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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

#531

Post by Dylan16807 »

coryrc wrote: post #418
WheatMillington wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be implying that there are no circumstances in which a vehicle can hit a pedestrian and the driver not be at fault... which is absurd.

Just about absolute. Fall off bridge onto car, I guess not. Olympic sprinter dashes out from car intentionally trying to be hit? Guess not either. Clothed mostly in black on a rainy night on a freeway? Not either. But you hit a kid in daytime? It's your fault. Period.

A kid can dash out from a car about as fast as an olympic sprinter can. And with unlucky timing their intent doesn't matter.

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

#532

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

linsomniac wrote: post #445
Aloisius wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Considering the car hit the child at only 6 mph and the kid just got up and brushed themselves off, it was plenty slow enough.

Nobody was injured.

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

#533

Post by mattlondon »

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.)

Yes I agree, but why 10mph? Why not 5mph? or 2mph? You'll still hit them if they step out right in front of you and you don't have time to react.

Obviously the distances are different at that speed, but if the person steps out so close that you cannot react in time, you're fucked at any speed.

10mph will do serious damage still, so please for the sake of the children please slow yourself and your daughter's driving down to 0.5mph where there are pedestrians or parked cars.

But seriously I think you'd be more safe to both slow down and also to put more space between the parked cars and your car so that you are not scooting along with a 30cm of clearance - move out and leave lots of space so there is more space for sight-lines for both you and pedestrians.

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

#534

Post by WalterBright »

socalgal2 wrote: post #450
WalterBright wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ho…

I once rounded a blind curve on a non-residential street only to find a man on a bicycle pulling a trailer with his baby in it, stopped in the middle of the road. I stopped and yelled at him, which surprised him.

That incident still gives me the willies.

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

#535

Post by lmm »

mattlondon wrote: post #516
belorn wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you drive in Sweden you will occasionally come up to a form of speed reduction strategy that may seem counterintuitive. They all add to make driving harder and feel more dangerous in order to force attention and lower speed. One is to merge opposite directional roads into a single lane, forcing drivers to cooperate and take turn to pass it, one car at a time. For a combined car and pedestrian road (max speed of 7k…

Does it actually work though? Many roads in London have parked cars on either side so only one can get through - instead of people cooperating you have people fighting, speeding as fast as they can to get through before someone else appears, or race on-coming cars to a gap in the parked cars etc. So when they should be doing 30mph, they are more likely doing 40-45. Especially with EVs you have near-instant power to q…

> Does it actually work though?

Yes. They have made steady progress over the previous decades to the point where they can now have years with zero road fatalities.

> And putting obstacles in the road so you cant see if someone is there? That sounds really dangerous and exactly the sort of thing that caused the accident in the story here.

Counterintuitive perhaps, but it's what works. Humans adjust their behaviour to the level of perceived risk, the single most important thing is to make driving feel as dangerous as it is.

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

#536

Post by lmm »

okdood64 wrote: post #370
aanet wrote: post #234

This is the classic Suddenly Revealed Pedestrian test case, which afaik, most NCAP (like EuroNCAP, Japan NCAP) have as part of their standard testing protocols. Having performed this exact test on 3 dozen vehicles (L2/L3/L4) for several AV companies in the Bay Area [1], I would say that Waymo's response, per their blog post [2] has been textbook compliance. (I'm not defending their performance... just their response…

> Waymo will still have to accept some responsibility Why? This is only true if they weren't supposed to be on the road in the first place. Which is not true.

Bringing a vehicle onto the public roads is a privilege not a right. Any harm to pedestrians that results is your responsibility, not anyone else's.

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

#537

Post by lmm »

mmooss wrote: post #486
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

We are responsible for the consequences of our actions. The speed limit is almost irrelevant; drive slowly enough so you don't hit anyone - especially in a school zone.

> We are responsible for the consequences of our actions.

We're not though. Drivers are allowed to kill as many people as they like as long as they're apologetic and weren't drinking; at most they pay a small fine.

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

#538

Post by SauntSolaire »

flutas wrote: post #371
micromacrofoot wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as far as we know

even as far as we know they aren't The Waymo blog post refused to say the word "child", instead using the phrase "young pedestrian" once. The Waymo blog post switches to "the pedestrian" and "the individual" for the rest of the post. The Waymo blog post also consistently uses the word "contact" instead of hit, struck, or collision. The Waymo blog post makes no mention of the injuries the child sustained. The Waymo bl…

The speed limit of a school zone in California is 25, not 15, which would explain why they didn't mention it.

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

#540

Post by mattlondon »

lmm wrote: post #535
mattlondon wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it actually work though? Many roads in London have parked cars on either side so only one can get through - instead of people cooperating you have people fighting, speeding as fast as they can to get through before someone else appears, or race on-coming cars to a gap in the parked cars etc. So when they should be doing 30mph, they are more likely doing 40-45. Especially with EVs you have near-instant power to q…

> Does it actually work though? Yes. They have made steady progress over the previous decades to the point where they can now have years with zero road fatalities. > And putting obstacles in the road so you cant see if someone is there? That sounds really dangerous and exactly the sort of thing that caused the accident in the story here. Counterintuitive perhaps, but it's what works. Humans adjust their behaviour to…

I think the humans in London at least do not adjust their behaviour for the perceived risk!

From experience they will adjust their behaviour to reduce their total travel time as much as possible (i.e. speed to "make up" for lost time waiting etc) and/or "win" against other drivers.

I guess it is a cultural thing. But I cannot agree that making it harder to see people in the road is going to make anything safer. Even a robot fucking taxi with lidar and instant reaction times hit a kid because they were obscured by something.

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