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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

#561

Post by ssteeper »

aanet wrote: post #234

This is the classic Suddenly Revealed Pedestrian test case, which afaik, most NCAP (like EuroNCAP, Japan NCAP) have as part of their standard testing protocols. Having performed this exact test on 3 dozen vehicles (L2/L3/L4) for several AV companies in the Bay Area [1], I would say that Waymo's response, per their blog post [2] has been textbook compliance. (I'm not defending their performance... just their response…

In your opinion as an AV safety expert, has Waymo already demonstrated a far higher standard of driving than human drivers in collision avoidance scenarios?

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

#562

Post by confidantlake »

IAmBroom wrote: post #348

The statistically relevant question is: How many human drivers have hit children near elementary schools, since Waymo's last accident? If Waymo has fewer accidents where a pedestrian is hit than humans do, Waymo is safer. Period. A lot of people are conjecturing how safe a human is in certain complicated scenarios (pedestrian emerging from behind a bus, driver holds cup of coffee, the sun is in their eyes, blah blah…

So confident yet so wrong.

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

#563

Post by Bud »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #8
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…

Yup. And to add > Waymo said in its blog post that its “peer-reviewed model” shows a “fully attentive human driver in this same situation would have made contact with the pedestrian at approximately 14 mph.” It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse. With a distracted driver (a huge portion of human drivers) it could've been catastrophic.

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

#564

Post by Bud »

elzbardico wrote: post #480
loeg wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your opinion of "most humans" is vastly overinflated. The median human driver would be going 5 over the speed limit, on their cell phone, and paying fuck all attention. Humans never drive as slow as 17 mph, even in the context of being directly in front of schools with visible children.

You're describing the median driver in America or India. This is not universal.

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

#565

Post by throwaway7783 »

Habgdnv wrote: post #513
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…

In Bulgaria we have a similar speed reduction strategy but we are a bit ahead of Sweden: We use medium-radius but very deep potholes. If you lose attention for even a split second, you are forced to a full stop to change a tire. Near schools it gets more "advanced": they put parked cars on both sides of the road, and the holes positioned so you can't bypass them. For example, two tire-sized holes on both sides of the…

Same in India! We go one better, we let people drive in the opposite lane as well!

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

#566

Post by parl_match »

direwolf20 wrote: post #520
parl_match wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how about 10-15 mph if directly adjacent to a school, especially during the bands before and after school stars or ends. route away from schools whenever feasible.

That's how fast it was going.

A vehicle can't go 10 to 15 miles per hour at the same time. If it was going 15, then it should have been going 10. Or driving further away from occluded spaces. And again, routing away from schools.

The simple fact is that it hit a child and even though it wasn't a serious issue due to their safety policies, there's still room for improvement in these technologies.

And since it's a robot, and not a human, you can actually make changes and have them stick. For example, routing away from schools during certain hours.

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

#567

Post by lmm »

mattlondon wrote: post #540
lmm wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does it actually work though? Yes. They have made steady progress over the previous decades to the point where they can now have years with zero road fatalities. > And putting obstacles in the road so you cant see if someone is there? That sounds really dangerous and exactly the sort of thing that caused the accident in the story here. Counterintuitive perhaps, but it's what works. Humans adjust their behaviour to…

I think the humans in London at least do not adjust their behaviour for the perceived risk! From experience they will adjust their behaviour to reduce their total travel time as much as possible (i.e. speed to "make up" for lost time waiting etc) and/or "win" against other drivers. I guess it is a cultural thing. But I cannot agree that making it harder to see people in the road is going to make anything safer. Even…

> I think the humans in London at least do not adjust their behaviour for the perceived risk!

The evidence is that they do though. E.g. the Exhibition Road remodelling (removing curbs/signs/etc.) has been a great success and effectively reduced vehicle speeds, e.g. https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/sites/default/files/media/documents/...

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

#568

Post by recursive »

elzbardico wrote: post #488
Nition wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of clickbait headlines have the same problem. "You're using too much washing powder!" Everyone's replying to you as if you truly don't understand the sign's intention but I'm sure you do. It's just annoying to be doing everything right and the signs and headlines are still telling you you're wrong. There was a driving safety safety ad campaign here: "Drive to the conditions. If they change, reduce your speed."…

Humans are supposed to deal with this kind of ambiguity. Actually, that's one of our nicest abilities. I hate when people pretend to be smarter than everyone else by pointing this kind of utterance and insisting that someone, somehow, will parse those statements in the most literal and stupid manner. Then there are the ignorant misanthropes that can't waste a chance to repeat their reductionist speculations about hum…

Sorry I made you mad. I wasn't trying to seem smarter than everyone. Maybe dumber.

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

#569

Post by luses »

Zopieux wrote: post #274

Cheers to cities pedestrianizing school streets even in busy capitals (e.g. Paris). Cars have no place near school entrances. Fix your urbanism and public transportation. Yes, kids in developed countries have the autonomy to go to school by themselves from a very young age, provided the correct mindset and a safe environment. That's a combination of: * high-trust society: commuting alone or in a small group is the no…

you're exactly right. the fixation on human vs AV error rates completely misses the point. even if we achieve 'perfect' AVs, mixing heavy machinery with children guarantees conflict. physics dictate cars can't stop instantly. the only solution is removing cars, not better drivers.

most commenters here are ignoring the structural incentives. the long term threat of waymo isn't safety, its the enclosure of public infrastructure. these companies are building a permission structure to lobby personal vehicles and public transit off the road.

transportation demand is inelastic. if we allow a transition where mobility is captured by private platforms, the consumer loses all leverage. the endgame is the american healthcare model: capture the market, kill alternatives, and extract max rent because the user has no choice. we need dense urban cores and mass transit, not a dependency on rent seeking oligopolies

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

#570

Post by aanet »

ssteeper wrote: post #561
aanet wrote: post #234

This is the classic Suddenly Revealed Pedestrian test case, which afaik, most NCAP (like EuroNCAP, Japan NCAP) have as part of their standard testing protocols. Having performed this exact test on 3 dozen vehicles (L2/L3/L4) for several AV companies in the Bay Area [1], I would say that Waymo's response, per their blog post [2] has been textbook compliance. (I'm not defending their performance... just their response…

In your opinion as an AV safety expert, has Waymo already demonstrated a far higher standard of driving than human drivers in collision avoidance scenarios?

> In your opinion as an AV safety expert, has Waymo already demonstrated a far higher standard of driving than human drivers in collision avoidance scenarios?

That's a difficult question to answer, and the devil really is in the details, as you may have guessed. What I can say that Waymo is, by far, the most prolific publisher of research on AV safety on public roads. (yes, those are my qualifiers...)

Here's their main stash [1] but notably, three papers talk about comparison of Waymo's rider-only (i.e. no safety driver) performance vis-a-vis human driver, at 7.1 million miles [2], 25 million miles [3], 56 million miles [4]. Waymo has also been a big contributor to various AV safety standards as one would expect (FWIW, I was also a contributor to 3 of the standards... the process is sausage-making at its finest, tbh).

I haven't read thru all their papers, but some notable ones talk about the difficulty of comparing AV vs human drivers [5], and various research on characterising uncertainty / risk of collision, comparing AVs to non-impaired, eyes-on human driver [6]

As one may expect, at least one of the challenges is that human-driven collisions are almost always very _lagging indicators_ of safety (i.e. collision happened: lost property, lost limbs, lost lives, etc.)

So, net-net, Waymo still has a VERY LONG WAY to go (obviously) to demonstrate better than human driving behavior, but they are showing that their AVs are better-than-humans on certain high-risk (potential) collisions.

As somebody remarked, the last 1% takes 90% of time/effort. That's where we are...

---

[1] https://waymo.com/safety/research

[2] https://waymo.com/research/comparison-of-waymo-rider-only-cr...

[3] https://waymo.com/research/do-autonomous-vehicles-outperform...

[4] https://waymo.com/research/comparison-of-waymo-rider-only-cr...

[5] https://waymo.com/research/comparative-safety-performance-of...

[6] https://waymo.com/blog/2022/09/benchmarking-av-safety/

[edit: reference]

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