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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

#551

Post by lambdasquirrel »

billjings wrote: post #483
ruuda wrote: post #394

Everybody here is discussing the car and the cyclist, but I don't see anybody considering the possibility that the intersection design is unsafe. That there is a stop sign is a pretty bad signal in itself, Not Just Bikes made a video explaining this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42oQN7fy_eM

It's a low traffic 4 way stop sign intersection. Low speed, probably a 25mph speed limit? If you're cycling, this kind of intersection is only dangerous if you fail to yield/stop appropriately to auto traffic. Which seems like might be what happened here, from the description.

Maybe. Article says bicyclist was obscured by a truck.

17th street in Potrero is relatively quiet but that particular area often has cars coming off the freeway. It can be a maze to get through on bike. I wouldn't rush to make a judgment until we had a dashcam video.

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

#552

Post by itsoktocry »

pmontra wrote: post #528
sschueller wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a better solution for that: Public transportation.

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 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's a class of "ban cars" city people who cannot fathom this.

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

#553

Post by prmoustache »

lupusreal wrote: post #519
sschueller wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a better solution for that: Public transportation.

I can drive to work in twelve minutes. If I humor the premise of a bus that stops in front of my home and also my workplace, which is unlikely to ever exist no matter how much money is thrown at public transit, it would still take several times longer than driving myself because there are numerous other homes and businesses between which the bus would stop at. Using a bus would mean I have to wake up earlier, and the…

Considering that each time you are driving your it costs money to you and the society and reduce your health and life expectancy unless you exercise separately, that cycling and walking improve your life expectancy while saving money to both you and the society, and that a 12 minutes drive can't be much more than a 40 minutes bicycle ride, my bet is that riding to work would be a better option for both you and the society as it would save everyone money[1] and time while improving everyone general health and life expectancy.

[1] combining exercising + commuting will make you gain time over commuting faster + exercising separately in that kind of distances.

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

#554

Post by Symbiote »

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #551
billjings wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a low traffic 4 way stop sign intersection. Low speed, probably a 25mph speed limit? If you're cycling, this kind of intersection is only dangerous if you fail to yield/stop appropriately to auto traffic. Which seems like might be what happened here, from the description.

Maybe. Article says bicyclist was obscured by a truck. 17th street in Potrero is relatively quiet but that particular area often has cars coming off the freeway. It can be a maze to get through on bike. I wouldn't rush to make a judgment until we had a dashcam video.

That might well also mean the car was obscured to the cyclist.

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

#555

Post by prmoustache »

topkai22 wrote: post #5

I looked up the cited street in street view- there are stop signs in all 4 directions. I look forward to the full accident report, but from the evidence available it sounds like the cyclist didn’t stop at the sign appropriately.

EU guy here.

Usually in european countries when there are stop signs, they only apply to smaller streets/roads that connect to larger prioritary roads/streets. If we want equal level of priority for all directions we either use, traffic lights, roundabouts were usually the one already engaged in the roundabout has priority over people connecting to it or use priority from your right (default priority in France for example unless specified).

Who gets priority in a 4 directions stop sign?

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

#556

Post by [deleted] »

npteljes wrote: post #535
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.

Self-driving cars are not an attempt to make driving safer, they are attempts to create commercially viable self-driving vehicles.

[deleted]

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

#557

Post by vdaea »

billjings wrote: post #483
ruuda wrote: post #394

Everybody here is discussing the car and the cyclist, but I don't see anybody considering the possibility that the intersection design is unsafe. That there is a stop sign is a pretty bad signal in itself, Not Just Bikes made a video explaining this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42oQN7fy_eM

It's a low traffic 4 way stop sign intersection. Low speed, probably a 25mph speed limit? If you're cycling, this kind of intersection is only dangerous if you fail to yield/stop appropriately to auto traffic. Which seems like might be what happened here, from the description.

Some will come and tell you that cyclists have an innate right to ignore all traffic laws and that if you were in Europe the car will always be at fault.

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

#558

Post by henriquez »

nicbou wrote: post #506
henriquez wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then by that logic the software engineers should be prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter when their beta test kills someone.

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

#559

Post by asoneth »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #463
maxwellg wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then ride in dedicated bike lanes, but don't make up excuses why you should break the laws just because they are inconvenient to you.

> don't make up excuses why you should break the laws just because they are inconvenient to you

I tend to agree, and obey the speed limit and come to a stop at stop signs when driving. I get passed by other drivers, sometimes dangerously, often illegally, several times a week.

I would have sympathy for driver complaints about cyclists who ignore inconvenient traffic laws if drivers were any more law-abiding.

If you want to drive faster, fine, change the speed limit. But don't just ignore laws you find inconvenient!

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

#560

Post by zilti »

teekert wrote: post #418
zilti wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that is absolute bullshit. So so often, it is obviously the reckless cyclist's fault.

That's a US perspective you have a car-first culture. If you have a bike first infrastructure you wouldn't talk like that. Here Bikes and cars are often even on different roads, where they need to cross, it's made very clear how that will work (traffic lights, clear lanes).

No, that is the perspective of a sane person. God damn it. I am European, and I - without a driver's license, so just a cyclist and pedestrian btw - have to deal with the behaviour of the entitled cycling shits every day, especially since I moved to Berlin. Occasionally also with pedestrians that just suddenly step onto the street without even looking. Surprisingly, the car drivers - even though they are assholes in Berlin, too - have been by far the most sane traffic participants to me so far.

I have seen quite a few situations with cyclists behaving so ridiculously recklessly that the only reason I can see is that they must have a death wish. But yeah, sure, blame the car for running into a cyclist who runs a red light over an intersection at full speed, suddenly appearing between two lanes of standing cars. Or for running into a cyclist driving on the left side of the road into an intersection without looking. Or blame me for running into a pedestrian who suddenly steps in front of me. Ah no, wait - you're a hardcore cycling apologete, I am sure the pedestrian would be at fault in this particular case, right?

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