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  • If a human driver did the same we wouldn't have this conversation.
  • > The company pulled the car over after detecting a “violation of our terms of service involving a firearm,"

    Well now my biggest fear of riding a Waymo is not how it drives but getting my Google account banned because it misdetected something.

  • Do you know what a ghost gun is? Where is the misdetection?
  • I don't trust any of these driverless cars. The last vestige of American car culture was that it would provide freedom and an open road. Now, it seems, that era is over, and cars in the future will be more like jail cells with constant surveillance.
  • Similar a few months back:

    Waymo reports teen riders for bad behavior and delivers them to the police

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48824010

  • Delivering sounds an awful lot like kidnapping..
  • Shocking this isn't bigger news. It will be strange what they get you for. Maybe car ownership isn't doomed after all.

    At least a human usually has some judgment and discretion situationally.

    I guess the alternative "Juvenile Driveby Shooting takes place from Waymo" isn't a better headline though.

  • If i were a driver i would call the cops too. What do you mean? A ghost gun in a taxi is ok?
  • “Maybe car ownership isn't doomed after all.”

    You think “owning” the vehicle will matter in the near future? That’s cute

  • Google would probably be held 100% liable if it happened from their car. . What I don’t get is why Waymo allows unaccompanied juvenile riders at all? That seems like a huge risk for them.
  • >Maybe car ownership isn't doomed after all

    I think if anything waymo, robot taxi is doomed. Self driving ever matures to private car ownership will to car share to subsidize costs will with 1-10% utilization will basically generate more demand than non car owners will ever need - there simply isn't business model for share only fleet outside of specific low vehicle density zones. And even for private car owners, the only ones who will generate some revenue are those that work offpeak hours, i.e. they can rent their cars during surge, which will make congestion worse for all existing drivers by increasing traffic (kek). Proliferation of self driving = eventually millions of beater supply cars doing rotations for basically marginal costs killing fleet economics.

  • Flock is bad, but fleets of cars strapped to the teeth with cameras and sensors are suddenly ok even when they call the police on you? Why? Because of the makers of the technology that powers the cars say they are safer (via datasets that we have no way to validate)?
  • I have an option not to use Waymo. I don't have an option not to get screwed by Flock.
  • Depends on how you feel about guns. I think people who are opposed to them would agree with this, people who are in favor of guns would be alarmed by this.
  • Because you sign up for the service, agree to the terms, and voluntarily get into the car.
  • Well for one, so far they've only called the police on people who chose to use the service.

    When we have evidence that Waymo is contracting its external cameras out to local governments and allowing abuse, then we can criticize them for it.

  • I think there's a legitimate distinction between monitoring what's inside the car vs what's outside. Outside seems bad. Inside is probably necessary.
  • Wait, can I not carry in a Waymo?

    Found their rules page: "Do not carry weapons of any kind in the car"

    That seems... naive? Plenty of people carry pepper spray or a knife with them. Not even ever intending to use them as a weapon.

    When I go to the range, I travel with a locked case that contains my pistol, which inside has a cable lock. I couldn't take that through a waymo?

    What about some kid buying a goofy mall katana they are going to put on their wall?

    Like, obviously brandishing a weapon should be disallowed, but merely having anything that's a weapon? Seems fraught.

  • > What about some kid buying a goofy mall katana they are going to put on their wall?

    Or a kitty keychain...

  • I understand Waymo having this position for now. I also think it is reasonable to push them to refine the rules for the situations you mention.
  • Even if their rules say that I don't get why they are allowed to call the police. In this case it might have been an unregistered gun but if someone was carrying legally they can refuse service but they shouldn't be calling the police.
  • >Found their rules page: "Do not carry weapons of any kind in the car"

    Corporate speak for "concealed means concealed"

  • Don’t brandish your weapon and no one will know you have it. Obviously the case here.
  • In California, it's surprisingly hard to be a legal, responsible gun owner if you don't own your own car. Rideshare bans weapons via TOS, public transit (even unloaded in a locked container) is illegal.
  • I dunno. This doesn’t bother me in the same way that flock cameras do. A Waymo car is a private space that you don’t have to use if you don’t want to. Seems pretty reasonable to me that Waymo doesn’t want their cars used for drive by shootings. If a drive by were to happen in a Waymo, this would be compelled by law anyway.
  • Sure, but the Waymo is taking intrusive video of much more than the inside of the car. And unlike a mast-mounted camera, it can be sent almost anywhere at almost any time.
  • Yeah I don’t get it. You’re getting into a privately owned vehicle. You agree to the terms of service when you sign up and ask for a ride. You should assume you have zero privacy in those cars.
  • It starts to become a problem once you’ve replaced public infrastructure to a sufficient degree by private infrastructure like waymos that avoiding to use them starts to seriously inconvenience people.
  • As far as I can tell here the ghost portion is basically a non-sequiter. The waymo vehicle called the cops because it detected e passengers had a gun. The vehicle did not know or care about its status as a ghost gun or not. I'm sure that the Waymo terms of service prohibit carrying weapons into the vehicle. I'm pretty sure that if you were brandishing a realistic looking enough gun, an Uber driver would kick you out and call the cops as well.