this post was submitted on 13 May 2026
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I was actually surprised that Waymo had only thousands of units in operation.
That being said, 3,000 commercially operating for years with zero fatalities, that's not nothing. It's not a ton, it doesn't change the world (much), but it isn't zero. Tesla's result so far rounds down to zero.
There's also tons of incidents of Waymo robo-taxis speeding through school zones, turning the wrong way onto one-way streets, and stopping in the middle of the road obstructing traffic. And this is carefully curated sections of cities that they are contained in.
The lack of fatalities seems to be in spite of Waymo, not because of
They constantly need manual corrections by humans remoting in, much like with Tesla. So downvote me all you want, it doesn't change the fact that both companies can't achieve what they claim.
I mean, there are traffic violations, and then there are traffic violations - if there's a dead body at the end, it was the second type.
Neither is desirable, but it would actually be a big win to create a tech system that drives a car that produces fewer fatalities per mile than the average human, regardless of whether or not it generates speeding tickets or other inconveniences.
That's my opinion, anyway. I won't downvote you, I only downvote comments unhelpful to the overall conversation, you're not being unhelpful, I just disagree with you.
Speeding increases the distances needed to stop. That's really important in school zones, where there's kids crossing the street. Not only that, Waymo's cars can't identify school buses that are stopped to pick up and drop off students and tend to drive right past them.
The only reason they haven't killed any kids yet is because they're kept in small areas of cities away from schools. If you don't believe me, here's a video covering it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kcq0tjmvGOs
And focusing on developing self-driving cars as robotaxis is silly when there's a way better solution: re-zoning cities to make them more walkable and building more publiv transport. Removing cars from cities is way safer, and reduces issues like congestion and noise pollution.
And then there's the issues of major tech companies trying to build up monopolies and fund fascist takeovers of the government (i.e. Elon Musk and Tesla), but that's tangential to the main argument.
I know you think you're being polite with this, but you're actually being incredibly condescending here.