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Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

sfgate.com

161–170 of 750 posts

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#161
"S.F. Supervisor Shamann Walton responded to the news of the collision on social media, saying, “So much for safety.”"

Why the snark? It seems it was a hard call, something that a human driver would not have caught and potentially caused a deadlier accident. As I see it there wasn't an investigation from the cyclists p.o.v.

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#162
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only way that happens is if the cyclist signs a boatload of paperwork to waive his right to litigation. And on top of that, I'm far less interested in the footage than I am the telemetry. What was the state of the gas and brake, what was the steering angle, how long was it from detection to action. Those things concretely answer the question of "would a human have done better or worse in this situation?", which is ul…

> And on top of that, I'm far less interested in the footage than I am the telemetry. What was the state of the gas and brake, what was the steering angle, how long was it from detection to action. Those things concretely answer the question of "would a human have done better or worse in this situation?" You absolutely cannot answer that question without looking at the video and considering how easy or hard it would…

I don't think you can "absolutely" answer the question with the information that, at least could be, available. You can certainly form an opinion that's closer to agreeing with reality however, which is mostly what I'm interested in.

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#163
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rolling through stop signs while cycling is generally appropriate (and is the law in more enlightened places). In California it may be illegal, but so is a car exceeding the speed limit, and few would excuse Waymo for hitting one of those.

Cyclists are just dangerous and until we look at statistics we can’t assume that AI does worse than humans in protecting cyclists. As a driver, it took me many years to get into the habit of shoulder checking when turning right from the right lane. I always have my turning signal but to cyclists it doesn’t mean much, they will always try to pass me on the right on the intersection. Cyclists sometimes behave as though…

If you are turning across a curbside bike lane then you need to yield. A bike lane is a traffic lane, you need to wait for it to be clear before turning, and yes, you need to check your shoulder on roads with bike lanes.

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A computer doesn't need a multi million dollar marketing campaign convincing it not to text while driving or drive drunk. >I don’t need to wait for the kid to be in the street to start reacting and prepare for different possibilities. Neither does a computer.

> A computer doesn't need a multi million dollar marketing campaign convincing it not to text while driving or drive drunk. A human doesn't get random bugs every week from OTA updates. The human mind is not a viable target for hackers. The risks of human drivers are individual. The risks of computer drivers are systemic and massive. One bad bug or hack could kill millions if self driving cars become ubiquitous.

Humans have a bunch of unpatchable bugs in safety-critical systems.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccadic_masking

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#165
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope regulators watch video from the vehicle and think, “damn I would not have been able to react that fast. Sure we can make these things even safer but it would be immoral to block waymo’s operations as it would certainly increase harm.”

> damn I would not have been able to react that fast. i apply my own standard of driving to it: I wouldn't get in that position in the first place.

It seems to me that the best metric might be whether the average driver would get into that position or react faster if they did.

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#166
post #144
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have no reason to release it to the public. They don’t want to set a precedent. They will show the video to the regulators (CA DMV) and if they’re not happy, they will take action. It’s regulation working as intended.

Public trust is a pretty good reason.

There’s enough to establish public trust with their voluntary release of safety data and regulators closely overseeing their operations.

Setting a precedent for releasing footage means fault is automatically assumed when they don’t voluntarily release it.

It’s a problem if they’re not even releasing it to the regulators, but that’s not happening here.

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#167
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I hope Waymo learbx for this, as well applies as similar scenarios: never cross through these zones of high bike traffic when the obstruction from another vehicle prevents a wide enough view to brake before this zone. This might be fair, but at some point, if you are applying this consistent level of caution, there isn't going to be anywhere in the real world left to actually drive

Yes. I appreciate the political reasons for wanting zero accidents, but fewer, less deadly accidents than if a human were behind the wheel is what the goal really should be.

That’s such a low bar though. Zero is achievable.

Part of it is to slow cars down and take more cars off the road rather than changing who drives.

Invest in public transit, redesign problematic infrastructure, and create mixed use urban areas so people don’t feel the need to travel through a city.

A city should be a safe place. More deaths in a slower zone than on freeways is preposterous. I understand the reasons why this is true, but the deeper reasons for the reasons are that we gave up.

Fewer, less deadly automobiles is what the goal really should be.

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#168
post #23

the cyclist left the scene “reporting only minor scratches.” I'd never considered it before, but perhaps the endgame is humans getting used to automated taxis like potholes, animals, nails and other road hazards ? And then learning to judge the risk and accepting occasional small crashes like this.

My guess is that the cyclist has really had minor scratches and decided that his time is worth more than waiting and filling in a police report.

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#169
post #5

I looked up the cited street in street view- there are stop signs in all 4 directions. I look forward to the full accident report, but from the evidence available it sounds like the cyclist didn’t stop at the sign appropriately.

> there are stop signs in all 4 directions

This is a complete aside, but woah, is this common in SF? They simply aren't used here where I am (roundabouts are used instead)

Like they're uncommon enough that theres a news article on it in a different state: https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/motoring/fourw...

A four way stop sign seems like an absolute downgrade compared to a roundabout, but thats my local bias showing.

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#170
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but fine-tuning is cumulative. Test situations can be created and tested against forever. Lessons can be learned and applied across the whole fleet. This is radically different from sharing the roads with a bunch of Sunday drivers, some of which might be distracted or impaired.

Yes, it totally makes sense for bike commuters to be run over and sent to the hospital by robotic driverless vehicles while billionaire entrepreneurs refine the AI models powering them — it’s a beta test after all, you can’t actually expect it to work on public streets. And I bet those cyclists weren’t even paying their road tax. The needs of the 95th percentile that the model was tuned for outweigh the needs of ever…

I think that line of reasoning would only apply if the driverless vehicles are not better than human drivers. That is to say, it's perfectly reasonable that bike commuters would die as the software is improved as long as less bike commuters are die than would without the driverless cars.

To be clear, I don't know that I necessarily think that driverless cars currently are better than human drivers. I'm just pointing out that the logic changes if they are.

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