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Re:Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing tr... by MBCook on Sunday December 21, 2025 @02:00PM (#46347250)
> But it's also not a disaster

Because it’s a power outage. If we instead learned about this during a real disaster people could have died because these things were let on the road without planning what they should do in abnormal circumstances.

We’re lucky it’s not a disaster.

Re:Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing tr... by JumpCrisscross on Sunday December 21, 2025 @02:13PM (#46347387)
> If we instead learned about this during a real disaster people could have died

This is universally true. The question is how bad could it have been, and in which cases would it have been the worst?

> We’re lucky it’s not a disaster

This is always true. Again, the question is how lucky?

We have an opportunity to count blocked emergency vehicles and calculate a hypothetical body count. This lets us characterize the damage. But it also permits constraining hysteria.

Re:Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing tr... by SR2Z on Sunday December 21, 2025 @09:37PM (#46350760)
> We’re lucky it’s not a disaster.

I'm sure that if this was something predictable like a cyclone or wildfire, Waymo would still have 100% of their nightly traffic on the road, right? And SFFD would not be able to do what they normally do when they can't get support, which is hop into the car and use the controls to manually move it?

Or... maybe Waymo HAS considered what their cars should do in abnormal circumstances and this kind of outcome was considered acceptable for the number of cars and the nature of the "disaster"?