This is the script of my national radio report yesterday on the Waymo robotaxis meltdown in San Francisco Saturday, and other robocar issues. As always there may have been minor wording variations from this script as I presented the report live on air.
- - -
Yes, the prolonged Saturday San Francisco power failure and the related meltdown of Waymo robotaxi operations there is a serious harbinger of things to come. It could have been catastrophic. Google was lucky that their Waymo failures Saturday didn't contribute to any deaths. Waymos frozen at intersections, inside intersections, in the middle of turns, sometimes multiple Waymos stopped lined up in packs, many Waymos creating massive traffic jams around the city that reportedly in some cases were blocking emergency vehicles.
Imagine sitting in a Waymo frozen in the middle of an intersection on a rainy night during a power failure, with other cars whizzing by trying to get past you. Awful.
Google will make excuses-- traffic signals being out may have been part of their problems -- but how could they not have anticipated such a situation? Imagine major fires or earthquakes. Picture robocars unable to reach their human overseers in control centers, or those centers not reacting fast enough during a mass disaster. Robocars blocking escape routes or otherwise behaving in haywire ways making terrible situations vastly worse.
There have previously been many instances of Waymos and other driverless vehicles causing problems for emergency and other workers. A Waymo recently drove into what was reportedly closed off police activities. Waymo is being investigated for repeatedly driving past school buses with "do not pass" red lights on -- children loading or unloading. And MANY other incidents.
When there's no human driver -- police, fire, other emergency workers or others can't just tap on the car's window and tell them to get out of the way, or to stay where they are. Driverless vehicles have NO common sense, and the list of potential situations that can confuse them, even in perfect weather, is seemingly endless.
Also in San Francisco very recently, a Waymo killed a beloved neighborhood cat. Yes, human drivers kill many animals, but this case was unnecessary and is a giant red flag. The cat had crawled under the car. Bystanders tried to stop the car from leaving while they tried to extract the cat. The Waymo ignored them. They were understandably scared to block the car with their bodies. They didn't have time to try use phone apps to contact Waymo operations. The car pulled out and killed the cat. What if it had been a toddler who had crawled under there?
Just as it's nuts that there's no way to quickly get these cars to move out of a dangerous situation, it's also crazy that they don't have emergency stop buttons on the outside like we have in so many other systems in our lives. Elevators, subways, trains, escalators and many more, and of course fire alarms are also widely required. Robocar fanboys will say an emergency stop button on the outside could be abused. Yeah, that's true, just like how all those other emergency stop buttons and alarms can be abused, and occasionally they are abused. But we STILL HAVE THEM, because they ARE NECESSARY.
Waymo and other driverless vehicles are currently bringing us the worst of two worlds. They can cause dangerous situations both when they get stuck motionless, and by moving when they should sit still. This serves to dramatically demonstrate how inappropriate it is to be deploying these still experimental vehicles so rapidly on public streets. Proponents may often use questionable statistics to claim these vehicles drive more safely than humans, but when something even a bit unexpected happens, these cars can behave utterly stupidly and unnecessarily put lives at risk.
We don't need politicians palling around with these Big Tech Billionaire CEOs who are forcing this tech into our lives long before it's ready, if it ever really is. We need our leaders standing up to these CEOs to protect our communities. It's not just a matter of Waymos driving neighborhoods crazy with robocar traffic and horns bleeping all night anymore. There are so many serious problems with robocars that I don't even have time to get into now. We are NOT guinea pigs, and this tech needs to be put on a very short regulatory leash before a true calamity occurs. Enough is enough!
- - -
L
The censored CBS "60 Minutes" piece - "Nazi-lite"
It really tells us very little we didn't already know, or could easily surmise. Trump sent Venezuelan detainees to the horrific El Salvador COCOT prison, without due process, most of whom had no criminal convictions, based in most cases solely on dubious interpretations of tattoos. Once there, they were beat, tortured, and degraded. Trump felt this was great, and DHS Secretary Christy Noem went to visit the prison and give it her full endorsement. The men were later transferred out of the prison and returned to Venezuela as part of a prisoner exchange deal. The piece said that they had requested comment from the Trump administration and had been refused, and ignored by the El Salvador government.
It's basically Nazi-lite. For the moment.
