From the Waymo blog... > The Waymo Driver braked hard... By Waymo Driver, they don't mean a human, do they?
No, this is the term they use to refer to their package of sensors, compute, and software.
Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica
591–600 of 813 posts
Re: Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica
#592Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is generally the problem with self-driving cars, at least in my experience (Tesla FSD). They don't look far enough ahead to anticipate what might happen and already put themselves in a position to prepare for that possibility. I'm not sure they benefit from accumulated knowledge? (Maybe Waymo does, that's an interesting question.) I.e., I know that my son's elementary school is around the corner so as I turn I'm…
Tesla FSD is leagues behind Waymo; generalizing based on your Tesla experience doesn't make sense.
So... the thing is it's really not. They're behind on schedule, having just launched in public. But FSD has been showing capabilities in regular use (highway navigation, unprotected left turns in traffic, non-geofenced operation areas based solely on road markings) that Waymo hasn't even tried to deploy yet.
It's much more of a competition than I suspect a lot of people realize.
Re: Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica
#593Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Waymo is intentionally leaving out the following details: - Their "peer-reviewed model" compares Waymo vehicles against only "Level 0" vehicles. However even my decade-old vehicle is considered "Level 1" because it has an automated emergency braking system. No doubt my Subaru's camera-based EBS performs worse than Waymo's, still it's not being included in their "peer-reviewed model." That comparison is intentionally…
Emergency braking in non-camera/non-LIDAR cars requires a significant radar signal which you're only going to get from another vehicle (and even then it's noisy and tends to produce frustrating false positives, leading to later-than-you-want stops). It very likely won't detect a child or a dog, I'm not aware of a single instance of an EBS claiming to have done so in practice (and kids and dogs get hit every day!).
Re: Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica
#594Earlier 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…
It's a runaway process of prioritizing safety over convenience -- and it's wrecking their road base just before self-driving cars would allow them to have both.
> prioritizing safety over convenience
this sounds like exactly the right tradeoff, especially since these decisions actually increase convenience for those not in cars
Re: Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica
#595Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse. We'd have to see video of the full scene to have a better judgement, but I wouldn't call it likely. The car reacted quickly once it saw the child. Is that enough? But most humans would have been aware of the big picture scenario much earlier. Are there muliple kids milling around on the sidewalk? Near a school? Is there a big truck/SUV parked th…
Two things: I've read studies saying that most drivers don't brake at max effort, even to avoid a collision. This may be at least one of the reasons that Waymo predicted that an attentive human would likely have been going faster than their car at the moment of impact. I've got a good idea of my fun-car's braking performance, because I drive it hard sometimes, but after reading that I started practicing a bit with my…
The reason attentive humans don't equal the Waymo here is reaction time. When a thing happens the human takes a moment to process what it means, and choose a reaction. It's not, by our standards, a long time but it's way longer than it takes the Waymo.
Going early means you slow early, which means you also take longer to reach the child, but you're braking for all of that extra time, so you're slowing down even more.
Re: Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica
#596Earlier 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…
It's a runaway process of prioritizing safety over convenience -- and it's wrecking their road base just before self-driving cars would allow them to have both.
Gosh, no, the self-driving cars will be forced to drive at safe speeds in pedestrian corridors as opposed to voluntarily driving at safe speeds in pedestrian corridors. How awful.
Re: Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica
#597Earlier 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…
There are always going to be outlier events. If for every one person who still manages to get hit—at slow, easily-survivable speeds—you prevent five others from being killed, it’s a pretty obvious choice.
Re: Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica
#598Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse. We'd have to see video of the full scene to have a better judgement, but I wouldn't call it likely. The car reacted quickly once it saw the child. Is that enough? But most humans would have been aware of the big picture scenario much earlier. Are there muliple kids milling around on the sidewalk? Near a school? Is there a big truck/SUV parked th…
The car was driving 17mph before braking. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a human drive at 17mph in a school zone or other area children congregate.
Re: Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica
#599Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Driving under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol is already illegal in every state. FWIW, your first OWI in Wisconsin, with no aggravating factors, is a civil offense, not a crime, and in most states it is rare to do any time or completely lose your license for the first offense. I'm not sure exactly what OP is getting at, but DUI/OWI limits and enforcement are pretty lax in the US compared to other countries. Ou…
That's true, but note that getting much more severe on enforcement and punishment for DUI/OWI will result in an even higher prison population, more serious life consequences for poor and minorities, etc, when the US is constantly getting trashed for how bad those things are already. To be a bit snarkier, and not directed at you, but I wish these supposedly superior Europeans would tell us what they actually want us t…
I suspect you could step up enforcement in ways that don’t involve prison time simply by taking away people’s licenses, and then having a fast feedback loop to catch people driving without a license.
Re: Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica
#600Earlier 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…
It's a runaway process of prioritizing safety over convenience -- and it's wrecking their road base just before self-driving cars would allow them to have both.
What an American framing. My convenience at the cost of your eventual safety. I guess this is why we also have toddler death machines with 5-foot grills that we call “full size” vehicles.