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

sfgate.com

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

#351

Post by Aloisius »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #270
athrun wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the intersection [1], what a badly designed mess it is! You have 2 bike lanes disappearing into the intersection without any sort of protection. Cars can be parked right up to the ped crossings, potentially obscuring what is happening. Looks like a death trap to me. At a minimum, raising the crossings so that cars have to slow down, and having no parking zones in front the crossings would improve the situa…

> Cars can be parked right up to the ped crossings, potentially obscuring what is happening. Looks like a death trap to me. California recently made it illegal to park within 20 feet of a crosswalk: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/news-and-media/dmv-highlights-... SF hasn't started enforcing the law yet, and I suspect that 99% of drivers don't know about the law.

They haven't started enforcing it because you can only issue warnings if people park close to the crosswalk until next year - specifically because most drivers don't know about the law.

And the law actually states that local authorities can come up with their own distance rules instead.

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

#352

Post by petre »

gnicholas wrote: post #343
ehsankia wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think more impressively, even in this seemingly worst case scenario where everything lined up as poorly as it could have, the car was still able to react quite aggressively and the situation ended only with minor scratches it seems? Honestly, if anything, this is probably proof that self-driving is the future, as I would bet any human would've most definitely done much worse in the same scenario.

I wonder if a human driver would have (for better or worse) swerved to avoid hitting the cyclist. That is, the Waymo might be programmed to only execute certain types of evasive maneuvers, whereas a human would instinctively do other things as well. Of course, if there were someone in the vehicle's blind spot, it's possible this would have resulted in a worse accident, since there would have been no time for a human…

In a recent accident that happened in my country, a human driver swerved to avoid a cyclist that was quickly switching lanes without signaling in order to cross from one side to another. The swerving car went over the sidewalk and killed a pedestrian. You should draw your own conclusions.

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

#353

Post by zx8080 »

groggo wrote: post #305
shuckles wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it’s not. AB122 passed the legislature to legalize the California roll for cyclists, because coming to a full stop at a stop sign makes no sense for riders with high visibility. Newsom vetoed it for stupid culture war reasons. It’s a law that doesn’t make sense so it’s not a big issue if it isn’t followed.

I'm a cyclist and support these types of laws. But I could imagine someone making the same case for a car (or a motorcycle?). You can have high visibility and come towards a 4-way stop in the middle of nowhere and there's not another car in sight. It doesn't really make sense. For cycling of course it's super annoying to lose your momentum.

Considering:

> annoying

Vs

excess CO2 from engines (does not matter if electric or not, as efficiency is still a thing to consider) after a full stop,

would it make more sense to make cyclists to yield always and not cars?

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

#354

Post by jmward01 »

I'm surprised that nearly all the comments here act as though there are only two parties involved and one of those parties is 'at fault'. I'll throw this out there: Cyclists, drivers, pedestrians and everything in-between (which is a growing category) have to co-exist and the streets of SF don't make that easy in many (most?) places. Where is the discussion about how to better design SF streets to make it all work better and safer? I'll start. I think we need to shut down more streets to make them pedestrian/bike/e-bike/etc friendly and limit where cars can go during most hours. If thee are more car free pathways then these situations won't be possible. These are probably fighting words depending on if you are a cyclist or not. Full disclosure, I used to commute via the wiggle.

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

#355

Post by TulliusCicero »

godelski wrote: post #248
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #185

I'm disappointed in all the folks immediately blaming the cyclist without further information, and I'm similarly disappointed in all the folks blaming Waymo for the same reason. But, unless they somehow have extra information we're not privy to, I'm much more disappointed in the S.F. Supervisor quoted in the article, Shamann Walton, for immediately going online to say "so much for safety." Us internet weenies are alw…

[flagged]

I don't hate cyclists, I've used a bike as a primary form of transport for much of my life.

But especially in the US, dangerous behavior from cyclists seems to be proportionally much more common than dangerous behavior by Waymos. So yeah, it's easy to believe that a cyclist just kind of blew the stop sign when they shouldn't have.

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

#356

Post by teekert »

flakes wrote: post #350
teekert wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m happy that in the Netherlands it’s ALWAYS the car driver’s responsibility (she always pays).

I don't agree with most laws that impose absolutes. The courts exist to deal with grey areas. A large number of pedestrians struck by cars each year (at least in North America), are themselves intoxicated, and not fit to walk along roadways. There are many cases where the driver should not reasonably be at fault for a pedestrians erratic behavior. There's also the "hit-to-kill" phenomenon in China, where it can be fi…

You mean laws that forbid pedestrians from crossing roads? It’s just a matter of where you put your priorities. Here we prioritize our bike based transportation. Drivers just have to be careful, also insurance is obligatory so drivers don’t really feel it financially. They just pay collectively for all the other traffic participants they hit.

We have a very different system, nobody goes bankrupt from causing an accident or from healthcare related costs.

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

#357

Post by PeterisP »

ra7 wrote: post #166
fprog wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public trust is a pretty good reason.

There’s enough to establish public trust with their voluntary release of safety data and regulators closely overseeing their operations. Setting a precedent for releasing footage means fault is automatically assumed when they don’t voluntarily release it. It’s a problem if they’re not even releasing it to the regulators, but that’s not happening here.

It's not enough, because at least for me and a few others (e.g. the neighboring comment "If the footage is not released to the public I'm going to assume it makes Waymo look bad.") being able to judge the event personally can establish much more trust than anything they do with the regulators, because we also don't necessarily fully trust the regulators and their political motivation, and want to see if we would agree with the regulators for such major cases.

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

#358

Post by peter422 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #113
babl-yc wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I drive and bike. It's more annoying on a bike to come to a complete stop.

I find plenty of rules of the road annoying, whether I'm in a car, on a bicycle or pedestrian. This "Oh, well, it's annoying so we don't do that" is BS.

I used to yield at stop signs early on while cycling, but after I was hit by a car who ran a stop sign, I switched to coming to a complete stop at every stop sign, ensuring no cars were about to run their stop signs, then going. Self preservation is more important than maintaining a little bit of momentum.

A fun bonus for this method is it seems to annoy the cars behind you even more when you actually come to complete stops, even though all drivers complain that cyclists don’t stop at stop signs.

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

#359

Post by rahimnathwani »

Aloisius wrote: post #351
rahimnathwani wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cars can be parked right up to the ped crossings, potentially obscuring what is happening. Looks like a death trap to me. California recently made it illegal to park within 20 feet of a crosswalk: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/news-and-media/dmv-highlights-... SF hasn't started enforcing the law yet, and I suspect that 99% of drivers don't know about the law.

They haven't started enforcing it because you can only issue warnings if people park close to the crosswalk until next year - specifically because most drivers don't know about the law. And the law actually states that local authorities can come up with their own distance rules instead.

> They haven't started enforcing it because you can only issue warnings if people park close to the crosswalk until next year - specifically because most drivers don't know about the law.

OK, I see that now:

  (4) Prior to January 1, 2025, jurisdictions may only issue a warning, and shall not issue a citation, for a violation unless the violation occurs in an area marked using paint or a sign.
But honestly I often see cars stopped (waiting, not parked) in red zones and have never seen them get a ticket or even asked to move on.

> And the law actually states that local authorities can come up with their own distance rules instead.

I didn't know this!

  (B) Notwithstanding subparagraph (A), a local authority may establish a different distance if both of the following requirements are met:
  (i) A local authority establishes the different distance by ordinance that includes a finding that the different distance is justified by established traffic safety standards.
  (ii) A local authority has marked the different distance at the intersection using paint or a sign.
I wonder whether (n)(1)(B)(i) is, in practice, a high bar.

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

#360

Post by PeterisP »

muglug wrote: post #44
xianshou wrote: post #7

If Waymo is truly as much better than Cruise as the statistics claim, this is a perfect opportunity to release the full video of the incident. Most collisions are avoidable, but a few are the result of a perfect storm of conditions that would be difficult to navigate for even the most skilled human driver. To know whether the truck's occlusion of the cyclist is one of those cases requires the actual footage.

> this is a perfect opportunity to release the full video of the incident I hope they’ve released the full video to investigators, but they’re in a tight spot — SF city government is looking for reasons to come down harshly on the company, and trying to sway public opinion ahead of the city’s verdict won’t help.

Why wouldn't it help? I think entirely the opposite, if they believe that SF city government has political reasons to misinterpret the evidence, then putting the evidence to the general public can act as a check to the SF government, preventing them from any shenanigans asserting that the video shows something other than most members of the public saw there.
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