Will Waymo accept when society starts killing robotaxis? Feels like self defense.
this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2025
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I feel lile we should start killing normal cars too, for consistency. That's what the ceo wants, right?
Agreed, all cars should be banned. Replace asphalt roads with rail lines and paths meant for walking and biking.
Notice how they say nothing about taking responsibility for robotaxi deaths when they happen.
Except for the third and fourth paragraphs.
Perhaps accountability is a better word to use. Where in the 3rd and 4th paragraphs? I don't have access to Archive on my VPN rn, but nowhere in the linked article do they talk about holding companies that control and own robots to the same level of accountability as an individual.
The most interesting part of the interview arrived when Korosec brought on a thought experiment. What if self-driving vehicles like Waymo and others reduce the number of traffic fatalities in the United States, but a self-driving vehicle does eventually cause a fatal crash, Korosec pondered. Or as she put it to the executive: “Will society accept that? Will society accept a death potentially caused by a robot?”
“I think that society will,” Mawakana answered, slowly, before positioning the question as an industrywide issue. “I think the challenge for us is making sure that society has a high enough bar on safety that companies are held to.”
We're already accepting an alphabet agency adjacent mobile surveillance unit so...
No it doesn't.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
Her death?
Edit: I'm getting the 'famous last words' vibes of Charlie Kirk. She is going to be killed by one of her cars.
About 3700 people die every day in motor vehicle crashes. 1.35 million per year.
Why wouldn't you allow a safer alternative to human operators?
We can’t just take the robotaxi companies at their word that they are safer though. Countries need some kind of way to test these like human driving tests. Some kind of automated verification system for each update before it can go public.
Otherwise who’s to say Tesla, for example, won’t release a buggy update that becomes worse? They are already releasing versions that allow the car to exceed the speed limit by x amount so to me that would be an instant fail on a test.
To begin with, we need full transparency and mandatory reporting. The latter is already required by law, but Cruise fucked around with that once by lying, and look at them now. Tesla is the worst offender by sheer numbers, if you count their "full self driving" as autonomy, which it really isn't, even though they sell it as such ... they're a joke in the industry, make everyone else bad, and just need to die already; their sole rollout for an autonomous service in Austin was pathetic.
Like the abity to not have to drive nearly everywhere
Trains, bicycles, and walkable infrastructure would be far safer, cheaper, and more sustainable.
We already have a safer alternative, it's called rail
Rail only goes where the infrastructure is built out. Heavy deliveries and cargo need some method of completing the last leg of the route, even if there is a rail line nearby. How is a train an alternative to a vehicle that can drive down a dirt road? You just have millions of trains running everywhere all the time even when the routes are rarely used?
Last time I had a discussion like this people were saying we didn't need trucks, that we can just use fleets of cargo bicycles.
If the only road vehicles were occasional 20kph last mile delivery vehicles and emergency services, our roads and cities could look drastically different. Outside cities, this doesn't really apply and we probably still need traditional road vehicles.
Crazy idea and just throwing this out there, what if we dont acturally need suburbs in America? They're absolutely horrible for space efficiency, they're environmentally expensive, and create the conditions that require cars. Nobody really needs two or three guest bedrooms and lets be honest front lawns are useless (they also look ugly).
Now im not saying we should just demolish peoples houses. What I am saying is that no new suburban housing should be developed and over time through laws the suburbs should be destroyed. Rual areas can have their roads tho.
Self-serving CEO makes self-serving statements. Not really new.
That's disgusting. He's probably right.
Misleading headline is misleading.
The full statement was about society accepting this in the context of autonomous vehicles also drastically reducing these deaths, overall. Which, yeah, society will likely accept that, given that we already "accept" quite a lot of traffic deaths.
To be clear, I still think this is all crap. We all know that what's actually gonna happen is that when this kind of accident happens, the companies will be functionally immune from liability. People harmed or killed by these autonomous vehicles will have no recourse to hold anyone accountable. Not to mention the VAST assumptions baked into "autonomous vehicles will reduce traffic deaths"
Uber had a fatal crash, albeit with a safety driver who was distracted at the time. There was uproar and Uber scaled back their venture but society largely moved past it.
Well, he would say that, woudn't he?
Well shit, let the CEO Luigi himself then, for his shareholders.
And I would accept the death of the Way I CEO
I know that, once cars drive themselves, it will be just time before an accident happens and someone does.
I also know that computer driven taxies will likely be safer than human ones, at some point
I also know you don't brag about that shit, and if I hear a fucking CEO brag about how the public will be fine when his product murders a person, I'm fine with his death as well.