Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say • Hacker News Board

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

#681

Post by smt88 » Thu, Feb 08, 2024, 7:54 PM UTC

SllX wrote: post #482

smt88 wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The roads belong to taxpayers, not regulators. The regulators are supposed to work for us. Anyway, I'm talking about a moral or PR obligation, not a legal one. Waymo is using roads that taxpayers pay for, and that raises the bar for transparency for them.

You would think so but no. Roads and highways belong to the State or Federal government (basically whoever built the damn thing). States and the Federal government are managed by an Elected government and their appointees, and are empowered to levy taxes. Taxpayers foot the bill, and some taxpayers are even citizens with the right to vote in elections. The whole “X belongs to the taxpayer” is crap rhetoric you and ma…

Yeah, again. I'm not talking about the legal framework, I'm not poorly educated on this subject as you condescendingly claim, and nothing you wrote affects my point.

I'm saying that we pay for the roads, and the entities that legally own/maintain/control the roads are supposed to be under the control of our elected representatives. We own the roads in the sense that they are public spaces that we pay for.

There is a moral obligation to transparency when benefitting from public resources, whether or not there's a legal one.

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

#682

Post by insane_dreamer » Thu, Feb 08, 2024, 8:25 PM UTC

_dain_ wrote: post #494

insane_dreamer wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you choose to blow through the stop sign because it "looks safe", you should bear the full responsibility for that decision. (I say this as an avid cyclist who sometimes blows through stop signs.)

>avid cyclist Why do I only see this phrase when someone is blaming cyclists? I bike everywhere but I'm not an "avid cyclist", it's just a tool for getting around. What is there to be "avid" about? I suspect it's from people who think of cycling primarily as a sport or pastime, not a practical mode of transport. >If you choose to blow through the stop sign because it "looks safe", you should bear the full responsibil…

by that I meant that I cycle regularly (both for sport and transport); in other words, I'm not criticizing cyclists from the sidelines

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

#683

Post by insane_dreamer » Thu, Feb 08, 2024, 8:29 PM UTC

_dain_ wrote: post #494

insane_dreamer wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you choose to blow through the stop sign because it "looks safe", you should bear the full responsibility for that decision. (I say this as an avid cyclist who sometimes blows through stop signs.)

>avid cyclist Why do I only see this phrase when someone is blaming cyclists? I bike everywhere but I'm not an "avid cyclist", it's just a tool for getting around. What is there to be "avid" about? I suspect it's from people who think of cycling primarily as a sport or pastime, not a practical mode of transport. >If you choose to blow through the stop sign because it "looks safe", you should bear the full responsibil…

> 4-way stop signs are stupid, there are better alternatives like roundabouts. UK and Europe have hardly any stop signs.

wholeheartedly agree, and just in general there are too many stop signs in the US;

but what's needed for cars going at 40-50 Mph is different than what's needed for cyclists who have the time to look both ways without necessarily having to come to a full stop (just like pedestrians crossing the road at places other than a crosswalk).

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

#684

Post by topkai22 » Thu, Feb 08, 2024, 8:30 PM UTC

jessekv wrote: post #436

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.

Stop-as-yield for bikes is the actual law in 8 states including Washington and Oregon. This raises the question, should the car drive differently in those states? https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2022-03/Bicyclis...

No- the bike would still be expected to yield to the automobile that arrived at the intersection first (provided that’s what happened.)

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

#685

Post by FireBeyond » Thu, Feb 08, 2024, 8:41 PM UTC

Aloisius wrote: post #341

jeromegv wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see quite a bit of cars not coming to a 3 second stop, they mostly roll at slow speed and never actually stop the vehicle completely. Do you advocate for 70% of the drivers to be taken off the road?

The law is a complete stop in California, not a 3 second stop. And yeah, anyone rolling through stop signs shouldn't be driving. In cities that actually enforce traffic laws, you can get your license suspended for it.

And since this is about (semi-) autonomous vehicles, in this case, lets not also forget the release of FSD that specifically allowed you to run stop signs.

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

#686

Post by B56b » Thu, Feb 08, 2024, 8:44 PM UTC

a-french-anon wrote: post #500

sschueller wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a better solution for that: Public transportation.

> Public transportation > Safety Pick one. Danger doesn't come only from other vehicles.

It just comes mostly from other vehicles, or are 42,000+ people also being killed each year while taking public transit?

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

#687

Post by godelski » Thu, Feb 08, 2024, 8:58 PM UTC

dxbydt wrote: post #589

godelski wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're in the write direction but I think you don't have the right words to describe what you're trying to describe. I made a sister comment, but if I correctly understand you, then it would be more accurate to say that the averaged statistic removes important variables for making accurate conclusions. We need not look at your mother, but we can consider different environments. I think most of us would say it would b…

> It's useful because if you have both and they are far apart you know there's a lot of variance ummm. I would refrain from using nonparametric skew to make a comment about the magnitude of variance. Essentially, the gap between mean and median will always be bounded by 1 sigma. The ratio abs(mean-median)/sigma is nonparametric skew. It is atmost 1, for any distribution( hence nonparametric, no distributional assumpt…

Perhaps I gave the statement too much strength, far more than intended. But I don't view any metric as anything more than a guide. The reason I use parametric skew in this way is explicitly for a quick and dirty interpretation of the data. Essentially trying to understand if I should take someone's data at face value or not. It's about being a flag. The reason is because when going about the world in an every day fashion I am generally not going to have access to other data like variance (which if we did, we wouldn't need this hack) and can't really do an F-test on the fly. Usually you're presented with the mean and it can still be hard to find a median but it is usually more obtainable than the variance or any other information. So I get your concern and I think you are right for bringing it up because how I stated things could clearly be mistaken (I'll admit to that) but wanted to assure you that no strong decisions were being made using this. I only use it as a sniff test. I do think it helps to give people a bunch of different sniff tests because it is hard for us to navigate data and if you're this well versed I'm sure you have a similar frustration in how difficult it can be to make informed decisions. So what tools do we have to can set off red flags and help us not be deceived by those who wish to just throw numbers at us and say that this is the answer?

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

#688

Post by genocidicbunny » Thu, Feb 08, 2024, 8:59 PM UTC

Mawr wrote: post #656

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…

> I can drive to work in twelve minutes. Then you can cycle there in ~20 minutes. The difference would be that cycling infrastructure is dirt cheap, bikes are dirt cheap, you can fit way more bikes on a path than cars, you get daily physical exercise - longer lifespan, emit trivial amounts of pollution and parking is a non-issue.

> Then you can cycle there in ~20 minutes.

Unless, you know, there's no way to actually cycle there in 20 minutes because the routes are not cyclist friendly or accessible. Or maybe they live in a hilly area where cycling means either working up quite a sweat, or getting an e-bike to assist. Or there's inclement weather that makes cycling extremely uncomfortable if not impossible. Or if you have an injury that makes cycling difficult or painful to where you can only go very slow. Or when you have to carry something heavy with you.

There was a point where I had a 15 minute commute to work by car. Cycling, it was 40 minutes and required getting pretty sweaty. Why? Because by car I could take the highway, and by bike I couldn't. Cycling was also much more dangerous on that route than the highway drive, because I had to go through many intersections, pass multiple schools during the morning drop-off time, cross over a major highway overpass that always had heavy traffic that time of day.

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

#689

Post by dmix » Thu, Feb 08, 2024, 9:00 PM UTC

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #468

dmix wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes there is a hostility between drivers and bikers and bikers and cars, where they both build up resentment and settled for this hostile middle ground where they both treat the others poorly. Not to mention plenty of people in both are just dumb or ignorant of their surroundings

Just to nitpick a little, let's use the word cyclists, not bikers. I feel that bikers actually obey traffic signs more than cyclists do.

> Just to nitpick a little, let's use the word cyclists, not bikers

Humans are capable of gleaning from context.

> I feel that bikers actually obey traffic signs more than cyclists do.

Motorcycles have completely different traffic laws, both legally and socially... so yes they would follow car style traffic rules more closely than a cyclist.

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

#690

Post by brewdad » Thu, Feb 08, 2024, 9:13 PM UTC

gpsx wrote: post #643

kurthr wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, if you come to a stop at the same time with two cars at right angles, the car on the right has the "right of way".

I think this is a rule in Europe but I am not aware of this being a rule in the US.

It is but it's one of those rules that gets half a sentence in the drivers manual that people cram when they turn 16 and never think about again.