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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

#241

Post by ahahahahah »

shaky-carrousel wrote: post #232
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.

A fully attentive human would've known he was near a school and wouldn't have been driving at 17 mph to begin with.

You clearly don't spend much time around a school measuring the speed of cars. Head on down and see for yourself how often or not a human driver goes >17mph in such a situation.

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

#242

Post by drunner »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #8
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #2

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…

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.

A human driver in a school zone during morning drop off would be scanning the sidewalks and paying attention to children that disappear behind a double parked suv or car in the first place, no?

As described by the nhtsa brief:

"within two blocks of a Santa Monica, CA elementary school during normal school drop off hours; that there were other children, a crossing guard, and several double-parked vehicles in the vicinity"

The "that there were other children, a crossing guard, and several double-parked vehicles in the vicinity" means that waymo is driving recklessly by obeying the speed limit here (assuming it was 20mph) in a way that many humans would not.

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

#243

Post by recursive »

xnx wrote: post #128

Alternate headline: Waymo saves child's life

In this timeline, we want our headlines to somehow reflect the contents of the story.

Saved child from what? From themselves. You can't take full credit for partially solving a problem that you, yourself, created.

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

#244

Post by Veserv »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #87

Meanwhile the news does not report the other ~7,000 children per year injured as pedestrians in traffic crashes in the US. I think the overall picture is a pretty fantastic outcome -- even a single event is a newsworthy moment _because it's so rare_ . > The NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation is investigating “whether the Waymo AV exercised appropriate caution given, among other things, its proximity to the eleme…

Err, that is not the desirable statistic you seem to think it is. American drivers average ~3 trillion miles per year [1]. That means ~7000 child pedestrian injurys per year [2] would be ~1 per 430 million miles. Waymo has done on the order of 100-200 million miles autonomously. So this would be ~2-4x more injurys than the human average.

However, the child pedestrian injury rate is only a official estimate (it is possible it may be undercounting relative to highly scrutinized Waymo vehicle-miles) and is a whole US average (it might not be a comparable operational domain), but absent more precise and better information, we should default to the calculation of 2-4x the rate.

[1] https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10315

[2] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/8137...

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

#245

Post by tintor »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #8
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #2

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…

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.

"fully attentive human driver ..." is Waymo's claim, and it could be biased in their favor.

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

#246

Post by recursive »

trillic wrote: post #93
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?

Why didn't sully just not hit the birds?

Skill issue, presumably.

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

#247

Post by cucumber3732842 »

jsrozner wrote: post #222
aimor wrote: post #150

The school speed limit there is 15 mph, and that wasn't enough to prevent an accident. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/child-struck-waymo-near-... https://maps.app.goo.gl/7PcB2zskuKyYB56W8?g_st=ac

So the waymo was speeding! All the dumbasses on here defending waymo when it was going 17 > 15. Oh also, that video says "kid ran out from a double parked suv". Can you imagine being dumb enough to drive over the speed limit around a double parked SUV in a school zone?

> Can you imagine being dumb enough to drive over the speed limit around a double parked SUV in a school zone?

Can you imagine being dumb enough to think that exceeding a one size fits all number on a sign by As if 2mph would have fundamentally changed this. Pfft.

A double parked car, in an area with chock full street parking (hence the double park) and "something" that's a magnet for pedestrians, and probably a bunch of pedestrians should be a "severe caution" situation for any driver who "gets it". You shouldn't need a sign to tell you that this is a particular zone and that warrants a particular magic number.

The proper reaction to a given set of indicators that indicate hazards depends on the situation. If this were easy to put in a formula Waymo would have and we wouldn't be discussing this accident because it wouldn't have happened.

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

#248

Post by seanmcdirmid »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #180
jerlam wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Europe is much better at this than we are. Even when you have on street parking, they make sure there are clearances around cross walks and places where there are lots of pedestrians. Most US cities don't even care, even a supposedly pedestrian friendly one like Seattle.

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

#249

Post by maerF0x0 »

Veserv wrote: post #244
maerF0x0 wrote: post #87

Meanwhile the news does not report the other ~7,000 children per year injured as pedestrians in traffic crashes in the US. I think the overall picture is a pretty fantastic outcome -- even a single event is a newsworthy moment _because it's so rare_ . > The NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation is investigating “whether the Waymo AV exercised appropriate caution given, among other things, its proximity to the eleme…

Err, that is not the desirable statistic you seem to think it is. American drivers average ~3 trillion miles per year [1]. That means ~7000 child pedestrian injurys per year [2] would be ~1 per 430 million miles. Waymo has done on the order of 100-200 million miles autonomously. So this would be ~2-4x more injurys than the human average. However, the child pedestrian injury rate is only a official estimate (it is pos…

If that's the case, then that's great info. Thank you for adding :)

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

#250

Post by recursive »

mholt wrote: post #125
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #2

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…

The autonomous vehicle should know what it can't know, like children coming out from behind obstructions. Humans have this intuitive sense. Apparently autonomous systems do not, and do not drive carefully, or slower, or give more space, in those situations. Does it know that it's in a school zone? (Hopefully.) Does it know that school is starting or getting out? (Probably not.) Should it? (Absolutely yes.) This is th…

What's the success rate of this intuitive sense that humans have? Intuitions are wrong frequently.
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