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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

#541

Post by darepublic »

tombert wrote: post #490
belorn wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same with driving in the winter. Anecdotally I always observe more accidents when the roads are clear.

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

#543

Post by mrcwinn »

>To put this in perspective, our peer-reviewed model shows that a fully attentive human driver in this same situation would have made contact with the pedestrian at approximately 14 mph. This significant reduction in impact speed and severity is a demonstration of the material safety benefit of the Waymo Driver.

Our car hits better is a win, I guess?

Glad the child is okay.

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

#544

Post by JumpCrisscross »

toast0 wrote: post #337
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing is a 12 mph speed limit would be honored by an autonomous vehicle but probably ignored by humans.

If the speed limit was 15 mph, and the Waymo vehicle was traveling at 17 mph before braking, why do you believe the Waymo vehicle would honor a 12 mph speed limit? It didn't honor the 15 mph limit.

> If the speed limit was 15 mph, and the Waymo vehicle was traveling at 17 mph before braking, why do you believe the Waymo vehicle would honor a 12 mph speed limit?

+/- 2 mph is acceptable speedometer and other error. (15 mph doesn’t mean never exceed under any legal inteprerstion I know.)

It’s reasonable to say Waymo would reduce speed in a 12 versus 15 in a way most humans would not.

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

#546

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

emptybits wrote: post #159
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> John Smith hits you -> you seek relief from John's insurance company. John's insurance premium goes up. He can't afford that. Thus, effective financial feedback loop. Real skin in the game. John probably (at least where I live) does not have insurance, maybe I could sue him, but he has no assets to speak of (especially if he is living out of his car), so I'm just going to pay a bunch of legal fees for nothing. He d…

I see. Thank you for sharing. Insurance here is mandatory here for all motorists. If you are hit by an underinsured driver, the government steps in and additional underinsured motorist protection (e.g. hit by an out of province/country motorist) is available to all and not expensive. Jail time for an at-fault driver here is very uncommon but can be applied if serious injury or death results from a driver's conduct. T…

> Insurance here is mandatory here for all motorists.

You do know that insurance being mandatory doesn't stop people from driving without insurance, right?

> If you are hit by an underinsured driver, the government steps in and additional underinsured motorist protection (e.g. hit by an out of province/country motorist) is available to all and not expensive.

Jolly good for you.

If I don't carry underinsured coverage, and someone totals my car or injures me with theirs, I'm basically fucked.

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

#547

Post by jobs_throwaway »

xorbax wrote: post #455
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A human brain automatically thinks of all the scenarios I don't think this is true. There are infinitely many scenarios in a complex situation like a road with traffic, cars parked, pedestrians about, weather, etc. My brain might be able to quickly assess a handful, but certainly not all.

> like a road with traffic, cars parked, pedestrians about, weather Not all of those need to be done "quickly". That's where LLMs fail You note the weather when you leave. You understand the traffic five minutes ahead. You recognize pedestrians far ahead of time. Computers can process a lot in fractions of a second. Humans can recognize context over many minutes. The Waymo may have done better in the fraction of a se…

Computers can take all of those things into account as well

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

#548

Post by jobs_throwaway »

jjav wrote: post #398
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A human brain automatically thinks of all the scenarios I don't think this is true. There are infinitely many scenarios in a complex situation like a road with traffic, cars parked, pedestrians about, weather, etc. My brain might be able to quickly assess a handful, but certainly not all.

There aren't infinitely many scenarios to consider, but even if that's a figure of speech, there aren't thousands or even hundreds. If there's ten kids nearby, that's basically ten path scenarios, and that might be reduced if you have great visibility into some of them. > My brain might be able to quickly assess a handful, but certainly not all. What would you do if you can't assess all of them? Just keep driving sam…

It was a figure of speech, but I think you're undercounting. When you consider interactions between all the things, even with just a handful of variables (and I think there are many more than a handful) you get a huge number of scenarios.

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

#549

Post by naet »

We should all think twice before taking a company PR statement completely at face value and praising them for slowing down faster than their own internal "model" says a human driver would. Companies are heavily interested in protecting their bottom line and in a situation like this probably had 5-10 people carefully craft every single word of the statement for maximum damage control.

Surprised at how many comments here seem eager to praise Waymo based off their PR statement. Sure it sounds great if you read that the Waymo slowed down faster than a human. But would a human truly have hit the child here? Two blocks from a school with tons of kids, crossing guards, double parked cars, etc? The same Waymo that is under investigation for passing school busses illegally? It may have been entirely avoidable for the average human in this situation, but the robotaxi had a blind spot that it couldn't reason around and drove negligently.

Maybe the robotaxi did prevent some harm by braking with superhuman speed. But I am personally unconvinced it was a completely unavoidable freak accident type of situation without seeing more evidence than a blog post by a company with a heavily vested interest in the situation. I have anecdotally seen Waymo in my area drive poorly in various situations, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

There's the classic "humans are bad drivers" but I don't think that is an excuse to not look critically into robotaxi accidents. A human driver who hit a child next to a school would have a personal responsibility and might face real jail time or at the least be put on trial and investigated. Who at Waymo will face similar consequences or risk for the same outcome?

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

#550

Post by gerdesj »

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…

"from behind a tall SUV, "

I look for shadows underneath stationary vehicles. I might also notice pedestrians "vanishing". I have a rather larger "context" than any robot effort.

However, I am just one example of human. My experience of never managing to run someone over is just an anecdote ... so far. The population of humans as a whole manages to run each other over rather regularly.

A pretty cheap instant human sensor might be Bluetooth/BLE noting phones/devices in near range. Pop a sensor in each wing mirror and on the top and bottom. The thing would need some processing power but probably nothing that the built in Android dash screen couldn't handle.

There are lots more sensors that car manufacturers are trying to avoid for cost reasons, that would make a car way better at understanding the context of the world around it.

I gather that Tesla insist on optical (cameras) only and won't do LIDAR. My EV has four cameras and I find it quite hard to see what is going on when it is pissing down with rain, in the same way I do if I don't clean my specs.

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