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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

#541

Post by infecto »

ChatGTP wrote: post #530
cm2187 wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a cyclist and a driver I feel the one driving the killing machine is always at fault. Of course if the cyclist ran into the car that’s different but drivers need to be ultra careful. Period.

As a cyclist and driver, I feel fault is not to be assigned to the car by default. If you are driving a car you certainly need to be aware but if you are walking or riding a bicycle you need to be equally aware of your surroundings. People are stupid regardless of what they are driving.

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

#542

Post by matthewfelgate »

eloisius wrote: post #533
pmontra wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no public transportation that can bring me home after saying goodbye to friends at 1 AM in a big city and having to drive one hour to my home in a little town. There is no such public transportation even during the day unless I want to spend 2 to 3 hours on a mix of metro, train and bus. And I don't have many choices about the time to leave. You could say that it's flawed to live in the countryside and/or ha…

There isn’t in the US, dominated by urban design built for cars, but in many societies it’s entirely possible to have drinks until late and then safely get home via transit.

In some areas of some countries.

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

#543

Post by phicoh »

ChatGTP wrote: post #530
cm2187 wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a cyclist and a driver I feel the one driving the killing machine is always at fault. Of course if the cyclist ran into the car that’s different but drivers need to be ultra careful. Period.

This attitude doesn't help when typically in a collision, the cyclist needs medical treatment.

Traffic is a complex real-time action game where there are serious consequences if people make mistakes. So the best approach is to be predictable within the traffic rules.

So for a cyclist, don't get in the path of a 'killing machine' when the car has priority and when the cyclist has priority look for clues that the car is actually going to stop.

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

#544

Post by infecto »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #185

I'm disappointed in all the folks immediately blaming the cyclist without further information, and I'm similarly disappointed in all the folks blaming Waymo for the same reason. But, unless they somehow have extra information we're not privy to, I'm much more disappointed in the S.F. Supervisor quoted in the article, Shamann Walton, for immediately going online to say "so much for safety." Us internet weenies are alw…

I was struck by that supervisor comment too. I don’t live there anymore but when I did that was always the looming issue.

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

#545

Post by alemanek »

aubanel wrote: post #475
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.

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 are other benefits of self driving cars.

For example average utilization of a self driving car would be at least an order of magnitude greater than non-self driving one. Think about how much time a car spends parked and waiting to be used.

With greater utilization we should have a lower absolute number of vehicles that are replaced more frequently. This would lead to less polluting and better maintained vehicles since they would all be fleet owned/operated in this scenario.

How cool would it be to have the public transit of the future be a point to point, any point, transit system using an army of electric minivans (minibus in urban areas).

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

#546

Post by infecto »

maxwellg wrote: post #219
babelfish wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone can't follow traffic laws, they shouldn't be on the road (regardless of mode of transportation)

Insisting that a bicycle needs to follow the same procedures as a 3000lb internal combustion engine driven vehicle is madness. The vast majority of car laws are completely inappropriate for bicycles. Bicycles are much smaller, go much slower, can stop much faster, etc.

I get what you’re saying but as a cyclist totally disagree. The problem I see at least while I was in SF, cyclists generally believed since they were riding a bike, they had the right of way in all scenarios. I still have vivid memories of almost smoking a cyclist while on my motorcycle only for them to be mad at me when I tried to explain to them that zipping in between lines of cars will get them run over. If you are to mingle bicycle son the same roads as cars, they need to follow the same rules.

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

#547

Post by snthd »

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.

We've somehow skipped the itteration where we switch out humans for machines on the job of limiting maximum speed.

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

#548

Post by ExoticPearTree »

ragazzina wrote: post #496
ExoticPearTree wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sounds like a bad idea. I doubt people will respond with proper context, especially given that it will still be lacking in information. Waymo has 360 degrees cameras. There's absolutely no lack of context if the video starts 2-3 minutes before the incident and stops when everything was sorted out at the scene. Bonus points if it has audio also.

The video would be cut to only show the most dramatic moment a minute after released, and it would be the shorter version to become popular.

For tabloids, yes, but the same happens with any other video of an accident. So it is not a reason not to be released.

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

#549

Post by jasomill »

Aloisius wrote: post #351
rahimnathwani wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cars can be parked right up to the ped crossings, potentially obscuring what is happening. Looks like a death trap to me. California recently made it illegal to park within 20 feet of a crosswalk: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/news-and-media/dmv-highlights-... SF hasn't started enforcing the law yet, and I suspect that 99% of drivers don't know about the law.

They haven't started enforcing it because you can only issue warnings if people park close to the crosswalk until next year - specifically because most drivers don't know about the law. And the law actually states that local authorities can come up with their own distance rules instead.

Outside areas with dedicated parking enforcement patrols, do police actually issue tickets for parking within distance of thing?

I ask because, here in Indianapolis, on my heavily-trafficked mixed residential/commercial street, drivers routinely ignore both painted curbs and painted parallel parking space markers for days at a time and seem to be rarely, if ever, ticketed for doing so.

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

#550

Post by itsoktocry »

alemanek wrote: post #545
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 are other benefits of self driving cars. For example average utilization of a self driving car would be at least an order of magnitude greater than non-self driving one. Think about how much time a car spends parked and waiting to be used. With greater utilization we should have a lower absolute number of vehicles that are replaced more frequently. This would lead to less polluting and better maintained vehicle…

>For example average utilization of a self driving car would be at least an order of magnitude greater than non-self driving one.

Why would this be the case? At least one order of magnitude?

>This would lead to less polluting and better maintained vehicles since they would all be fleet owned/operated in this scenario.

Ah yes, those meticulously maintained taxi and rental car fleets.

>How cool would it be to have the public transit of the future be a point to point,

What is preventing this today? Not the lack of autonomous vehicles. Ah yes, those meticulously maintained taxi and rental car fleets.

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