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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

#351

Post by netsharc »

jjav wrote: post #154
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.

> 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 th…

Curiously enough Google could have access to how fast humans usually drive through that street.. if they record people's Google Maps trips, they can show the court that "Look, 80% of Google Maps users drive through here at 30 mph!".

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

#352

Post by TeMPOraL »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #129
TeMPOraL wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The promise of self-driving cars being safer than human drivers is also kind of the whole selling point of the technology.

Sure, but the companies building them are just shoving billions of dollars into their ears so they don't have to answer "who's responsible when it kills someone?"

The question of responsibility, while philosophically interesting wrt. increasingly autonomous machines, is not going to be an issue in practice. We'll end up dealing with it like we always do with multi-party responsibility in complex systems: regulators setting safety standards and outlining types and structures of liabiliy, contracts shifting the liability around, and lots and lots of insurance.

In fact, if you substitute "company providing self-driving solution (integrated software + hardware)" for "company renting out commercial drivers" (or machine operators), then self-driving cars already fit well into existing legal framework. The way I see it, the only change self-driving cars introduce here is that there is no individual operator we could blame for the accident, no specific human we could heavily fine or jail, and then feel good about ourselves because we've issued retributive justice and everything is whole now. Everything else has already long been worked out.

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

#353

Post by Jblx2 »

Veserv wrote: post #244
maerF0x0 wrote: post #87

Meanwhile the news does not report the other ~7,000 children per year injured as pedestrians in traffic crashes in the US. I think the overall picture is a pretty fantastic outcome -- even a single event is a newsworthy moment _because it's so rare_ . > The NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation is investigating “whether the Waymo AV exercised appropriate caution given, among other things, its proximity to the eleme…

Err, that is not the desirable statistic you seem to think it is. American drivers average ~3 trillion miles per year [1]. That means ~7000 child pedestrian injurys per year [2] would be ~1 per 430 million miles. Waymo has done on the order of 100-200 million miles autonomously. So this would be ~2-4x more injurys than the human average. However, the child pedestrian injury rate is only a official estimate (it is pos…

Would this Waymo incident be counted as an injury? Sounds like the victim was relatively unharmed? Presumably there are human-driver incidents like this where a car hits a child at low speeds, with effectively no injuries, but is never recorded as such?

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

#354

Post by IAmBroom »

trollbridge wrote: post #200
dlg wrote: post #153

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…

I do not like the phase "it's the kid's fault" for a kid being hit by a robot-car. It is never a 6 year old's fault if they get struck by a robot.

No-fault accidents happen. Accidents can have causes that are not legal nor moral blame.

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

#355

Post by themafia »

decimalenough wrote: post #341
themafia wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and that data clearly shows that the experiment is successful in reducing crashes I disagree. You need way more data, like orders of magnitude more. There are trillions of miles driven in the US every year. Those miles often include driving in inclement weather which is something Waymo hasn't even scraped the surface of yet. > without question There are _tons_ of questions. This is not even a simple problem. I cann…

You're moving the goalposts. The claim is that Waymos are safer than human drivers in the areas and under the conditions where they currently operate . Yeah, I'm sure Waymos would struggle in a blizzard in Duluth, but a) so would a human and b) Waymos aren't driving there. (Yet.)

> You're moving the goalposts

No. I'm not. I'm being realistic about the technology. You're artificially limiting the scope.

> so would a human

This is goalpost moving 101. The question isn't would a human driver also struggle but _would it be better_? You have zero data.

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

#356

Post by recursive »

Nition wrote: post #332
recursive wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is close to a particular peeve I have. Occasionally I see signs on the street that say "Slow Down". I'm not talking about the electronic ones connected to radar detectors. Just metal and paint. Here's my problem. If you follow the instructions on the sign, it still says to slow down. There's no threshold for slow enough. No matter how slow you're going, the sign says "Slow Down". So once you become ensnared in t…

A lot of clickbait headlines have the same problem. "You're using too much washing powder!" Everyone's replying to you as if you truly don't understand the sign's intention but I'm sure you do. It's just annoying to be doing everything right and the signs and headlines are still telling you you're wrong. There was a driving safety safety ad campaign here: "Drive to the conditions. If they change, reduce your speed."…

Yes. You have understood precisely the spirit in which I intended it.

In advertising: "Treat yourself. You deserve it!"

Me: What if someone who didn't deserve it heard this message. How can you possibly know what I deserve? Do all people deserve to treat themselves? Is the notion of deserving or treating really so vacuous?

Normies: jfc

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

#357

Post by Analemma_ »

bhewes wrote: post #313

The a human would do it better people are hilarious. Given how many times I have been hit by human drives on my bike and watched others get creamed by a cars. One time in Boulder at a flashing cross walk a person ran right through it and the biker they creamed got stuck in the roof rack.

Yeah I have to wonder if any of the "humans would do it better" people actually have children and have dropped them off in a school zone. Drivers are on their phones rolling through school zones at 25-30 during pickup/dropoff hours all the fucking time.

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

#358

Post by [deleted] »

mhast wrote: post #164
crazygringo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we adopted that level of risk, we'd have 5mph speed limits on every street with parking. As a society, we've decided that's overly cautious.

But with waymos it would be possible. Mark those streets as "extremely slow" and never go there unless you are dropping someone off. (The computer has more patience than human drivers.) If that's too annoying then bad parking by school areas so the situation doesn't happen.

[deleted]

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

#359

Post by jerlam »

sowbug wrote: post #225
jerlam wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure. Self-driving is complex and involves the behavior of other, non-automated actors. This is not like a compression algorithm where things are easily testable and verifiable. If Waymos start behaving extra-oddly in school zones, it may lead to other accidents where drivers attempt to go around the "broken" Waymo and crash into it, other pedestrians, or other vehicles. I know Tesla FSD is its own thing, bu…

And we haven't reached the point where people start walking straight into the paths of cars, either obliviously or defiantly. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nVEDebSuEUs

There are already anecdotes of people aggressively jaywalking in front of a Waymo because they know it will stop, and people driving more aggressively around Waymos because it will always defer to them.

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

#360

Post by kyleee »

accidc wrote: post #347
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.

It depends. A driver may have seen a child dart behind a car and expect them to emerge on the other side. Does Waymo have the same object permanence and trajectory prediction (combined) to that of a human? Once the video evidence it out, it might become evident. Generally Waymo seems to be a responsible actor so maybe that is the case and this can help demonstrate potential benefits of autonomous vehicles. Alternativ…

“Does Waymo have the same object permanence and trajectory prediction (combined) to that of a human?”

Good technical question

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