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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

#321

Post by 0xfaded »

7e wrote: post #303
armada651 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cyclists have a bad rep in SF because many (not all) ride quite dangerously. Cycling in the US is almost by definition riding dangerously, since there are very few places with actual safe bicycle infrastructure. This is a self-selecting pressure, because it means that the only cyclists that actually dare to cycle in the city are risk-takers. > I live adjacent to a four-way stop and there's an incident where a cycli…

It's simple selfishness. Cyclists don't want to lose their momentum. Coasting is fun and exertion is not; humans evolved to minimize their energy expenditure. To fix that, you'd need to redesign the bicycle to be completely battery powered. Even then, acceleration will be slower than not stopping. Cyclists will try to rationalize their behavior in all kinds of ways, but they're just lying to themselves (and you).

The fix is really quite simple, develop separate routes for cyclists and motor vehicles. Where those routes unavoidably cross have proper intersections. The person you are replying to is right, four-way-stops are a travesty, both for cyclists and cars.

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

#322

Post by yuliyp »

shuckles wrote: post #285
alvah wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"> I live adjacent to a four-way stop and there's an incident where a cyclist fails to yield nearly hourly. You can blame the cyclist or perhaps a four-way stop with a nearly hourly cyclist incident needs to be redesigned." Or, bear with me here, just maybe the cyclists failing to yield is kind of the big issue here?

No it’s not. AB122 passed the legislature to legalize the California roll for cyclists, because coming to a full stop at a stop sign makes no sense for riders with high visibility. Newsom vetoed it for stupid culture war reasons. It’s a law that doesn’t make sense so it’s not a big issue if it isn’t followed.

Failure to yield is a separate question from should they be required to stop if nobody is present.

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

#323

Post by jtriangle »

Terr_ wrote: post #268
jtriangle wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming nothing. I'm simply posing a question, not answering it. It's your post that is nonsense, as it appears you've read about half of what I wrote before you replied.

Perhaps it's not what you intended in your mind, but it's what you happened to type out in ASCII. In this quote, you are asserting that something is true:: > 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?" Unfortunately it is not true: "Those thing…

Did I at any point say the video wasn't important? I don't recall doing so. I did assert that the telemetry was more interesting than the video, but the telemetry being more interesting than the video feed doesn't mean the video, itself, is not interesting. You missed that in favor of being pedantic, that says something about you, and if I thought it had any chance of helping, I'd tell you to take a long look in the mirror and wonder why you are the way you are.

That'll be my last reply though, I'm watching a youtube stream of a guy trying to get gentoo to boot off NTFS, it's not going well, but it is more interesting than providing detailed analysis of simple language that you've misunderstood.

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

#324

Post by godelski »

anon373839 wrote: post #312
rahimnathwani wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cyclists have a bad rep in SF because many (not all) ride quite dangerously. It's a common sight to see cyclists running four-way stop signs and lights without even yielding. Pick any stop sign in SF. Watch it for an hour and count the number of cars that come to a complete stop. The denominator doesn't matter because the numerator will be ~0.

> count the number of cars that come to a complete stop You’re conflating two different phenomena, perhaps purposefully. California drivers do often fail to come to a technical stop at intersections, but they first slow to a near-zero speed that very nearly accomplishes the same purpose. In contrast, a large number of cyclists do not slow at all, and blast through red lights at full speed.

You're restating their point but I don't think you get it. "a large number" is a vague term and I think we would be apt to say "a large number of cars run stop signs." The big issue at hand is selection and perceptual biases. If we're just going on intuition here we're going to make bad decisions. You will not notice the "large number of" cyclists that have appropriate behavior because this will be normal behavior that is non-disruptive and your brain is designed to not take special notice of this. But your brain is designed to take special notice of rare and/or disruptive events. So you always over inflate those numbers and it is hard to accurately quantify. See "Perceptual vigilance" for more.

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

#325

Post by philistine »

godelski wrote: post #314
7e wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simple selfishness. Cyclists don't want to lose their momentum. Coasting is fun and exertion is not; humans evolved to minimize their energy expenditure. To fix that, you'd need to redesign the bicycle to be completely battery powered. Even then, acceleration will be slower than not stopping. Cyclists will try to rationalize their behavior in all kinds of ways, but they're just lying to themselves (and you).

> It's simple selfishness. This is a weird characterization of what's going on given you have an apt description. I've only been struck by cars (twice) when stopped at a stop sign. It's no question that an intersection is one of the most dangerous locations for a cyclist and it is also no question that an intersection can be cleared significantly faster when starting with __any__ amount of momentum vs a complete stop…

Don't give them the time of day. I never understood why cyclists acted the way they act until I started commuting to work. I felt unsafe at intersections when stopped. I felt unsafe at intersections when starting slowly. I read online about some road rules making my trips more dangerous for ME, not the cars. Now I know what I can do that's totally illegal that's keeping me safer.

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

#326

Post by smsm42 »

The fundamental problem of self-driving cars in cities is that they are expected to be 100% safe. They could be 10 times as safe as regular cars, but it wouldn't save them from headlines of "robot car kills an innocent person". And given how chaotic and unpredictable situation on the roads in a densely populated city without designated spaces for cyclists can be, 100% safety is impossible. Even if AI itself if perfect, there's physics of mass, inertia, velocity, visibility, etc. - which sometimes will cause situations that lead to collisions, unless the self-driving cars either are physically segregated or limited to ridiculously low speeds where they become useless.

Solution 1: make separate bike paths. Totally works in many cities, likely can't happen in SF because of so many reasons. Solution 2: ban self-driving cars. Solution 3: pay megabucks to PR company which would create some kind of a narrative where safety is much less important than the benefits of the self-driving cars, and if you say otherwise, you are a bad person and should be cancelled. Not sure if it's possible but it probably less impossible than making a 100% safe self-driving car.

A sane solution would be to figure out how much safety we expect, take effort to make it as close to 100% as possible while realizing it's never 100%, and rationally investigate each case of failure, while recognizing that some amount of them are inevitable. But that would be totally outdated and unusual pattern of behavior, so I don't expect it to happen in practice.

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

#327

Post by klyrs »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #286
soraki_soladead wrote: post #204

Agree that's not a great look for the supervisor. Cyclists have a bad rep in SF because many (not all) ride quite dangerously. It's a common sight to see cyclists running four-way stop signs and lights without even yielding. I live adjacent to a four-way stop and there's an incident where a cyclist fails to yield nearly hourly. Meanwhile, Waymo has millions of incident-free miles and of all the self-driving car compa…

Even with a cyclist disregarding the law, it shouldn't be possible for a law abiding autonomous vehicle to collide with anything if it had confirmed the intersection was clear of traffic. Seems like it assumes an unoccupied slot behind trucks that won't always be true. What if this was a T-intersection where a cyclist wasn't obligated to stop?

Ah, but people yelled because waymo was too timid. They probably did that because it's how people are expected to drive in California. Bit of a sticky wicket for waymo isn't it?

I tried this line of reasoning with a judge once. If you break the law just because people expect you to, it's still your traffic violation.

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

#328

Post by knapcio »

I just had this thought (possibly unrelated to this particular situation): We see how many accidents are caused by autonomous vehicles therefore it’s easy to blame them. However what we don’t see is how many accidents did not happen because of autonomous vehicles. I hope regulators consider both cases.

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

#329

Post by godelski »

iknowstuff wrote: post #320
anon373839 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> count the number of cars that come to a complete stop You’re conflating two different phenomena, perhaps purposefully. California drivers do often fail to come to a technical stop at intersections, but they first slow to a near-zero speed that very nearly accomplishes the same purpose. In contrast, a large number of cyclists do not slow at all, and blast through red lights at full speed.

The full speed being, of course, about the speed of a car doing a california roll. Google “cyclist stop sign safety”

> In 1982, Idaho was the first State to pass such a law, commonly known as the “Idaho Stop Law.” The law allows bicyclists to yield at stop signs and proceed when safe, rather than come to a complete stop. After Idaho adopted the law, bicyclist injuries from traffic crashes declined by 14.5% the following year (Meggs, 2010). In 2017, Delaware adopted a similar, limited stop-as-yield law, known as the "Delaware Yield.” Traffic crashes involving bicyclists at stop sign intersections fell by 23% in the 30 months after the law’s passage, compared to the previous 30 months.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2023-03/Bicyclis...

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

#330

Post by seanmcdirmid »

DeRock wrote: post #307
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think all of us agree that cars shouldn’t blow through intersections, neither should bicycles. It definitely raises my eyebrows more if cars do it (rare but sadly increasingly less rare) vs if bicycles do get it (fairly common).

> It definitely raises my eyebrows more if cars do it (rare but sadly increasingly less rare) It is extremely common, the default really, for cars to roll through 4-way stops.

Maybe where you live? It isn’t as common here in Seattle, although as I said it is definitely becoming less rare.
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