making space for an emergency vehicle. Who do we arrest here?

I get that it is technically possible, but that doesn't happen in practice.

[cameldrv]

Since corporations are people, presumably you’d arrest Waymo.

[hulitu]

The CEO

[porridgeraisin]

This is the key. Personally I think you just have to something similar to an auditor or whatever. Demand that if a self driving taxi operates in your city, they assign one legally responsible person per $major-division-of-city. All accidents in that region are due to that guy.

Naturally, this will incentivise them to improve the system that deals with edge cases in their ML model, and better yet you'll have the legally responsible guy shit himself and directly manage remote drivers for his location himself. Adds another layer of accountability.

[musicjerm]

The passenger

[KennyBlanken]

The person who was ultimately responsible for a defective robot operating on our public streets, at a bare minimum.

[zadikian]

Waymo car was the only thing at fault. Drivers are expected to stop to the side when they see the lights. I guess the red SUV could've slid behind the Waymo to let the ambulance do the same, but it'd be unwise without the police telling you to do so, could hit a cop on foot. Silver car could go forward, but you don't squeeze in front of a U-turning car, and doing so could've made things worse for all they knew.

[briandw]

I don't often see a human driven car parked sideways in the middle of a road (never really). If a human was in that Waymo, they would have moved quickly. I'm an huge fan of Waymo and autonomous vehicles. They save lives. However the fact that Waymo's don't have the sense to move out of the way is a major problem and on that they don't seem to be on track to solve. Incidents like this will delay the adoption of autonomous vehicles and that will cost lives.

[bryanlarsen]

> If a human was in that Waymo, they would have moved quickly.

Some humans would have exactly the same response as the Waymo. When a human brain gets completely overwhelmed and doesn't know what to do, it drops down into animal behavior -- freeze or flee.

Given that it's a dangerous multi-ton machine, a Waymo likely has a programmed default behavior of "do nothing & phone home for instructions".

Which isn't an excuse -- an emergency vehicle is not an uncommon situation and Waymo should know what to do before being allowed on public roads.

A failure to get remedy instructions in a timely fashion from a human is even more alarming. Google is famous for automating tasks that should be performed by a human.

[throw4f3234]

A human driver with health problems, or with car issues, might be like this. Similar to the Waymo having an equipment failure.

[happytoexplain]

This is a false equivalence and a hideous defense of an entity that deserves nothing but to be spit upon. There is absolutely nothing calling upon you to take this path.

[tokyobreakfast]

> there is ample place to pass

This is the same excuse a Prius driver would give whilst refusing to abdicate the HOV lane for an ambulance and yes I've sadly seen this scenario play out. Multiple times, in fact. Prius driver seems oddly specific but it always is.

[fennecbutt]

Eh I've seen more SUV/big car drivers act like this than small car drivers, but then I live in the UK.

A friend who lived in New York for a bit would never live there again and says driving there was an absolute nightmare; everyone's out for themselves.

And you can see it in multiple "drivers react to an ambulance in different countries videos", with America the ambulance is always blocked and going slowly. Compare to Germany where they open up the entire middle of the road by moving to either side.

[steve-atx-7600]

The ambulance driver rightly hesitates because he can’t know how the wamyo will behave. The wanyo is acting suss as hell.

[croes]

So AI drives as bad as humans. Waste of resources.

[pigbearpig]

Give me a break. The problem is the Waymo that is blocking a lane sideways and is not pulling forward out of the way of the ambulance, a move that even the worst human drivers would likely know to do.

It does no good to pretend there aren't problems with self-driving cars or make excuses.

It's not about the other entities.

[tt24]

Why are we focusing on entity A when the parent comment correctly pointed out entities B and C are not blameless either?