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Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica

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Re: Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica

#61
post #56

And before the argument "Self driving is acceptable so long as the accident/risk is lower than with human drivers" can I please get that out of the way: No it's not. Self driving needs to be orders of magnitude safer for us to acknowledge it. If they're merely as safe or slightly safer than humans we will never accept it. Becase humans have a "skin in the game". If you drive drunk, at least you're likely to be in the…

> I'm willing to accept robotaxis, and accidents in robotaxis, but there needs to be some solid figures showing they are way _way_ safer than human drivers. Do you mean like this? https://waymo.com/safety/impact/

Yes but ideally from some objective source.

Re: Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As every company should, when they have a success. Are they also as transparent about their failures?

Is this a success? There was still an incident. I'd argue this was them being transparent about a failure

Being transparent about such incidents is also what stops them from potentially becoming a business/industry-killing failures. They're doing the right thing here, but they also surely realize how much worse it would be if they tried to deny or downplay it.

Re: Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica

#63

And before the argument "Self driving is acceptable so long as the accident/risk is lower than with human drivers" can I please get that out of the way: No it's not. Self driving needs to be orders of magnitude safer for us to acknowledge it. If they're merely as safe or slightly safer than humans we will never accept it. Becase humans have a "skin in the game". If you drive drunk, at least you're likely to be in the…

Orders of magnitude? Something like 100 people die on the road in the US each day. If self-driving tech could save 10 lives per day, that’s wouldn’t be good enough?

"It depends". If 50 people die and 50 people go to jail, vs. 40 people die and their families are left wondering if someone will take responsibility? Then that's not immediately standing out as an improvement just because fewer died. We can do better I think. The problem is simply one of responsibility.

Re: Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica

#64

And before the argument "Self driving is acceptable so long as the accident/risk is lower than with human drivers" can I please get that out of the way: No it's not. Self driving needs to be orders of magnitude safer for us to acknowledge it. If they're merely as safe or slightly safer than humans we will never accept it. Becase humans have a "skin in the game". If you drive drunk, at least you're likely to be in the…

I think those figures are already starting to accumulate. Incidents like this are rare enough that they are news worthy. Almost every minor incident involving Waymo, Tesla's FSD, and similar solutions gets a lot of press. This was a major incident with a happy end. Those are quite rare. The lethal ones even rarer.

As for more data, there is a chicken egg problem. A phased roll out of waymo over several years has revealed many potential issues but is also remarkable in the low number of incidents with fatalities. The benefit of a gradual approach is that it builds confidence over time.

Tesla has some ways to go here. Though arguably, with many hundreds of thousands of paying users, if it was really unsafe, there would be some numbers on that. Normal statistics in the US are measured in ~17 deaths per 100K drivers per year. 40K+ fatalities overall. FSD for all its faults and failings isn't killing dozens of people per years. Nor is Waymo. It's a bit of an apples and oranges comparison of course. But the bar for safety is pretty low as soon as you include human drivers.

Liability weighs higher for companies than safety. It's fine to them if people die, as long as they aren't liable. That's why the status quo is tolerated. Normalized for amounts of miles driven with and without autonomous, there's very little doubt that autonomous driving is already much safer. We can get more data at the price of more deaths by simply dragging out the testing phase.

Perfect is the enemy of good here. We can wait another few years (times ~40K deaths) or maybe allow technology to start lowering the amount of traffic deaths. Every year we wait means more deaths. Waiting here literally costs lives.

Re: Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica

#65
post #53

A human driver would most likely have killed this child. That's what should be on the ledger.

Disagree, most human drivers would notice they are near an elementary school with kids coming/going, crossing guard present, and been driving very carefully near blocked sight lines. Better reporting would have asked real people the name of the elementary school, so we could see some pictures of the area. The link to NHTSA didn't point to the investigation, but it's under https://www.nhtsa.gov/search-safety-issues "N…

We're getting into hypotheticals but i will say in general i much much prefer being around Waymos/Zooxs/etc. than humans when riding a bicycle.

We're impatient emotional creatures. Sometimes when I'm on a bike the bike lane merges onto the road for a stretch, no choice but to take up a lane. I've had people accelerate behind me and screech the tyres, stopping just short of my back wheel in a threatening manner which they then did repeatedly as i ride the short distance in the lane before the bike lane re-opens.

To say "human drivers would notice they are near an elementary school" completely disregards the fuckwits that are out there on the road today. It disregards human nature. We've all seen people do shit like i describe above. It also disregards that every time i see an automated taxi it seems to drive on the cautious side already.

Give me the unemotional, infinite patience, drives very much on the cautious side automatic taxi over humans any day.

Re: Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Waymo hits a kid? Ban the tech immediately, obviously it needs more work. > Waymo hits a kid? Well if it was a human driver the kid might well have been dead rather than bruised. These can be true at the same time. Waymo is held to a significantly higher standard than human drivers.

> Waymo is held to a significantly higher standard than human drivers. They have to be, as a machine can not be held accountable for a decision.

The promise of self-driving cars being safer than human drivers is also kind of the whole selling point of the technology.

Re: Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They they are being very transparent about it.

As every company should, when they have a success. Are they also as transparent about their failures?

Well, as a comparison, we know that Tesla has failed to report to NHTSA any collisions that didn't deploy the airbag.

Re: Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica

#69
post #45

From the Waymo blog... > the pedestrian suddenly entered the roadway from behind a tall SUV, moving directly into our vehicle's path. Our technology immediately detected the individual as soon as they began to emerge from behind the stopped vehicle. The Waymo Driver braked hard, reducing speed from approximately 17 mph to under 6 mph before contact was made. > Following contact, the pedestrian stood up immediately, w…

It depends on the situation, and we need more data/video. But if there are a bunch of children milling about an elementary school in a chaotic situation with lots of double parking, 17 mph is too fast, and the Waymo should have been driving more conservatively.

Whoa! You're allowed to double park outside a school over there?!

Re: Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica

#70

From the Waymo blog... > the pedestrian suddenly entered the roadway from behind a tall SUV, moving directly into our vehicle's path. Our technology immediately detected the individual as soon as they began to emerge from behind the stopped vehicle. The Waymo Driver braked hard, reducing speed from approximately 17 mph to under 6 mph before contact was made. > Following contact, the pedestrian stood up immediately, w…

It does sound like a good outcome for automation. Though I suppose an investigation into the matter would arguably have to look at whether a competent human driver would be driving at 17mph (27km/h) under those circumstances to begin with, rather than just comparing the relative reaction speeds, taking the hazardous situation for granted.

What I would like to see is a full-scale vehicle simulator where humans are tested against virtual scenarios that faithfully recreate autonomous driving accidents to see how "most people" would have acted in the minutes leading up to the event as well as the accident itself

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