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

sfgate.com

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

#181

Post by Aloisius »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #121
deepfriedchokes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the cyclist didn’t stop at the intersection or follow the rules of right of way.

I am usually one to bash cyclists for not following the rules, but I believe it's actually legal for them to do this at stop signs. They only have to slow down and check for crossing traffic before going through.

California requires bicyclists to come to a full stop at stop signs. There's no stop-as-yield here.

Even in places that do, they still require bicyclists to yield right-of-way to any vehicle stopped at the intersection before they arrived.

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

#182

Post by lex-lightning »

lokar wrote: post #104
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Seems like good driving means "don't drive in to places you cannot see". If you are just accelerating after a stop sign, there is no reason to have such high speed and urgency when making the turn.

Well, it sounds like the cyclist was doing the same while failing to stop or yield at a stop sign.

Putting aside the debate on whether bicycles have to follow rules designed for cars, shouldn’t we still avoid accidents even if the bicyclist were unambiguously at fault?

But then that’s exactly why cars have stop signs. They trade high speed and carrying capacity against lethality.

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

#183

Post by fortran77 »

fprog wrote: post #144
ra7 wrote: 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.

[flagged]

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

#184

Post by undersuit »

belltaco wrote: post #123
lokar wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it sounds like the cyclist was doing the same while failing to stop or yield at a stop sign.

If the description is correct then the cyclist was going into the space that they could see in front of them, unlike the Waymo. Someone else said that stop signs are legally equivalent to yield signs for bicycles in California. They probably couldn't see the Waymo because it was occluded by the truck, so how could they yield to it. This is why straight going traffic always has the right of way if the roads are simila…

>Someone else said that stop signs are legally equivalent to yield signs for bicycles in California.

California does not have the "Idaho Stop".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop

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

#185

Post by CobrastanJorji »

I'm disappointed in all the folks immediately blaming the cyclist without further information, and I'm similarly disappointed in all the folks blaming Waymo for the same reason.

But, unless they somehow have extra information we're not privy to, I'm much more disappointed in the S.F. Supervisor quoted in the article, Shamann Walton, for immediately going online to say "so much for safety." Us internet weenies are always going to have our hot takes, but someone in charge of the city has a responsibility to at least try to be better.

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

#186

Post by [deleted] »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #173
manzanarama wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you are injecting facts with a lot of assumptions. How do we know a human driver would have taken longer? What if the human would have seen the bike 200 yards up the road 45 seconds ago, and since bikes don't disappear, waited a half second before proceeding into the intersection. Or what if a small portion of the bike was visible? It could have been absolutely unavoidable but I don't think we know that n…

What we do know is that this incident will be analyzed with the level of attention we would give to a plane crash. If there was any way the incident could have been avoided, the engineers will probably figure it out. It’s likely that software will be updated to implement a fix as well, and this type of accident will become much less likely across Waymo’s entire fleet. That seems like a really good result.

[deleted]

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

#187

Post by stqism »

patrick451 wrote: post #109
ganieldackle wrote: post #88

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.

With the hacker comment, in fairness the weakest link in a lot of orgs is often the human one. Ignoring obvious stuff like phishing links, people can be disillusioned by their employer or their government through propaganda and other campaigns run by their adversaries. The westerners who supported ISIS, etc didn’t just do so in a vacuum out of the blue.

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

#188

Post by sverhagen »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #173
manzanarama wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you are injecting facts with a lot of assumptions. How do we know a human driver would have taken longer? What if the human would have seen the bike 200 yards up the road 45 seconds ago, and since bikes don't disappear, waited a half second before proceeding into the intersection. Or what if a small portion of the bike was visible? It could have been absolutely unavoidable but I don't think we know that n…

What we do know is that this incident will be analyzed with the level of attention we would give to a plane crash. If there was any way the incident could have been avoided, the engineers will probably figure it out. It’s likely that software will be updated to implement a fix as well, and this type of accident will become much less likely across Waymo’s entire fleet. That seems like a really good result.

Journalists swarm all over it. Waymo engineers will take their learnings. But honest question: is there an official, scrutinous authority also coming into this that would be able to hold Waymo to account? Maybe like the NTSB?

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

#189

Post by Fricken »

slg wrote: post #159
manzanarama wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you are injecting facts with a lot of assumptions. How do we know a human driver would have taken longer? What if the human would have seen the bike 200 yards up the road 45 seconds ago, and since bikes don't disappear, waited a half second before proceeding into the intersection. Or what if a small portion of the bike was visible? It could have been absolutely unavoidable but I don't think we know that n…

Let's be honest, anyone making any type of conclusion based off the information in the article is just giving in to their biases. None of us know enough to actually have any serious opinion on this specific collision.

I'm drawing the conclusion that this is a non-issue, or would be if autonomous vehicles hadn't got to be so political over the last year in San Fransisco. There are many people out for blood, they want a follow-up to the Cruise scandal.

One fact of the matter is that the cyclist wasn't seriously hurt, and Waymo has had many minor contact events in its 10 million+ miles of driving on public roads. We're hearing about this event because politics.

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

#190

Post by cozzyd »

elwebmaster wrote: post #135
lmm wrote: 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…

generally it's the motorists who are dangerous to the cyclists... when's the last time someone in a car was injured by a bicycle?
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