Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

sfgate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

601–610 of 750 posts

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

#601

Post by Smeevy »

vdaea wrote: post #557
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.

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.

Honestly, that seems so much more reasonable.

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

#602

Post by fsflover »

prmoustache wrote: post #555
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 ex…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39301885

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

#603

Post by ghaff »

School-Cotton wrote: post #598
ghaff wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>saying goodbye to friends at 1 AM in a big city and having to drive one hour to my home in a little town I doubt there are a lot of places where you're replacing that scenario with public transit.

At least in New York you could make this work if your little town is on a metro north line. The last trains do leave after 1 AM I believe.

NYC is not exactly typical although I'm sure there are other one-off examples per the comments, especially if you relax the constraints to 11pm or so. But I'm not sure it's terribly common most places to take a late train to a small town and get home from there without driving from the train station.

I think my last commuter rail is around 10:30pm but I'd have little confidence that I could get a taxi/Uber from the train station; it's not that far but certainly not safely walkable especially late at night.

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

#604

Post by nick_ »

vdaea wrote: post #557
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.

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.

Those pesky cyclists might even argue that traffic laws only exist in the first place because car drivers just would not stop maiming and killing people. Crazy cyclists.

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

#606

Post by zilti »

teekert wrote: post #577
zilti wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You have a perspective I don't recognize.

[flagged]

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

#607

Post by ghaff »

vertis wrote: post #529
lupusreal wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you can drive in 12 minutes surely the walk itself isn't that long. Public transport is never going to be able to compete over a short distance. I used to commute 1.5 hours each way on the train from Wollongong to Sydney. The alternative drive takes the same or longer, depending on traffic. Hundreds and hundreds of people do this trip every day (and the equivalent from Newcastle). Another period of my life was liv…

So I'm a 7 minute drive to the nearest commuter rail station, but that's using an interstate. Google tells me it would be a 2 hour walk which included a section of dark country road without sidewalks and at least one set of interstate ramp crossings. So not practical. (I do drive to the train station and take the train into the city if I have a 9-5 type customer meeting.)

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

#608

Post by fmobus »

edgyquant wrote: post #591
sschueller wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a better solution for that: Public transportation.

It being a better solution is your opinion and not one a large number of people agree with. I for one taking hate public transportation and avoid it at all costs.

It is more efficient though.

But if you say you want to avoid at all costs, and assuming there are more people like you out there, maybe we should just start _charging that cost_.

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

#609

Post by WindyMiller »

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.

> If you're cycling, this kind of intersection is only dangerous if you fail to yield/stop appropriately to auto traffic.

Or if auto traffic fails to yield/stop appropriately to you.

Of course it's almost always the case that dangerously-designed roads only cause accidents when someone does something wrong. A one-track road with blind bends and no speed limit is perfectly safe if people use it safely.

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

#610

Post by ExoticPearTree »

CalRobert wrote: post #565
ExoticPearTree wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I drive and bike. It's more annoying on a bike to come to a complete stop. That's a side effect of your choice, not an excuse to blow through stop signs.

It's also a side effect of very bad urban design. I bike in the Netherlands and don't know if I've _ever_ seen a stop sign here. Traffic signals, sure, but not stop signs.

Cities in Europe are much smaller and more compact than US cities. And while there's no stop sign, you still have to yield to traffic from your right if there's no sign whatsoever. And specifically, dutch cities tend to have winding narrow streets where you can't speed up too much.

Stop signs are put in places where I guess a yield sign proved to be dangerous to traffic?

Post reply on HN