[HN Gopher] Waymo blocking ambulance during deadly Austin shooting
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Waymo blocking ambulance during deadly Austin shooting
Author : clydethefrog
Score : 46 points
Date : 2026-03-01 21:59 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mysanantonio.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mysanantonio.com)
| xvxvx wrote:
| We continue to inch closer to these dumb buckets costing someone
| their life. Hell, they may already have.
| afavour wrote:
| Human driven cars cost people their lives multiple times every
| day, though. So I don't think the calculation can be quite as
| simple as that. As self driving cars are rolled out I think
| each incident like this needs to be studied to see how
| avoidable it was, whether a human would have been able to
| resolve it, and what changes can be made.
|
| There are always going to be fuck ups at some level. The
| question is whether we're moving from a world of more fuckups
| to fewer or not.
| jeffbee wrote:
| "Multiple" being stretched to the absolute limit in this
| comment.
| amelius wrote:
| The argument that as long as they cause less incidents than
| human drivers they are a win has to go. Because that only
| works if the statistics of the environment are stationary.
| afavour wrote:
| What does "statistics of the environment" mean in this
| context? How can fewer deaths on the road _not_ be a win?
| majormajor wrote:
| I think they're getting at something like this: If self-
| driving cars resulted in dramatically more miles-
| traveled-in-car per person they could be safer per-mile
| and more efficient per-mile while making some important
| total outcomes worse.
|
| Relevant to this example: if people travel by car more
| because they care less about traffic when they're playing
| video games or on TikTok during it, instead of driving,
| overall congestion will likely go up which makes
| emergency services worse.
| Noaidi wrote:
| But in the case of self driving cars, who do we find at
| fault? Have we even answered that question? I mean did the
| Waymo car even get a ticket for blocking the ambulance?
| cj wrote:
| If you are to believe Waymo's safety stats, they have less
| accidents/injuries per mile driven.
|
| But whether or not reducing injuries at a statistical level
| outweighs the downside of autonomous vehicles causing accidents
| (even at lower rates) is a bit of a dilemma.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| I think the style of incidents and circumstances are probably
| neglected. But, even if they're not, I think there's other
| reasons we notice waymo issues more. Akin to how nuclear and
| airplane travel are safer than coal and car travel. This
| might be true, but when something does go well in those
| aforementioned fields, we notice.
| furyofantares wrote:
| The human side of those stats, whenever I've seen them
| presented next to self-driving car stats, has always been an
| aggregate of all human driving, a vast amount of which is in
| environments or conditions that Waymo doesn't operate in.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| No, we're finding edge cases that come up once every like
| million miles these things are putting on the road. Which means
| they are pretty damn good given how many are on the road right
| now.
| screye wrote:
| It's the reverse. Every Waymo on the road saves more lives. The
| average driver is a bufoon
| 4d4m wrote:
| Wild! Who wrote legislation to allow this?
| bgun wrote:
| You mean cars being allowed to endanger human lives? Enshrined
| by law, urban infrastructure and cultural notions of
| independence for over a century? Why is it just now seen as a
| problem because robots are driving, instead of the stupid,
| reckless, poorly trained, often intoxicated humans who have
| been driving up until now?
| prhn wrote:
| At the risk of sounding ignorant, why didn't the various police
| cruisers and even the ambulance itself just push the damn thing
| out of the way? That's what the push bars attached to the front
| of their vehicles are for.
| johnnyApplePRNG wrote:
| My thoughts exactly.
|
| What an embarrassment.
|
| "Authorities" paralyzed by politeness when lives are in the
| balance.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Ambulances can be seriously damaged by attempting to do it.
| Police cruisers can do it, but then they may be sued for
| damages. I know that cars blocking fire hydrants were a serious
| problem in the past and owners sued firemen for pulling water
| hoses through their cars after breaking the windows - the law
| was not allowing it even if the line through the car was the
| only option.
| xoxxala wrote:
| When my mom was a firefighter, and a car was blocking a
| hydrant, she happily broke windows and pushed the hose right
| through the car. Didn't happen a lot, but did happen more than
| once.
| dangus wrote:
| Ambulances aren't exactly designed to act as battering rams.
|
| They ram a car and the radiator goes bust and now you've got an
| ambulance with no engine.
|
| Or you just hurt the passengers inside the Waymo and now you've
| got two emergencies.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| A human police over eventually got into the drivers seat to
| move the car. They sat around for minutes before doing so. They
| could've gotten into it immediately.
|
| But yea they absolutely could've also just slammed it and moved
| on too.
| mxfh wrote:
| 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 eather, 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.
| tapoxi wrote:
| You can arrest a driver for not making space for an emergency
| vehicle. Who do we arrest here?
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| The person who was ultimately responsible for a defective
| robot operating on our public streets, at a bare minimum.
| general1465 wrote:
| A customer?
| aduty wrote:
| Start disabling and towing their cars and watch a solution
| magically appear.
| wnevets wrote:
| > 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.
| musicjerm wrote:
| The passenger
| briandw wrote:
| [delayed]
| N_Lens wrote:
| Nowaymo!
| dangero wrote:
| The problem we will encounter with self driving cars is that
| while they will make less mistakes than humans, they will make
| _different_ mistakes.
|
| Humans will continue to have a hard time accepting this tradeoff.
|
| I live in LA where Waymos are now on every street. My experience
| is that they don't respect human courtesy, so for example if I
| need to cross a lane of busy traffic, a human may brake as a
| courtesy to let me through. Waymos have fucked me over where a
| human probably would have shown some level of community and
| empathy.
| NewJazz wrote:
| _Humans will continue to have a hard time accepting this
| tradeoff._
|
| Are you asserting that humans _should_ accept these, currently
| not fully known, tradeoffs?
| fragmede wrote:
| Waymo's are not about to run a person or bicyclist over. Just
| walk in front of them and they'll stop for you to cross. You
| can always start livestreaming if you don't believe it, the
| insurance payout would be _amazing_. (Subject to the laws of
| physics, naturally.)
|
| Source: Haven't been run over yet by one, and I live in one of
| their current markets.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| That courtesy is almost always bad practice and is generally
| unlawful. You must yield right of way to a pedestrian at a
| legal crossing, but california has codes that prohibit impeding
| normal traffic flow, including stopping in the street to wave
| across a pedestrian where there is no such crossing. It's
| especially dangerous on multi-lane roads because the stopped
| vehicle can blind the pedestrian to other traffic.
| rfrey wrote:
| In many places, traffic would not function if drivers did not
| e.g. make space for other drivers to change lanes. It's an
| extraordinary claim to say such behaviour is bad practice (or
| even illegal??)
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > The problem we will encounter with self driving cars is that
| while they will make less mistakes than humans
|
| This is only true for certain self-driving cars. Tesla and Uber
| are among the worst, and are far worse than human drivers.
| Something like 10x, I believe, in terms of miles driven?
| orliesaurus wrote:
| This is my town, wow - cant believe someone filmed this whole
| interaction while there was a shooting a couple of blocks from
| there... If the ambulance was in a hurry they could have rammed
| the Waymo, I am sure Google wouldn't have sued for damages.
|
| AFAIK when a Waymo detects emergency vehicle lights and sirens,
| it is designed to pull over and stop, unlock its doors, and roll
| down its windows. Also: First responders can put the vehicle into
| a manual mode to move it if needed.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| >If the ambulance was in a hurry
|
| i believe they were.
|
| >they could have rammed the Waymo
|
| Not an expert but i think the goal is to get the ambulance and
| its occupants to a specific location and then make an egress to
| a nearby medical facility? Also I'm not confident ambulances
| are designed to execute the pit maneuver.
|
| >I am sure Google wouldn't have sued for damages.
|
| Oh well if that's the case i guess it's all alright.
|
| >First responders can put the vehicle into a manual mode to
| move it if needed.
|
| I really feel like you're missing the point of why you're
| supposed to pull over and yield right-of-way for emergency
| vehicles.
| comrh wrote:
| Isn't it making an illegal u-turn over a double yellow line?
| hansvm wrote:
| Kind of. The thing making it illegal is that it's blocking
| traffic in the process (and potentially missing some visibility
| requirement or something; it's hard to tell from just the
| video).
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| I've never understood why everyone acts like this is some bizarre
| legal quagmire.
|
| If I make a robot and it goes and kills someone, nobody sits
| around navel gazing wondering how they're going to prosecute a
| robot.
|
| If I make a device that pulls the trigger of a gun aimed at
| someone tied to a chair when I click a button on my cell phone,
| or something green appears in the camera attached to the device,
| or time reaches 11:24:42pm - nobody sits around navel gazing
| wondering how they're going to prosecute an electronic device.
|
| In both cases, _I would be prosecuted_.
|
| These cars are robots. They are designed, constructed,
| programmed, and monitored/supervised by humans. The humans are
| responsible for anything the robots do that cause damage, violate
| civil regulations, or criminal laws.
|
| The solution here is very simple. Seize all the corporate email
| records, code, etc. and charge everyone involved in the
| production of the code that caused the "behavior", along with
| anyone whose negligence in supervision or review failed to catch
| the defect, or anyone who knew the car would or could do what it
| did, and failed to blow the whistle or failed to stop the car
| hitting the road.
|
| Maybe then SV will stop "beta testing" fatal devices on the
| general public.
| himata4113 wrote:
| I can feel like a lot of people will disagree with you, but
| this is a pretty fair comparison. The people will disagree the
| most is the waymo users and I see their POV as well since as
| they have said: "much better than uber and always on time".
| orliesaurus wrote:
| Someone on Austin's subreddit said the following and I think it's
| the correct take/lens:
|
| > I might get downvoted for expressing my feelings but whatever.
| I hate seeing my coworkers being ridiculed for simply doing the
| right thing and moving on with their work. I've been abused and
| called an idiot on here for stating our reality. I'm a paramedic.
| We will NOT attempt to move or hit a vehicle, person, or object
| to go to a call or transport a patient. Especially if there's an
| option for an alternate route. People cut us off, don't move,
| flick us off, and generally don't regard us even with our lights
| and sirens on. Is it frustrating? Absolutely. Do we like it? Hell
| no. But getting in trouble or under investigation for a collision
| or possibly causing unnecessary harm simply isn't worth it. I
| know this was high profile, tragic, and absolutely dire. But you
| have to remember, we live this everyday and this is not the first
| time a vehicle, object, or person has gotten in this paramedic or
| EMTs way and it won't be the last. Don't even get me started on
| the amount of verbal abuse and assaults we deal with. This is a
| very hard job and we are under constant scrutiny but I promise
| you we try and do our very best every day. So please do us a
| favor next time you see us out on the streets and give us some
| grace.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| where's the lidar bois now?
| himata4113 wrote:
| Everyone is downvoted in the comments 80% are grey? Even the ones
| that sound perfectly reasonable? Upvoted one and it was still
| greyed out which makes me think there's more to it, but maybe I
| am missing something really obvious.
| escapegoat wrote:
| My kneejerk, not thought through notion: why not require an
| emergency override protocol be builtin to road using robots? No
| thoughts on how this would work exactly, but it would let
| emergency workers move robot vehicles out of the way.
| ekianjo wrote:
| I thought Lidar solved everything?
| Janicc wrote:
| This comment section surely would look the same if it had been a
| Tesla, right?
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