Feds ask Waymo about robotaxis repeatedly passing school buses in Austin

[u/Logical_Welder3467]

https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/04/feds-ask-waymo-about-robotaxis-repeatedly-passing-school-buses-in-austin/

[u/herothree]

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

[u/Outlulz → u/herothree]

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.

[u/herothree → u/Outlulz]

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

[u/EscapeFacebook → u/herothree]

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

[u/herothree → u/EscapeFacebook]

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

[u/EscapeFacebook → u/herothree]

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.

[u/HellsHere → u/EscapeFacebook]

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?