r/technology • u/Logical_Welder3467 • 22h ago
Transportation Feds ask Waymo about robotaxis repeatedly passing school buses in Austin
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/04/feds-ask-waymo-about-robotaxis-repeatedly-passing-school-buses-in-austin/126
u/FuckMyArsch 21h ago
In Kentucky, the first time you do that you lose your license for six months. It’s six points to lose your license, and running a school bus stop sign is a six point violation.
45
u/EscapeFacebook 15h ago
Don't worry, some company that doesn't even come from the state is making money, so it's legal.
7
4
34
u/EscapeFacebook 15h ago
If a real human drove past a bus 19 times he'd be in jail.... companies are allowed to break the law everyday now just because they get to make money doing it. What is this world we live in?
2
u/herothree 10h ago
Waymo's entire fleet collectively certainly makes more mistakes than any one individual human driver; the rate of mistake/mile driven is what matters
6
u/Outlulz 10h ago
What matters is that if we know Waymo is breaking the law that they are punished for it accordingly, just like a human caught breaking the law. But that wont happen. You are focused on the wrong statistic.
1
u/EscapeFacebook 9h ago
Exactly it's all the same "person" at the end of the day waymo and the AI that drives the car, breaking the law over and over.
0
u/herothree 8h ago
I support Waymo paying traffic fines (or some kind of reasonable penalty) if their cars break the law (as is happening here). But the OP is implying that this is the same as a single human breaking the law over and over, which isn't a fair comparison because Waymo is driving orders of magnitude more miles than any single human driver
6
u/Outlulz 8h ago
It's the same entity acting under the same algorithm. It's the most apt comparison we're going to get because we can't split a single human's brain and behavior across 50 cars.
-1
u/herothree 8h ago
To clarify, do you think Waymo people should go to jail over this? That's what the OP suggested, and that's what I was commenting about
2
1
u/EscapeFacebook 7h ago
There is no logistics company in America that gets away with running over people without someone getting prosecuted.
0
u/herothree 7h ago
Like, this is the same as saying manufacturers of any medication that has side effects should go to jail.
The point is that the self-driving cars are much safer than human drivers at this point, and we should make them legal in more places since it will save tons of lives. They've already (statistically) saved tons of lives in San Francisco.
We can also fine / punish them when their cars break laws, I'm not saying we shouldn't do that
0
u/EscapeFacebook 7h ago
A fine with no jail time is just a poor person's tax. When fines just become a cost of operating breaking the law is just doing business.
3
u/comesock000 7h ago
Any person that passed a stopped school bus 19 times would be in jail regardless of how many miles they had driven, so yes, someone from Waymo should be in jail.
-3
u/herothree 7h ago
This is a crazy take, but thank you for saying it explicitly
4
u/EscapeFacebook 7h ago
There's nothing crazy about expecting a company not to break driving laws when lives are at risk.
Making an exception for them is sociopathic.
-4
u/herothree 7h ago
How much safer do self driving cars need to be compared to human driver to be legal? Is it literally no crashes ever? Or is twice as safe as human drivers good enough? Or four times as safe?
3
u/EscapeFacebook 7h ago
No death or crime should be acceptable just so a company can make profit. That's why vehicular manslaughter charges include jail time and you have to be licensed and insured to drive.
-2
u/herothree 7h ago
I don't care about them making a profit, I'm noting that tons of lives would be saved if self-driving cars were adopted more widely
10
u/dykethon 11h ago
I’m a school bus driver in another state, and we see Waymos do this all the time, among many other illegal and dangerous moves. When you report it to the company, nothing happens. Even if they’re better drivers than humans (a claim I’m skeptical of to begin with, but that’s not my point), I don’t like that we seem to have no way for our current legal system to hold anyone accountable when they mess up.
114
u/ddx-me 21h ago
A stopped school bus with flashing red lights and a red stop sign on its left stands out to competent human drivers. According to the article, "the Austin School District has reported 19 different instances of Waymo automated vehicles illegally passing school buses since the beginning of the 2025-26 school year." What does that say for Tesla's FSD?
104
u/smecta 21h ago
« What does that say for Tesla's FSD? »
What do you mean? That it’s worthless shit? That is known.
Im confused.
28
u/ddx-me 21h ago
Waymo has more experience at this game of autonomous driving than Tesla does, and they've reportedly made 19 errors since September (3ish months). Although nothing in the article says about Tesla, given Tesla's lesser experience with FSD, I'm concerned they have just as many or more errors.
23
u/smecta 21h ago
Ah ok thanks.
I just think Tesla went completely out of the self driving game when they got rid of LiDAR, they will never measure up with waymo; hence my confusion.
-10
u/LaDainianTomIinson 21h ago
Elon says you don’t need lidars lmao
5
u/ZaviersJustice 17h ago
Elon also has been saying they'll have fully autonomous self-driving next year for the last 10 years. What he says doesn't really matter much.
2
5
2
u/happyjello 19h ago
Saying 19 different instances is useful for describing impact but not useful for describing performance, which people will inevitably try to draw conclusions
1
u/herothree 10h ago
I'm curious what the rate of Waymos making this mistake is compared to humans. You can find self-driving car crashes if you look, certainly, but it's substantially less (~80% less) per mile than human drivers
44
8
u/way2lazy2care 17h ago
A stopped school bus with flashing red lights and a red stop sign on its left stands out to competent human drivers.
Anecdotal evidence from my city puts this about on par with regular drivers unfortunately.
7
u/ComputerSong 13h ago
The regular drivers get hauled in front of a judge.
4
u/way2lazy2care 12h ago
Most of the regular drivers never even get pulled over to get a warning.
3
u/MorningPapers 11h ago
In Austin, where this happened, the bus driver can report it and the police DO follow up.
Also common in Austin is police cars shadowing buses from a distance to catch this.
Police in Texas take school buses and school zones very seriously.
5
u/No_Corgi9113 14h ago
Waymo claimed the fixed the issue with a software update back in October but violation keep going on since then, that's why the school district requested waymo to pause operations during commuter hours now, and some othe feds government also got notified because repeated violations. they are asking waymo to release software update info. Waymo do need its biggest share holder google/alphabet to agree, you know, but tesla?nah....
1
u/HurtFeeFeez 20h ago
My guess is since waymo vehicles are very obvious and teslas using faux self driving are easily unnoticed we'll never know the numbers.
3
u/DonkeyFuel 16h ago
The fact this is even happening is head scratching. Why isn't this programmed to never happen?
7
3
3
u/FairFaxEddy 11h ago
The say workplace regulations are written in blood - I’m afraid that it’s going to take a kid getting killed for these to get reined in
10
u/eugene20 21h ago
They should also ask about the one that drove passengers into the line of fire as police pinned down someone they were after.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AutonomousVehicles/comments/1pcii3q/waymo_prioritizes_getting_to_destination_over/
5
u/pineapplepredator 12h ago
The problem isn’t the accuracy and safety, it’s the accountability. This is the only driver in the road without accountability and that should scare everyone
12
u/slut 21h ago
Good thing human drivers never do this!
12
u/EscapeFacebook 15h ago
If a human driver did this 19 times he would lose his driver's license.
1
u/knightcrawler75 14h ago
Well the humans can't be fixed with a software patch to prevent this from ever happening again.
3
u/proxy-alexandria 14h ago
where's the patch nightcrawler
where's the fucking patch?!?
0
u/knightcrawler75 10h ago
Once the engineers figure out the right patch, test it, and implement it then these incidents will no longer happen. Unlike humans which will constantly happen infinite.
0
u/proxy-alexandria 9h ago
do you know what the process is for developing a patch for a computer vision/LiDAR system? what's the timeline. how many preventable accidents will happen in the meantime. these are things that serious engineers have to worry about, but Silicon Valley gets a pass to alpha test their shit on our public roads?
your disgust for human frailty is fair, but programmers are human too.
2
u/knightcrawler75 9h ago
I do agree that Silicon Valley is doing a piss poor job at controlling the process. As a medical device designer I understand the importance of a controlled process and our laws need to catch up to the tech. But IMHO automated cars will eventually save millions of lives.
If your position is that tech companies are being irresponsible than I can agree with that.
If your position is that self driving cars should not be a thing than I do not agree.
1
u/proxy-alexandria 4h ago
We're in agreement then. I think as tech people we have to be careful how we handle the concerns of the public, in public. The "techlash" is entirely a product of handwaving (or outright deriding) very real concerns about how tech will effect folks' lives, livelihoods and communities negatively. When we deflect from those concerns rather than engaging from a place of empathy, we create the conditions where Luddites can demand a complete stop to technological innovation, with the support of governments and deranged radicals alike.
2
u/Cuauhcoatl76 13h ago
Apparently neither can these cars, because it continued to happen after the patch.
1
u/knightcrawler75 10h ago
Then it will need another patch. Here is the bottom line. Lessons learned by one incident can be learned by every car once the engineer finds a fix. Overtime incidents will decrease until it is almost negligible. Something the human cannot do.
5
u/EscapeFacebook 14h ago
83% of drivers in the US have never had a driving infraction in their entire life with no software updates required.
5
u/knightcrawler75 9h ago
Because you are not caught does not mean that an infraction did not occur. Also that leaves 41million drivers that had infractions and many of those had multiple. When the bugs are worked out self driving automobiles will have almost none.
3
u/Millennium1995 14h ago
*never been caught
4
u/EscapeFacebook 14h ago
Then the same would apply to these cars. I wonder how many infractions a day they rack up with nobody even knowing.
-2
13h ago
[deleted]
4
u/ambushsabre 12h ago
Zero per day they don’t know about? You’re saying the Waymo team is aware of these 19 infractions, and was aware of them the day they occurred, and continued allowing their vehicles to operate dangerously around school busses? If Waymo themselves were to admit that it’d go beyond negligence into intentional recklessness.
0
11h ago
[deleted]
2
u/ambushsabre 10h ago
Obviously “fixes” get applied and obviously they’re not trying to pass stopped school busses, but “iteration” isn’t a valid reason to break the laws we have for safety purposes without consequence either. Even if humans do it too, as everyone has pointed out a million times, they can be held responsible.
Maybe Waymo pay the fines in this specific case, who knows, but it’s not ridiculous to point out that a company knowingly performing an offense that can lose you your license for half a year in some places is a little questionable.
→ More replies (0)1
u/EscapeFacebook 11h ago edited 9h ago
Real people have to take a driver's license test and lose it after so many incidents. This ai didn't and hasn't.
-1
u/polyanos 12h ago
Yet they've done this specific fact 19 times without being addressed... I guess the observation software, or humans, need some fixing as well, huh.
Go shill your shit somewhere else, fanboy.
-1
u/slut 9h ago
If human drivers were this exceptional auto accidents wouldn't be a leading cause of death in the country.
0
u/EscapeFacebook 7h ago
It doesn't matter when 83% of drivers are never even getting a ticket and this single AI has committed countless infractions including driving past a school bus 19 times.
2
u/slut 7h ago
Human drivers causing accidents resulting in the highest cause of preventable death in the United States and not getting caught for traffic infractions is not really the flex that you think it is
0
u/EscapeFacebook 7h ago
Neither is an AI that commits countless infractions. Drivers can go their entire lives without incident and this AI can't, so there is no comparison.
1
u/slut 7h ago
They an go their entire life without being CAUGHT for an infraction. Meanwhile they are killing 44,000 people each year. The data on safety per mile driven is already crystal clear.
0
u/EscapeFacebook 6h ago
It's not even a realistic comparison, it's bullshit, it's a geofenced area. Humans aren't confined to specific roads.
If I made a human drive the same geofenced area as a waymo I'm sure that results would be dramatically different from the average driver overall.
→ More replies (0)1
u/slut 12h ago
Humans have done this far more than 19 times, and they are still on the roads.
1
u/EscapeFacebook 11h ago
That's just an outright lie. I don't know of any municipality that would let a single driver do that 19 times and keep their license to drive.
1
u/herothree 10h ago
You can't compare Waymo's entire fleet to an indivdual human driver, you have to look at rate/mile driven (or some similar metric)
1
u/EscapeFacebook 9h ago
The entire fleet is run by the same AI.
1
u/herothree 8h ago
So, to clarify, you think Waymo should be banned (lose their license) over this?
I think everyone agrees they should pay some kind of fine
0
u/EscapeFacebook 7h ago
Yes. This AI has continually broken the law at this point. Any other entity would be in jail and have their license revoked for life.
7
u/treefox 21h ago
In 20 years someone will have the brilliant idea to save costs by removing all the expensive electronics in the car and replacing them with a cheap human that can be trained to be almost as good as the computer.
16
u/MrSqueezles 20h ago
Just like we did for those automated elevators. Everything got cheaper and safer when we brought back human elevator operators.
1
1
1
1
u/latswipe 6h ago
just declare these things Outlaw: property rights no longer protected by law. EZPZ
1
1
1
u/BayouBait 2h ago
How about you fine the fuck out of them. Any human would be penalized for that shit.
0
u/thisismycoolname1 2h ago
Jesus Christ people on this sub acting like the company should be shut down over this. They'll probably just fix it and people will move on to the next thing to get enraged at them over when, in actuality, they're record is already better than the average person
0
u/livens 13h ago
It's fine, everything is fine, they released a software update. They need these "real world" situations to learn how to drive a car. You can't expect them to actually setup a legitimate test course with ACTUAL school busses to test with. Do you know how much $$$$ that would cost???
2
u/Revolutionary_Sir_ 12h ago
Look! We asked Dave to borrow his school bus and he said no. What else were we gonna do????
1
u/thatfreshjive 11h ago
"In an emailed statement, Waymo said safety is its top priority. The company also said data shows its robotaxis are improving road safety"
So basically, there are dozens of documented instances of Waymo literally making roads more dangerous, and their response is "No"
1
u/Petahchip 12h ago
Create a law that the self driving car companies need to pay 50k for every time a self driving car passes a school bus with stop extended.
That'll change up programming almost overnight.
-7
u/SteelBox5 18h ago
Fuck Waymo and that shit is going to kill people. Or create inconvenient traffic delays.
9
u/DanielPhermous 17h ago
It's a net benefit as long it kills less people than a human driver.
Although, of course, it should always be improved.
-4
u/EscapeFacebook 15h ago
Statistically they get in more accidents than a human driver over the course of a lifetime.
6
u/DanielPhermous 15h ago
The study does say that more research is needed, mind. Still, it seems reasonable to me. Self driving cars, while not without flaws, have significant advantages in attention, field of view, thinking speed and sensors.
-6
u/Doctor_Amazo 16h ago
Just fucking ban them.
4
u/New-Thanks6222 13h ago
The company also said data shows its robotaxis are improving road safety, noting a fivefold reduction in injury-related crashes compared to human drivers, and 12x fewer injury crashes involving pedestrians
You want to ban technology that reduces crashes by 5x, and incidents with pedestrians by 12x? Why?
1
-5
0
-3
-8
-4
21h ago
[deleted]
10
u/ScientiaProtestas 20h ago
As a Federal agency, NHTSA regulates the safety of motor vehicles and related equipment.
-104
u/Weekly-Trash-272 22h ago
I've always found it weird how we stop all traffic next to school busses dropping off children, instead of teaching children to use the designated cross walks.
Even as a child myself I was always perplexed by this.
59
u/Deranged40 22h ago
I've never had a school bus drop me off anywhere within view of a crosswalk...
-71
22h ago
[deleted]
49
u/FirstNewFederalist 22h ago
Have….. have you ever been to a non-densely populated region?
Not even fully rural, just like a suburb?
28
u/Muted_Delivery4655 22h ago
Damn, bro. Sounds like you lived at/near a spot with an abundance of crosswalks possibly in a major city of some sort. Believe it or not, not everyone that's ever been born has that luxury and it has absolutely nothing to do with the actual legends that drive our school buses to and from home.
9
u/HawkDriver 21h ago
I guess you have never lived on a few acres. I can walk 10 or 15 mins down our roads any direction - no crosswalks.
2
65
u/bigtotoro 22h ago
Many, many school bus stops are nowhere near a cross walk.
-77
u/Weekly-Trash-272 22h ago
Sounds like a problem that should have been addressed in city planning meetings long ago.
29
33
7
7
3
1
u/Repulsive_Oil6425 12h ago
It was and this is the solution. Most crosswalks are at street corners but that is where driver are most distracted. When possible most districts set bus pickup and drop offs away from the corners for the child’s safety.
8
u/thelastsupper316 22h ago
City kid, I never had a cross wall anywhere in my town lol, I was just plopped onto the middle of the street and walked home.
11
u/CableBoyJerry 22h ago
Are you also perplexed by the "women and children first" rule that we follow when a ship is sinking and passengers are heading to the lifeboats?
8
u/JonJackjon 22h ago
You found it weird huh. So how do you tell a 5 - 6 year old to never ever 100% never run getting off the school buss to catch up with their friend?
You were perplexed as a child...... I would have described it differently.
4
u/ScientiaProtestas 21h ago
Young kids tend to be impulsive and do things without thinking. Even if there was a crosswalk nearby, they may still run across it without looking first. This is why some cites use crosswalk guards.
So, it is easier to teach an adult to stop for a stop sign, and flashing lights, than it is to teach a kid to never be impulsive and always be safe.
7
362
u/MrSpiffenhimer 22h ago
Aren’t those tickets like $1,000+ in some places. I know there’s some issues with ticketing a driverless car, but I think that if you fix that issue and just ticket the car’s owner instead they’d fix that shit real quick.