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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

#601

Post by stouset »

trhway wrote: post #349
oakesm9 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who lives on a residential street right by a primary school in the UK, the majority of drivers are going over 20mph even at the peak time when there are children everywhere. While in theory human drivers should be situationally aware of the higher risks of children being around, the reality is that the majority will be in their own bubble of being late to drop their kid off and searching for the first free…

the human driver would usually drive more closely to the centerline of such a residential road. If the road is clear ahead i'd drive almost over the centerline of the road having enough clearance between my path and the parked cars for any such "jumper" to be visible long enough for me to react. If there is an opposite traffic i get back strictly into my lane and slow down much more if the parked cars are close and t…

> the human driver would usually drive more closely to the centerline of such a residential road

I certainly do this. But asserting that most humans would usually do this? Have you ever actually seen humans drive cars? This is absolutely not what they do. On top of that, they run stop signs, routinely miss pedestrians in blind spots, respond to texts on their phone, or scroll around on their display to find the next song they want to put on.

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

#602

Post by consumer451 »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #507
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…

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.

I was wondering how much convenience is worth one kid's life. This thread reminded me of some interesting terms like "value of statistical life." It appears that all those annoying low speed limits and purposeful obstructions in residential areas really do save lives.

> An evaluation of 20 mph zones in the UK demonstrated that the zones were effective both in reducing traffic speed and in reducing RTIs. In particular child pedestrian injuries were reduced by 70 per cent from 1.24 per year in each area before to 0.37 per year after the zones were introduced

https://www.rospa.com/siteassets/images/road-safety/road-saf...

The "Vision Zero" program was started in Sweden, and is becoming more widely adopted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero

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

#604

Post by saalweachter »

nkrisc wrote: post #237
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.

Ignored by some , not all humans. I absolutely drive extra slowly and cautiously when driving past an elementary school during drop off and pick up precisely because kids do dumb stuff like this. Others do too, though not everyone of course, incredibly.

The great thing about doing things like driving the speed limit in school zones is you get to witness other drivers drive even worse, like passing you in a no passing zone in front of the school, because they can't bear to drive slow for three blocks.

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

#605

Post by johnnyanmac »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #282
themafia wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not against constructive criticism of Waymo. I feel like you have to say this out loud because many people in these discussions don't share this view. Billion dollar corporate experiments conducted in public are sacrosanct for some reason. > I just think it's important to consider the counterfactual More than 50% of roadway fatalities involve drugs or alcohol. If you want to spend your efforts improving safety…

> I feel like you have to say this out loud because many people in these discussions don't share this view. Billion dollar corporate experiments conducted in public are sacrosanct for some reason. Yes, and I find it annoying that some people do seem to think Waymo should never be criticized. That said, we already have an astounding amount of data, and that data clearly shows that the experiment is successful in reduc…

>data clearly shows that the experiment is successful in reducing crashes.

That's fine. But crashes are relatively rare and what matters is accountability. Will Waymo be accountable for hitting this kid the way a human would? Or will they fight in court to somehow blame the pedestrian? Those are my big concerns when it comes to self driving vehicles, and history with tech suggests that they love playing hot potato instead of being held accountable.

And yes, better walkable infrastructure is a win for all. The minor concern I have is the notion that self driving is perfect and we end up creating even more car centric infrastructure. I'm not sure who to blame on that one.

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

#606

Post by bee_rider »

dekhn wrote: post #585
bee_rider wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they speculate about things like “we’re near a school zone, kids are unloading, there might be a kid I’ve never seen behind that SUV?” (I’m legitimately asking I’ve never been in a Waymo).

It's not particularly meaningful to ponder the subjective experience of the waymo driving computer. Instead, focus on its externally visible behavior.

I was being informal with “speculate,” sorry. They could identify that sort of situation as a high-risk area in some way.

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

#607

Post by femto »

okdood64 wrote: post #370
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…

> Waymo will still have to accept some responsibility Why? This is only true if they weren't supposed to be on the road in the first place. Which is not true.

The performance of a human is inherently limited by biology, and the road rules are written with this in mind. Machines don't have this inherent limitation, so the rules for machines should be much stronger.

I think there is an argument for incentivising the technology to be pushed to its absolute limits by making the machine 100% liable. It's not to say the accident rate has to be zero in practice, but it has to be so low that any remaining accidents can be economically covered by insurance.

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

#608

Post by missinglugnut »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #600
Noumenon72 wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you've ever driven more than 5 miles an hour, you risked hurting someone for your convenience.

Acknowledging life has risk tradeoffs doesn't make you an American, but denying it can make you a self-righteous jerk.

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

#609

Post by jjav »

eszed wrote: post #503
jjav wrote: post #154

Earlier 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…

> I've read studies saying that most drivers don't brake at max effort, even to avoid a collision.

Ha! It is unbelievable how difficult it is to make someone brake hard. You'd think it's the easiest thing possible in the age of ABS - just press hard as you can.

I have a lot of experience on this, I used to teach car control both to teens and adults. One of the frequent exercises was seemingly very simple: Drive at Xmph until this spot, then brake at maximum power.

The vast majority of people can't do it on the first or second try, they'll just meekly press on the brake like they're coasting to a stop. After more coaching that hard means hard, they start to get it, but it takes many many tries.

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