Company breaks law: you cheeky little scamp, just don't let me catch you again, eh?
Normal person breaks law: Halt! Prepare for adminstration of the long dick of the law!
Seriously, how many points do they get to rack up before a ban? I get 12. And is it per car, per version or what?
So it turns out that some infractions in some jurisdictions are "owner liability" and so all the authority needs to do is cite the registered owner, because they're always responsible for anyone who is permitted to drive their car.
If the jurisdiction is not "owner liability" then it may be necessary to ID the driver instead, but the ticket is still sent off to the registered owner for handling, because the ticket and the car and the driver all go together.
Regarding a sibling query if the car is stolen, I'd say the owner has bigger fish to fry, and therefore would have reported the incident already, and so untangling a speeding offense would necessarily involve documenting the report and the incident of theft prior to those infractions. It may get a little sus if the owner said "hey my car was stolen and then returned to me just around the hour this photo was taken! it weren't me bruh!"
Let's not forget all the disparate jurisdictions and patchwork of laws which make up this sort of scenario. We can never make blanket statements that cover every situation.
I'd bet a lot of money that the intersection isn't signed or is poorly signed (because if there's one thing these vehicles do pretty well it's obey obvious signage) or not signed and the illegality of the U turn is implicit, the software learned that the path was valid from other drivers because it's a easy/tasteful place to do a U turn and the cops just spawn camp it (because they need a legal pretext for the stop, so something like that works well) when they want to go fishing.
One would hope that the traffic laws of an area are "hard coded" and not dependent on what other drivers do.
For example, there’s a street in my neighborhood that’s normally open for two-way traffic, but one of the buildings that fronts it is being renovated so the street was changed to one-way for about a month, and as of a couple of days ago it’s still one-way but in the other direction. Imagine trying to get a car to work that out on its own.
The Waymos I ride have developed a habit of swinging right into bus turnouts.
A bus turnout looks like a dedicated right-turn lane, except it ends and you must merge before turning right!
So these Waymos are illegally entering these lanes for no good reason and seem completely unaware of their actual designated use or signage. I cannot figure out why.
Sooner or later we'll be making so many omelettes that the occasional broken egg will be, reluctantly, accepted, and the penalties will amount to the usual corporate wrist-slapping, and that will be that.
Waymo has been deployed for a long time. It’s absurd that law enforcement has no idea how, or whom, to ticket!!
