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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

#281

Post by cucumber3732842 »

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.

Kinetic energy is a bad metric. Acceleration is what splats people.

Jumping out of a plane wearing a parachute vs jumping off a building without one.

But acceleration is hard to calculate without knowing time or distance (assuming it's even linear) and you don't get that exponent over velocity yielding you a big number that's great for heartstring grabbing and appealing to emotion hence why nobody ever uses it.

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

#282

Post by jobs_throwaway »

themafia wrote: post #275
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly, I'm not against constructive criticism of Waymo. I just think it's important to consider the counterfactual. You're right too that an especially prudent human driver may have avoided the scenario altogether, and Waymo should strive to be that defensive.

> I'm not against constructive criticism of Waymo. I feel like you have to say this out loud because many people in these discussions don't share this view. Billion dollar corporate experiments conducted in public are sacrosanct for some reason. > I just think it's important to consider the counterfactual More than 50% of roadway fatalities involve drugs or alcohol. If you want to spend your efforts improving safety…

> I feel like you have to say this out loud because many people in these discussions don't share this view. Billion dollar corporate experiments conducted in public are sacrosanct for some reason.

Yes, and I find it annoying that some people do seem to think Waymo should never be criticized. That said, we already have an astounding amount of data, and that data clearly shows that the experiment is successful in reducing crashes. Waymos are absolutely, without question already making streets safer than if humans were driving those cars.

> If you want to spend your efforts improving safety _anywhere_ it's right here.

We can and should do both. And as your comment seems to imply but does not explicitly state, we should also improve road design to be safer, which Europe absolutely kicks America's ass on.

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

#283

Post by jobs_throwaway »

mlyle wrote: post #60
veltas wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, I can tell you right now that many human drivers are probably safer than the Waymo, because they would have slowed down even more and/or stayed further from the parked cars outside a school; they might have even seen the kid earlier in e.g. a reflection than the Waymo could see.

It seems it was driving pretty slow (17MPH) and they do tend to put in a pretty big gap to the right side when they can. There are kinds of human sensing that are better when humans are maximally attentive (seeing through windows/reflections). But there's also the seeing-in-all-directions, radar, superhuman reaction time, etc, on the side of the Waymo.

And the fact that Waymo is never drunk/high/tired/texting, which an astounding portion of human drivers are.

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

#284

Post by almosthere »

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.

I remember someone using similar language when Uber self driving killed someone - and when the video was released, it was laughable.

It is also crazy that this happened 6 days ago at this point and video was NOT part of the press releases. LOL

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

#285

Post by Aloisius »

jsrozner wrote: post #222
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

So the waymo was speeding! All the dumbasses on here defending waymo when it was going 17 > 15. Oh also, that video says "kid ran out from a double parked suv". Can you imagine being dumb enough to drive over the speed limit around a double parked SUV in a school zone?

Depends on where the Waymo was.

The 15 mph speed limit starts on the block the school is on. The article says the Waymo was within two blocks of the school, so it's possible they were in a 25 mph zone.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Vhce7puwwYyDYEuo6

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

#286

Post by jobs_throwaway »

drunner wrote: post #242
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.

A human driver in a school zone during morning drop off would be scanning the sidewalks and paying attention to children that disappear behind a double parked suv or car in the first place, no? As described by the nhtsa brief: "within two blocks of a Santa Monica, CA elementary school during normal school drop off hours; that there were other children, a crossing guard, and several double-parked vehicles in the vicin…

Some human drivers? Yes, certainly.

Your median human driver? Sadly, I think not. Most would be rushing, or distracted, or careless.

> waymo is driving recklessly by obeying the speed limit here (assuming it was 20mph) in a way that many humans would not.

I don't think we can say at all that the Waymo was driving recklessly with the data we currently have

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

#287

Post by samrus »

margalabargala wrote: post #276
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would a human be driving at 17 in a school zone during drop off hours? In my experience in California, always and yes.

Maybe we should not only replace the unsafe humans with robots, but also have the robots drive in a safe manner near schools rather than replicating the unsafe human behavior?

One argument for the robots is that they can be programmed to drive safer, while humans cant.

But that depends on reliability, especially in unforseen (and untrained-upon) circumstances. We'll have to see how they do, but they have been doing better than expected

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

#288

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

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.

who benefits from a statement like this?

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

#289

Post by jobs_throwaway »

zdragnar wrote: post #138
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your sensible driving, but here in the UK, roads outside schools are complete mayhem at dropping off/picking up times. Speeding, overtaking, wild manoeuvres to turn round etc. When reading the article, my first thought was that only going at 17mph was due to it being a robotaxi whereas UK drivers tend to be strongly opposed to 20mph speed limits outside schools.

Most US states cap speed limits around schools at 15mph when children are present. There may also be blinking lights above these signs during times that will be likely. I'm not sure how much of that Waymo's cars take into account, as the law technically takes into account line of sight things that a person could see but Waymo's sensors might not, such as children present on a sidewalk.

I don't think this is accurate, 20mph is more common

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

#290

Post by Rebelgecko »

drunner wrote: post #242
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.

A human driver in a school zone during morning drop off would be scanning the sidewalks and paying attention to children that disappear behind a double parked suv or car in the first place, no? As described by the nhtsa brief: "within two blocks of a Santa Monica, CA elementary school during normal school drop off hours; that there were other children, a crossing guard, and several double-parked vehicles in the vicin…

I live near a school zone in LA and most drivers do not obey school zone speed limits.

You will get honked at by aggro drivers if you slow down to the school zone speed limit of 25mph. Most cars go 40ish.

And ofc a decent chunk of those drivers are on tiktok, tinder, Instagram, etc

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