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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

#151

Post by jerlam »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #106
orwin wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

17 mph is way too fast near a school if it's around the time children are getting out (or in).

The limit is 20 MPH in Washington state, in California the default is 25 MPH, but is going to 20 MPH soon and can be further lowered to 15 MPH with special considerations. The real killer here is the crazy American on street parking, which limits visibility of both pedestrians and oncoming vehicles. Every school should be a no street parking zone. But parents are going to whine they can't load and unload their kids c…

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 people from other neighborhoods from using the public street to park. New roads are paved as wide as possible to allow both street parking and a double-parked car to not impede traffic. And we've started building homes without any kind of parking that force people to use the street.

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

#152

Post by yibg »

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.)

I don't see how that's feasible without introducing a lot of friction.

Near my house, almost the entire trip from the freeway to my house is via a single lane with parked cars on the side. I would have to drive 10 MPH the entire way (speed limit is 25, so 2.5x as long).

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

#153

Post by dlg »

I was just dropping my kids off at their elementary school in Santa Monica, but not at Grant Elementary where this happened.

While it's third-hand, word on the local parent chat is that the parent dropped their kid off on the opposite side of the street from Grant. Even though there was a crossing guard, the kid ran behind a car an ran right out in to the street.

If those rumors are correct, I'll say the kid's/family's fault. That said, I think autonomous vehicles should probably go extra-slowly near schools, especially during pickup and dropoff.

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

#154

Post by jjav »

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.

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 there?

If that's the scenario, there is a real probability that a child might appear, so I'm going to be over-slowing way down pre-emptively even thought I haven't seen anyone, just in case.

The car only slows down after seeing someone. The car can react faster that I can after seeing someone, but as a human I can pre-react much earlier based on the big picture, which is much better.

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

#155

Post by xnx »

alkonaut wrote: post #61
jonas21 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm willing to accept robotaxis, and accidents in robotaxis, but there needs to be some solid figures showing they are way _way_ safer than human drivers. Do you mean like this? https://waymo.com/safety/impact/

Yes but ideally from some objective source.

Like this? https://waymo.com/blog/2024/12/new-swiss-re-study-waymo

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

#156

Post by xnx »

WarmWash wrote: post #52
alkonaut wrote: post #11

And before the argument "Self driving is acceptable so long as the accident/risk is lower than with human drivers" can I please get that out of the way: No it's not. Self driving needs to be orders of magnitude safer for us to acknowledge it. If they're merely as safe or slightly safer than humans we will never accept it. Becase humans have a "skin in the game". If you drive drunk, at least you're likely to be in the…

If waymo is to be believed, they hit the kid at 6mph and estimated that a human driver at full attention would have hit the kid at 14 mph. The waymo was traveling 17mph. The situation of "kid running out between cars" will likley never be solved either, because even with sub nanosecond reaction time, the car's mass and tire's traction physically caps how fast a change in velocity can happen. I don't think we will eve…

Second-order benefit: More Waymos = fewer parked cars

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

#157

Post by samrus »

Dlanv wrote: post #142
simojo wrote: post #12

I'm curious as to what kind of control stack Waymo uses for their vehicles. Obviously their perception stack has to be based off of trained models, but I'm curious if their controllers have any formal guarantees under certain conditions, and if the child walking out was within that formal set of parameters (e.g. velocity, distance to obstacle) or if it violated that, making their control stack switch to some other "p…

With above-average human reflexes, the kid would have been hit at 14mph instead of 6mph. About 5x more kinetic energy.

But would a human be driving at 17 in a school zone during drop off hours? Id argue a human may be slower exactly because of this scenario

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

#159

Post by emptybits »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #118
emptybits wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo hits you -> you seek relief from Waymo's insurance company. Waymo's insurance premium go up. Waymo can weather a LOT of that. Business is still good. Thus, poor financial feedback loop. No real skin in the game. John Smith hits you -> you seek relief from John's insurance company. John's insurance premium goes up. He can't afford that. Thus, effective financial feedback loop. Real skin in the game. NOW ... add…

> John Smith hits you -> you seek relief from John's insurance company. John's insurance premium goes up. He can't afford that. Thus, effective financial feedback loop. Real skin in the game. John probably (at least where I live) does not have insurance, maybe I could sue him, but he has no assets to speak of (especially if he is living out of his car), so I'm just going to pay a bunch of legal fees for nothing. He d…

I see. Thank you for sharing. Insurance here is mandatory here for all motorists.

If you are hit by an underinsured driver, the government steps in and additional underinsured motorist protection (e.g. hit by an out of province/country motorist) is available to all and not expensive.

Jail time for an at-fault driver here is very uncommon but can be applied if serious injury or death results from a driver's conduct. This is quite conceivable with humans or AI, IMO. Who will face jail time as a human driver would in the same scenario?

Hit and run, leaving the scene, is also a criminal offence with potential jail time that a human motorist faces. You would hope this is unlikely with AI, but if it happens a small percentage of the time, who at Waymo faces jail as a human driver would?

I'm talking about edge cases here, not the usual fender bender. But this thread was about policy/regs and that needs to consider crazy edge cases before there are tens of millions of AI drivers on the road.

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

#160

Post by thatswrong0 »

toast0 wrote: post #113
bpodgursky wrote: post #6

A human driver would most likely have killed this child. That's what should be on the ledger.

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…

> To estimate injury risk at different impact speeds, IIHS researchers examined 202 crashes involving pedestrians ages 16 or older

A child is probably more likely to die in a collision of the same speed as an adult.

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