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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Portland OR is doing a survey on rezoning the Inner Eastside. Why not suggest this when you complete it? "Under no circumstances allow the warehousing or parking of autonomous vehicles used as taxis or for delivery on lots, buildings, or streets, individually, in bulk, or as a fleet."

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Ah this must be a definition of "autonomous" with which I am not familiar. Or perhaps we have decided that the only thing which could make AI data centers more of an environmental disaster would be to let them drive cars. www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/20...

If you've ever wondered whether a generative AI model can drive a car, wonder no more: It can be done, at great expense and very slowly, so long as it can maintain an internet connection.

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

ah, do you think they can interpret this gesture? www.newswise.com/articles/aud...

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Old enough to remember that over a generation ago "self-parking" was as "solved" as Ulrich claims Level 4 autonomy is. This, of course, is why you see self-parking cars everywhere.🙄 Rivian is investing tens of billions in Level 4 as it bleeds investors' cash. spectrum.ieee.org/rivian-self-...

Robotaxis currently roaming the U.S., China, and the Middle East have proved that driverless, Level 4 autonomy is possible. These cars operate in relatively tiny numbers in a couple of dozen cities, and within the specific constraints of commercial services.

Scaringe, during our drive of his company's make-or-break R2 SUV at a Utah state park, says that showroom Rivians will start adopting some of its robotaxis' Level 4 capabilities no later than 2030, perhaps beginning with self-parking functions.

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Your reminder that every Waymo or other AV is not only a mobile surveillance platform but a rolling datacenter. The Waymo Gen 5 Jaguar I-Pace continuously carries the weight equivalent of 7 additional passengers around. And remember to add the stationary datacenter footprint it needs to run.

Ali Haghani's Twitter post from 2026-05-26 showing the curb weight of the Waymo's registration at 5,886 pounds (2,670 kg) vs the car's stock weight of 4,784 pounds (2,170 kg).

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Repeated violations shows contempt for the law and should carry additional sanction. Illegal PUFO has more than monetary implications. Waymo is currently facing a lawsuit from a cyclist who got doored by a passenger dropped in a bike lane. Waymo illegally blocks safety daylighting zones.

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Virginia Autonomous Driving Work Group ignores best-practice configuration certification standards*, sets things up for easy regulatory capture by vendors, and hopes for lots of jobs cleaning poop out of Waymos†. www.thecentersquare.com/virginia/art...

The group debated how safe a self-driving vehicle should have to prove it is before moving beyond the pilot stage. Rather than setting a fixed crash-rate target, members favored giving DMV room to decide whether each company had safely completed its pilot based on its operating conditions, miles driven and vehicle type.

The study also pointed to possible benefits, including new jobs tied to autonomous vehicles, help with driver shortages and expanded transportation options.

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Was this Tesla rear-ended and its driver killed because of FSD phantom braking or failure. Tesla legally redacted details that would help the public find out. Great reporting by Fred Lambert @ Electrek electrek.co/2026/08/31/t...

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Waymo's recent blogpost tries to establish that their Gemini-powered Vision Language models can interpret hands signals within the context of a scene, "helping it navigate situations that are far outside its standard training data." But they interpret nothing, understand nothing. Technobabble.

7. Vision Language
Models improve scene reasoning
Driving requires complex, chain-of-thought reasoning. When a car encounters a police officer using hand signals at the site of a collision, the Driver must understand the intent of those signals within the context of the surrounding scene. This is where Vision-Language Models (in our case, trained with Gemini) become crucial reasoning partners. They provide high-level semantic "hints" to the Driver, helping it navigate situations that are far outside its standard training data.

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Looking forward to LIDAR-protective glasses, clothing, and skin creams becoming popular.

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

The is passage from the safewashing Streetsblog post by Arielle Fleischer seems appropriate.

Cities become more delightful when there are fewer cars circling and less curb space devoted to vehicle storage. Right now, roughly 40 percent of ride-hailing miles are empty, a figure that generally holds for AV fleets. But as a fleet operator, Waymo is incentivized to minimize deadheading because we bear the cost of every single empty mile driven. (highlighted) Every unnecessary mile means additional operating costs, energy consumption, vehicle wear, and risk exposure. (highlighting ends)
Traditional ride-hailing platforms don’t internalize these costs; they are pushed onto the drivers. Waymo, like cities, wants to reduce empty miles as much as possible.

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Second: "Curb management is exactly how cities can organize that tradeoff with clear rules." And Waymo will ignore those rules, like this Waymo parked illegally at a no-parking-for-safety-reasons daylighting area

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Kaiser leadership: Hey you know the best way we can deliver better healthcare more affordably? No one: Replace living-wage security jobs with a robot that can't deal with a parking lot. via www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivin...

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Your reminder that "self parking" cars are as much a pipe dream as "autonomous vehicles", despite the simpler design domain and decades of head start. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

However, despite considerable progress and the availability of various systems on the market, deploying APSs that can operate reliably and robustly across the full spectrum of real-world complexity remains a formidable challenge. The transition from controlled demonstrations in well-defined test tracks to ubiquitous, robust real-world deployment in everyday parking scenarios is hampered not only by sheer environmental complexity, such as varying weather conditions, diverse parking lot layouts, and inconsistent human behaviors, but also by fundamental trade-offs. (continues)

(continued) These include the delicate balance between system performance (e.g., speed and smoothness of parking) and the computational resources available on automotive-grade hardware, the rigorous demands of safety assurance versus the desire for rapid feature deployment, and the overarching influence of cost constraints on sensor suites and processing power. Furthermore, the persistent challenge of validating systems against the unpredictability of human behavior (e.g., pedestrians suddenly appearing, other drivers making unexpected maneuvers) and diverse, often poorly maintained, operational conditions adds layers of difficulty.

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Ironic that Waymo got the exemption given that every single thing installed by Waymo is probably also made in China. How did those get imported? www.forbes.com/sites/alanoh... archive.is/vYEAZ

In comments submitted to the Commerce Department last year, Waymo argued its vehicles shouldn’t be subject to the new rules because all the connected tech on board is American-owned and -fitted.

The vehicles Waymo receives from Geely, it says, are “base vehicles,” stripped of telematics systems and any other technology that would allow the vehicle to communicate with, or send data back to, its manufacturer. Only “authorized personnel” install Waymo's self-driving technology into the cars after they’re delivered to the United States.

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Waymo's app is supposed to not allow illegal or unsafe dropoff locations, but it does anyway. Should any city allow this? Here's a dropoff in a no-stopping unprotected bike lane on Masonic in SF. I wonder how @pbotinfo.bsky.social would feel about this in Portland?

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Just wait until Waymos serve congestion zones and then stand down because an unpredicted thunderstorm rolls in. The entire fleet will scurry into every legal and illegal spot in sight, like this Waymo parked for over a day in a SF no-parking daylighting zone during the Dec 2025 blackout.

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

Employees at Waymo's sister company think Google's AI is crap. How is Waymo's so much better? Oh. It's not. www.404media.co/google-emplo...

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

This is not quite accurate. Each Waymo without passengers is carrying half a ton of computers and sensors. That's the equivalent of seven ghost passengers. An entire minibus's worth!

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

These things are going to look so cool stalled at every intersection in SF at the next blackout!

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

I remind these Tesla workers on the "trauma team" that they can organize their workplace just as other data workers do. data-workers.org

One data-labeling team focused on near-misses of pedestrians, three employees said. Known informally as the “trauma team,” one source said, these employees worked in Palo Alto, California, with special permissions to view the footage. Engineers closely guarded the trauma-team clips, but some footage would occasionally “slip through” to other teams, the person said.
The person and another employee said they saw clips showing drivers manually taking over at the last second when FSD failed to recognize pedestrians in crosswalks. Two other former employees recalled seeing videos last year of FSD-piloted Teslas nearly hitting children.

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

from a Waymo and its Little Brother, a Serve delivery robot. An anonymous Waymo spokesman told 404 this, but as it is not part of the Waymo user agreement, the details could change for riders. Non-riders usually have no expectation of privacy under current law. www.404media.co/lapd-publish...

A Waymo spokesperson told 404 Media that it does not proactively give footage to police.
“Waymo does not provide information or data to law enforcement without a valid legal request, usually in the form of a warrant, subpoena, or court order. These requests are often the result of eyewitnesses or other video footage that identifies a Waymo vehicle at the scene,” the spokesperson said. “We carefully review each request to make sure it satisfies applicable laws and is legally valid. We also analyze the requested data or information, to ensure it is tailored to the specific subject of the warrant. We will narrow the data provided if a request is overbroad, and in some cases, object to producing any information at all.”

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Waymo wants Louie careers.withwaymo.com/jobs/waymo-o...

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Waymo Is Not In The ‘Vision Zero’ Toolbox: Data At least two of the cities where Waymo operates have not experienced declines in traffic-related injuries and deaths. Sophia Lebowitz @ Streetsblog NYC nyc.streetsblog.org/2026/04/22/w...

Driverless taxi company Waymo claims to be a tool for safe streets — but at least two of the cities where Waymo operates have not experienced declines in traffic-related injuries and deaths.

In San Francisco, where Waymo began operating in June 2024, traffic injuries actually increased by 2.6 percent from 2,896 in 2023 to 2,907 in 2025, according to data tracked by the city. And crash deaths also rose, albeit by one, from 26 in 2023 to 27 in 2025, a statistically insignificant increase, but nonetheless in the wrong direction for a company that has argued it will make cities safer.

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Qcraft, maker of chips and software for slopbots, raises $100M Series-D round. CEO claims AI already has human intelligence, will become superhuman in next decade. pulse2.com/qcraft-100-m...

“2026 marks a critical inflection point in AI development. We are transitioning from ‘human-like’ intelligence to superhuman intelligence. Over the next five to ten years, the greatest opportunities in AI will emerge in the physical world—and that is precisely what makes autonomous driving so exciting. It is the best and most direct gateway into physical-world AI.”

Dr. James Yu, Chairman And CEO Of QCraft

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Slopware as defined by Level4IsGoingGreat is now in the Urban Dictionary. Vote for it! www.urbandictionary.com/author.php?a...

slopware

1. Computer code generated by large language models (LLMs), such as Gemini, ClaudeCode, and GPT.

2. Code that uses stochastic models like transformers so it has only a probability of working correctly, like Tesla's Full Self Driving and Waymo driver

First Developer: This submission to my project is full of bugs, zero-day exploits, and code that came from other projects.

Second Developer: It looks like they used ClaudeCode. Typical slopware!

First Parent: Oh, here's the schoolbus, stopping now with its stop sign extended.
Second parent: Look at that Waymo! It just blew past the stopped schoolbus!
First parent: That slopware is dangerous!

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

Waymo slopware fails so badly that Event Response cannot move the vehicle as they claimed they could in letter to Sen Markey and in Vehicle Safety Plan filed with CPUC in Oct 2025. Waymo slopware fails so badly support cannot unlock manual controls for firefighters to drive vehicle out of the way.

1(b) Whether your company ever allows RAOs to tele-drive a vehicle, beyond providing guidance to the AV;
Response: Waymo has not used remote driving or "tele-operations" where a human performs the Dynamic Driving Task. As mentioned above, we do not have humans passively monitoring the AVs as if they are engaging in normal driving, nor are there humans who are able to start driving an AV remotely.
Waymo has developed a tool that is reserved as an additional safeguard for a rare set of potential situations to assist a stopped AV fully onto the shoulder from the adjacent lane on a high speed road. In such situations, a specially trained, U.S.-based ERT agent could prompt the AV to move forward at 2 mph for a short distance at fixed steering angles to exit the travel lane.
To date, this functionality has never been used outside of training.

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

Waymo once again admits they can remotely operate vehicles, but denies they ever have outside training scenarios in letter to Sen Ed Markey (D-MA) assets.ctfassets.net/7ijaobx36mtm...

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

Waymo can creates slop to train its Driver on, but still can't pass the barrier of meaning to understand the world and its surprises. cowboystatedaily.com/2023/07/14/c... waymo.com/blog/2026/02...

Most simulation models in the autonomous driving industry are trained from scratch based on only the on-road data they collect. That approach means the system only learns from limited experience. Genie 3’s strong world knowledge, gained from its pre-training on an extremely large and diverse set of videos, allows us to explore situations that were never directly observed by our fleet.

A "watch for falling cows" road sign against a mountain backdrop. A yellow triangle with the silhouette of a car from the rear driving next to a steep road cut rising above it. At the top, a cow is falling, along with some large boulders the size of small boulders, towards the car.

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Cláudio Afonso @ Waymo Exec Admits Remote Operators in Philippines Help Guide US Robotaxis Mauricio Pena may have just committed perjury or Waymo lied to CPUC, if Phillippines staffs Event Response. EV agents are able to remotely move robots at low speed. eletric-vehicles.com/waymo/waymo-...

Peña noted that the vehicles remain in control of all driving tasks at all times.

“They provide guidance. They do not remotely drive the vehicles,” Peña told the Senate committee. “The Waymo vehicle is always in charge of the dynamic driving tasks, so that is just one additional input.”

When pressed on how many operators are located outside the United States, Peña said he did not have the breakdown available, escalating frustration from senators.

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

Interesting revelation by Jesse Levinson, CEO of Zoox, that humans no longer monitor Zoox robots unless they call for help. Contrast that with their statement in their last communication to the CPUC. Levinson was replying to a Fortune opinion article posted by Brad Templeton.

Hi, Brad. You wrote, "Using remote supervisors is expensive. It's perfectly fine for small fleets (and all companies do it, I am confident Zoox is doing it today, though official confirmation of such things is rare." I'd like to reiterate and officially confirm (as we've done publicly, by the way) that last summer Zoox graduated from remotely monitoring our robotaxis by default. We of course still have TeleGuidance capabilities when needed, but our robotaxis ask for assistance when they want it; otherwise, no one is monitoring them.

Section 4.02 of GO 157-E requires that all vehicles under a TCP permit shall comply with the California Highway Patrol and Motor Carrier Safety Sections of Title 13 of the California Code of Regulations. The California Code of Regulations ("CCR") Title 13 Section 1215 Subsection (c) requires that each driver shall prepare a report on each vehicle operated that covers certain parts and accessories, including the horn, windshield wipers, and rear vision mirrors. Because the Zoox robotaxi does not have an in-steering wheel horn, windshield wipers, or rear vision mirrors, Zoox seeks an exemption to these inspection and reporting requirements under this CCR. First, autonomous vehicles are excepted from such equipment requirements under California law, so long as the vehicle otherwise complies with applicable federal regulations, which is the case for the Zoox robotaxi. As such, the requirement to inspect such equipment is functionally an "if equipped" requirement; meaning, the inspection requirement only applies if the vehicle is required to, and actually contains, the covered equipment. Furthermore, Zoox conducts extensive manual daily inspections as provided in the Pre-Service Checklist that was submitted as part of Zoox's renewal application, in addition to our automatic inspections and continual system monitoring. Therefore, there are no safety risks associated with not inspecting the equipment the Zoox robotaxi does not have, and Zoox's regular inspections and continual monitoring of the ADS are functionally equivalent to the inspections and reports required by the CCR.

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

It's to be noted that robotaxis, like the Waymo Ojai (not involved in this incident) nearly exceed the 6 foot height recommended for safer daylighting, and almost all exceed it once sensor packages are included. Waymos are notorious for illegally stopping & parking in daylighting zones, as pictured.

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

From Waymo's October 2025 Passenger Safety Plan: "Event Response agents are able to remotely move the Waymo AV under strict parameters, including at a very low speed over a very short distance." www.reddit.com/r/waymo/s/SQ...

From the r/waymo subreddit,

I left the bar, and hopped in my Waymo. It was in an alley behind the bar, which is where most ride shares will pick you up. Hopped in, started ride, it starts rolling forward; and right in front of us, there’s the headlights of a Ford Raptor. Just to the driver side(my pax) of the Raptor, there’s a dumpster. The Waymo pulled off and it was a full on Mexican standoff; if the Waymo went left it was technically going wrong way through the parking lot. And it looked like to me the dumpster was lined up enough with the Raptor to prevent us from moving forward.

After a few seconds, the Waymo lurched forward, crawling towards the Raptor; I was kinda stunned. But as we got closer, I realized there was a gap just wide enough for the Waymo to squeeze through next to the dumpster. And the Waymo did indeed squeeze right through, I’m sure leaving the driver of the Raptor completely dumb struck.

Incredible, 10/10, can’t wait until Waymo’s are 50% of the cars on the road.

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

Waymo scolded by judge after robotaxi company refuses to discuss details from power outage www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/w... archive.is/iuxot

“Counsel, is it your position that the number of vehicles that stopped as a result of the Dec. 2025 power failure is confidential?” he asked. When the attorney stood his ground, saying his client couldn’t risk exposing too much detail about its fleet deployment, the judge did not appear satisfied.
“Well, you may have claimed a trade secret, but the commission has not ruled on that yet,” Mason said

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

City of Santa Monica asking that Waymo depots be declared public nuisances abc7.com/post/city-sa...

The city's court papers, filed Dec. 24 in Beverly Hills Superior Court, say those who live near the stations have used such terms as "mini-Las Vegas,'' "living next door to a spaceship,'' "a circus'' and "a city that never sleeps'' to describe their plight.

Residents also say they hear workers' whole conversations in normal speaking voices in the middle of the night, along with all the other sounds the Waymo cars make, which "echo off buildings along the alleys like a canyon,'' according to the city's court papers, which state that lights from cars and awnings are more glaring when it is dark.

The proposed injunction would stop recharging operations at the two lots from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. or by ordering other "appropriate measures to abate the nighttime nuisances.''

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

Waymo slow-rolls fire truck with lights & siren, orig below I guess we should be glad a Tesla didn't t-bone the fire truck on a cross street. If there were casualties from whatever emergency the truck was headed to, would that count against Waymo? Or is it just another externalized cost?

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

Money quote from Taskin Padir, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern University and an autonomous vehicle researcher in this piece by Cesareo Contreras: techxplore.com/news/2025-12...

"I do think they've gone to some degree to indicate that the engineering they've done, they have produced a car that, based on the statistics, doesn't seem to be any more deadly than a car driven by a human," he said. "But it's a leap to say they're safer than humans. That's taking their statistics one step too far."

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Level 4 Autonomous Driving Is Going Great @level4isgoinggreat.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

This head of a VC thinks Waymo is like a medical intervention that needs fast-tracking. You have to wonder why Dr Zlotkin never made a case for immediate nationwide implementation of something like Hoboken's successful Vision Zero—0 fatalities for 8 years running. No conflicts of interest noted.

In medical research, there’s a practice of ending a study early when the results are too striking to ignore. We stop when there is unexpected harm. We also stop for overwhelming benefit, when a treatment is working so well that it would be unethical to continue giving anyone a placebo. When an intervention works this clearly, you change what you do.

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