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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

#411

Post by jjav »

yibg wrote: post #152
JKCalhoun wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my problem is that it reacted after seeing the child step out from behind the SUV. An excellent driver would have already seen that possible scenario and would have already slowed to 10 MPH or less to begin with. (It's how I taught my daughter's to drive "defensively"—look for "red flags" and be prepared for the worst-case scenario. SUV near a school and I cannot see behind it? Red flag—slow the fuck down.)

I don't see how that's feasible without introducing a lot of friction. Near my house, almost the entire trip from the freeway to my house is via a single lane with parked cars on the side. I would have to drive 10 MPH the entire way (speed limit is 25, so 2.5x as long).

But you most likely don't have that entire road be full of little kids in the sidewalk all the way. If you did, then yes probably 10mph or less would be wise.

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

#412

Post by RomanPushkin »

Will post it here:

> In October 2025, a Waymo autonomous robotaxi struck and killed KitKat, a well-known bodega cat at Randa's Market in San Francisco's Mission District, sparking debates over self-driving car safety

It's a child now. All I wanna ask - what should happen, so they stop killing pets and people?

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

#413

Post by GoatInGrey »

okdood64 wrote: post #370
aanet wrote: post #234

This is the classic Suddenly Revealed Pedestrian test case, which afaik, most NCAP (like EuroNCAP, Japan NCAP) have as part of their standard testing protocols. Having performed this exact test on 3 dozen vehicles (L2/L3/L4) for several AV companies in the Bay Area [1], I would say that Waymo's response, per their blog post [2] has been textbook compliance. (I'm not defending their performance... just their response…

> Waymo will still have to accept some responsibility Why? This is only true if they weren't supposed to be on the road in the first place. Which is not true.

Think of it like dog ownership: if my dog hurts someone, that's on me. Property that causes harm is the owner's responsibility.

If I program a machine and it goes out into the world and hurts someone who did not voluntarily release my liability, that's on me.

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

#414

Post by ufmace »

bragr wrote: post #338
ufmace wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More than 50% of roadway fatalities involve drugs or alcohol. If you want to spend your efforts improving safety _anywhere_ it's right here. Self driving cars do not stand a chance of improving outcomes as much as sensible policy does. Europe leads the US here by a wide margin. Could you spell out exactly what "sensible" policy changes you were thinking of? Driving under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol is alr…

>Driving under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol is already illegal in every state. FWIW, your first OWI in Wisconsin, with no aggravating factors, is a civil offense, not a crime, and in most states it is rare to do any time or completely lose your license for the first offense. I'm not sure exactly what OP is getting at, but DUI/OWI limits and enforcement are pretty lax in the US compared to other countries. Ou…

That's true, but note that getting much more severe on enforcement and punishment for DUI/OWI will result in an even higher prison population, more serious life consequences for poor and minorities, etc, when the US is constantly getting trashed for how bad those things are already.

To be a bit snarkier, and not directed at you, but I wish these supposedly superior Europeans would tell us what they actually want us to do. Should we enforce OWI laws more strictly, or lower the prison population? We can't do both!

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

#415

Post by smarnach »

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…

> we should default to the calculation of 2-4x the rate.

No we should not. We should accept that we don't have any statistically meaningful number at all, since we only have a single incident.

Let's assume we roll a standard die once and it shows a six. Statistically, we only expect a six in one sixth of the cases. But we already got one on a single roll! Concluding Waymo vehicles hit 2 to 4 times as many children as human drivers is like concluding the die in the example is six times as likely to show a six as a fair die.

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

#416

Post by aucisson_masque »

> The young pedestrian “suddenly entered the roadway from behind a tall SUV, moving directly into our vehicle’s path,” the company said in its blog post.

The issue is that I don’t trust a private company word. You can’t even trust the president of the USA government nowadays… release the video footage or get lost.

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

#417

Post by aucisson_masque »

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…

Can’t trust a private company.

Where is the video recording ?

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

#418

Post by coryrc »

WheatMillington wrote: post #213
coryrc wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, it's still the automobile's fault. At least it was already slowed down to 17 mph to start. Remember that viral video of some Australian in a pickup ragdolling a girl across the road? Most every comment is "well he was going the speed limit no fault for him!" No asshole, you hit someone. It's your fault. He got zero charges and the girl was seriously injured.

You seem to be implying that there are no circumstances in which a vehicle can hit a pedestrian and the driver not be at fault... which is absurd.

Just about absolute. Fall off bridge onto car, I guess not. Olympic sprinter dashes out from car intentionally trying to be hit? Guess not either. Clothed mostly in black on a rainy night on a freeway? Not either.

But you hit a kid in daytime? It's your fault. Period.

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

#419

Post by thewebguyd »

yibg wrote: post #251
hombre_fatal wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to consider it "lots of friction" in a vehicle where you press a button to go faster and another button to slow down. A single lane residential street with zero visibility seems like an obvious time to slow down. And that's what the Waymo did.

That's why the speed limit is 25 (lower when children are present in some areas) and not 35 or 40 etc. It's not reasonable to expect people to drive at 40% of the posted speed limit the entire way. We're also not talking about zero visibility (e.g. heavy fog). We're talking about blind spots behind parked cars, which in dense areas of a city is a large part of the city. If we think as a society in those situations th…

It absolutely is reasonable to expect people to drive below the limit. Speed limits are just that, maximum upper bounds of how fast you legally can go, not "recommended" speeds or minimum speeds, nor are they necessarily "safe" speeds. It's just a legal upper bounds.

It is a drivers responsibility to drive for the conditions. If conditions are calling for driving 40% slower, then that's what you do and suck it up.

If too many roads have conditions that require that, take that up with your municipality to fix the situation. Or, even better, advocate for better public transit and trains, and designing cities to move people, not move cars.

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

#420

Post by nearbuy »

Veserv wrote: post #306

Absent more precise information, this is a statistical negative mark for Waymo putting their child pedestrian injury rate at ~2-4x higher than the US human average. US human drivers average ~3.3 trillion miles per year [1]. US human drivers cause ~7,000 child pedestrian injurys per year [2]. That amounts to a average of 1 child pedestrian injury per ~470 million miles. Waymo has done ~100-200 million fully autonomous…

I don't think this comparison is meaningful given the sample size of 1 and the differences between the between your datasets. The standard error margins from the small sample size alone are so large that you could not reasonably claim humans are safer (95% CI for Waymo is about 1 per 20 million miles to 1 per 8 billion miles). Then there are the dataset differences:

1. The NHTSA data is based on police-reported crash data, which reports far fewer injuries than the CDC reports based on ED visits. The child in this case appeared mostly unharmed and situations like this would likely not be counted in the NHTSA data.

2. Waymo taxis operate primarily in densely populated urban environments while human driver milage includes highways and rural roads where you're much less likely to collide with pedestrians per mile driven.

Waymo's 90% crash reduction claim is at least an apples-to-apples comparison.

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