I had aasumed the plan was killed for cynical political motivations, the same as apparantly caused the hangup and Hochul's near killing of NYC congestion pricing. Its really hard to gather evidence about what is the motivation for things though...
The article somewhat strangely proposes a technology solution to a problem that they claim isn't a technology problem. Disclosure and reporting regulations can be enacted that don't need a technology element other than what vehicles already have installed.
Save yourself time reading it, it's just a shameless plug for some SaaS service.
The only reason why Waymo was denied access to New York is they haven't given a bribe big enough that the city government requested. That's it. As soon as Waymo gives they bribe they requested they'll be in New York.
> Imagine the conversation New York legislators could have had if every robotaxi ride generated a cryptographically signed, tamper-evident record of the vehicle's behavior — independently verifiable by any regulator, auditor, or safety agency.
This is putting the cart before the horse. The problem with autonomous vehicles is that there's no standardized third party test suite to validate and certify ahead of time and periodically that the vehicles are capable of behaving correctly in all road conditions even with their sensors degraded as will happen over time.
This kind of validation should be done by the state or a neutral third party like UL in the US before a single vehicle is allowed on public roads.
Without it they're just unleashing multi-ton weapons on the streets with no guarantee they'll perform adequately. The problems with this were evident in SF when the blackout happened and the Waymos clogged up the roadways. If that happens during a real emergency and blocks the roadways it could result in thousands of deaths.
Autonomous vehicles are a bad idea anyway for the reasons in this video[1].
The specific dishonesty is the sentence: "None of them answer the question legislators actually care about: what is this vehicle doing, moment to moment, on our roads?" Legislators did not care about that question. They cared about the Transport Workers Union and the New York Taxi Workers Alliance telling them they'd face primary challenges. No amount of cryptographically signed telemetry data changes that calculus.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 28.3 ms ] threadThe only reason why Waymo was denied access to New York is they haven't given a bribe big enough that the city government requested. That's it. As soon as Waymo gives they bribe they requested they'll be in New York.
Why isn't Google/Waymo building it. Sounds like they are much better equipped for it.
This is putting the cart before the horse. The problem with autonomous vehicles is that there's no standardized third party test suite to validate and certify ahead of time and periodically that the vehicles are capable of behaving correctly in all road conditions even with their sensors degraded as will happen over time.
This kind of validation should be done by the state or a neutral third party like UL in the US before a single vehicle is allowed on public roads.
Without it they're just unleashing multi-ton weapons on the streets with no guarantee they'll perform adequately. The problems with this were evident in SF when the blackout happened and the Waymos clogged up the roadways. If that happens during a real emergency and blocks the roadways it could result in thousands of deaths.
Autonomous vehicles are a bad idea anyway for the reasons in this video[1].
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0