I am a little worried that this is still a problem after 20 years. Don't they have simulators to test every weird and unexpected road condition offline? And flooded roads aren't exactly an unusual event to begin with.

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krackers an hour ago | parent | next [-]

They can simulate "driving out of a raging fire" but not a flooded street? This seems like an admission that the fancy "world model simulation" doesn't actually mean much

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

	▲	brookst an hour ago \| parent [-]
		IMO there is a lot of daylight between “is not perfectly capable of simulating all situations and always used perfectly to the full capabilities of the system” and “doesn’t mean much”.

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marcosdumay 30 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It can just mean that nobody though about flooded streets, what's way more reasonable than it seems because of the birthday paradox.

But that also means they need a long time to adapt to a new situation. That may be very bad depending on how fine grained a situation is defined, or it may mean nothing and in a few months they'll be back without problems.

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burnte an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In ATL this happens often enough that it's not a shock when it happens, we have lots of drainage problems here. I agree that I would have assumed Waymo had tested in events like this, but clearly not. So what I can say is running in ATL is a great test case for these events, and also the people who live here don't do a better job than Waymo did. There were dozens of people who ruined their cars yesterday trying to drive through deep water.

	▲	QuercusMax 31 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		We had a story in the news this week about a Cybertruck driver who thought his Elonmobile was a boat because it has "wade mode" and deliberately drove into a lake! Humans are very stupid when it comes to driving through standing water!

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outside2344 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The fact that they aren't a usual event is probably exactly the challenge here.

	▲	antonymoose an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It may not be usual in Atlanta itself, but living on the Southeastern coast within a mile or two of the water, for 30+ years, it’s a surprisingly common occurrence. I’ve got old photos around of kayaking through downtown Charleston during college, for instance, where the street flooding is not only usual but a many times per season occurrence. Lots of seaside areas have the same issue.
	▲	trollbridge 37 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I’ve lived in a place where it flooded every year or two. It floods regularly where I live now too. Locals know which roads to avoid and not to drive into a flood.