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Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

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Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#171

Post by jhgg »

tiahura wrote: post #154
data-ottawa wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The captcha example isn't exactly fair, the images shown can be newly generatrd, repeated, or used as control images, and even if they are unclassifiable then you're not seeing the successes. Without knowing the whole system there's too much hidden bias to claim the computer is more of less accurate than a commuter.

No doubt all of your excuses are at least partially true, however, at this point, literally after almost two decades of billions of people training these things to see bikes, it still needs a lot more work.

Recaptcha has not been used to train any neural network to detect anything in a very long time.

In fact, visual challenges like this are a mostly solved problem, and the real magic is the classification that happens behind the scenes.

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#172

Post by spamizbad »

websap wrote: post #145
dharmab wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience with motorcycling and bicycling as a primary mode of transport I'm happy if the human drivers attempt to stop at all

Cyclists are supposed to stop at stop signs, if not stop at least yield. At least in this case (if true), the cyclist followed the truck through a 4 way intersection (assuming it's a 4-way stop), that would put them in the wrong. Hope waymo releases the footage.

So are cars and yet it's common practice among drivers to simply slow down to 5-10 mph, declare that a "stop" and proceed into the intersection.

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#173

Post by matthewdgreen »

manzanarama wrote: post #101
km3r wrote: post #11

So the scenario (as described by waymo, surely with some spin): "Driving through a 4 way intersection, while a large truck is also going through the intersection. As you go through, a biker quickly passes behind the truck with minimal time to react once in sightlines." A human driver would take significantly longer to react, and could be deadly. Waymo managed to hit the breaks before the collision, potentially leadin…

I feel like you are injecting facts with a lot of assumptions. How do we know a human driver would have taken longer? What if the human would have seen the bike 200 yards up the road 45 seconds ago, and since bikes don't disappear, waited a half second before proceeding into the intersection. Or what if a small portion of the bike was visible? It could have been absolutely unavoidable but I don't think we know that n…

What we do know is that this incident will be analyzed with the level of attention we would give to a plane crash. If there was any way the incident could have been avoided, the engineers will probably figure it out. It’s likely that software will be updated to implement a fix as well, and this type of accident will become much less likely across Waymo’s entire fleet. That seems like a really good result.

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#174

Post by bsimpson »

danenania wrote: post #153
babelfish wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone can't follow traffic laws, they shouldn't be on the road (regardless of mode of transportation)

So anyone who drives 1 mph over the speed limit shouldn’t be on the road? There are laws and there are norms. The overlap is never exact.

The laws should overlap with the norms more.

It really bothers me that the laws don't reflect real life. It gives the authorities the ability to harass whoever they like for violating laws that are routinely ignored until a cop wants to start something. That's not okay.

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#175

Post by fortran77 »

yellow_postit wrote: post #150
websap wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cyclists are supposed to stop at stop signs, if not stop at least yield. At least in this case (if true), the cyclist followed the truck through a 4 way intersection (assuming it's a 4-way stop), that would put them in the wrong. Hope waymo releases the footage.

There’s rules as written and then rules as followed — I’d much prefer a system that recognizes the rules that people tend to follow/bend/break — as a cyclist I too will often “convoy” with a bigger vehicle as it provides some additional protection most of the time (though obviously not here)

[flagged]

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#176

Post by brian_cunnie »

yellow_postit wrote: post #150
websap wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cyclists are supposed to stop at stop signs, if not stop at least yield. At least in this case (if true), the cyclist followed the truck through a 4 way intersection (assuming it's a 4-way stop), that would put them in the wrong. Hope waymo releases the footage.

There’s rules as written and then rules as followed — I’d much prefer a system that recognizes the rules that people tend to follow/bend/break — as a cyclist I too will often “convoy” with a bigger vehicle as it provides some additional protection most of the time (though obviously not here)

> rules as written/rules as followed

As a bicyclist in San Francisco, if I follow the rules as written, I cause traffic. Cars expect me to blow through four-way stop-sign intersections, and if I stop and wait for the cars, the drivers get confused & don't want to go (afraid of hitting me, I suspect).

In terms of right of way, the rules as followed seem to be pedestrian > bike > car.

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#177

Post by pavon »

Retric wrote: post #143
belltaco wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like the Waymo vehicle was turning after an all-way stop sign? Is this a good representation with the blue car being the Waymo and the truck being the red car? https://taylorkinglaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/4-Way-S... Wonder why it was cutting so close to the large truck's back while accelerating during the turn that it couldn't see the cyclist till it was too late. Them saying the car braked only after t…

Are we sure the Waymo was turning instead of the cyclist? The only description is Waymo entered an intersection after a complete stop. “The cyclist was occluded by the truck and quickly followed behind it, crossing into the Waymo vehicle’s path.”

Yeah the ways I can interpret that are

1) The cyclist entered from a cross street going straight as soon as the truck partially cleared the intersection.

2) The cyclist was following behind the truck and then turned in front of the Waymo.

3) The cyclist was following behind the truck and the Waymo turned into it.

To me "crossing into the Waymo vehicle's path" is a pretty weasel-worded way to say (3), but it is technically true.

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#178

Post by henriquez »

harimau777 wrote: post #170
henriquez wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it totally makes sense for bike commuters to be run over and sent to the hospital by robotic driverless vehicles while billionaire entrepreneurs refine the AI models powering them — it’s a beta test after all, you can’t actually expect it to work on public streets. And I bet those cyclists weren’t even paying their road tax. The needs of the 95th percentile that the model was tuned for outweigh the needs of ever…

I think that line of reasoning would only apply if the driverless vehicles are not better than human drivers. That is to say, it's perfectly reasonable that bike commuters would die as the software is improved as long as less bike commuters are die than would without the driverless cars. To be clear, I don't know that I necessarily think that driverless cars currently are better than human drivers. I'm just pointing…

Logic and morality are on two separate paths. IF the driverless car decides to kill your daughter because saving a van full of refugees was for the greater good, then it wouldn't be a question of what was "better," it would be a question of what was "righteous." In this hypothetical scenario, logically it would make sense to kill your daughter and apparently you're completely comfortable with amoral constructs making this decision on your behalf.

Fortunately we don't have to ponder such philosophical dilemmas while the current iteration of so-called "driverless" vehicles are `developmentally delayed` to put it lightly. But I guess a few bruised-up bike commuters are considered "acceptable loss" along the way to real progess (which is surely coming soon, surely)

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#179

Post by standardUser »

stronglikedan wrote: post #151
bagels wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No lies in the article. "The bill now heads to Governor Newsom's desk" ... where it was vetoed, sadly.

> where it was vetoed, sadly Sounds like the gov did the right thing. Cyclists shouldn't get special privileges. They're operating a vehicle on the roadway just like everyone else. Drivers of other types of vehicles shouldn't also have to remember special rules just for cyclists.

> Drivers of other types of vehicles shouldn't also have to remember special rules just for cyclists.

Drivers of any vehicle should learn all of the rules they need to drive safely and legally. It's not like there's a hundred different types of vehicles on the road. There's some special rules for trucks and motorcycles and bicycles and that's about it.

Plus, travel by bicycle is a net positive for society and I strongly support incentivizing it, including through preferential laws (even though I almost never do it myself).

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#180

Post by seanmcdirmid »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #173
manzanarama wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you are injecting facts with a lot of assumptions. How do we know a human driver would have taken longer? What if the human would have seen the bike 200 yards up the road 45 seconds ago, and since bikes don't disappear, waited a half second before proceeding into the intersection. Or what if a small portion of the bike was visible? It could have been absolutely unavoidable but I don't think we know that n…

What we do know is that this incident will be analyzed with the level of attention we would give to a plane crash. If there was any way the incident could have been avoided, the engineers will probably figure it out. It’s likely that software will be updated to implement a fix as well, and this type of accident will become much less likely across Waymo’s entire fleet. That seems like a really good result.

Only the driving software will be updated, the intersection will not be redesigned to reduce the severity of driver mistakes. It’s not the best outcome, ideally someone will analyze the case and produce the changes that needed to made to the driving software, the intersection, and biking behavior (aka the Dutch approach).
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