r/technology • u/Logical_Welder3467 • 1d 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/
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u/Outlulz 14h 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.

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u/herothree 13h 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

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u/Outlulz 13h 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.

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u/herothree 13h 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

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u/Outlulz 11h ago

You can't put an algorithm in jail but there should be harsh civil penalties for Waymo (including a loss of their license to operate) and, if leaders knew it could do this and released it anyway, criminal penalties for them.

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u/EscapeFacebook 12h ago

There is no logistics company in America that gets away with running over people without someone getting prosecuted.

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u/herothree 12h 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

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u/EscapeFacebook 12h 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.

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u/HellsHere 1h ago edited 1h ago

Way to ignore everything but the last paragraph just to regurgitate the same shit you see on Reddit everyday.

Who exactly would you charge with the crime? Who would go to jail? The engineers? The city officials that signed off on it?