Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by nearbuy » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #149

webdood90 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many human drivers do you think would pass the bar you're setting? IMO, the bar should be that the technology is a significant improvement over the average performance of human drivers (which I don't think is that hard), not necessarily perfect.

> How many human drivers do you think would pass the bar you're setting? How many humans drivers would pass it, and what proportion of the time? Even the best drivers do not constantly maintain peak vigilance, because they are human. > IMO, the bar should be that the technology is a significant improvement over the average performance of human drivers (which I don't think is that hard), not necessarily perfect. In pr…

The parent comment said the bar should be "significant improvement" over the average performance of human drivers.

Then you said, "this isn't reasonable", and the bar shouldn't be "slightly better" or "barely better". It should be at least better than the 75th percentile driver.

It sounds like you either misread the parent comment or you're phrasing your response as disagreement despite proposing roughly the same thing as the parent comment.

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

#382

Post by gjm11 » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

IAmBroom wrote: post #348

The statistically relevant question is: How many human drivers have hit children near elementary schools, since Waymo's last accident? If Waymo has fewer accidents where a pedestrian is hit than humans do, Waymo is safer. Period. A lot of people are conjecturing how safe a human is in certain complicated scenarios (pedestrian emerging from behind a bus, driver holds cup of coffee, the sun is in their eyes, blah blah…

This is wrong, although something quite like it is right.

Imagine that there are only 10 Waymo journeys per year, and every year one of them hits a child near an elementary school, while there are 1000000 non-Waymo journeys per year, and every year two of them hit children near elementary schools. In this scenario Waymo has half as many accidents but is clearly much more dangerous.

Here in the real world, obviously the figures aren't anywhere near so extreme, but it's still the case that the great majority of cars on the road are not Waymos, so after counting how many human drivers have had similar accidents you need to scale that figure in proportion to the ratio of human to Waymo car-miles.

(Also, you need to consider the severity of the accidents. That comparison probably favours Waymo; at any rate, they're arguing that it does in this case, that a human driver in the same situation would have hit the child at a much higher and hence more damaging speed.)

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

#383

Post by jobs_throwaway » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

themafia wrote: post #308

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 reduc…

> 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 need way more data, like orders of magnitude more. There are trillions of miles driven in the US every year.

Absurd, reductive, and non-empirical. Waymos crash and cause injury/fatality far less frequently than human drivers, full stop. You are simply out of your mind if you believe otherwise, and you should re-evaluate the data.

> Those miles often include driving in inclement weather which is something Waymo hasn't even scraped the surface of yet.

Yes. No one is claiming that Waymos are better drivers than humans in inclement weather, because they don't operate in those conditions. That does not mean Waymos are not able to outperform human drivers in the conditions in which they do operate.

> I see an environment forming where we ignore the hard problems and pray these corporate overlords solve the problem on their own. It's madness.

What's madness is your attitude that Waymos' track record does not show they are effective are reducing crashes. And again, working on policy does not prevent us from also improving technology as you seem to believe it does.

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

#384

Post by direwolf20 » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

boothby wrote: post #258

direwolf20 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fact: This child's life was saved by the car being driven by a computer program instead of a human.

No, the fact is that the child sustained minor injuries. And, fact: no human driver made the decision to drive a vehicle in that exact position and velocity. Imagining a human-driven vehicle in the same place is certainly valid, but your imagination is not fact. I imagine that the kid would be better off if no vehicle was there. But that's not a fact, that's an interpretation -- perhaps the kid would have ended up de…

This is a good point. Cars should be banned near schools. That is a logical conclusion given the facts.

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

#385

Post by jobs_throwaway » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

themafia wrote: post #355

decimalenough wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

It is not moving the goalpost to say "so would a human". Comparison to human drivers is exactly the stated goalpost (and it should be).

> You have zero data.

Outrageously uninformed take. We have mountains of data that show Waymos in aggregate are safer drivers than humans.

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

#386

Post by jobs_throwaway » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 9:23 PM UTC

themafia wrote: post #312

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have contradicting data I'd be glad to see it >It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse. Is based off the source I gave in my comment, the peer-reviewed model > a huge portion of human drivers Is based on my experience and bits of data like 30% of fatal accidents involving alcohol Like I said, if you have better data I'm glad to see it

> based on my experience The data completely disagrees with you. > Like I said, if you have better data I'm glad to see it We all have better data. It's been here the entire time: https://www.nhtsa.gov/research-data/fatality-analysis-report...

Your data that shows 30% of fatal crashes involve alcohol, not to mention any of the other factors I named? Seems like your data supports my conclusion!

Again, I welcome you to point to data that contradicts my claims, but it seems you are unable

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

#387

Post by JKCalhoun » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 9:25 PM UTC

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #277

JKCalhoun wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of drive that way. I slow down, move as far away in my lane from the parked cars as possible. It's certainly what I would expect from a machine that would claim to be as good as the best human driver.

> a machine that would claim to be as good as the best human driver. Does Waymo claim that? If so I haven't seen it. That should of course be the goal, but "better than the average human driver" should be the bar.

If they don't clim that, why would I be interested in their tech?

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

#388

Post by Aloisius » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 9:26 PM UTC

netsharc wrote: post #351

jjav wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!".

Waymo itself has this as well. They record their drives after all which means they know the speed of the vehicles around them.

They even wrote a blog post about it:

https://waymo.com/blog/2023/07/past-the-limit-studying-how-o...

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

#389

Post by globular-toast » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 9:30 PM UTC

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…

How many human drivers do under 20mph, like ever?

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

#390

Post by altairprime » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 9:31 PM UTC

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.

At some point children are capable of pursuing Darwin Awards. Parents may enable this, but ultimately if one’s child does something stupid contrary to one’s guidance and restrictions, they may end up with a Darwin for it. Two hundred years ago the child mortality rate was half, as in you lost one child per two, and most of those were not the fault of the child or parents. Society for quite some years has been pushing that down, to the point that a near-death involving a neglectful parent and a witless child is apparently (?) newsworthy — but the number of deaths will never reach zero, whether humans or robots or empty plains and blue skies. There will always be a Veruca Salt throwing themselves into the furnace no matter how many safety processes we impose onto roads, cars, drivers, and/or robots.

If you want to see an end to this nonsensical behavior by parents, pressure your local city into having strict traffic enforcement and ticketing during school hours at every local school, so that the parent networks can’t share news with each other of which school is being ‘harassed’ today. Give license points to vehicles that drop a child across the street, issue parking tickets to double parkers, and boot vehicles whose drivers refuse to move when asked. Demand they do this for the children, to protect them from the robots, if you like.

But.

It’ll protect them much more from the humans than from the robots, and after a few thousand rockets are issued to parents behaving badly, you’ll find that the true threat to children’s safety on school roads is children’s parents — just as the schools have known for decades. And that’s not a war you’ll win arguing against robots. (It’s a war you’ll win arguing against child-killing urban roadway design, though!)