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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

#551
post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your opinion of "most humans" is vastly overinflated. The median human driver would be going 5 over the speed limit, on their cell phone, and paying fuck all attention. Humans never drive as slow as 17 mph, even in the context of being directly in front of schools with visible children.

You're describing the median driver in America or India. This is not universal.

For context, Santa Monica is in America or India.

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

#552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a machine that would claim to be as good as the best human driver. Does Waymo claim that? If so I haven't seen it. That should of course be the goal, but "better than the average human driver" should be the bar.

If they don't clim that, why would I be interested in their tech?

Because we can reduce crashes and fatalities without Waymo being Max Verstappen

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

#553
OK Its like this!, If I hit a child in a school district, I loose my licence for many years, and if I dont or cant show remourse, it could be longer, I pay fines, etc Therefor waymo, must have it's algorythm terminated, ie: totaly destroyed, all the hardware smashed, and they never get to try again with any derivitive of this technology, as there is no reasonable, understandable path towards repentence and rehabilitation, it is litteraly a monster running over children. or was it carrying an ICE team, then nevermind.

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

#554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is close to a particular peeve I have. Occasionally I see signs on the street that say "Slow Down". I'm not talking about the electronic ones connected to radar detectors. Just metal and paint. Here's my problem. If you follow the instructions on the sign, it still says to slow down. There's no threshold for slow enough. No matter how slow you're going, the sign says "Slow Down". So once you become ensnared in t…

You learn how to put those signs into context during your driving lessons, and fail your test if you don't apply that correctly.

My driving test was so thorough that I had to parallel park between two entirely fictional cars. There was certainly no consideration of eccentric signage.

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

#555
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 25mph school zone? That seems fast. 15mph would be more the norm, which is in line with the 17mph the car believed itself to be traveling. FYI, unless you are a commerical truck, a cop, or a racer, your speedometer will read slightly fast, sometimes as much as 5 to 10%. This is normal practice for cars as it limits manufacturer liability. You can check this using independant gps, ie not an in-dash unit. (Just imagi…

I mostly see 25 mph for school zones, though I'm in NC. Checking California, it sounds like 25 is standard there as well.[0] Some will drop to 15, but 25 is the norm as far as I can find. [0] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/handbook/california-driver-han...

25 mph is typical non-school-zone residential around here, with school zones always slower.

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

#556
post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, I have seen how people struggle to drive at low speed and can only do start/stop, accelerating to a way too high speed only to slam on brakes, repeating endlessly. But really, did you seriously read my post as meaning people literally can't go slower than 20 so just plough into whatever is in the way? I'm obviously talking about an open road situation. Hardly any human drivers go under 20 by choice.

What does an open road situation have to do with the incident situation?

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

#557
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Humans have this intuitive sense. Some do, some of the time. I'm always surprised by how much credence other people give to the idea that humans aren't on average very bad at things, including perception.

It's an autonomous vehicle fitted with a gazillion of sensors and data to drive itself. We can expect better from it than humans.

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

#558
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…

Have you been in a waymo? It knows when there are pedestrians around (it can often see over the top of parked cars) and it is very cautious when there are people near the road and it frequently slows down. I have no idea what happened here but in my experience of taking waymos in SF, they are very cautious and I'd struggle to imagine them speeding through an area with lots of pedestrians milling around. The fact that…

You can watch the screen and see what it can detect, and it is impressive. On a dark road at night in Santa Monica it was able to identify that there were two pedestrians at the end of the next block on the sidewalk obscured by a row of parked cars and covered by a canopy of overgrown vegetation. There is absolutely no way any human would have been able to spot them at this distance in these conditions. You really can "feel" it paying 100% attention at all times in all directions.

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

#559
post #549

We should all think twice before taking a company PR statement completely at face value and praising them for slowing down faster than their own internal "model" says a human driver would. Companies are heavily interested in protecting their bottom line and in a situation like this probably had 5-10 people carefully craft every single word of the statement for maximum damage control. Surprised at how many comments he…

It's going to sound batshit insane what I say - the problem is, if we don't praise company PR, the other side will use this as an excuse to push even harder regulations, not allow them in newer cities, slow down the adoption rate, while factually ignoring that this is just a safer method of transport. I wish I was not a bootlicker, but I really want robotaxis to be available everywhere in the world at some point, and such issues should not slow them down IF it's better, and especially, not worse than humans on average.

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

#560
post #537
post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We're responsible for the consequences of our actions regardless of what anyone else says, including the law.

Also, where I live that's manslaughter, a serious felony that can put you in jail.

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