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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

#51

Post by calchris42 »

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…

AV’s with enough sensing are generally quite good at stopping quickly. It is usually the behavior prior to the critical encounter that has room for improvement.

The question will be whether 17 mph was a reasonably cautious speed for this specific scenario. Many school zones have 15 mph limits and when there are kids about people may go even slower. At the same time, the general rule in CA for school zone is 25 mph. Clearly the car had some level of caution which is good.

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

#52

Post by WarmWash »

alkonaut wrote: post #11

And before the argument "Self driving is acceptable so long as the accident/risk is lower than with human drivers" can I please get that out of the way: No it's not. Self driving needs to be orders of magnitude safer for us to acknowledge it. If they're merely as safe or slightly safer than humans we will never accept it. Becase humans have a "skin in the game". If you drive drunk, at least you're likely to be in the…

If waymo is to be believed, they hit the kid at 6mph and estimated that a human driver at full attention would have hit the kid at 14 mph. The waymo was traveling 17mph. The situation of "kid running out between cars" will likley never be solved either, because even with sub nanosecond reaction time, the car's mass and tire's traction physically caps how fast a change in velocity can happen.

I don't think we will ever see the video, as any contact is overall viewed negatively by the general public, but for non-hyperbolic types it would probably be pretty impressive.

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

#53

Post by axus »

bpodgursky wrote: post #6

A human driver would most likely have killed this child. That's what should be on the ledger.

Disagree, most human drivers would notice they are near an elementary school with kids coming/going, crossing guard present, and been driving very carefully near blocked sight lines.

Better reporting would have asked real people the name of the elementary school, so we could see some pictures of the area. The link to NHTSA didn't point to the investigation, but it's under https://www.nhtsa.gov/search-safety-issues

"NHTSA is aware that the incident occurred within two blocks of a Santa Monica, CA elementary school during normal school drop off hours; that there were other children, a crossing guard, and several double-parked vehicles in the vicinity; and that the child ran across the street from behind a double parked SUV towards the school and was struck by the Waymo AV. Waymo reported that the child sustained minor injuries."

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

#54

Post by micromacrofoot »

Filligree wrote: post #44
WarmWash wrote: post #32

Oddly I cannot decide if this is cause for damnation or celebration Waymo hits a kid? Ban the tech immediately, obviously it needs more work. Waymo hits a kid? Well if it was a human driver the kid might well have been dead rather than bruised.

> Waymo hits a kid? Ban the tech immediately, obviously it needs more work. > Waymo hits a kid? Well if it was a human driver the kid might well have been dead rather than bruised. These can be true at the same time. Waymo is held to a significantly higher standard than human drivers.

> Waymo is held to a significantly higher standard than human drivers.

They have to be, as a machine can not be held accountable for a decision.

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

#56

Post by jonas21 »

alkonaut wrote: post #11

And before the argument "Self driving is acceptable so long as the accident/risk is lower than with human drivers" can I please get that out of the way: No it's not. Self driving needs to be orders of magnitude safer for us to acknowledge it. If they're merely as safe or slightly safer than humans we will never accept it. Becase humans have a "skin in the game". If you drive drunk, at least you're likely to be in the…

> I'm willing to accept robotaxis, and accidents in robotaxis, but there needs to be some solid figures showing they are way _way_ safer than human drivers.

Do you mean like this?

https://waymo.com/safety/impact/

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

#57

Post by energy123 »

simojo wrote: post #12

I'm curious as to what kind of control stack Waymo uses for their vehicles. Obviously their perception stack has to be based off of trained models, but I'm curious if their controllers have any formal guarantees under certain conditions, and if the child walking out was within that formal set of parameters (e.g. velocity, distance to obstacle) or if it violated that, making their control stack switch to some other "p…

From a purely stats pov, in situations where the confusion matrix is very asymmetric in terms of what we care about (false negatives are extra bad), you generally want multiple uncorrelated mechanisms, and simply require that only one flips before deciding to stop. All would have to fail simultaneously to not brake, which becomes vanishingly unlikely (p^n) with multiple mechanisms assuming uncorrelated errors. This is why I love the concept of Lidar and optical together.

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

#58

Post by entuno »

gortok wrote: post #9
bpodgursky wrote: post #6

A human driver would most likely have killed this child. That's what should be on the ledger.

For me, the policy question I want answered is if this was a human driver we would have a clear person to sue for liability and damages. For a computer, who is ultimately responsible in a situation where suing for compensation happens? Is it the company? An officer in the company? This creates a situation where a company can afford to bury litigants in costs to even sue, whereas a private driver would lean on their i…

Is there actually any difference? I'd have though that the self-driving car would need to be insured to be allowed on the road, so in both cases you're going up against the insurance company rather than the actual owner.

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

#59

Post by alkonaut »

WarmWash wrote: post #52
alkonaut wrote: post #11

And before the argument "Self driving is acceptable so long as the accident/risk is lower than with human drivers" can I please get that out of the way: No it's not. Self driving needs to be orders of magnitude safer for us to acknowledge it. If they're merely as safe or slightly safer than humans we will never accept it. Becase humans have a "skin in the game". If you drive drunk, at least you're likely to be in the…

If waymo is to be believed, they hit the kid at 6mph and estimated that a human driver at full attention would have hit the kid at 14 mph. The waymo was traveling 17mph. The situation of "kid running out between cars" will likley never be solved either, because even with sub nanosecond reaction time, the car's mass and tire's traction physically caps how fast a change in velocity can happen. I don't think we will eve…

Oh I have no problem believing that this particular situation would have been handled better by a human. I just want hard figures saying that (say) this happens 100x more rarely with robotaxis than human drivers.

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

#60

Post by mlyle »

veltas wrote: post #24
chaboud wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly, but Waymos have recently been much more aggressive about blowing through situations where human drivers can (and generally do) slow down. As a motorcyclist, I've had some close calls with Waymos driving on the wrong side of the road recently, and I had a Waymo cut in front of my car at a one-way stop (t intersection) recently when it had been tangled up with a Rivian trying to turn into the narrow street it…

Absolutely, I can tell you right now that many human drivers are probably safer than the Waymo, because they would have slowed down even more and/or stayed further from the parked cars outside a school; they might have even seen the kid earlier in e.g. a reflection than the Waymo could see.

It seems it was driving pretty slow (17MPH) and they do tend to put in a pretty big gap to the right side when they can.

There are kinds of human sensing that are better when humans are maximally attentive (seeing through windows/reflections). But there's also the seeing-in-all-directions, radar, superhuman reaction time, etc, on the side of the Waymo.

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