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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

#441

Post by toast0 »

globular-toast wrote: post #389
toast0 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty hyperbolic. At less than 20 mph, car vs pedestrial is unlikely to result in death. IIHS says [1] in an article about other things: > As far as fatalities were concerned, pedestrians struck at 20 mph had only a 1% chance of dying from their injuries Certainly, being struck at 6 mph rather than 17 mph is likely to result in a much better outcome for the pedestrian. And that should not be minimized; althou…

How many human drivers do under 20mph, like ever?

Plenty. Have you ever driven on a freeway at rush hour? Have you driven in a pickup/dropoff line at a school or an airport? You may or may not want to go 100, but when there's a vehicle in front of you going 20mph or less, you're kind of stuck.

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

#442

Post by alkonaut »

criddell wrote: post #90
alkonaut wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

If the current situation was every day 40 people die but blame is rarely assigned, would you recommend a change where an additional 10 people are going to die but someone will be held responsible for those deaths?

Yes

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

#443

Post by linsomniac »

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.

>It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse.

Maybe. Depends on the position of the sun and shadows, I'm teaching my kids how to drive now and showing them that shadows can reveal human activity that is otherwise hidden by vehicles. I wonder if Waymo or other self-driving picks up on that.

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

#444

Post by NewJazz »

smarnach wrote: post #415
Veserv wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> we should default to the calculation of 2-4x the rate. No we should not. We should accept that we don't have any statistically meaningful number at all, since we only have a single incident. Let's assume we roll a standard die once and it shows a six. Statistically, we only expect a six in one sixth of the cases. But we already got one on a single roll! Concluding Waymo vehicles hit 2 to 4 times as many children as…

Uh, the miles driven is like rolling the die, not hitting kids.

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

#445

Post by linsomniac »

Aloisius wrote: post #236
jjav wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It was going 17 mph. That is rather slow. To put it another way. If an autonomous vehicle has a reaction time of 0.3 seconds, the stopping distance from 17 mph is about the same as a fully alert human driver (1 second reaction time) driving 10.33 mph.

>It was going 17 mph. That is rather slow.

There's a case to be made that it wasn't slow enough.

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

#446

Post by [deleted] »

Veserv wrote: post #393
10000truths wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that highway miles heavily skew this statistic. There's naturally far fewer pedestrians on highways (lower numerator), people travel longer distances on highways (higher denominator), and Waymo vehicles didn't drive on highways until recently. If you look only at non-highway miles, you'll get a much more accurate comparison.

Then you or Waymo can meet the burden of proof and present that more precise and better information. There is little reason to assume against safety at this point in time except as a intellectual exercise for how more accurate information could be found. Until then, it is only prudent to defer snap judgements, but increase caution, insist on rigor and transparency, and demand more accurate information.

[deleted]

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

#447

Post by alex1138 »

Petersipoi wrote: post #179
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.

Yeah, but Tesla has a proven bad safety record. Waymo doesn't and the GP comment is alluding to that

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

#448

Post by NewJazz »

GoatInGrey wrote: post #421
RomanPushkin wrote: post #412

Will post it here: > In October 2025, a Waymo autonomous robotaxi struck and killed KitKat, a well-known bodega cat at Randa's Market in San Francisco's Mission District, sparking debates over self-driving car safety It's a child now. All I wanna ask - what should happen, so they stop killing pets and people?

The real but contentious answer is to change our street and urban design. You can only do so much to make a giant metal machine safe for children and small animals to be struck by. Reducing the frequency of cars and pedestrians occupying the same space will go further than trying to engineer the equivalent of a pool that is impossible to drown in.

Do you think that a company that operates autonomous vehicles will support legislation that makes it easier and safer to move around on foot without getting hit by a car? Or will they lobby for car-centric urban design, like many many companies before them?

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

#449

Post by alistairSH »

estearum wrote: post #439
recursive wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you should slow down relative to the posted speed limit why not change the speed limit to reflect that directly?

Usually the reason is the "slow down" portion is very small, and it's confusing to shift down the actual speed limit for a 200 foot stretch of road then increase it again.

Except we do that all the time in school zones... normally 35+, but from 7am-9am and again from 2pm-4pm the limit drops to 25mph (which is still to fast if the kids are actually crossing the street or walking alongside en masse).

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

#450

Post by socalgal2 »

WalterBright wrote: post #367
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…

When I was a boy, I ran into the street from between two parked cars. I did not notice the car coming, but he noticed me popping out from nowhere, and screeched to a stop. I was very very lucky.

I saw a girl dart out between to parked cars on a strode. She was less lucky. The car did slam on their breaks. I have no idea what speed it was ultimately going when they hit the girl. It wasn't enough to send her flying but it was enough to knock her over hard. The dad, was sitting in his front yard and had her up and in his car and I'm guessing rushed to the hospital.

Those kind of neighborhoods where the outer houses face the fast large roads I think are less common now but lots of them left over from the 50+ years ago.

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