r/SelfDrivingCars • u/carmichaelcar • 9d ago
News Driver hospitalized after crash involving Zoox robotaxi on Las Vegas Boulevard
https://www.ktnv.com/traffic/driver-hospitalized-after-crash-involving-zoox-robotaxi-on-las-vegas-boulevard36
u/Cunninghams_right 9d ago edited 9d ago
I hate the "involved" headlines. While technically correct, people read it with a bias toward the SDC being at fault. One of the the biggest problems of our era is misleading but technically correct information.
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u/triclavian 9d ago
Normally I agree, and it looks like the driver should have avoided the malfunctioning car sideways in the middle of the road, but also a Zoox probably should never be sideways in the middle of the road.
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u/bobi2393 9d ago
The Zoox wasn't sideways until it was rear-ended. (Video on X). But it appears that the Zoox shouldn't have been stopped in the middle of the clear intersection.
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u/Acceptable_Tea281 8d ago
This guy got hurt and is hospitalized all so a tech company can use the streets as a testing ground to make as much money as possible. This would not have happened if the zoox wasnt there. It’s wrong that it happened full stop lol
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u/skyfireee 7d ago
what if my car dies in the same spot? that accident would not have happened if someone would not check their phone while driving on busy intersection
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u/ronnie_sx 6d ago
per capita you should be way more angry about the drunk drivers plowing into families but you’re right roBoT bAd
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u/Acceptable_Tea281 6d ago
Yeah, we should do more to stop drunk driving. You think the people doing that are the same to just get a waymo? They have uber as an option as it is and are still doing that lol
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u/ronnie_sx 6d ago
No shit thats why all cars need to be self driving genius….
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u/Acceptable_Tea281 6d ago
Great. How do you suppose we get one to everyone after we effectively wipe out the middle class with self driving tech?
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u/ronnie_sx 6d ago
you dont need to own you’re car. To thinks so is ridiculously entitled. ultimately a mix of public transit and shared self driving cars are the only scalable solutions
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u/Acceptable_Tea281 6d ago
We’re allocating tax breaks to tech companies directly competing with Public transit and slashing jobs in the towns/cities self driving cars are expanding to - what makes you think public transit will catch up?
Not everyone can afford a $40 round trip each time they need to leave the house and the car is the only financially feasible option lol
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u/Cunninghams_right 6d ago
even just regular drivers are much less safe than a Waymo. serious injury causing accidents are 10x-20x lower for the same operating domain, but the removing the highest accident prone human drivers and most accident prone drivers only moves the average for humans less than 2x.
single-fare SDC do not reduce all negative externalities of cars, but the leading companies are already reducing some of the negative externalities.
also, just as a data-point: late night bus services cost more per passenger-mile in most US cities than a single-occupant uber/lyft/Waymo. maybe we should be thinking about why we're paying more for a service that performs so poorly that people try to just drive drunk instead.
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u/Acceptable_Tea281 6d ago
The option of working as regular drivers is also the backbone of the American middle class lol.
This idea that public transit being inefficient (in the case of late night busses) and a privately owned service, which is subject to price gouging, being the better alternative is asinine. Yes we need to tighten up and improve our public services, no handing the reins over to alphabet/zoox/tesla is not the answer
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u/Cunninghams_right 6d ago
rideshare drivers are often working at or below minimum wage. I wouldn't call that middle class. in fact, why are you advocating for sub-minimum wage work? if Uber was exploiting children in mines, I guess you'd be up here saying "think of the children, they yearn for the mines! what will the children do if they can't earn their parents $1/hr?!". come on. the solution to wealth inequality isn't foregoing efficiency, it's tax policy.
which is subject to price gouging
uhh, they're cheaper PPM than the transit service while earning a profit. how are the price gouging?
Yes we need to tighten up and improve our public services
how? it's already terrible service (especially at night) AND costs more. how do you make the service better without costing more? how do you reduce the cost without reducing quality of service?
no handing the reins over to alphabet/zoox/tesla is not the answer
transit agencies all over the world use private companies to fill in gaps where they have trouble covering it effectively with the transit agency, and the best performing transit systems are ones that have stronger profit motivation.
so again, I'm not saying we should stop providing transit and replace it all with something else. I'm literally saying that we need to think carefully about the trade-offs we're making, and whether there could be better mixtures of services. here is an example: if a city contracted with a service, like Waymo, and required them to operate a pooled service so that vehicle would have higher average occupancy, that could be used like a demand-response service (which is already contracted out by transit agencies), and especially bolstered during times/places where accident rates are higher.
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u/Acceptable_Tea281 6d ago
The reason rideshare drivers are the first to be impacted by job displacement on a level we’ve never seen is because they already don’t have a voice and nobody will fight for their livelihood. Do you think this has never come up in a board room before? Lol.
I’m advocating for the trucking industry and the only upward mobility in America for millions of folks.
Uber is very rarely cheaper than public transit, and they get to decide when it’s at its most expensive and as the consumer a lot of the time you have no choice how expensive the rideshare apps are gonna be lol.
Waymo is not going to accept a deal with a city for their cars to be used in that manner, and even if they did, that money is infinitely better used improving public services than siphoned into the pockets of shareholders.
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u/carmichaelcar 9d ago
Unrelated coincidence : Zoox was supposed to expand beyond 100 taxis today in LV
The Nevada Transportation Authority (NTA) permit that imposed the 100-vehicle cap is set to expire September 25, TechCrunch has learned. An NTA official and a Zoox spokesperson confirmed the change, which is also outlined in an updated permit
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u/Sad_Note4359 9d ago
Looking at the video definitely a case of distracted driving. Could have easily been a a cyclist instead of a vehicle, And the Nissan had three business days to slow down or change lanes
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u/JasonQG 8d ago
That doesn’t excuse randomly stopping in an intersection. That’s just putting yourself in unnecessary danger, and some poor innocent person is paying the real price
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u/cukamakazi 8d ago
Is the poor innocent person you’re referring to the one who wasn’t paying attention while piloting a 2000 lb chunk of metal?
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u/bradtem ✅ Brad Templeton 9d ago
In this sort of situation, if the vehicle has been stopped for some time, the party rear ending it is very likely to get 100% vehicle code fault, even though the Zoox was clearly not performing well. However, since Amazon is a deep pocketed party, we could see an effort to get some amount of blame on them for this.
A driver who stops suddenly for no reason (phantom brake) can get some fault if rear ended by somebody right behind them, but it's still mostly the fault of the rear party. But if the vehicle has been stopped for a while as in this situation, good luck for the rear driver; though hope injuries are minor.
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u/JasonQG 8d ago
It matters very little to me who is legally at fault. I never want to be in a vehicle stopped randomly in an intersection. That’s just putting yourself in unnecessary danger. At the end of the day, I care about my life more than who’s paying for the funeral
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u/bradtem ✅ Brad Templeton 8d ago edited 8d ago
I didn't think anybody suggested the zoox should stop there
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u/JasonQG 8d ago edited 8d ago
Look around. There are people putting 100% of the blame on the human driver and none on Zoox. And I got downvoted for my above comment, which is kinda crazy to me
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u/DeliciousAd2134 2d ago
Definitely human driver's fault. Traffic can be stopped for any reason -- turning left, emergency, traffic backup, etc. The driver needed to pay attention. Zoox was malfunctioning, but that was a separate issue
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u/bradtem ✅ Brad Templeton 7d ago
Under the law the human driver does get 100% of the blame. There is no law, or liability, for stopping, even for no reason, in most situations. (And none of the exceptions appear to apply here.) This does not mean that the Zoox performed as desired, which is why I said above. I don't think anybody is saying the Zoox did well, just that it did nothing which assigns fault under the law. And we could debate if the law should change, but there are actually a number of reasons it is the way it is.
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u/porkbelly6_9 9d ago
Zoox: 20% fault
Driver: 80% fault
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u/Zemerick13 8d ago
Zoox is 0% at fault. There are countless valid reasons why a vehicle might not be at full speed. Starting from a stop ( like freshly changed light ), stalled, ran out of gas/battery, medical emergency, etc. Drivers should always be looking at what is in front of them, and driving at a distance and speed appropriate to be able to respond in time. And boy oh boy did the Nissan driver have plenty of distance and time. This easily could have been a school bus dropping off/picking up kids.
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u/ChupacabraJeff 8d ago
Zoox caused the accident. The Nissan is responsible for the accident.
If Zoox drove like normal this would not have happened. If the Nissan paid attention to driving this would not have happened. Shit happens. The Nissan is 100% at fault.
Should Zoox get in trouble? Yes. Should the human driver of the Nissan get in trouble? Yes. Should the punishment be the same? No.
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u/Zemerick13 8d ago
While there's a fair chance zoox should be in trouble for an avoidable error, we don't actually know. For example, it could have been a hardware fault with the battery. We need more info to know whether zoox screwed up as well. But at least they didn't ram full speed into another vehicle.
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u/ChupacabraJeff 8d ago
We need more info to know whether zoox screwed up as well.
No. We don't. We have video.
But at least they didn't ram full speed into another vehicle.
Doesn't matter.
Zoox caused the accident. The Nissan is responsible for the accident.
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u/Zemerick13 8d ago
We have a video showing from a distance of a zoox slowing down to a crawl. We do NOT have a video showing telemetry from the zoox, or any other relevant info.
Yea, it does matter that the zoox didn't ram into someone at full speed. That would be WAY worse. That's the kind of thing that would get an AV company shut down.
The zoox did not cause the accident. It contributed to it. The driver of the nissan caused it. There could have not been a car coming from behind the zoox, and then there wouldn't have been an accident. Or the driver could have been paying attention, and stopped and gone around, again avoiding the accident.
A school bus stopping to pick up kids and getting rear-ended by another car did NOT cause an accident. That's all the Zoox did, it slowed to a near stop. That's it. Nothing more. It shouldn't have done it there. They need to look into why it did. But that does not mean it suddenly caused an accident. It was an intersection, it could have easily been a person making a perfectly legal right turn into that lane that got hit instead of the Zoox.
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u/ChupacabraJeff 8d ago
We have video of a Zoox obstructing traffic flow. We have video of a Nissan plowing into the rear end of a Zoox.
That's the kind of thing that would get an AV company shut down.
Obstructing traffic flow instead of properly pulling over in a safe manner should get an AV company shut down but there's too much money involved.
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u/KobeBall 8d ago
Zoox is at fault due to whatever error caused it to randomly stop in the middle of the road. All these cars have onboard computers so cant hide that it was messing up
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u/bobi2393 9d ago
I have a few bucks to gamble, anyone know the current odds on "Zoox had the right of way?"
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u/tenemu 9d ago
The video was posted. It stopped in the middle of an intersection and a distracted driver rear ended it.
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u/chickenAd0b0 8d ago
tbf, you just normally don’t expect someone to stop right in the middle of intersection in a flowing traffic
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u/Proof-Constant-3240 9d ago edited 9d ago
I'll take the other side, but this is callous. Have you been drinkin?
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u/WrapBudget9060 9d ago
Love things like this because when was the last time you saw an article that was like "driver of a 2021 Toyota Corolla hospitalized" or "driver of a diesel truck hospialized"? If we reported every single hospitalization from an MVA along with specific car models for each one, THEN we could make a legitimate comparison on the safety of FSD/robotaxi vs standard driving. Until then, these articles are just fear mongering
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u/Puzzleheaded-Flow724 8d ago
Like last January first, with the two pickup trucks incidents, the Reuters news titles were
Tesla Cybertruck explodes outside Trump Las Vegas hotel, killing driver
The other was
Truck crashes in New Orleans crowd killing multiple, officials say
Spoiler, it was an F150. Most news sites had a similar news title.
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u/NewNewark 6d ago
Love things like this because when was the last time you saw an article that was like "driver of a 2021 Toyota Corolla hospitalized" or "driver of a diesel truck hospialized"?
Every day? Multiple times a day? Try opening a local newspaper.
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u/WrapBudget9060 6d ago
For a large city newspaper? I rarely see anything for a non-fatal accident from a typical gas based car. Maybe in rural America though?
There are multiple crashes per day that never get attention, but the minute a car with FSD gets into a fender bender you never hear the end of it
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u/NewNewark 6d ago
Local outlets like TAPinto and Patch report crashes that require a police response
Example:
August 17: At approximately 5:45 p.m., a driver was traveling westbound on Stuart Road near Bouvant Drive when a fox ran into the road. He swerved to avoid it, but lost control of the car and hit a curb and a stop sign instead.
August 20: At approximately 6:45 p.m., a 75-year-old driver was traveling on State Road near Arreton Road when a branch fell off a tree during severe winds and landed on the hood of her car. The impact caused her windscreen to shatter.
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u/reddit-frog-1 9d ago
Zoox should turn on a feature that flashes a strobe light and siren when a car approaches front behind at too high of a speed.
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u/psilty 7d ago
For it to be effective a feature like that would need to account for stopping distance of a wide variety of cars plus human reaction time. It will trigger way earlier than you probably think, causing false positives and possibility of additional accidents from distracting nearby drivers.
What really would fix it is Automatic Emergency Braking which is mandated on all new cars from 2029 onward.
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u/reddit-frog-1 7d ago
Yeah, the AEB has been mostly complete since 2023. In 5 years, most existing cars will have this feature.
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u/FuddyCap 8d ago
You can look at the data online and it is quite clear that Xoox has a very high accident rate
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9d ago
[deleted]
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u/carmichaelcar 9d ago
A. It’s not zoom
B. Photo is after the collision
C. There is a link - you can see the entire videohttps://x.com/PCALive/status/2103633728757248512/video/1?s=46
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u/Boccob81 9d ago
So the zoox stops in the middle of the intersection for a reason undisclosed as why and some how hit the Nissan I’ve not seen the video yet only going of the comments why did it stop ?
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u/onions_are_evil 9d ago
The Nissan hit it. Zoox slowed and stopped erroneously and the car behind, with plenty of time to react, rear ended it. If this was a manned vehicle, the car behind would be at fault most likely. I could imagine someone seeing something in the road erroneously and stopping like that. We've all seen shit like that where people do dumb shit because they see don't see something right. Not to say Zoox shouldn't fix whatever caused this but the other driver should have stopped.
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u/Boccob81 9d ago
It looks like the zoox hit it the way the pics look from the angels
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u/Zemerick13 8d ago
Doesn't matter what the pic looks like. Video shows what actually happened.
Zoox is crossing intersection. It then slows. It comes to a near stop. It creeps forward. More time goes by. Something is obviously wrong with it. Ages and ages of time to react. Nissan comes in at full speed and rams hard into the back of the zoox, no sign of slowing down or trying to avoid it.
That zoox could have been anything, including a bus making a stop. Driver was just straight up not looking straight in front of them.
( Also, other cars immediately leave, not even checking if the driver was ok. )
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u/danlev 9d ago
Looks like it was a human not paying attention and it ran into a malfunctioning(?) Zoox.
Video of the incident: https://x.com/pcalive/status/2103633728757248512?s=46