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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

#101

Post by parl_match »

direwolf20 wrote: post #82
dylan604 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is hitting a child not a failure? And actually, how can you call this a success? Do you think this was a GTA side mission?

Immediately hitting the brakes when a child suddenly appears in front of you, instead of waiting 500ms like a human, and thereby hitting the child at a speed of 6 instead of 14 is a success. What else to you expect them to do, only run on grade–separated areas where children can't access? Blare sirens so children get scared away from roads? Shouldn't human–driven cars do the same thing then?

"and thereby hitting the child ... is a success."

> What else to you expect them to do, only run on grade–separated areas where children can't access?

no, i expect them to slow down when children may be present

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

#104

Post by renewiltord »

alkonaut wrote: post #63
criddell wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do they go to jail?

That is not my experience here in the Bay Area. In fact here is a pretty typical recent example https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/community-members-mour...

The driver cuts in front of one person on an e-bike so fast they can’t react and hit them. Then after being hit they step on the accelerator and go over the sidewalk on the other side of the road killing a 4 year old. No charges filed.

This driver will be back on the street right away.

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

#105

Post by direwolf20 »

boothby wrote: post #102
bpodgursky wrote: post #6

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

No, "the ledger" should record actual facts, and not whatever fictional alternatives we imagine.

Fact: This child's life was saved by the car being driven by a computer program instead of a human.

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

#106

Post by seanmcdirmid »

orwin wrote: post #100
direwolf20 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immediately hitting the brakes when a child suddenly appears in front of you, instead of waiting 500ms like a human, and thereby hitting the child at a speed of 6 instead of 14 is a success. What else to you expect them to do, only run on grade–separated areas where children can't access? Blare sirens so children get scared away from roads? Shouldn't human–driven cars do the same thing then?

17 mph is way too fast near a school if it's around the time children are getting out (or in).

The limit is 20 MPH in Washington state, in California the default is 25 MPH, but is going to 20 MPH soon and can be further lowered to 15 MPH with special considerations.

The real killer here is the crazy American on street parking, which limits visibility of both pedestrians and oncoming vehicles. Every school should be a no street parking zone. But parents are going to whine they can't load and unload their kids close to the school.

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

#107

Post by trillic »

alkonaut wrote: post #77
jillesvangurp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 reve…

> ~17 deaths per 100K drivers per year. 40K+ fatalities overall. I also think one needs to remember those are _abysmal_ numbers, so while the current discourse is US centric (because that's where the companies and their testing is) I don't think it can be representative for the risks of driving in general. Naturally, robotaxis will benefit from better infra outside the US (e.g. better separation of pedestrians) but i…

It will also never get worse. This is the worst the algorithms from this point forward.

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

#108

Post by direwolf20 »

parl_match wrote: post #101
direwolf20 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immediately hitting the brakes when a child suddenly appears in front of you, instead of waiting 500ms like a human, and thereby hitting the child at a speed of 6 instead of 14 is a success. What else to you expect them to do, only run on grade–separated areas where children can't access? Blare sirens so children get scared away from roads? Shouldn't human–driven cars do the same thing then?

"and thereby hitting the child ... is a success." > What else to you expect them to do, only run on grade–separated areas where children can't access? no, i expect them to slow down when children may be present

how slow?

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

#109

Post by myrmidon »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #66
micromacrofoot wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What? No? The main selling point is eliminating costs for a human driver (by enabling people to safely do other things from their car, like answering emails or doomscrolling, or via robotaxis).

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

#110

Post by toast0 »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #89
WarmWash wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If waymo is to be believed, they hit the kid at 6mph and estimated that a human driver at full attention would have hit the kid at 14 mph. The waymo was traveling 17mph. The situation of "kid running out between cars" will likley never be solved either, because even with sub nanosecond reaction time, the car's mass and tire's traction physically caps how fast a change in velocity can happen. I don't think we will eve…

> The situation of "kid running out between cars" will likley never be solved Nuanced disagree (i agree with your physics), in that an element of the issue is design. Kids running out between cars _on streets that stack building --> yard --> sidewalk --> parked cars --> driving cars. One simple change could be adding a chain link fence / boundary between parked cars and driving cars, increasing the visibility and tim…

How do you add a chain link fence between the parked and driving cars for on-street parking?
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