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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

#481

Post by dkarbayev »

belorn wrote: post #469
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.

If you drive in Sweden you will occasionally come up to a form of speed reduction strategy that may seem counterintuitive. They all add to make driving harder and feel more dangerous in order to force attention and lower speed. One is to merge opposite directional roads into a single lane, forcing drivers to cooperate and take turn to pass it, one car at a time. For a combined car and pedestrian road (max speed of 7k…

It's fairly common at least in the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland too. In Switzerland they also place street parking spots on alternating sides on narrow streets, which also makes you more attentive and lower your speed.

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

#482

Post by mmooss »

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…

In your experience, where do we find a credible source of info? Do we need to wait for the government's investigation to finish?

> I would say that Waymo's response, per their blog post [2] has been textbook compliance.

Remember Tesla's blog posts? Of course Waymo knows textbook compliance just like you do, and of course that's what they would claim.

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

#483

Post by fragmede »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #363
Spivak wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People's standards for when they're willing to cede control over their lives both as the passenger and the pedestrian in the situation to a machine are higher than a human. And for not totally irrational reasons like machine follows programming and does not fear death, or with 100% certainty machine has bugs which will eventually end up killing someone for a really stupid reason—and nobody wants that to be them. Then…

>People's standards for when they're willing to cede control over their lives both as the passenger and the pedestrian in the situation to a machine are higher than a human. Are they? It is now clear that Tesla FSD is much worse than a human driver and yet there has been basically no attempt by anyone in government to stop them.

FSD is already better than at least one class of drivers. If FSD is engaged and the driver passes out, FSD will pull over to the side of the road and stop. And before we leap to conclusions that it only helps in the case of drunk drivers who shouldn't be driving in the first place (which, they shouldn't be), random strokes and seizures happen to people all the time.

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

#484

Post by akoboldfrying »

smarnach wrote: post #461
NewJazz wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, the miles driven is like rolling the die, not hitting kids.

Sure, but we shouldn't stretch the analogy too far. Die rolls are discrete events, while miles driven are continuous. We expect the number of sixes we get to follow a binomial distribution, while we expect the number of accidents to follow a Poisson distribution. Either way, trying to guess the mean value of the distribution after a single incident of the event will never give you a statistically meaningful lower bou…

The Poisson distribution is well approximated by the binomial distribution when n is high and p is low, which is exactly the case here. Despite the high variance in the sample mean, we can still make high-confidence statements about what range of incident rates are likely -- basically, dramatically higher rates are extremely unlikely. (Not sure, but I think it will turn out that confidence in statements about the true incident rate being lower than observed will be much lower.)

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

#485

Post by superfrank »

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…

> 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 there?

Waymos do this and have for years. They know where the people are around them and will take precautionary action based on that.

Here's a video from 2019 of one understanding that a car in the bike lane means the cyclists may dart out into the lane it's in and taking action based on that. https://waymo.com/blog/2019/05/safety-at-waymo-self-driving-...

That video is nearly 7 years old at this point and they've gotten much, much better since then.

If you think a fully-attentive human driver would have done better, I think you're kidding yourself.

I know you didn't make this point, but if anyone think the average LA driver would have done better than this I've got a bridge to sell you and that's really what matters more. (I say that as someone who used to live like half a mile from where this happened)

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

#486

Post by mmooss »

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

We are responsible for the consequences of our actions. The speed limit is almost irrelevant; drive slowly enough so you don't hit anyone - especially in a school zone.

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

#487

Post by aembleton »

recursive wrote: post #240
2b3o4o wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article the car was traveling at 17 miles an hour before it began braking. Presumably this was in a 25 mph school zone, so it seems the Waymo was already doing exactly what you describe - slowing down preemptively.

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…

You learn how to put those signs into context during your driving lessons, and fail your test if you don't apply that correctly.

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

#488

Post by elzbardico »

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."…

Humans are supposed to deal with this kind of ambiguity. Actually, that's one of our nicest abilities.

I hate when people pretend to be smarter than everyone else by pointing this kind of utterance and insisting that someone, somehow, will parse those statements in the most literal and stupid manner.

Then there are the ignorant misanthropes that can't waste a chance to repeat their reductionist speculations about human cognition. Just like the idiot Elon Musk that wasted billions in irrecoverably fucked self-driving system based on computer-version because he underestimated the human visual cortex.

Fucking annoying midwits.

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

#489

Post by fragmede »

NewJazz wrote: post #448
GoatInGrey wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real but contentious answer is to change our street and urban design. You can only do so much to make a giant metal machine safe for children and small animals to be struck by. Reducing the frequency of cars and pedestrians occupying the same space will go further than trying to engineer the equivalent of a pool that is impossible to drown in.

Do you think that a company that operates autonomous vehicles will support legislation that makes it easier and safer to move around on foot without getting hit by a car? Or will they lobby for car-centric urban design, like many many companies before them?

Absolutely. Because the next step is to ban human driven cars from those areas, and in that case, who makes boat loads of money?

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

#490

Post by tombert »

belorn wrote: post #469
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.

If you drive in Sweden you will occasionally come up to a form of speed reduction strategy that may seem counterintuitive. They all add to make driving harder and feel more dangerous in order to force attention and lower speed. One is to merge opposite directional roads into a single lane, forcing drivers to cooperate and take turn to pass it, one car at a time. For a combined car and pedestrian road (max speed of 7k…

I've heard that that is why roundabouts are safer than their alternatives: counterintuitively, they're safer because they're less safe, forcing the user to pay more attention as a result.
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