[HN Gopher] US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety
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US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety
Author : gmays
Score : 45 points
Date : 2025-10-23 12:40 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.yahoo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.yahoo.com)
| paxys wrote:
| I'm not complaining, but like..maybe also do this for the vast
| majority of human drivers who also flout these rules.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| I'm going to call bullshit on this. Most human drivers do not
| flout these rules.
| trollbridge wrote:
| No kidding. Try doing this once or twice and the driver will
| record your information and you'll get a nice visit from the
| police.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Out here in rural nowhere it doesn't -- it just gets the
| sheriff on the local news begging people to stop instead of
| solving the actual problem at hand by placing patrols on
| the routes.
|
| [1] https://www.wwnytv.com/2025/02/12/absolutely-
| terrifying-grow...
| trollbridge wrote:
| Out here in rural nowhere it most certainly does. The
| school bus driver will record your number plate, and
| school buses have the equivalent of dashcams now.
| criddell wrote:
| I think maybe they meant that the majority of vehicles that
| flout the rules are human-driven.
| basisword wrote:
| Human drivers can be seen and stopped by police and given an
| appropriate punishment. Self-driving cars have nobody to take
| accountability like that so you need to go back to the source.
| some_random wrote:
| Yeah but in many cases they're not, traffic enforcement went
| way down during Covid and it's still down.
| daseiner1 wrote:
| Most large cities I've lived in, general traffic
| enforcement essentially only exists on that
| month's/quarter's designated ticket-writing day. i.e., when
| highway patrol and city police just write speeding tickets
| all day to juice revenue
| some_random wrote:
| I don't know what large cities you've lived in, but
| that's not what any experts seems to be saying in any
| piece I've ever read. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive
| /2024/07/29/upshot/traffi...
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I mean, we do. The problem is that you need to be physically
| present to catch and deal with those people, and you can only
| really deal with one party (others will do their thing while a
| police officer is dealing with the first driver they stop). Not
| to mention that drivers change their behavior if they see the
| police around, so it's harder to catch them in the act. So for
| a variety of reasons it's harder to solve the human driver
| problem.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| With how cheap high definition cameras are, I don't see why
| society needs a person to be physically present.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| "Wasn't me in the car"
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Hence high definition camera. Most states have tints on
| windshield and dark tints on front windows as illegal.
| Also, the license plate is all that is needed, ticket the
| owner and they will readily give up the driver.
|
| Other countries have no issues with camera based traffic
| law enforcement.
| hamdingers wrote:
| "Don't care, car is registered to you, pay up"
|
| This is only an issue because traffic code violations are
| treated like criminal acts instead of... code violations.
| We don't have this issue with parking tickets, there's no
| reason we should have it with automated red light and
| school bus cameras.
| terminalshort wrote:
| I prefer the risk of death over constant surveillance
| hamdingers wrote:
| If you're want to operate a deadly vehicle in public you
| need to compromise, sorry.
| terminalshort wrote:
| Sounds like you're the one who needs to compromise
| because most people agree with me, or we would already
| have such a system.
| hamdingers wrote:
| Sounds like you're confused about the world you live in
| if you believe there aren't millions of cameras, many
| with ALPR capabilities, pointed at the street already.
|
| I propose they be made actually useful instead of merely
| surveillance for surveillance sake, but I can see how
| that would feel oppressive to drivers accustomed to
| getting away with murder.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| A) everyone is already constantly surveilled via mobile
| networks and license plate readers, so surveillance is a
| moot point. We might as well get something out of it.
|
| B) the system can be setup to purge and/or record only at
| relevant times or during infractions
| righthand wrote:
| Yeah fair treatment for billion dollar corporations and robots
| and all. Who could forget. Waymo is such a lovely person, why
| would anyone ask them to do better?
| krisoft wrote:
| To be honest. I think this is one of the strengths of autonomous
| cars.
|
| With humans when they do this at max we can punish that
| individual. To increase population wide compliance we can do a
| safety awareness campaign, ramp up enforcement, ramp up the
| fines. But all of these cost a lot of money to do, take a while
| to have an effect, need to be repeated/kept up, and only help
| statistically.
|
| With a robot driver we can develop a fix and roll it out on all
| of them. Problem solved. They were doing the wrong thing, now
| they are doing the right thing. If we add a regression test we
| can even make sure that the problem won't be reintroduced in the
| future. Try to do that with human drivers.
| trollbridge wrote:
| ... assuming the GiantCorp running the robotaxis cares about
| complying with the law, and doesn't just pay a fine that means
| nothing to them.
| xbar wrote:
| Waymo seems more interested in delivering a true solution
| than I have seen elsewhere.
| daseiner1 wrote:
| > a fine that means nothing to them
|
| Yes, this is often the case. In this instance, though,
| endangering children is just about the worst PR possible.
| That's strong leverage.
| tanseydavid wrote:
| This^^^ -- the impact of positive vs negative PR is
| unusually huge with this type of tech.
| bluGill wrote:
| The first fines should be meaningless to the company. If the
| issue isn't fixed the fines should get higher and higher. If
| the company fixes one issue but there is a second discovered
| quickly we should assume they don't care about safety and the
| second issue should have a higher fine than the first even
| though it is unrelated.
|
| Companies (and people) have an obligation to do the right
| thing.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| What do you mean by "second issue"? A second instance of
| the same underlying problem, or a different underlying
| problem? The way you phrase it as unrelated suggests the
| latter to me.
|
| It's pretty wild to jump straight to "they don't care about
| safety" here. Building a perfect system without real world
| testing is impossible, for exactly the same reason it's
| impossible to write bug-free code on the first try. That's
| not a suggestion to be lax, just that we need to be
| realistic about what's achievable if we agree that some
| form of this technology could be beneficial.
| bluGill wrote:
| The courts get to decide that. Often it is a "I know it
| when I see it". The real question is did they do enough
| to fix all possibly safety issues before this new one
| happened that was different. If they did "enough"
| (something I'm not defining!) then they can start over.
| lawlessone wrote:
| >The first fines should be meaningless to the company.
|
| Why?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| the discourse around "corporations" has gotten absolutely
| ridiculous at this point, especially on this website.
| d4mi3n wrote:
| It's not an unreasonable take given historic behavior.
| Rather than decrying the cynicism, what steps can we take
| to ensure companies like Tesla/Waymo/etc are held
| accountable and incentivized to prioritize safety?
|
| Do we need hasher fines? Give auto regulators as much teeth
| as the FAA used to have during accident investigations?
|
| Genuinely curious to see how addressing reasonable concerns
| in these areas can be done.
| terminalshort wrote:
| Why isn't allowing people to sue when they get hurt and
| general bad PR around safety enough? Did you see what
| happened to Boeing's stock price after those 737 crashes?
| trollbridge wrote:
| Right. We have a precedent for how to have an
| ridiculously safe transportation system: accidents are
| investigated by the NTSB, and every accident is treated
| as an opportunity to make sure that particular failure
| never happens again.
| varenc wrote:
| It's ironic given this forum began as a place for aspiring
| startup (Delaware C-Corp) founders.
| paganel wrote:
| Some of us came here because we were finding
| programming.reddit.com too mainstream (after all this
| thing was written in Arc! of which almost no-one knew any
| details for sure, but it was Lisp, so Lisp cool), for
| sure we weren't visiting this place in order to become
| millionaires.
|
| Even though I agree, there was a time and a place (I'd
| say 2008-2010) when this forum was mostly populated by "I
| want to get rich!" people, maybe that is still the case
| and they've only learned to hide it better, I wouldn't
| know.
| renewiltord wrote:
| We feared the advent of LLMs since they could be used as
| convincing spam tools. Little did we know that humans would
| often do the same.
| paganel wrote:
| I agree, much of the people here are still way too lenient
| when it comes to big corps.
| themafia wrote:
| > we can develop a fix and roll it out on all of them.
|
| You have to know what you're fixing first. You're going to
| write a lot of code in blood this way.
|
| It's not that people are particularly bad at driving it's that
| the road is exceptionally dynamic with many different users and
| use cases all trying to operate in a synchronized fashion with
| a dash of strong regulation sprinkled in.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> You 're going to write a lot of code in blood this way._
|
| Waymo has been doing a lot of driving, without any blood.
| They seems to be using a combination of (a) learning a lot
| from close calls like this one where no one was hurt even
| through it still behaved incorrectly and (b) being cautious
| so that even when it does something it shouldn't the risk is
| very low because it's moving slowly.
| themafia wrote:
| Waymo operates in a very limited scope and area. I would
| not attempt to extrapolate anything from their current
| performance.
| mastax wrote:
| If you were trying to evaluate that code deployed willy
| nilly in the wider world, sure. But that code exists
| within a framework which is deliberately limiting rollout
| in order to reduce risk. What matters is the performance
| of the combined code and risk management framework, which
| has proven to be quite good.
|
| Airbus A320s wouldn't be very safe if we let Joe Schmo
| off the street fly them however he likes, but we don't.
| An A320 piloted within a regulated commercial aviation
| regime is very safe.
|
| What matters is the safety of the entire system including
| the non-technological parts.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Waymo operates in San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles,
| Austin, and Atlanta so I am sure they encountered school
| buses by now and learned from those encounters.
| programjames wrote:
| The human traffic code is also written in blood. But humans
| are worse at applying the patch universally.
| hamdingers wrote:
| We don't even try. In the US you demonstrate that you know
| the rules at one point in time and that's it, as long as
| you never get a DUI you're good.
|
| For instance, the 2003 California Driver's Handbook[1]
| first introduced the concept of "bike lanes" to driver
| education, but contains the advice "You may park in the
| bike lane unless signs say "NO PARKING."" which is now
| illegal. Anyone who took their test in the early 2000s is
| likely unaware that changed.
|
| It also lacks any instruction whatsoever on common modern
| roadway features like roundabouts or shark teeth yield
| lines, but we still consider drivers who only ever studied
| this book over 20 years ago to be qualified on modern
| roads.
|
| 1. https://dn720706.ca.archive.org/0/items/B-001-001-944/B-
| 001-...
| Natsu wrote:
| Some places will dismiss a traffic ticket if you attend a
| driver's education class to get updates, though you can
| only do this once every few years. So at least there have
| been some attempts to get people to update their
| learning.
| dangus wrote:
| As a counterpoint, a large fine or jail time as a deterrent
| actually has meaning.to an individual.
|
| For a company, it's a financial calculation.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimshaw_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
|
| (Add the period to the end of the link, HN won't do it)
| 05 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimshaw_v._Ford_Motor_Co%2E
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| It's a strength if you catch the bug and fix it before it
| injures anyone. If anything, this proves edge-cases can take
| years to manifest.
| jmpman wrote:
| I'm also curious about school zones. The one near my house has a
| sign, "School" "Speed Limit 35" "7:00AM to 4:00PM School Days"
|
| Now, how does a robotaxi comply with that? Does it go to the
| district website and look up the current school year calendar? Or
| does it work like a human, and simply observe the patterns of the
| school traffic, and assume the general school calendar?
|
| I suspect it continues in Mad Max mode.
| isodev wrote:
| Aren't they supposed to read signs? Otherwise they'd also
| ignore the overhead speed limits on the highway for traffic
| jams / air quality adjustments during the day.
| izacus wrote:
| Wait, how does that work? Every person in your city needs to
| know the exact calendar of that school?
| daseiner1 wrote:
| the sign says the hours for the reduced speed limit or, more
| commonly in my experience, has a light that activates during
| school hours.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The light and often even the sign itself are typically
| considered informational aids rather than strict
| determinants of legality. The driver is expected to comply
| with all the nitpicky details of the law regardless of
| whether the bulb is burned out or the school schedule
| changes.
|
| Needless to say, most people regularly violate _some_ kind
| of traffic law, we just don 't enforce it.
| daseiner1 wrote:
| of course. i'm confident slowing down near a school is
| pretty intuitive for the vast majority of drivers,
| though.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Sure, but the context here is a discussion about how a
| computer can know all of these "intuitive" rules humans
| follow.
|
| The answer is encoded in the map data in this case, but
| it's an interesting category of problems for autonomous
| vehicles.
| fragmede wrote:
| Now I'm imagining the Waymo Driver calling out to Gemini
| to determine "school hours" by looking it up on the
| Internet, and wondering about the nature of life.
| tanseydavid wrote:
| Have you had the experience of riding in a Waymo making a
| left hand turn against incoming traffic -- and how it
| handles the eventual yellow light?
|
| I was very impressed about the decision making in this
| situation. Seems very intuitive (at least superficially).
| slavik81 wrote:
| Yes, that's how it works in Alberta. It's particularly
| confusing because not all schools have the same academic
| calendar (e.g., most schools have a summer break, but a few
| have summer classes).
|
| Unlike the sibling comment, there are no lights or
| indications of when school is in session. You must memorize
| the academic calendar of every school you drive past in order
| to know the speed limit. In practice, this means being
| conservative and driving more slowly in unfamiliar areas.
| jefftk wrote:
| This is another example of something where, at least if you
| want to get all the way to completely correct operation,
| it's easier for an driverless car than a human. A person
| can't memorize the schedules of every school district they
| might pass, but an automated system potentially could. Of
| course something like Google Maps could solve this too, for
| both humans and Waymo.
| RaftPeople wrote:
| In the area I live, the wording is frequently "when children
| present" so you don't need to know school schedule.
| themafia wrote:
| Present means "present in the school." It's not always
| observable while driving by if you need to obey the reduced
| limit or not. California does it and I find it absurd.
|
| Many other states setup a flashing yellow light and program
| the light with the school schedule. Then the limit only
| applies "when light is flashing." Far more sensible.
| username223 wrote:
| This is the one most familiar to me. Usually the signs have
| flashing orange lights to indicate when they're active, but
| sometimes not. You generally know roughly when the kids are
| in school (maybe look at the school?), and follow what
| other drivers are doing. Things like this are why I think
| fully autonomous driving basically requires AGI.
| hamdingers wrote:
| You are not penalized for failing to go over 35 on non-
| school-days. School zones are sufficiently small that the
| time penalty for complying on a summer weekday isn't that
| much of an inconvenience.
| buckle8017 wrote:
| They should just always observe the lower speed limit.
|
| The difference is usually 5 or maybe 10 mph.
|
| Which over the distance of a school zone is nothing.
| bink wrote:
| It can be dangerous though. In my area we have roads with
| speed limits of 45 that drop to 25 "when children are
| present". My EV always assumes children are present as it has
| no real way to determine if they are. Driving 25 in a 45 is
| dangerous for many reasons.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Are school days ever Sundays? If not, perhaps all drivers just
| treat every non-Sunday as school day. If so, they probably just
| slow every day.
| netsharc wrote:
| Off-topic... what poor writing:
|
| > a Waymo did not remain stationary when approaching a school bus
| with its red lights flashing and stop arm deployed.
|
| Because it's physically possible to approach something while
| remaining stationary?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| "approached the school bus from an angle where the flashing
| lights and stop sign were not visible"
|
| I call bullshit on that. Yes the stop sign is only on the left
| side but the flashing lights are on all four corners of the bus.
| You'd need to be approaching the side of the bus from a direct
| right angle to not see the flashing lights.
| trhway wrote:
| there have been increase of "aggressiveness" of autonomous
| cars. My earlier comment -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45609139 . May be that
| aggressiveness is sold internally as some optimization enabled
| by the higher skills of the robot-driver.
| Animats wrote:
| There's a video of the actual incident.[1] (Yahoo posted some
| file photo). The Waymo was entering from a side street, in front
| of the school bus. It clearly recognized that it was in an iffy
| situation and slowed to creeping speed, rather than blocking the
| intersection. No children are visible.
|
| If the school bus has a dashcam, much better info may be
| available. This video starts too late.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSjwolFxvpc
| llsf wrote:
| I cannot wait for the school bus to be a waymo, that could tell
| the other waymos around that it is full of vulnerable and
| unpredictable little humans, and to be on the watch out.
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