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

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

#511

Post by actionfromafar »

tpoacher wrote: post #507
TeMPOraL wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not misguided. They are not there yet, but progressing steadily. There is nothing misguided in switching out a human for a machine that can do a job better, while keeping the job unchanged. Iterative improvement is the only thing anything ever gets done, and yes, that means we might first need to get drivers out of the streets before we're able to make more substantial redesign of the transportation fabric.

"[...] that can to the job better " is the key phrase here though. It's probably a bit misguided in the sense that, if the end-result further down the line is the "more machines than humans driving in the streets" (let alone zero humans), then it might have made more sense to iteratively change the infrastructure instead, rather than have machines try to work under infrastructure that is designed to be good for human…

But the roads and cars were iteratively improved in a co-evolving way. Early cars with huge wheels could traverse cow-paths and mud and weren't very fast. (And you opened fences. :-)

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

#512

Post by tsukikage »

sschueller wrote: post #479
aubanel wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the end goal of self driving cars is simply to let people do something else than drive. Safety is only a condition for this to happen.

There is a better solution for that: Public transportation.

It's better for some metrics - number of passengers moved per vehicle, fuel efficiency etc.

What it isn't optimal for is getting from origin to destination without walking and without waiting.

If I am carrying heavy/bulky things or I am less mobile than average, walking to the nearest public transport stop isn't great, and every change of transport is painful.

Waits are also long basically anywhere that isn't the center of a densely populated city, and add up with every change of vehicle.

Eventually, a public transport based solution to travel ends up using "find ways to travel less" as a component.

The existence of direct door-to-door transport with cargo space, however it is achieved (cars, self-driving, carshare, taxis...) is needed to close these gaps, and therefore I do not see it ever going away.

Societies need to make the other forms of transport attractive enough that, given access to direct door-to-door transport, they still remain a viable choice.

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

#513

Post by disillusioned »

godelski wrote: post #395
CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can compare this statistically by looking at accidents per 1,000,000 miles driven of autonomous cars vs humans. Over long mileage, the rate of prevented accidents shows up in the data as a lower overall accident rate. I don't have the stats at hand but Waymo does great on this stat. Now, that's not to say that Waymo would avoid any specific accident better than a human. But from a public health standpoint, that's…

> We can compare this statistically by looking at accidents per 1,000,000 miles driven of autonomous cars vs humans. This is extremely limited and really not relevant to the topic at hand. You've marginalized out the type of accidents. Most miles driven are on highways and this is a different environment than urban. The information you've marginalized out is essential for making reasonable conclusions about safety. I…

I highly recommend reading through Waymo's own publications that addresses these exact concerns: https://waymo.com/safety/

Specifically "Framework for a conflict typology including causal factors for use in ADS safety evaluation" and "Comparison of Waymo Rider-Only Crash Data to Human Benchmarks at 7.1 Million Miles"

It may not surprise you to know that they have given a LOT of consideration to these factors and have built a complex model that addresses these to demonstrate their claims.

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

#514

Post by pooper »

dns_snek wrote: post #486
resolutebat wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are you one of the 88% who know they are better than average, or one of the 12% who are worse? https://www.smithlawco.com/blog/2017/december/do-most-driver...

This has nothing to do with being "a better driver" than average. If you simply don't drive while intoxicated, extremely tired, or distracted with your gadgets, you're already beating the average when it comes to collisions and injuries.

> If you simply don't drive while intoxicated, extremely tired, or distracted with your gadgets, you're already beating the average when it comes to collisions and injuries.

It still does not make you a good driver. I've personally been in situations where I'm on the right lane, going slightly below the speed limit, when the vehicle (usually a pickup truck) passes me from the shoulder on the right, often blaring it's horns in disapproval as if they were on their way to save lives.

> Rules for Using the Shoulder. The laws for using a shoulder vary in each state, but it is illegal in all states to use the shoulder to bypass traffic or to pass another driver.

I can't wait to make it illegal for humans to drive on public roads.

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

#515

Post by pooper »

scott_w wrote: post #477
resolutebat wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making a classic is-ought fallacy here. Drunk, high, sleep deprived or "crazy wild aggressive reckless" human drivers ought not to exist, but they do, and thus it's absolutely fair to compared autonomous drivers against them.

Others have made better points but I want to add another thing to point out you can also be making the same "is-ought" mistake yourself: Impaired drivers (drink, drugs, sleep), bad drivers, dangerous drivers, etc. who ought to use the self-driving function are exactly the kinds of people who won't and continue to drive badly. What this means is the safer drivers leave it off (because they outperform the system), whil…

When it is good enough, we should remove the ability for humans to drive cars manually in all new cars after that point.

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

#516

Post by TaylorAlexander »

undersuit wrote: post #184
belltaco wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Reading that page, I learned that while California does not de jure have the Idaho Stop, it does de facto have the Idaho Stop. Waymo should account for this.

However I think that is irrelevant, depending on whether the description I heard is correct - it sounds like Waymo turned so quickly after a truck that it could not be certain its path would be clear. That to me seems like the real mistake.

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

#517

Post by rsynnott »

ra7 wrote: post #132
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.

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.

> They have no reason to release it to the public.

I mean, if it reflects positively on them, they have huge reason; they want to put as much distance between their response and Cruise's as possible, and show that they're acting in good faith.

A large part of what killed Cruise was, well, either the cover-up or its employees' amazingly persistent internet connectivity problems, depending on how cynical you want to be.

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

#518

Post by this15testingg »

nerdponx wrote: post #89
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.

Harder to do when the driver of the vehicle is not a human being you can make eye contact with, and the human operator isn't interested in maintaining safe and attentive authority over the vehicle that they are responsible for.

If cyclists go through without coming to a complete stop (like 99% of drivers, complete stop means the wheels are not turning and the speedometer says "0") and gets hit, the cyclist/pedestrian dies.

If a car ignores signals, the cyclist/pedestrian still dies.

These are not the same modes of traffic, and forcing everyone on earth to bend to the behaviors of the most dangerous mode of transportation is insanity.

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

#519

Post by lupusreal »

sschueller wrote: post #479
aubanel wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the end goal of self driving cars is simply to let people do something else than drive. Safety is only a condition for this to happen.

There is a better solution for that: Public transportation.

I can drive to work in twelve minutes. If I humor the premise of a bus that stops in front of my home and also my workplace, which is unlikely to ever exist no matter how much money is thrown at public transit, it would still take several times longer than driving myself because there are numerous other homes and businesses between which the bus would stop at.

Using a bus would mean I have to wake up earlier, and therefore fall asleep earlier, and also get back later. It would mean less time at home with my family. I suppose next you'll say that I should be living in walking distance of my job, like my life and indeed entire communities should be structured around employers like during the industrial revolution. God forbid you ever want to change your job, you'll have to hope the new one is next door or you'll be moving your family... more likely you're locked into your current job which is just the way employers would like it. The normalization of cars were a huge win for labor, but the anti-car crowd always ignores this. I guess being locked into my job and at the mercy of public transit is meant to be compensated by the benevolence of The Party who will surely have my back? No thanks.

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

#520

Post by mnky9800n »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #484
sschueller wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self driving cars are a misguided attempt to make driving safer when the underlying issue isn't necessarily the driver.

They are not misguided. They are not there yet, but progressing steadily. There is nothing misguided in switching out a human for a machine that can do a job better, while keeping the job unchanged. Iterative improvement is the only thing anything ever gets done, and yes, that means we might first need to get drivers out of the streets before we're able to make more substantial redesign of the transportation fabric.

I think they meant that cars are bad and public transit is good and solves the problem of wanting to do something else while in transit as opposed to driving.
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