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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

#651

Post by badpun »

cloverich wrote: post #621
prmoustache wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a complete shit show and a recipe for problems for anything but very low volume traffic.

It definitely hiccups in high traffic times, but in practice it works reasonably well around the country. Its generally not meant for high volume intersections, where you'd expect a light instead. For perspective, I'd imagined roundabout and other designs as better, but hadn't really considered an alternative algorithm for people to follow.

Europe has an algorithm that, on such intersections, you have to yield to a car on your right-hand side. This works well until there's a car on every leg of the intersection, which is extremely rare (because, on intersections with such levels of traffic, there are road signs explicitly saying which road has to yield to which one).

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

#652

Post by Mawr »

edgyquant wrote: post #593
a-french-anon wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Public transportation > Safety Pick one. Danger doesn't come only from other vehicles.

No idea why the downvotes. In my city (Seattle) there has been a dozen violent attacks in the last few months ranging from a couple being beaten with a hammer, a stabbing to a gun shooting. You aren’t likely to be beaten with a hammer while driving your own car that’s for sure

Because it's an incredibly US-centric POV. Of course public transport will be unsafe if 95% of the population drives, leaving only the marginalized groups to use it.

You won't get beaten with a hammer in your car, you'll just be driven into by a 16yo on his phone or a drunk driver. Neither should be driving in the first place, but there are no viable alternatives to cars, so we've just got to deal with it.

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

#653

Post by badpun »

itsoktocry wrote: post #552
pmontra wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no public transportation that can bring me home after saying goodbye to friends at 1 AM in a big city and having to drive one hour to my home in a little town. There is no such public transportation even during the day unless I want to spend 2 to 3 hours on a mix of metro, train and bus. And I don't have many choices about the time to leave. You could say that it's flawed to live in the countryside and/or ha…

> There is no public transportation that can bring me home after saying goodbye to friends at 1 AM in a big city and having to drive one hour to my home in a little town. There's a class of "ban cars" city people who cannot fathom this.

The solution is simple - don't come back at 1 am, or if you absolutely have to, either move closer to your friends, or come back via a taxi.

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

#654

Post by CalRobert »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #610
CalRobert wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a side effect of very bad urban design. I bike in the Netherlands and don't know if I've _ever_ seen a stop sign here. Traffic signals, sure, but not stop signs.

Cities in Europe are much smaller and more compact than US cities. And while there's no stop sign, you still have to yield to traffic from your right if there's no sign whatsoever. And specifically, dutch cities tend to have winding narrow streets where you can't speed up too much. Stop signs are put in places where I guess a yield sign proved to be dangerous to traffic?

True, but you're addressing some of the things I meant when I said US cities have very bad urban design.

The alternative isn't a yield sign, it's a redesigned intersection and likely a roundabout, or much smaller intersection, or similar.

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

#655

Post by Symbiote »

cloverich wrote: post #621
prmoustache wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a complete shit show and a recipe for problems for anything but very low volume traffic.

It definitely hiccups in high traffic times, but in practice it works reasonably well around the country. Its generally not meant for high volume intersections, where you'd expect a light instead. For perspective, I'd imagined roundabout and other designs as better, but hadn't really considered an alternative algorithm for people to follow.

The alternatives outside North America are

1. no markings at all, for very low-traffic places. You're supposed to be driving so slowly that you figure it out. (Yield to the right, if you can't figure it out. In practise, yield to bigger vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists etc — the roads is so small there might not be much choice.)

2. one road is the main road, the other is minor — minor traffic yields. This is most common. There might be signs, but there might only be road markings involving some sort of triangles (i.e. a yield sign).

3. a painted or similar shallow roundabout, showing roundabout rules apply (yield to the left) but allowing large vehicles like buses to drive over the paint. Only used in some countries.

4. an actual (concrete, kerbstone) roundabout, if there's space for that and traffic is higher.

I think you see 3, 1, 1, 2 if you follow this road north-west in Copenhagen: https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6993358,12.5310164,3a,75y,32...

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

#656

Post by Mawr »

lupusreal wrote: post #519
sschueller wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

> I can drive to work in twelve minutes.

Then you can cycle there in ~20 minutes. The difference would be that cycling infrastructure is dirt cheap, bikes are dirt cheap, you can fit way more bikes on a path than cars, you get daily physical exercise - longer lifespan, emit trivial amounts of pollution and parking is a non-issue.

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

#657

Post by godelski »

agos wrote: post #481
godelski wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha yeah that is accurate. The right language is situational though haha. People are generally overconfident in their ability to mathematically describe things. There's a clique "all models are wrong" and like all cliques it is something everyone can repeat but not internalize lol

you should not forget the second part: all models are wrong, some are useful

The second part is the obvious part that often doesn't need restating. Models can be incredibly powerful tools.

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

#658

Post by lolc »

teekert wrote: post #415
zilti wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a cyclist myself, and let me tell you... cyclists are the fucking worst. Many of them drive so recklessly, like going full-speed through an intersection while their traffic light is red. There is just no way in many cases for a car driver to avoid hitting such idiots, no matter how much attention they pay. Neither cars nor bicycles can just stop on a whim, they need a couple meters to do so.

That is a US perspective. We don't have "cyclists" everybody uses a bike from time to time, our infrastructure is build for it [0], and when you get your driver’s license your learn how to deal with it. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynwMN3Z9Og8

I hate the thought of being restricted to that slow speed. But my look at the throughput!

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

#659

Post by rangestransform »

inglor_cz wrote: post #508
sschueller wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a better solution for that: Public transportation.

Even public transportation would benefit greatly from reliable self-driving. Shortage of bus/tram/train drivers is a major bottleneck all across Europe, especially in places where they just can't offer competing wages and lose their drivers to the richest cities of the EU. Rural Bulgaria will never be able to pay their drivers as much as Vienna or Munich can. Not even third of that, the economic gap is just too big.…

at least in north america, the public transit labour cartel will shut down any attempts to automate public transit; notably, the NYC MTA blocked subway one-person train operation with automatic train protection. It'll be a good day when private AV services force public transit to finally get costs under control (who am i kidding, they'll just tax AVs to shovel more money to the unions)

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

#660

Post by 1024core »

userbinator wrote: post #221
1024core wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Counter: see all the blurring in Google Maps Streetview.

IIRC they were sued about identifying people and car plates.

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