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

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

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

691–700 of 813 posts

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

#691

Post by baq »

missinglugnut wrote: post #608
datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You’re egocentric instead of system-centric. Life has risks, but risk is to be managed, not accepted blindly with disregard of available options. A systemic approach to minimizing risk of injury on roads looks exactly like inconvenience to the individual.

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

#692

Post by jacquesm »

2b3o4o wrote: post #212
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…

According to the article the car was traveling at 17 miles an hour before it began braking. Presumably this was in a 25 mph school zone, so it seems the Waymo was already doing exactly what you describe - slowing down preemptively.

25 mph is an upper limit, not a minimum.

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

#693

Post by jacquesm »

WalterBright wrote: post #534
socalgal2 wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a girl dart out between to parked cars on a strode. She was less lucky. The car did slam on their breaks. I have no idea what speed it was ultimately going when they hit the girl. It wasn't enough to send her flying but it was enough to knock her over hard. The dad, was sitting in his front yard and had her up and in his car and I'm guessing rushed to the hospital. Those kind of neighborhoods where the outer ho…

I once rounded a blind curve on a non-residential street only to find a man on a bicycle pulling a trailer with his baby in it, stopped in the middle of the road. I stopped and yelled at him, which surprised him. That incident still gives me the willies.

You yelled at someone because you were in the wrong? Panic reaction?

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

#694

Post by sdenton4 »

jjav wrote: post #609
eszed wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Xm…

If you brake too hard, you might fly over the handlebars.

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

#695

Post by Jean-Papoulos »

somenameforme wrote: post #622
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #8

Earlier 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.

You're omitting the context provided by the article. This wasn't just a random scenario. Not only was this by an elementary school, but during school drop off hours, with both children and doubled parked cars in the vicinity. If somebody doesn't know what double parking is - it's when cars parallel park beside one another, implicitly on the road, making it difficult to see what's beyond them. So you are around young…

>driving 17mph (27kph for metric types) in this context is reckless and not something human would typically do

Unfortunately, a vast overestimation of human danger recognition. Or empathy, unsure

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

#696

Post by oliwarner »

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…

> From the Waymo blog...

I'll just remind anyone reading: they're under no obligation to tell the unvarnished truth on their blog.

Even if the NHTSA eventually points out significant failures, getting this report out now has painted a picture of Waymo only having an accident a human would have handled worse.

It would be wise to wait and see if the NHTSA agree. Would a driver have driven at 17mph in this sort of traffic or would they have viewed it as a situation where hidden infant pedestrians are likely to step out?

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

#697

Post by well_ackshually »

mjevans wrote: post #666
davorak wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Driving is based so much off of feel so my numbers may be off, but in the scenario you are talking about 5mph seems reasonable, 10mph already seems like to much.

The want to be E but really armchair engineer in me for this context says there's far too little Engineering safety of the situation. That school should not be on a busy roadway at all, it should also not have a child dropoff area anywhere near one but instead, ideally, a slow loop where the parents do drop off children, and then proceed forward in a safe direction away from the school in a flow.

It's funny because now you're sounding like you're blaming the school/the city for the situation.

Things are what they are. Driving situations are never perfect and that's why we adapt. The Waymo was speeding in a school zone. Did a dangerously fast overtake of a double parked car. It's engineering safety failure over engineering safety failure from Waymo's part, on nobody else.

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

#698

Post by hnlmorg »

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…

That’s genius but one has to ask: how much does it cost to maintain these speed restricting features?

In the UK, the cost of owning a car is high yet our potholes, while frequent, are small enough to survive. Thus being more of an annoyance rather than a speed restriction.

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

#699

Post by lesostep »

fennecbutt wrote: post #174
JKCalhoun wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my problem is that it reacted after seeing the child step out from behind the SUV. An excellent driver would have already seen that possible scenario and would have already slowed to 10 MPH or less to begin with. (It's how I taught my daughter's to drive "defensively"—look for "red flags" and be prepared for the worst-case scenario. SUV near a school and I cannot see behind it? Red flag—slow the fuck down.)

>reacted after seeing the child step out from behind the SUV. Lmao most drivers I see on the roads aren't even capable of slowing down for a pedestrian crossing when the view of the second half of the crossing is blocked by traffic (ie they cannot see if someone is about to step out, especially a child). Humans are utterly terrible drivers.

>> Humans are utterly terrible drivers

Duh, driver is, essentially, a type of specialized profession. It's kinda unreasonable to think that everyone could learn to do it well

Good thing we have public transport! :D

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

#700

Post by jononor »

pfg_ wrote: post #654
jasonfarnon wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not just put in speedbumps if all you're trying to do is slow people down? Are you sure this was the purpose of these designs? sounds a little too freakonomics to me.

Speed bumps suck for both the driver and passangers of the car and generate road noise.

They also are rather expensive to maintain, because the leading ledge gets many repeated stresses. And in nordic climates like Sweden there is a snow plow in the winter to remove snow - those occasionally snag on the speed bump - which tends to chip of big chunk, triggering rapid wear.
Post reply on HN