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Posted by drob518 4 hours ago

Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'(www.cnbc.com)
114 points | 97 commentspage 2
steele 3 hours ago|
Go fish
xnx 3 hours ago||
"recall" = applies software update
tim333 48 minutes ago||
Wikipedia has

>A product recall is a request from a manufacturer to return a product after the discovery of safety issues...

I think using the term for a software update is abusing the language a bit. And may confuse people who have a real recall where the thing has to go to the dealer.

xnx 29 minutes ago||
Yes, "recall" brings to mind serious issues like the gas tank exploding on the Ford Pinto.
fudged71 3 hours ago|||
Also I think it's wrong to call something a recall if it's not owned by customers. Waymo is a service.
asdff 2 hours ago|||
The difference between that and usual software updates I'm guessing is the cars are pulled from service until the update takes place.
dawnerd 3 hours ago|||
Recall makes for better headlines.
rogerrogerr 2 hours ago||
I really want car companies to just automate publishing “recalls” for every commit pushed to any car ever. Flood this broken term and force a distinction between “the airbags will literally explode and destroy your face” and “the radio volume is too quiet sometimes”
nickthegreek 2 hours ago||
A "recall" is a specific regulated action. It is announced as a recall because that is what is legally required according to the NHTSA. There is no wiggle room here.
rogerrogerr 2 hours ago||
Yes, we need to change the rules to create a distinction. The meaning of “recall” in common understanding vs. industry has diverged, and it’s almost certainly causing car manufacturers to do suboptimal things to avoid having “recall” tied to their name in the press.
nickthegreek 2 hours ago||
There is no issue in understanding unless you are talking about only reading the headline that a media outlet decides to use. How about we all just use our brains and understand that things can be fixed in different ways, but it is important that they get fixed.

Suboptimal behavior from companies is what leads to recalls. I cant even understand an example of what you are talking about there. And now you want to carry water for the industry by creating some diluted term. Does the car have a safety issue that is should not? Then its a recall. The manufacture can now decide how to resolve it. Sometimes that can be done via an OTA update.

I think its is in the interest of consumers to know ALL the ways these corps are putting your life at risk through their engineering efforts or lack there of. If your car manufacture is doing weekly OTA bug fixes on the vehicle that you drive you kids in everyday, you (the apparent beta tester) should sure as well know. Then you can make an informed decision.

dang 2 hours ago|||
We've updated the title above. Thanks!
paconbork 3 hours ago|||
Gah, thanks for this. Thought I was used to that slight-of-hand but this one got me
Sohcahtoa82 1 hour ago|||
Legally and technically true, and I hate it.

We really need a better term for when an urgent software update for a vehicle is issued. The extreme majority of the population completely misunderstands it when a "recall" is done when it's actually just an OTA software update.

jagged-chisel 3 hours ago||
aw, I was having fun imagining 3,800 Johnny cabs just immediately changing route to go to headquarters.
Desafinado 3 hours ago||
FFS, can we just go back to talking to each other in person and driving our own vehicles? Where'd the 90s go?
vachina 3 hours ago||
If the car drives itself we will have more time to talk to each other in person.
cryo32 3 hours ago|||
Or invest in public transport instead
Apocryphon 1 hour ago|||
Actually, we’ve just returned to 2007.

https://youtu.be/DOW_kPzY_JY

superfrank 3 hours ago|||
> can we just go back to talking to each other in person

He posts on an internet message board

Analemma_ 3 hours ago||
Just this morning I was almost killed twice on my bike ride to work by two separate drivers, one of whom looked to be 80 and could barely see over the dashboard, and one who was on their phone. I didn’t even bother trying to remember the plate numbers, knowing that the odds of any kind of consequences are absolute zero. No, we can’t go back to driving our own vehicles. Waymo everywhere and human driving outlawed, ASAP.
qwerpy 3 hours ago||
Agree. Multiple people I know have bought Teslas because they don’t trust themselves or their spouses to drive safely, and want them to use FSD. There should be incentives to get people onto self driving.
flextheruler 3 hours ago|||
Tesla cars are not capable of driving autonomously according to the company and regulators.
qwerpy 3 hours ago||
My dad doesn't care what the regulatory definition is, he just presses "Start Self-Driving" and off he goes.
flextheruler 2 hours ago||
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/models/en_us/GUID-59736DF...

"Failure to follow all warnings and instructions can result in property damage, serious injury or death."

"Driver intervention may be required in certain situations, such as on narrow roads with oncoming cars, in construction zones, or while going through complex intersections."

"Always remember that Full Self-Driving (Supervised) (also known as Autosteer on City Streets) does not make Model S autonomous and requires a fully attentive driver who is ready to take immediate action at all times."

mikem170 3 hours ago|||
If self-driving is better, then presumably cheaper insurance costs would be an incentive.
ggreer 2 hours ago||
Different states have different rules about what sort of things insurers are allowed to charge different rates for. In the states that allow it, Tesla does offer insurance discounts for FSD usage.[1] Lemonade also offers discounts for FSD usage.[2]

1. https://www.tesla.com/support/insurance/fsd-discount

2. https://www.lemonade.com/fsd

giacomoforte 3 hours ago|
LeCun is right.
alex1138 3 hours ago|
About what
giacomoforte 2 hours ago||
That you need world models to sensibly deploy "thinking" machines in the real world. Else they do stupid shit like drive straight into water. You can bruteforce some semblance of thinking by training on literally all knowledge that can be digitized but even that is proving to not be quite enough.
jfyi 2 hours ago|||
Like this?

https://waymo.com/blog/2026/02/the-waymo-world-model-a-new-f...

Or did you mean strictly in operation?

gjm11 1 hour ago|||
This seems like an odd take. Don't existing self-driving cars already have rather a lot of world-model? It's not like they're just hooking the driving apparatus to the output of an LLM or something.

(Of course there is also scope for debate about how much world model today's LLMs have; it seems like it's more than none even though it has to be built out of token-shuffling parts. But that's not relevant here.)