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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

#171

Post by xnx »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #118
emptybits wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo hits you -> you seek relief from Waymo's insurance company. Waymo's insurance premium go up. Waymo can weather a LOT of that. Business is still good. Thus, poor financial feedback loop. No real skin in the game. John Smith hits you -> you seek relief from John's insurance company. John's insurance premium goes up. He can't afford that. Thus, effective financial feedback loop. Real skin in the game. NOW ... add…

> John Smith hits you -> you seek relief from John's insurance company. John's insurance premium goes up. He can't afford that. Thus, effective financial feedback loop. Real skin in the game. John probably (at least where I live) does not have insurance, maybe I could sue him, but he has no assets to speak of (especially if he is living out of his car), so I'm just going to pay a bunch of legal fees for nothing. He d…

> John probably (at least where I live) does not have insurance, maybe I could sue him, but he has no assets to speak of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_proof

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

#172

Post by usefulposter »

jjav wrote: post #154
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. And to add > Waymo said in its blog post that its “peer-reviewed model” shows a “fully attentive human driver in this same situation would have made contact with the pedestrian at approximately 14 mph.” It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse. With a distracted driver (a huge portion of human drivers) it could've been catastrophic.

> It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse. We'd have to see video of the full scene to have a better judgement, but I wouldn't call it likely. The car reacted quickly once it saw the child. Is that enough? But most humans would have been aware of the big picture scenario much earlier. Are there muliple kids milling around on the sidewalk? Near a school? Is there a big truck/SUV parked th…

Precisely. Environmental context is not considered in Waymo's "peer-reviewed model" (I encourage reflexive commenters to first read it: https://waymo.com/safety/collision-avoidance-benchmarking), only basic driver behavior and traffic signal timings.

Note the weaselly "immediately detected the individual as soon as they began to emerge" in the puff piece from Waymo Comms. No indication that they intend to account for environmental context going forward.

If they already do this, why isn't it factored in the model?

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

#173

Post by oakesm9 »

jjav wrote: post #154
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. And to add > Waymo said in its blog post that its “peer-reviewed model” shows a “fully attentive human driver in this same situation would have made contact with the pedestrian at approximately 14 mph.” It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse. With a distracted driver (a huge portion of human drivers) it could've been catastrophic.

> It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse. We'd have to see video of the full scene to have a better judgement, but I wouldn't call it likely. The car reacted quickly once it saw the child. Is that enough? But most humans would have been aware of the big picture scenario much earlier. Are there muliple kids milling around on the sidewalk? Near a school? Is there a big truck/SUV parked th…

As someone who lives on a residential street right by a primary school in the UK, the majority of drivers are going over 20mph even at the peak time when there are children everywhere.

While in theory human drivers should be situationally aware of the higher risks of children being around, the reality is that the majority will be in their own bubble of being late to drop their kid off and searching for the first free spot they can find.

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

#174

Post by fennecbutt »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #114
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. And to add > Waymo said in its blog post that its “peer-reviewed model” shows a “fully attentive human driver in this same situation would have made contact with the pedestrian at approximately 14 mph.” It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse. With a distracted driver (a huge portion of human drivers) it could've been catastrophic.

I think my problem is that it reacted after seeing the child step out from behind the SUV. An excellent driver would have already seen that possible scenario and would have already slowed to 10 MPH or less to begin with. (It's how I taught my daughter's to drive "defensively"—look for "red flags" and be prepared for the worst-case scenario. SUV near a school and I cannot see behind it? Red flag—slow the fuck down.)

>reacted after seeing the child step out from behind the SUV.

Lmao most drivers I see on the roads aren't even capable of slowing down for a pedestrian crossing when the view of the second half of the crossing is blocked by traffic (ie they cannot see if someone is about to step out, especially a child).

Humans are utterly terrible drivers.

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

#175

Post by cucumber3732842 »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #88
torginus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually take extra care when going through a school zone, especially when I see some obstruction ('behind a tall SUV', was the waymo overtaking?), and overtaking is something I would probably never do (and should be banned in school zones by road signs). This is a context that humans automatically have and consider. I'm sure Waymo engineers can mark spots on the map where the car needs to drive very conservatively.

I appreciate your sensible driving, but here in the UK, roads outside schools are complete mayhem at dropping off/picking up times. Speeding, overtaking, wild manoeuvres to turn round etc. When reading the article, my first thought was that only going at 17mph was due to it being a robotaxi whereas UK drivers tend to be strongly opposed to 20mph speed limits outside schools.

School pick up and drop off traffic is just about the worst drivers anywhere. Like visibly worse than a bunch of "probably a little drunk" people leaving a sports stadium. It's like everyone reverts to "sixteen year old on first day behind the wheel" behavior. It's baffling. And there's always one token dad picking up his kid on a motorcycle or in a box truck or something that they all clutch their pearls at.

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

#176

Post by crazygringo »

mhast wrote: post #164
crazygringo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we adopted that level of risk, we'd have 5mph speed limits on every street with parking. As a society, we've decided that's overly cautious.

But with waymos it would be possible. Mark those streets as "extremely slow" and never go there unless you are dropping someone off. (The computer has more patience than human drivers.) If that's too annoying then bad parking by school areas so the situation doesn't happen.

I don't know if you've been to some cities or neighborhoods but almost every street has on-street parking in many of them.

And why would you make Waymo's go slower than human drivers, when it's the human drivers with worse reaction times? I had interpreted the suggestion as applying to all drivers.

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

#177

Post by Archio »

It's hard to imagine how any driver could have reacted better in this situation.

The argument that questions "would a human be driving 17mph in a school zone" feels absurd to the point of being potentially disingenuous. I've walked and driven through many school zones before, and human drivers routinely drive above 17mph (in some cases, over the typical 20mph or 25mph legal limit). It feels like in deconstructing some of these incidences, critics imagine a hypothetical scenario in which they are driving a car and its their only job to avoid a specific accident that they know will happen in advance, rather than facing the reality of what human drivers are actually like on the road.

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

#178

Post by jerlam »

trillic wrote: post #107
alkonaut wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ~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.

I am not sure. Self-driving is complex and involves the behavior of other, non-automated actors. This is not like a compression algorithm where things are easily testable and verifiable. If Waymos start behaving extra-oddly in school zones, it may lead to other accidents where drivers attempt to go around the "broken" Waymo and crash into it, other pedestrians, or other vehicles.

I know Tesla FSD is its own thing, but crowdsourced results show that FSD updates often increase the amount of disengagements (errors):

https://electrek.co/2025/03/23/tesla-full-self-driving-stagn...

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

#179

Post by Petersipoi »

Dlanv wrote: post #137

Basically Waymo just prevented a kids potential death. Bad any other car been there, probably including Tesla, the poor kid would have been hit with 4-10x more force.

You just invented a hypothetical situation in your head then drew conclusions from it. In my version, the other car misses the kid entirely.

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

#180

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jerlam wrote: post #151
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

On street parking is so ingrained into the American lifestyle that any change to the status quo is impossible. Cars have more rights on public property than people. Every suburban neighborhood has conflicts over people's imagined "ownership" of the street parking in front of their house. People rarely use their garages to store their car since they can just leave it on the street. There are often laws that prevent pe…

> On street parking is so ingrained into the American lifestyle that any change to the status quo is impossible

Plenty of American cities regulate or even eliminated, in various measures, on-street parking.

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