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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

#231

Post by kevingadd »

tzs wrote: post #35
kevingadd wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pretty common to see people go from the opposite side of a stop sign since it's "safe", even if it happens to be against the rules. I can understand how the Waymo AI would end up being configured to do this. Hopefully they amend that based on this incident.

> It is pretty common to see people go from the opposite side of a stop sign since it's "safe", even if it happens to be against the rules. Where is it against the rules?

That's why I said "if"? I don't know the laws of the road in all 50 states. They vary a lot.

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

#232

Post by dmix »

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…

The supervisor is up for election in SF so probably trying to sound important or useful.

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

#233

Post by shiroiuma »

al_borland wrote: post #86
roenxi wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what? Humans run in to cyclists too and although I have know idea about Waymo's tech, in a research setting computers are better than humans at figuring out what objects are based on visual data.

If computers are so good at this, why am I (a human) asked to identify bicycles and motorcycles to train these computers when confronted with a captcha? A human needs far less training and can identify a person on a bike without ever seeing an actual bike. They can also infer what is likely to happen based on a lot of context clues. Even if an event doesn’t seem likely, I can still prepare. For example, if I see kids…

>if I see kids playing basketball in a driveway, I’m going to slow down, incase the ball bounces into the street and a kid takes off after it without looking

That's because you're a thoughtful, conscientious driver. A very large fraction of drivers are not, so society winds up with lots of dead kids. Humans are terrible drivers: some of them are OK, but too many are very bad, leading to catastrophic results, and because of this human drivers need to be eliminated. Alternatively, the society could become far stricter about which humans are allowed to drive, but that isn't feasible when the society has intentionally made it so that it's effectively impossible to survive without owning and driving a car.

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

#234

Post by antognini »

belltaco wrote: post #155
tfehring wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, my reading was that the bike ran the stop sign and then attempted to make a left turn in front of the Waymo as it was going straight through the intersection.

My reading was that the Waymo was turning left. Remember, the description is from Waymo's PR, so that's why it's vague on purpose and needs to be taken with a grain of salt. According to another comment bikes can treat stop signs as yield signs in California. If the bike illegally ran a stop sign I would think Waymo would say or imply that.

There was a bill to make something like this legal, but it was vetoed by the governor.

Even if it had passed, it wouldn't have changed anything about this situation. Because there was other traffic in the intersection, the bicyclist would have had to yield and stop before entering the intersection.

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

#235

Post by justinzollars »

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

#236

Post by userbinator »

babl-yc wrote: post #25
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.

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.

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.

I've seen this behaviour a lot. Several times I (walking) came up to a 4-way stop, stopped there briefly to see the cars in the other direction slow and stop, and then started to cross and nearly got hit by a cyclist who seemed to have not seen the stop sign at all.

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

#237

Post by dmix »

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.

PR 101 is usually to say the bare minimum re bad press. And maybe release it later when it's out of the news cycle.

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

#239

Post by shiroiuma »

ambigious7777 wrote: post #142
vineyardmike wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s apply this same thing to humans. If a human engaged in this situation, no one would blink an eye. SF had a “zero motor deaths” goal for 2024 and there were human drivers in protest that any changes made to save lives would be inconvenient (eg removing parking spots to increase visibility). The ease at which people will negotiate a human life for parking is horrifying. And likely speaks to how they drive. We rea…

This. I've seen all of those walkable cities, green cities, etc... For the most part, I think that staying away from driving is a good idea. If we could have cities planned out so that anything would just be a few minutes walk away, that would solve so many problems. A car-independent society would have many improvements. Even for medium distance travel, we could have trains and such.

What you're describing is exactly how a large part of Japanese society lives today. It's one of the main reasons I moved here. I don't need a car, I walk or cycle or take trains wherever I need to go, including to other cities.

Americans really don't want to live in this kind of society. They don't like walking that much, and they like the isolation and feeling of superiority they get by driving around in an expensive vehicle that signals their class, and they generally hate walking anyway.

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

#240

Post by antognini »

Phrodo_00 wrote: post #61
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.

Cyclists can treat Stop signs as Yield signs in California.

Setting aside the fact that the bill that proposed this was vetoed, a yield sign does not mean "don't stop." Yield means "yield." If there is other traffic that has the right of way you are obligated to stop before entering the intersection.
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