> In your experience, where do we find a credible source of info? Do we need to wait for the government's investigation to finish? Most likely, yes, the NHTSA investigation will be credible source of info for this case. HOWEVER, Waymo will likely fight it tooth-and-nail from letting it be public. They will likely cite "proprietary algorithms / design", etc. to protect it from being released publicly. So, net-net, I d…
> You, Sir, cite two companies that are diametrically opposite on the safety spectrum Cringe. Stop it. Simping for google has stopped being cool nearly 2 decades ago.
I think it's less simping for good and more (rightfully) dunking on Tesla
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’s performance, once the pedestrian was revealed, sounds pretty good. But is 17mph a safe speed at an active school dropoff area? I admit that I don’t think I ever personally pay attention to the speedometer in such a place, but 17mph seems excessive even for an ordinary parking lot. I wonder whether Waymo’s model notices that small children are present or likely to be present and that it should leave extra marg…
I bet most drivers plow through that area at 30mph (since it's 25mph limit) instead if driving as slow as 16.
The statistically relevant question is: How many human drivers have hit children near elementary schools, since Waymo's last accident? If Waymo has fewer accidents where a pedestrian is hit than humans do, Waymo is safer. Period. A lot of people are conjecturing how safe a human is in certain complicated scenarios (pedestrian emerging from behind a bus, driver holds cup of coffee, the sun is in their eyes, blah blah…
Please read this article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-01-06/are-auton... Spoiler: we definitely don't know yet whether Waymo is statistically safer
> detects foot movement .. That’s probably how they do it, which is again very clever stuff, chapeau. But they do it like that b/c they can’t really predict the world around them fast enough. It might be possible in the future with AI World Models though
What do you mean “fast enough”? You can’t predict something that doesn’t exist i.e. not visible to the sensors. A Waymo wouldn’t move at all if it assumed people would always jump out of nowhere. Even if you detect “fast enough”, there are physical limits for braking and coming to a stop.
You are predicting stuff that your sensors don’t see all the time my friend
What do you mean “fast enough”? You can’t predict something that doesn’t exist i.e. not visible to the sensors. A Waymo wouldn’t move at all if it assumed people would always jump out of nowhere. Even if you detect “fast enough”, there are physical limits for braking and coming to a stop.
You are predicting stuff that your sensors don’t see all the time my friend
You’re being vague and hand-wavy yet again.
Do you stop at every double parked vehicle when you’re driving? A Waymo would never move if it always predicted pedestrians would jump in front of it out of nowhere or the car next it would swerve at 65 mph. It’s physically impossible to stop in time for many accidents, unless you’re already stopped.
Two things: I've read studies saying that most drivers don't brake at max effort, even to avoid a collision. This may be at least one of the reasons that Waymo predicted that an attentive human would likely have been going faster than their car at the moment of impact. I've got a good idea of my fun-car's braking performance, because I drive it hard sometimes, but after reading that I started practicing a bit with my…
The reason attentive humans don't equal the Waymo here is reaction time. When a thing happens the human takes a moment to process what it means, and choose a reaction. It's not, by our standards, a long time but it's way longer than it takes the Waymo. Going early means you slow early, which means you also take longer to reach the child, but you're braking for all of that extra time, so you're slowing down even more.
Not questioning that, merely proposing that the two compound.
Waymo’s performance, once the pedestrian was revealed, sounds pretty good. But is 17mph a safe speed at an active school dropoff area? I admit that I don’t think I ever personally pay attention to the speedometer in such a place, but 17mph seems excessive even for an ordinary parking lot. I wonder whether Waymo’s model notices that small children are present or likely to be present and that it should leave extra marg…
I bet most drivers plow through that area at 30mph (since it's 25mph limit) instead if driving as slow as 16. Even people being all indignant on HN.
True,
But that's not people being rational. That's people being dumb and impatient -- most of us will admit we've done impatient things in a car.
But shouldn't an AV drive like we wish we would drive on our best behavior?
Yep, if I plow into stationary vehicles on the highway while going the "limit" that's not a very solid defense is it?
> Yep, if I plow into stationary vehicles on the highway while going the "limit" that's not a very solid defense is it? Well, people are doing a lot of what-about-ism in this situation. Some of that is warranted, but I'd posit that analyzing one "part" of this scenario in isolation is not helpful, nor is this the way Waymo will go about analyzing this scenario with their tech teams. Let's consider, for argument's sak…
The main concern I've got here is the gap between a human's intuition to prevent this kind of situation vs an algorithm. I'm interested to learn more about Waymo's logic here too and I'm hoping my concerns are addressed in their algorithm, it wouldn't be impossible and it would make their vehicles safer. I can believe in a scenario where these vehicles are safer than 99% of humans, and I don't think we're there yet, but I'm open to being proved wrong. The main point I'm making with my speculation and hypotheticals is that the safety of the kid that walked out doesn't start with them walking out, the safety starts before that, and it's worth comparing with experienced drivers with good track records and asking them what sort of things are going through their head as they drive. They're more perceptive than some people might expect, and I would guess more perceptive than the algorithm currently is.
It depends on the video. What they should do is arrange for the video to get leaked and let the Internet courts argue about it, and then based on the Internet verdict, come out and claim it's real and they fired somebody for leaking it, or it's AI generated. Love him or hate him, releasing the video is something I can see Elon doing because assuming a human driver would have done worse, it speaks for itself. Release…
You are predicting stuff that your sensors don’t see all the time my friend
You’re being vague and hand-wavy yet again. Do you stop at every double parked vehicle when you’re driving? A Waymo would never move if it always predicted pedestrians would jump in front of it out of nowhere or the car next it would swerve at 65 mph. It’s physically impossible to stop in time for many accidents, unless you’re already stopped.
I agree but if you can infer that maybe there are children running around because it’s the time they get out of school etc, then yes, you stop at every double parked car.. I’m not saying it’s easy to do, I’m just saying that’s a limitation of the system, that still already does miracles..