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Tesla's Robotaxis Blow Through School Zones, NHTSA Petition Alleges

146 points speckx 3 days ago 117 comments

lesuorac 3 days ago | parent

Probably just re-enacting the training data.

sandworm101 3 days ago | parent

Or running an experiment to create new training data.

bayindirh 2 days ago | parent

> create new training data.

I mean, if they need training data for ragdoll simulation, there's already Carmageddon series. They can connect FSD to a PC and get enough training data in no time.

Not less gruesome*, but way less dangerous for schoolchildren.

*: They should download the patch to undo the zombie conversion, but Grok can do it in a pinch.

bryanlarsen 3 days ago | parent

Tesla/Musk has stated many times that FSD will follow common practice rather than follow the letter of the law. Over 90% of Americans speed in school zones, so FSD is presumably programmed to also do so.

https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/27029

stetrain 3 days ago | parent

As a normal human citizen, speeding in a school zone carries a risk of a significant ticket, with repeat offenses adding points until my license is suspended.

What consequences does Elon Musk face when his autonomous cars do the same?

Tepix 3 days ago | parent

That's your main worry? My worry is to hit a child that comes running from behind a vehicle.

telcodud 3 days ago | parent

On a Tesla robotaxi article, you're highlighting a Waymo incident when Waymo is approved for a fully driverless operation?

stetrain 3 days ago | parent

The risk of hitting a child is the reason that we have the school zones and the penalties to enforce them.

HWR_14 3 days ago | parent

Who speeds in a school zone? It's like 1000ft of going slow so you don't hit a child

Rebelgecko 3 days ago | parent

Where I live (Los Angeles), probably 90% of drivers

dawnerd 3 days ago | parent

Same in Oxnard, they put a school zone on a divided ave. No one slows down. And there's a bus stop on either side so if everyone obeyed the "when children present" it would be a huge bottleneck. Even cops fly through it.

keybrd-intrrpt 3 days ago | parent

Especially when school is not in session and children are not present.

How much is that likely to bias the dataset?

jcranmer 3 days ago | parent

There was a commenter on a similar article a few months ago arguing that speed limits being excessively low is just for trapping drivers and there's no reason for there to ever be speed limits below 30mph.

That's the kind of person I expect who speeds in a school zone.

ambicapter 3 days ago | parent

There's one of those in the thread right now.

ItsMonkk 2 days ago | parent

The city can either put up a sign, and then have an extremely expensive officer watch over that sign 24/7, or they can put in a little bit more work up-front that sets up proper traffic calming procedures, and then never need the officer.

Signs are low cap-ex but high op-ex technique that harms overall safety and causes thousands of deaths per year.

bryanlarsen 1 day ago | parent

Automated speed cameras are cheap and highly effective.

haunter 3 days ago | parent

>Who speeds in a school zone?

Marques Brownlee

konschubert 3 days ago | parent

Tens of thousands dead in traffic due to the “common practice” of driving unsafely. We have the opportunity here to make the roads safe but apparently mr musk doesn’t see the need.

I hope the Nordics prevail and the Europeans don’t follow his bullshit.

chadrs 3 days ago | parent

How could they say this but still claim it will be safer than humans?

lotsofpulp 3 days ago | parent

Not that the speeding is justified, but I would still bet on the computer continuously processing multiple video feeds reacting and stopping quicker than a human in almost all incidents.

delichon 3 days ago | parent

Whether driving below the posted speed limit is safer than driving with a somewhat faster flow of traffic is a fuzzy, very contingent question.

notahacker 3 days ago | parent

True, but gently slowing down on a residential street near a school feels unlikely to lead to other drivers attempting high speed tailgating, undertaking or other aggressive manoeuvres that might result from, say, hogging the overtaking lane without actually overtaking because you're sticking to the speed limit, even before the obvious downsides of speeding near schools are considered...

(Also, the second case is something a car manufacturer should probably be resolving more by not hogging the overtaking lane than defaulting to going 20mph over the limit for extended periods because everybody else does)

testing22321 2 days ago | parent

Think about all the drunk drivers. All the exhausted drivers. Those on their phone. Those in an emotional state that is overwhelming. All the hundreds and hundreds of reasons people do a bad job of driving.

Being better than off of those is not hard, and the data shows Waymo are already there.

Surac 3 days ago | parent

would rust have fixed this?

Xylakant 3 days ago | parent

Certainly, as long as it’s on the car and there’s enough of it.

vessenes 3 days ago | parent

My FSD 14.3 car definitely does NOT respect school zones. Maybe I’m weird, but whether or not I have the car in “Hurry” mode, I expect a hard cutoff at speed limit for a school zone of myself or anything acting on my behalf. I could understand the semantics around “Mad Max” not respecting the signage, but still. Bro. Slow down in a school zone.

konschubert 3 days ago | parent

A car should not have a “break the law” mode.

If speed limits are impractical they have to be fixed.

criddell 3 days ago | parent

In some places, that's how speed limits are fixed.

In Texas, for example, they do a traffic study and set the limit to the 85th percentile speed.

https://www.txdot.gov/safety/driving-laws/speed-limits/speed...

dawnerd 3 days ago | parent

Doesn't that just cause speeds to creep up as people think it's okay to go a little over the limit?

jareklupinski 3 days ago | parent

that's already priced in

ncallaway 3 days ago | parent

The amount that people go over the speed limit varies depending on the road conditions, what they think is safe, and what the speed limit is.

So, if a road feels "safe" at 60mph to people, and you put the speed limit as 20 the average traffic might be 40mph. If you put the speed limit as 40mph, it might go up to 55mph. If you put the speed limit as 60mph, it might go up to 65 mph.

But that natural tapering is what lets you find a stable value for a specific percentile threshold.

testing22321 2 days ago | parent

In all of that it’s worth pointing out 100 Americans were killed on the road today. 100 more will be killed tomorrow, and everyday.

I don’t feel like setting the speed limits at whatever people “think is safe” is a good idea, and the deaths confirm drivers are really, really bad at determining what is safe.

ncallaway 1 day ago | parent

Sure, and I don't think anyone would accuse Texas of being a "vision 0" champion. I wasn't advocating for this as a method of setting speed limits, I was just explaining why this method doesn't lead to a runaway speed increases over time.

OkayPhysicist 3 days ago | parent

Generally, there are 2 forces at play dictating how fast people will go on a given road. The probability of getting caught speeding is one, the other is the perceived safety of going fast. The issue most American roads have is that they are built extremely wide, with even more open space on either side of the road, so people are comfortable gunning it. Speed limits only matter insomuch as they adjust the perceived probability of being pulled over.

Our highways also train you that speed limit are complete bullshit. On an 8 lane, divided highway, with nothing but empty field or protective barriers on either side, 60 mph is comically low. That's how you end up with absurdities like it often being unavoidably illegal to drive on 680 in the Bay Area: either you're speeding, or you're obstructing traffic, both of which carry a fine.

IMO, the correct answer is to raise the speed limit of surface streets that already double as psuedo-highways (looking at you, San Jose), strictly enforce speed limits on surface streets, and then completely eliminate speed limits on the freeways.

bryanlarsen 3 days ago | parent

My google-fu is failing me right now so it might be apocryphal, but I once read a story about a man who got an obstruction of traffic ticket for doing the speed limit in the fast lane of the 401 in Toronto (the busiest & widest freeway in North America). He was doing so in protest of getting a speeding ticket for doing 40km/h over the limit in the merge lane.l

wearearobot 3 days ago | parent

We have the highest posted speed limit in the United States right now at 85mph for a 40-mile stretch in Austin - so you may be onto something.

amoorthy 2 days ago | parent

The older the get the more I appreciate speed limits as they are. Driving fast barely changes your arrival time on most trips and increases risk to you and others dramatically. I'm still guilty of speeding sometimes but on the whole I find driving the speed limits, or thereabouts, more relaxing and enjoyable (I do not hang out in the fast lane).

lesuorac 2 days ago | parent

Pretty hard disagree. Going 75 on the highway compared to other people going 45 does have an impact on arrival times.

Sure, driving to the supermarket doesn't change much at 20mph vs 35mph. However, you may want to start speeding more situational as a lot of the lights feel very interconnected so rather than constantly hitting the same red you can speed before it to get a yellow.

Speeding largely just increases consequence of an accident but the thing that's causing them in the first place is looking at your phone. Adjusting how fast people can go won't fix then unless you dial it all the way down to 10mph.

amoorthy 2 days ago | parent

If you're driving 75 mph and the speed limit is 45mph that's reckless.

Assuming the speed limit is 65 and you're driving at 75 that's quite normal but on a 1 hour journey you've saved ~9 minutes. Maybe worthwhile if you're going to the hospital but mostly not worth the stress and increased risk to others.

Also speeding is a major cause of accidents, even before cellphones were pervasive. https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/fatality-statistics/deta.... Also found another report dating back to the 90s that says the same thing but it's a pdf.

lesuorac 2 days ago | parent

> Assuming the speed limit is 65 and you're driving at 75 that's quite normal but on a 1 hour journey you've saved ~9 minutes.

Most highways around me at 55 so it's 16 minutes. It improves much more when compared to 45 which is common to see people at because they cannot use their hands and feet at the same time (curvey roads).

> In 2024, speeding was a factor in 29% of motor vehicle crash deaths.

Well yeah of course speed is involved in a crash. You can't have a crash with two parked vehicles. Faster speeds make an accident worse but the accident occurs because somebody didn't break in time or look where they were going (common with pedestrian strikes as right turning vehicles don't look right for peds; just left for cars).

Them finding only 8% of accidents involved a distracted driver is highly suspicious. Anecdotally the amount of times I see people leaving lane unintentionally while also either staring at their crotch or holding a phone to their mouth is way beyond 8%.

amoorthy 2 days ago | parent

:) Agreed, I am highly disturbed by the number of people I see driving while looking at their phone.

stronglikedan 2 days ago | parent

At first, most do. After a while, it's only a few. The limits are only increased when most people are doing it. It pans out eventually.

Karrot_Kream 3 days ago | parent

This link claims this is for highways. Does TxDOT have a wider criteria for "highway" than the standard FHWA criteria? Under FHWA I would presume that school roads would be found on local or collector roads, not highways, but I'm not familiar with the streets mix nor the grant landscape of Texas cities.

criddell 3 days ago | parent

Yes, there are different criteria for different roads. Presence of schools is one of them. In my neighborhood, the speed limit drops to 25 mph through school zones (it's 40-45 mph outside of the school zone).

Karrot_Kream 3 days ago | parent

My understanding is that the 85 pct rule has fallen out of favor outside of highways (where the mode mix is 100% high power automobiles.) I know for my municipality and my state, we set speeds in denser areas based primarily on the mode mix and in less dense areas a balance between vehicle volumes, congestion in surrounding areas, and mode mix.

panick21_ 3 days ago | parent

Lets not take advice about anything in regards to road safety from the US, or specially Texas.

m463 2 days ago | parent

You might be right, but the thing is, other countries can do things by fiat.

But the US democracy/political process plus the different states can lead to "vote for this speed limit" as well as widely varying traffic laws in different states.

Personally I think if you want super low speed limits, instead of just enacting them and expecting compliance, maybe use traffic calming devices and other reality-based methods. The united states is not one culture.

I found japan interesting. japan is a high trust, high compliance culture. A (US) friend lives there most of the time with his japanese wife and he told me how things work. The driving tests are very comprehensive and expensive. Also, if you're from the united states, they fail your test the first time you take it. They just assume someone driving on the right should not pass. They don't seem to do that to folks from australia/england.

panick21_ 2 days ago | parent

I agree that you should use traffic calming and things like that.

But the method of increasing speed limits because everybody is breaking the current limit is clearly just bad engineering practice.

You start by over-designing and over-building the road, then you add spit limits to slow it down, and then you realize that everybody still speeds and you up the speed limit.

That just evidence of a broken culture around safety and road design. And people are paying for it with their lives.

vessenes 3 days ago | parent

That … is definitely not how things work in the US. Municipalities set speed limits based on a variety of things including but not limited to maximizing revenue, the streets city council members live on, random news reports about speeds in adjacent jurisdictions, and so on.

Were a car to refuse to exceed the speed limit, it would be dangerously slow almost everywhere in the united states, arguably reducing safety substantially.

konschubert 3 days ago | parent

Sounds like a failed state in that regard.

qntmfred 3 days ago | parent

*imperfect

Xylakant 3 days ago | parent

This is a very weird argument. How can a car be dangerously slow if all the other cars stick to the speed limit as well? Any danger can only come from a difference in speed. So the danger is actually not the car observing the speed limit, it is the other cars that do not. Notably, any reduction in danger that flows from breaking the speed limit is only for the car and other cars breaking the speed limit, in no case it is for pedestrians, cyclists or other non-vehicle participants in traffic.

ToucanLoucan 3 days ago | parent

> How can a car be dangerously slow if all the other cars stick to the speed limit as well?

Because the other cars are speeding too.

> Notably, any reduction in danger that flows from breaking the speed limit is only for the car and other cars breaking the speed limit, in no case it is for pedestrians, cyclists or other non-vehicle participants in traffic.

Correct.

Speed limits in a vacuum are largely about revenue generation. There's ample evidence backing numerous practices that actually slow traffic, things like using traffic circles instead of intersections, reducing the width of lanes to promote slower travel, speed humps, separating traffic that's going a distance (roads) at speed, from slower traffic preparing to enter residences/businesses (streets). Lots of stuff.

Limits though? I mean they probably don't do nothing but they aren't nearly as effective unless you pair them with a regular police presence. And even then, mixed effects. I'm pretty sure the entirety of the Chicago Loop is capped at 55 mph, but if you actually do 55 on that thing, you're gonna die.

As to the topic of the thread: truthfully, IMO, parents should be barred from ferrying their kids to school. Not only is it just a "commute but worse" in terms of ecological impact (the car goes, drops the person, returns home, then returns later, picks up, and returns home. Literally 2x the normal traffic impact) but also it's ridiculously inefficient for similar reasons. School traffic everywhere I have ever lived has been a goddamned nightmare. I would rather be stuck on the highway jam ten times than be trying to navigate around a school full of stressed, harried parents driving big stupid SUVs, who themselves are surrounded by children, who themselves are entering and exiting vehicles at random.

School busses are the safest vehicles on American roads, and starting kids on them early gets them comfortable with the idea of mass transit. Dictionary definition of a win/win.

unshavedyak 3 days ago | parent

> Limits though? I mean they probably don't do nothing but they aren't nearly as effective unless you pair them with a regular police presence. And even then, mixed effects. I'm pretty sure the entirety of the Chicago Loop is capped at 55 mph, but if you actually do 55 on that thing, you're gonna die.

I actually look forward to self driving taxis/etc doing the speed limit for this reason. It's going to be difficult to speed if there are always vehicles doing the speed limits in various lanes (where passing lanes don't exist, at least)

ToucanLoucan 3 days ago | parent

As a software engineer I have no desire to ever let any sort of computer drive my car, and I will happily do what is required to maintain my access to the wheel. I'm thinking stuff like, more stringent driver exams, more expensive license renewals, that sort of thing. I recognize I'm an edge case and am prepared to contend with that however required. I am however also incredibly looking forward to a whole lot of other people being in self-driving cars, because my goodness, a large chunk of our populace has no business being behind the wheel.

Firaxus 3 days ago | parent

Largely agree. As a fellow red blooded american, I love my freedoms as well, but looking at how other people drive on the road, I’ll know when self driving has been solved because insurance companies will charge very differently for cars driven manually than cars driven by software.

Maybe software will never get good enough, but that’s not a bet I would make.

ToucanLoucan 3 days ago | parent

I think the software will get good enough to be quite far ahead of the average driver here. They're not great and they're only getting worse in my experience.

That said I think a fair number of people, myself included, are fine to pay and do more to keep our hand-driven cars, and I'll happily drive next to (properly insured) robots.

bluGill 2 days ago | parent

I am not so arrogant as to believe I'm better than other drives. My record is probably better than average, but only because I religiously do things like maintain an extra long following distance (you know the things they teach in drivers ed that nobody does once they pass their license exam)

jjav 2 days ago | parent

> I am not so arrogant as to believe I'm better than other drives.

Perhaps not you (since I don't know your background), but in general do you feel training makes no difference?

Would you say a heart surgeon with decades of experience would be arrogant to say they are a better heart surgeon than Joe Blow on the street who has zero medical experience? No, they truly are better, because their education and experience.

So yes, people can train to become far better drivers than the average. Hardly anyone does, because it is not required and most people don't care. But it is very much possible.

bluGill 2 days ago | parent

I don't have more training than anyone else - as you say nobody bothers to get it unless forced. I passed my test at 16, I know of a couple changes to training since then but it is by accident since I didn't look and no effort is made to ensure drivers hear of changes. I know many several things in my training that it is obvious nobody is doing.

I think training could help. However I don't think it will. People think they are good enough and will write down answers to pass the test. Maybe if the training was mandatory behind the wheel with failure meaning you lose your license - but the voters won't stand for that.

ToucanLoucan 2 days ago | parent

Quantity of training =/= advanced skill. It's also not arrogance on my part to see people who struggle with even the basics like a four-way stop, and not assess them to be lower skilled than myself. Arrogance would be assuming it, I just wait for people to do dumb shit, then judge them for it.

bluGill 2 days ago | parent

The arrogance is thinking they are worse than you. Most drivers I know complain about "the other guy" who make a mistake, mean while their own issues are "honest mistakes".

Are they struggling with a 4 way stop - or did they just prevent a crash because someone else you didn't even notice just did something stupid? That someone else might be you not knowing you even did something wrong!

Of course I have no idea how you drive, how much training you have or the other important details. The above shouldn't be taken as a personal attack on your actual driving. The attack does fit every other driver I know though (including me - though it is hard to be honest about my own failings)

Moomoomoo309 1 day ago | parent

I live in NJ, and what I like to say is that the drivers here actually know how to drive safely and correctly, they simply choose not to. When push comes to shove or they realize they can't drive like a jerk, they immediately cooperate and things move efficiently. It's not a knowledge problem, it's an attitude problem.

Leynos 3 days ago | parent

When I was learning to drive, I was taught to stay within the speed limit.

dmd 3 days ago | parent

Ok? When I was learning to drive, I was taught to drive safely, whether that was under the speed limit or not. As my dad put it, "would you rather be right or alive?"

ToucanLoucan 3 days ago | parent

Also, people generally self-regulate down to a speed that "feels safe" for the road at hand. Sometimes this itself causes problems (the HUGE suburban streets near me constantly have speeding cars, because again, the street is huge and wide lanes make people confident to drive faster) but again, the issue there is that you need to make the road narrower, and then drivers will naturally slow down.

These mechanisms among others are much more effective at traffic calming rather than putting up more damn signs to clutter things up, and hiring more cops. But of course fixing streets costs money, and police issuing fines generates it, so it's not shocking that most municipalities go with option B.

toast0 3 days ago | parent

> But of course fixing streets costs money

Not fixing streets is 'free' and reduces the perceived safe speed. Letting the streets crumble is a win win.

This doesn't entirely work, eventually the street gets unusable and it's often much more expensive to rebuild it than it you had done timely maintenance.

FireBeyond 2 days ago | parent

The issue there is that everyone has an inflated sense of their ability to drive at speed, and it's "other drivers" that are the problem.

Growing up in Australia, my dad pointed out two things to me, learning to drive: 1) that in my state at that time, you were required to drive at the maximum speed that was: within the limit, appropriate to the conditions and your ability to control the vehicle, and 2) that if it was to directly and imminently avoid an accident, a driver is permitted, for the minimum time possible, to ignore any road law (i.e. you cannot be cited for crossing over into oncoming traffic if it was to avoid traffic about to hit you. It was also commonly used for people cited for speeding while passing another vehicle - you'd appeal, and say "While I realize that I am still required to obey the speed limit when passing, as I was doing so, the vehicle I was passing adjusted its speed putting me in a situation where I felt the safest course to avoid an accident was to accelerate past them and then return to the speed limit").

But yes, as someone who was both a paramedic for 14 years, I've seen more than my fair share of drivers who think that they are safe (which, to be clear, is general commentary - I obviously don't know you).

dmd 2 days ago | parent

If all the many many other drivers on the road are passing you, going 20 mph (30km/h) faster, you are driving unsafely, regardless of the speed limit.

Xylakant 2 days ago | parent

No. They are driving unsafely, not you. Even if the speed limit doesn't seem to make sense for you, it may be there for a reason that's not obvious to you. It may also be there for non-safety reasons, such as noise reduction for the people living close by.

dmd 2 days ago | parent

Once again - I’d rather be alive than right.

Karrot_Kream 3 days ago | parent

If folks are actually interested in how speed limits are set in American cities, I'd encourage them to read about the process in their municipality rather than absorbing information from message board conspiracy posts. In practice, there are indeed several competing pressures that dictate speed limits.

One source of pressure to keep speeds high is that if municipalities can classify a street as a collector or arterial, they can get federal aid for projects related to the road. As such cities will often want to bring a local road up to collector or arterial status so that they can get higher federal funding for it. (Collectors and arterials usually are larger streets with higher speed limits, though the biggest gray zone is between collectors and local roads and often the biggest difference is indeed the speed limit.) Urban planning discourse about "stroads" in the US is largely a story of local roads that have eventually been classified as collectors or arterials so retain the residential or commercial density of a slower road but are expected to have the speeds and vehicle volumes of faster roads.

(FWIW I first saw this on city-data in the early 2000s and vaguely heard my parents' generation say similar things to this comment, but when I actually started listening and attending local meetings I realize that it's mostly an urban legend that gets repeated to each other.)

sandworm101 3 days ago | parent

And then read all the arbitrary historical minutia that have also influenced speed limits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law

"...the National Maximum Speed Limit (NMSL) was enacted in the 1974 Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act that withheld Federal Highway funds from States that refused to comply with provisions of the law, including a maximum speed limit of 55 miles per hour (89 km/h) for passenger vehicles, an increase Nixon approved in signing the final legislation."

Karrot_Kream 3 days ago | parent

Heh there is lots of minutiae, but I'd argue that the NMSL is actually a very big part of transport history in the US and is absolutely something that people should read about. I actually think covering it should be part of basic US civics but :shrug: doubt that's going to happen.

praxulus 3 days ago | parent

There are an enormous number of 2 lane roads in school zones. When there's only one lane of travel in your direction, what's the argument that driving the speed limit could be dangerously slow?

flerchin 3 days ago | parent

This is the justification you make to yourself. People drive the speed limit. I do, never had a speeding ticket. It has never been dangerous.

GuB-42 3 days ago | parent

I find driving in the US kind of weird. Most people are driving 5-10 mph above the speed limit. Not slower, not faster. So why not make the speed limit 5-10 mph faster? But then I guess that people will go over that speed limit.

Maybe the posted speed limit doesn't include the tip.

ChrisMarshallNY 2 days ago | parent

When I lived in Maryland, the state cops would sometimes do this thing, where a cop car would be in each lane, going exactly the speed limit.

No idea if they still do that.

ButlerianJihad 2 days ago | parent

In California, I would see a single CHP vehicle bring an entire freeway to a standstill, for whatever emergency reason. They would activate lights/sirens and then simply swerve wildly through every lane, while incrementally slowing down. Works a treat. Everybody on the road could tell, it was serious business!

FireBeyond 2 days ago | parent

That's called a rolling slowdown or stop. Washington State Patrol does that too, when they haven't got comprehensive traffic management set up yet for a collision/incident.

salamandars 2 days ago | parent

How is it possible to drive 'dangerously slow'? Nobody should be driving at a speed (regardless of the limit) where they cannot react in time to a slow or stopped vehicle appearing ahead of them.

0x457 3 days ago | parent

Reminds me show Upload, there cars had settings of how much pedestrians are respected.

chinathrow 3 days ago | parent

Bro, you are in control. You arw in charge. If you hit a kid and kill it using FSD, you will be held accountable, not Tesla.

Stop using dangerous hw features.

vessenes 3 days ago | parent

Well you may have read the very precise formulation I used acknowledging this very fact — this is software I’m deploying on my behalf, and it does not do what I expect in this case, so I choose not to use it in those circumstances.

chinathrow 3 days ago | parent

Thanks for the clarification, did you file a report?

FireBeyond 3 days ago | parent

Meanwhile I have a five year old Audi that not just recognizes school zones but can also tell (depending on the alert mechanism) when they're in use - flashing lights on the School Zone sign will cause the yellow "SCHOOL" bar that appears above the speed limit to also flash.

cwillu 2 days ago | parent

Ugh, there are few things worse than vehicle UIs that flash to draw your attention to the alert when the alert is about something you need to be paying attention to on the road. Such UIs should be illegal.

FireBeyond 2 days ago | parent

I mean my car has a HUD, so... (but yes, it also appears in the main cluster, which in my case is all digital). That being said, I do agree. But even in automotive UI/UX, I think there's probably significantly more low-hanging fruit.

badc0ffee 3 days ago | parent

Where I live, there are no school zones, but instead playground zones that are in effect from 7:30am to 9:00pm. Now, I might go 60 km/h in a 50 zone depending on the road, but I will always go exactly the limit in playground zones (30 km/h). The fine for speeding in those is so much worse.

I would say the majority do the same, for probably the same reason.

m463 2 days ago | parent

I've found a couple of things

I enabled FSD in a loaner years ago (12.x)

It would not exceed the speed limit. And that did not go well. There are some single-lane roads I drive on that are deserted, but have a few 25/30 zones. People ride your *ss if you go 25 or 30. late at night, that turns into road rage, people want to get home.

I found there was a setting for +<n> over speed limit and I turned it up and things got better. I believe later I was in another loaner and they had added a "go with the flow of traffic" setting (I don't recall the name). That actually went the speed of prevailing traffic and I was more comfortable being driven around.

There are actually lots of studies that show that using "the 85th percentile rule" to set the speed limits gets maximum compliance and much safer roads.

The further you set the speed limit from these speeds, the more speed variance you get and the variance is what causes accidents.

also, there is a psychological component too - I think driving ~5 mph over the speed limit is safer than driving the speed limit or 10 mph over.

people don't like those answers, but they work. Even murderers drive on the right/correct side of the road and drive with the flow of traffic.

Veserv 2 days ago | parent

I mean, they still have not figured out school bus stop signs after, what, 6 years of furious development? They consider that fit for commercial deployment even after it hospitalized that kid coming out from a school bus with the stop sign extended (SGO incident number 13781-5100) after being made aware of the safety defect.

Why would they feel the need to handle garden variety illegal behavior like school speed limits?

FeloniousHam 2 days ago | parent

I wish it switch to (or at least behave like) "Sloth" in any <30mph zone. Sometimes I forget to switch as I'm driven through a neighborhood and it's not friendly to anyone walking their dog.

t1234s 3 days ago | parent

Most school zones (if not all of them) should be eliminated.

tombert 3 days ago | parent

I've never heard this take...why should we eliminate school zones?

dpkirchner 3 days ago | parent

Just think of the minutes of your life you'll never get back. 20 minutes of your entire life, poof, gone! And for what, safety?

stetrain 3 days ago | parent

I don't directly agree with the parent comment but I can see a productive argument that could be made against the current implementation of many school zones.

Mainly that if we want traffic to be slow and walking children to be safe, this can be accomplished by better planning and placement of schools and better design of our streets.

Slapping a blinking 30mph sign on a wide, straight, six-lane highway is kind of a brute force solution that relies on enforcement and compliance, and still leaves pedestrians vulnerable to a lot of car traffic. Anyone walking through or crossing the street during non-school-zone hours is also not afforded that extra level of safety.

Placing the schools on quieter streets with features designed to naturally slow traffic flow and promote safety for pedestrians and bicycles could accomplish most of the same safety goals and work passively 24/7.

As could designing neighborhoods so that more kids can walk and bike to school, reducing car traffic further during busy pickup/dropoff times.

t1234s 3 days ago | parent

many school zones do not have a flashing light and instead have a timetable printed on the sign. This requires you to know at an instant: The current time (which depending on what you drive may not be accessible), If school is actively in session (If you don't have kids or are in a different area you may not know this)

These school zones are instead designed to generate revenue and not do anything for safety. If you are going to have an enforceable school zone you should have a flashing light indicating when its active.

tombert 2 days ago | parent

> many school zones do not have a flashing light and instead have a timetable printed on the sign. This requires you to know at an instant: The current time (which depending on what you drive may not be accessible), If school is actively in session (If you don't have kids or are in a different area you may not know this)

Doesn't that imply that there should just be flashing lights adding to existing school zones, not that we eliminate them?

> These school zones are instead designed to generate revenue and not do anything for safety. If you are going to have an enforceable school zone you should have a flashing light indicating when its active.

How does it generate revenue? I don't generally spend money when I'm slowing down for a school zone.

no-name-here 2 days ago | parent

> How does it generate revenue?

I think they are saying by speeding tickets.

jcomp 2 days ago | parent

I think elimination is a little broad, but I also think the majority of school zones aren't necessary, in my midwestern area of the US at least. Most schools I pass are set well back from the road, have a schoolyard that is entirely fenced, there's a bus/pickup circle off the street, and there's no sidewalk along or crosswalk across the school zoned street. There is little chance a student is going to be anywhere near the street.

kklisura 3 days ago | parent

Just couple of billions of miles of driving data more and they'll be good to go!

time0ut 3 days ago | parent

I have heard of small towns that generated income by running speed traps. There was a notorious one near where I am from where the speed limit changed like a dozen times seemingly randomly over the course of a couple miles. Maybe someday we will see some enterprising sheriff set up some trap for Tesla robotaxis and fund their local government by fining Elon. They can beta test it by sticking a cop at the nearest school right now!

cucumber3732842 2 days ago | parent

Speed trap towns (and all manner of other local government predation upon the populace) work because the harm is spread thinly among the public. You pull that shit on a megacorp and their legal team will show up in court and mop the floor with you.

Aarostotle 3 days ago | parent

It looks like there are 3 alleged incidents, not 1,000. That figure is the number of total Robotaxis.

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2026/INOA-DP26010-19159.pdf

Did the author even read the petition?

ButlerianJihad 2 days ago | parent

I've been extremely pleased with Waymo's adherence to the smallest footnotes of law. Several weeks ago, I was just leaving church, and the road outside is a 7-lane stroad. There was light traffic, and Waymo (Jaguar I-PACE) was accelerating to the 45mph limit, when suddenly it slowed, pulled over, and stopped on the shoulder. Mystified, I looked around to see what had caused this, and I noticed that a school bus, stopped with lights flashing, and disembarking young children, was directly opposite us (no concrete island) and the Waymo Driver was the only vehicle that obeyed the law.

It was not much later when a fire engine or two, at exactly the same point on exactly the same stroad, came screaming towards us with lights and sirens. Again, nobody else in traffic cared. The Waymo Driver immediately, safely, pulled over to the side, and stayed there until the first responders had passed.

There've been a lot of incidents where the Waymo Driver simply does the right thing. I'm so grateful for this. Not even I know the traffic laws well enough to drive like this. It's a modern miracle, and a dream come true. No taxi driver, no immigrant rideshare, comes close!

Ylpertnodi 2 days ago | parent

What is an "immigrant rideshare"?

ButlerianJihad 2 days ago | parent

It's the dude from Haiti who can't put two words together for a coherent English sentence. It's the dude from Somalia who doesn't have the common sense to keep his foot on the brake while the doors are open. It's the Mexican dude, claiming to speaka no English: when you request that he shut off the radio because of the offensive lyrics, he reports you, the rider, to the platform for rude/abusive language.

You know how the administration has been going after trucker schools and CDL truckers who also can't understand any English? The licensed truckers who couldn't graduate from a Quality Learing Center in Minnesota? All those fired and underqualified "truckers" are going to fall back on rideshare platforms, such as Lyft and Uber, because--get this--they don't even require drivers to speak English at all.

I've had taxi drivers try to manipulate the rider's touchscreen (mounted to the headrest of the passenger side front seat) while they were driving the car in motion. I've had drivers who tried to pump out personal information from me. I had an NEMT driver who knocked on my door, and halfway through the trip to the correct clinic, she claimed that she had picked up the wrong person. I've had taxi drivers who sabotaged the card-acceptor and insisted on cash payments. Certainly, we've all had taxi drivers who "got lost" or drove the wrong way "accidentally" to run up the meter.

The Waymo Driver doesn't pull any of that shit, and it 100% obeys laws. Now which are you going to choose?

LtWorf 2 days ago | parent

The account is an LLM.

HughParry 2 days ago | parent

> All comments by this account herein are generated by a neural network, unless otherwise specified.

fuck off