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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

#221

Post by userbinator »

1024core wrote: post #129
xianshou wrote: post #7

If Waymo is truly as much better than Cruise as the statistics claim, this is a perfect opportunity to release the full video of the incident. Most collisions are avoidable, but a few are the result of a perfect storm of conditions that would be difficult to navigate for even the most skilled human driver. To know whether the truck's occlusion of the cyclist is one of those cases requires the actual footage.

What about the privacy of the bicyclist? What if it was his/her mistake and they don't want to be ridiculed by the entire world?

There is no expectation of privacy with what happens on a public road.

See all the dashcam videos on YouTube.

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

#222

Post by cozzyd »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #211
lmm wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cyclists are just dangerous Nope. The numbers of people killed or seriously injured in road collisions that don't involve motor vehicles are absolutely tiny. Motorists are dangerous, cyclists are not. > Cyclists sometimes behave as though they are pedestrians and other times they behave as vehicles, depending on what is convenient. And? Is that somehow bad? This seems to be a common motorist talking point, but I've…

> And? Is that somehow bad? This seems to be a common motorist talking point, but I've never understood what it's supposed to imply. Yes, it can be very bad. Drivers not being predictable is a big cause of car crashes. I was always taught that when driving, don't be nice, be predictable. It's also a large part of defensive driving. A cyclist that is sometimes acting like a vehicle, and at other times as a pedestrian…

It seems quite predictable to me. Just assume they could be acting as either!

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

#223

Post by efitz »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #185

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 alw…

[flagged]

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

#224

Post by genocidicbunny »

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…

I want to take a kinder view of your comment than some of the other replies currently, in that there's a kernel of truth in what you say. I would rephrase it though, in that it's not that cyclists are inherently dangerous, it's more that mixing modes of transport that have vastly varying capabilities is dangerous. Any time you have vehicles of vastly variable mass and capabilities sharing a road, it's inherently more dangerous than if they were to be separated.

That goes for cars and bikes, and cars and pedestrians, and bikes and pedestrians.

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

#225

Post by ehsankia »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #185

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 alw…

I think more impressively, even in this seemingly worst case scenario where everything lined up as poorly as it could have, the car was still able to react quite aggressively and the situation ended only with minor scratches it seems?

Honestly, if anything, this is probably proof that self-driving is the future, as I would bet any human would've most definitely done much worse in the same scenario.

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

#226

Post by trhway »

>According to Waymo, the company’s vehicle fully stopped at a four-way intersection before proceeding into the intersection as a large truck was driving through in the opposite direction

and that is a traffic violation on the part of Waymo. From the STOP, you can't go into intersection until it is clear.

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

#227

Post by bialpio »

FireBeyond wrote: post #99
babl-yc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who bikes on 17th street regularly, cyclists rarely stop completely. Most treat it as a yield (myself included) because it's a pain to start+stop at every stop sign. But it's on the rider to make sure you're on the same page as the other drivers at the intersection, which some bikers don't and just blow through it without checking.

> Most treat it as a yield (myself included) because it's a pain to start+stop at every stop sign. Sure. It's a pain for cars to start and stop at every stop sign too. So?

How is it a pain to stop in a car? Does your foot hurt from pressing the brake pedal and then the accelerator? I don't get it - it takes actual, not-insignificant effort to start riding a bike after a full stop, unlike a car, even when it has a manual transmission. I'm guessing that is why there are jurisdictions that introduce laws allowing cyclists to skip the full stop.

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

#228

Post by athrun »

topkai22 wrote: 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.

Looking at the intersection [1], what a badly designed mess it is! You have 2 bike lanes disappearing into the intersection without any sort of protection.

Cars can be parked right up to the ped crossings, potentially obscuring what is happening. Looks like a death trap to me.

At a minimum, raising the crossings so that cars have to slow down, and having no parking zones in front the crossings would improve the situation by a lot.

Humans make mistakes all the time, intersections should be designed to accommodate that.

[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/KUka4HGt5AsVxFjo7

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

#229

Post by maxwellg »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #211
lmm wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cyclists are just dangerous Nope. The numbers of people killed or seriously injured in road collisions that don't involve motor vehicles are absolutely tiny. Motorists are dangerous, cyclists are not. > Cyclists sometimes behave as though they are pedestrians and other times they behave as vehicles, depending on what is convenient. And? Is that somehow bad? This seems to be a common motorist talking point, but I've…

> And? Is that somehow bad? This seems to be a common motorist talking point, but I've never understood what it's supposed to imply. Yes, it can be very bad. Drivers not being predictable is a big cause of car crashes. I was always taught that when driving, don't be nice, be predictable. It's also a large part of defensive driving. A cyclist that is sometimes acting like a vehicle, and at other times as a pedestrian…

Cyclists act like cyclists, and are more or less predictable when treated as such. Cyclists are not vehicles, and it doesn't make sense to insist they behave like vehicles. The theory of vehicular cycling was one of the worst things to happen to the development of a safe cycling community in America.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/28/why-john-fores...

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

#230

Post by Sebb767 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #180
matthewdgreen wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Only the driving software will be updated, the intersection will not be redesigned to reduce the severity of driver mistakes. It’s not the best outcome, ideally someone will analyze the case and produce the changes that needed to made to the driving software, the intersection, and biking behavior (aka the Dutch approach).

Fair, but then again, this would be taking drastic measures for a single data point. A full redesign would be quite a stretch for a single accident and nearly impossible to scale. The least you'd need to do is check for a pattern of accidents.
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