Driverless AND Brainless

 A given, right?  No car driver, then no brains in the car.

 

This week, there was a minor traffic accident in San Francisco. Two cars bumped into each other at low speed, and a third stopped for the accident and further blocked traffic. A mere nothing. This happens all the time, and we all know what happens next: the drivers exchange insurance information (and if they're thinking, they move their cars out of traffic first) and leave. Maybe they call the cops and file a report. But not this time

 This time, the three cars just sat there, deadlocked. Nobody moved, nobody talked, nobody took any action. This is because there was nobody to take action. No humans were involved. All three cars were autonomous vehicles operated by Waymo. Following the minor crash, none of them could figure out how to proceed and so just sat there, patiently waiting. They're good at that. Machines are very patient.

Eventually, someone (presumably from the company) came down and got things cleared up, but it exposed an obvious gap in how driverless cars handle fairly routine problems. In this case, the cars (or a car - the company's statement is unclear) got snarled up in a dead-end street and had a collision while one or more of them was trying to do a multi-point turn to get out of it....

BWAHAHAHAHAH