If that’s directed to me, I’d guess it’s because they spend more time on the road
and log more miles so they have higher insurance rates.
But I may have misunderstood the rates thing above that. I assumed we were
talking about accident rates, which for AVs is compared on number of incidents per miles driven . Are we talking accident rates or insurance rates ?
If we are talking about waymo insurance, best I can tell is they are self insuring with up to $5million to passengers. Please correct if that’s wrong.
Sounds more like a political decision; but, personally, I do have doubts about how waymo addresses the well publicized “edge cases” of the vehicle mishaps.
every new software update version should be treated like a new human getting a
license. It’s needs to pass a federally run AV
driving center test that can throw multiple edge case scenarios at the machine.
That would have a negative effect of possibly slowing down AV adoption
Not a very rosey picture on cyber cab program with departure of program
manager.
The Cybercab has no steering wheel, no pedals, and no fallback. If the self-driving software doesn’t work, the vehicle literally cannot be driven. Tesla changed the meaning of “Full Self-Driving” in September 2025, dropping its promise of unsupervised autonomy altogether. The next-gen AI5 chip won’t be available until mid-2027, meaning the Cybercab will launch on AI4 hardware, the same hardware that hasn’t achieved unsupervised autonomy in millions of existing Tesla vehicles.
When Tesla claimed to launch “unsupervised” Robotaxi rides in January, they vanished within a week and to this day, the program is limited to a small section of the Robotaxi service area in Austin with heavy use of teleoperation.
Yeah that was FSD level 2, which requires driver supervision.
But, in understatement of the day, that’s not a good thing to see. These cars
( Waymo included) have trouble detecting road signage and following the
laws. I still don’t know how latest version of FSD compares with their robotaxi
version of software operating in Austin.
Article does say this about it.
Meanwhile, Tesla is simultaneously operating a limited unsupervised Robotaxi service in Austin using the same FSD software that is currently under federal investigation for these exact types of violations.
They are fighting release of public incident details on what I consider flimsy
grounds too. Not a good look again.
NHTSA launched the investigation in October 2025 after connecting 58 incidents to FSD, including 14 crashes and 23 injuries. By December 2025, the documented violations had grown to 80, drawn from 62 driver complaints, 14 Tesla reports, and 4 media accounts.
Duce630
(DustinK - Damn it feels good to be a Cougar. -Dwight Davis)
230
This is wild, something I hadn’t thought of. The safety features that try to keep the car from hitting a pedestrian can be used against it by someone who wants to harm the car or the occupants. Not sure how you fix that, as you of course can’t account for crazy people, don’t blame this on the automated car companies but they may need to find a solution.
I could see this becoming the new thing to do for high schoolers out at night. More
fun to go mess with the robot car and/or trap it.
As for displaced truck drivers and taxi cab drivers, they may get more serious in retaliation, until someone dies and the perpetrators do hard time. May see something like the Luddite movement
people frequently sabotaged machines during the Industrial Revolution
, most notably during the Luddite movement (1811–1816) in England. Textile workers—specifically skilled artisans like croppers and weavers—smashed machinery (such as stocking frames and power looms) that threatened to render their skills obsolete, lower their wages, and reduce the quality of goods.
No clue how the auto car companies will address it. Is it time to declare the robots
sentient, and allow them to carry ?
/s
1 Like
Duce630
(DustinK - Damn it feels good to be a Cougar. -Dwight Davis)
232
Yea, I could see that.
Duce630
(DustinK - Damn it feels good to be a Cougar. -Dwight Davis)
233
Probably if you look at incidents per miles driven, the AI EVs still
outperform humans. It’s just one getting swept away by rushing water and the
other stopping for a puddle in the road make the news. Seems to be an endless
number of edge cases where AI , despite all the training, just does stupid things.
Duce630
(DustinK - Damn it feels good to be a Cougar. -Dwight Davis)
238
I think, and this is just my feeling, people feel more control when there’s a person making those mistakes instead of a computer. Like if a person does something you can react and possibly prevent a catastrophe, when a computer does it - I don’t know that there’s a way to intervene.
