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Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

sfgate.com

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Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#501

Post by ChatGTP »

cm2187 wrote: post #465
sandos wrote: post #457

Uhh.... thinking ahead of risks, and especially hidden cyclists and pedestrians is something that is taught in basic drivers ed here in Sweden. How can this not be the fault of the car? It should have realized that, yes, I am completely blind regarding whoever comes out from behind the truck, I should slow down. I guess there are some qualifications here. If there was a severely low probability of a cyclist there, an…

If I understood what happened, not in this case. When you drive through an intersection, you assume that the traffic coming in the opposite direction who wants to turn will give you priority, as I believe is the rule in every jurisdiction. It seems to me here that the cyclist made a turn without looking if cars were coming in the opposite direction.

The cyclist would’ve assumed whoever was going to make a turn would’ve waited to check nothing was behind the truck. Maybe I’m weird but it’s the default way I drive. I hate cutting corners, or making blind turns.

The car is in the wrong as it should’ve made sure the road was completely clear before executing the turn. I mean it must’ve been a pretty aggressive move to turn that soon after a truck went past…

That or the AIs are ready to start killing people

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#502

Post by bheadmaster »

sschueller wrote: post #479
aubanel wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the end goal of self driving cars is simply to let people do something else than drive. Safety is only a condition for this to happen.

There is a better solution for that: Public transportation.

[dead]

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#503

Post by cm2187 »

ChatGTP wrote: post #501
cm2187 wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understood what happened, not in this case. When you drive through an intersection, you assume that the traffic coming in the opposite direction who wants to turn will give you priority, as I believe is the rule in every jurisdiction. It seems to me here that the cyclist made a turn without looking if cars were coming in the opposite direction.

The cyclist would’ve assumed whoever was going to make a turn would’ve waited to check nothing was behind the truck. Maybe I’m weird but it’s the default way I drive. I hate cutting corners, or making blind turns. The car is in the wrong as it should’ve made sure the road was completely clear before executing the turn. I mean it must’ve been a pretty aggressive move to turn that soon after a truck went past… That or…

It’s unclear to me from the article who was turning, the cyclist or the car. I agree that whoever was turning is at fault.

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#504

Post by quonn »

sschueller wrote: post #479
aubanel wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the end goal of self driving cars is simply to let people do something else than drive. Safety is only a condition for this to happen.

There is a better solution for that: Public transportation.

And by better you mean that you prefer it. Because obviously most do not prefer it, otherwise they would use it.

Various countries in Europe have a dense network of public transport that you can use - often unlimited all around the country - for less than 50 Euros per month. Given the choice, most would take cars, especially outside of dense cities.

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#505

Post by Denvercoder9 »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #478
smsm42 wrote: post #326

The fundamental problem of self-driving cars in cities is that they are expected to be 100% safe. They could be 10 times as safe as regular cars, but it wouldn't save them from headlines of "robot car kills an innocent person". And given how chaotic and unpredictable situation on the roads in a densely populated city without designated spaces for cyclists can be, 100% safety is impossible. Even if AI itself if perfec…

> The fundamental problem of self-driving cars in cities is that they are expected to be 100% safe. They could be 10 times as safe as regular cars, but it wouldn't save them from headlines of "robot car kills an innocent person". Well, yes, because all the proponents of self-driving cars tout the fact that computer driven cars are way safer than human drivers. And they're not. Those 10 times safer than humans have no…

> Those 10 times safer than humans have no actual meaning in practice

I'd say that accidents or injuries per mile driven has quite a lot actual meaning. I don't know if they are at 10x compared to human drivers on those stats yet, but when they are, I'd say it's a reasonable take to say that they're 10x safer.

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#506

Post by nicbou »

henriquez wrote: post #94
nicbou wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but fine-tuning is cumulative. Test situations can be created and tested against forever. Lessons can be learned and applied across the whole fleet. This is radically different from sharing the roads with a bunch of Sunday drivers, some of which might be distracted or impaired.

Yes, it totally makes sense for bike commuters to be run over and sent to the hospital by robotic driverless vehicles while billionaire entrepreneurs refine the AI models powering them — it’s a beta test after all, you can’t actually expect it to work on public streets. And I bet those cyclists weren’t even paying their road tax. The needs of the 95th percentile that the model was tuned for outweigh the needs of ever…

We get run over with or without driverless cars, but driverless cars do it an awful lot less and will keep getting better at it.

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#507

Post by tpoacher »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #484
sschueller wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self driving cars are a misguided attempt to make driving safer when the underlying issue isn't necessarily the driver.

They are not misguided. They are not there yet, but progressing steadily. There is nothing misguided in switching out a human for a machine that can do a job better, while keeping the job unchanged. Iterative improvement is the only thing anything ever gets done, and yes, that means we might first need to get drivers out of the streets before we're able to make more substantial redesign of the transportation fabric.

"[...] that can to the job better" is the key phrase here though.

It's probably a bit misguided in the sense that, if the end-result further down the line is the "more machines than humans driving in the streets" (let alone zero humans), then it might have made more sense to iteratively change the infrastructure instead, rather than have machines try to work under infrastructure that is designed to be good for humans but bad for machines, and then try to "iteratively improve" under conditions that carry significant risk of injury.

Brings Ford's quote on "faster horses" to mind. Imagine if we still required roads to be horse friendly, and expected our cars to go through mud and jump fences.

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#508

Post by inglor_cz »

sschueller wrote: post #479
aubanel wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the end goal of self driving cars is simply to let people do something else than drive. Safety is only a condition for this to happen.

There is a better solution for that: Public transportation.

Even public transportation would benefit greatly from reliable self-driving.

Shortage of bus/tram/train drivers is a major bottleneck all across Europe, especially in places where they just can't offer competing wages and lose their drivers to the richest cities of the EU. Rural Bulgaria will never be able to pay their drivers as much as Vienna or Munich can. Not even third of that, the economic gap is just too big.

Many of the current drivers are in their 50s and 60s and with the bad demography of the continent, situation is likely to worsen in the near future.

With self-driving buses, you would be able to add more connections, as shortage of drivers would cease to become a factor, plus the cost of running the service per km/mile would be reduced with the salaries going away from the budget.

Today, even a flu epidemics will mess up the reliability of the system. If one in five drivers calls in sick, canceled services will skyrocket. Nothing like waiting on a desolate windy stop in subzero conditions for half an hour only to find out that the bus just didn't arrive, period. Been there, done that. (A perfect way to fall sick too, by the way.)

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#509

Post by viraptor »

cgriswald wrote: post #489
viraptor wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my pet peeve with people being so sure online about their abilities of avoiding things on the road. Yeah, maybe you could avoid it with your super human reflexes, but there physically no way you could check that side of your car, register what's there, decide whether you can move that way and then did it. The kneejerk avoidance reaction may be extremely dangerous on its own. (Also in Oz, rolling your car when…

Do people really not mentally track the vehicles around them? I remember in driver’s ed even before we were behind the wheel to have “exit strategies” for situations exactly like this. Cars don’t just appear magically next to you.

> Cars don’t just appear magically next to you.

They don't, but: 1. Your perception is not perfect. 2. A truck passing you means there was a blind spot and you have no idea what was there. 3. There are areas with many lanes merging / splitting, where it takes most of your attention to know where you're going; little left to track everything around.

Tracking your surrounding is great. Accepting that you're going to make mistakes, adjusting for that and also allowing assistive tech is even better.

Re: Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say

#510

Post by scaryclam »

cm2187 wrote: post #465
sandos wrote: post #457

Uhh.... thinking ahead of risks, and especially hidden cyclists and pedestrians is something that is taught in basic drivers ed here in Sweden. How can this not be the fault of the car? It should have realized that, yes, I am completely blind regarding whoever comes out from behind the truck, I should slow down. I guess there are some qualifications here. If there was a severely low probability of a cyclist there, an…

If I understood what happened, not in this case. When you drive through an intersection, you assume that the traffic coming in the opposite direction who wants to turn will give you priority, as I believe is the rule in every jurisdiction. It seems to me here that the cyclist made a turn without looking if cars were coming in the opposite direction.

I tend to assume they're going to be an idiot and turn. I'm not going to yield my right of way, but I'm going to prepare to stop. Just because something is a rule, doesn't mean people are thinking properly.

In the UK we have to take a specific test for hazard perception to see if we're capable of thinking about this kind of situation, before we can take the practical test for a licence.

The cyclist was in the wrong for turning, and legally there is nothing against the car. But the car was also in the wrong for not assessing the situation and preparing to stop, in case the cyclist was daft, which they were.

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