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

sfgate.com

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

#731

Post by azinman2 »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #348
azinman2 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they don't see another car that will have priority, they won't stop. There's a difference between stop and slow down. There are some people who barely slow down and that's totally illegal and blatantly bad. It's also a minority of the time. Most people do significantly slow if not stop at intersections, regardless if there's another car with the right of way or not. This is a big mischaracterization. That said,…

> There's a difference between stop and slow down. Yes, that's exactly my point! Going 2mph through a stop sign is materially different from stopping at the line. When you stop, you can confirm that the intersection is clear (and that there are no pedestrians about to cross). > It's also a minority of the time. If you had to guess, what would you say is the median speed of cars across the lines at stop signs in SF? >…

I’d say the median speed is 0, since probably a majority of the time there are other cars.

I see bikes blowing through all over the city, not just where I live. Just yesterday I was in the Richmond and a bike not only didn’t stop but it was AFTER I was fully stopped at the stop sign and about to start driving.

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

#732

Post by TulliusCicero »

godelski wrote: post #470
TulliusCicero wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't hate cyclists, I've used a bike as a primary form of transport for much of my life. But especially in the US, dangerous behavior from cyclists seems to be proportionally much more common than dangerous behavior by Waymos. So yeah, it's easy to believe that a cyclist just kind of blew the stop sign when they shouldn't have.

> behavior from cyclists seems to be proportionally much more common than dangerous behavior by Waymos I'm not trying to take any position to this notion. I don't know the facts. I only know that not coming to a complete stop (different from blowing throw an intersection!) does not equate to dangerous behavior. You'll find another link that shows evidence otherwise. "Stop-as-yield" laws would be worth looking into if…

I'm well aware of the Idaho stop, I'd advocated for it on many occasions.

However, I'm also aware that a lot of cyclists don't 'yield' so much as 'continue at full speed through the 4-way stop sign'.

So far, Waymo seems to have a culture of playing things very by the book and safely, or at least as safe as possible given the constraints of developing self-driving cars on public roads. I think it's very unlikely they'd lie, knowing that they'll have to hand over footage of the incident over to the authorities, and especially given what recently happened with Cruise semi-lying and being absolutely thrashed in the press because of it.

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

#733

Post by teekert »

flakes wrote: post #571
CalRobert wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of pedestrians are kids, who by their nature are erratic. Saying that it's the kid's fault for getting hit because they were "erratic" is effectively banning children from walking places, which is exactly what the US has done ("WHy don't kids play outside anymore???") The person operating the dangerous machinery where there could be people walking bears responsibility for not hitting people.

This is all true. As a driver, you are definitely expected to be aware at all times. Things like schoolzones enforce drivers being more aware and slowing even more. We have rules to not pass school buses when children are departing. We have speed limits that are lower in suburbs. Even if you follow all of these rules, theres not too much you can do about someone suddenly staggering infront of your car. Obviously if y…

Sometimes it’s unavoidable, and then your insurance will take care of it as will the care system. You are responsible but you won’t pay, your obligatory insurance will.

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

#734

Post by dtdynasty »

Fricken wrote: post #613
dtdynasty wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're hearing about this event because politics. I think reporting on integrating autonomous driving into roads is a news worthy subject even outside of the agenda of a particular publisher. The good things are reported for autonomous driving as well. I don't live in SF but know that Waymo and Cruise both had fully autonomous vehicles in SF.

Having access to a comprehensive database of incidents and near misses would be informative. A single incident where only incomplete information is available doesn't tell us much.

> Having access to a comprehensive database of incidents and near misses would be informative. A single incident where only incomplete information is available doesn't tell us much.

Agreed!

I wasn't commenting from a safety perspective, but from a news perspective. Recently Cruise has had regulatory action taken against them from the California Department of Motor Vehicles due to an autonomous vehicle accident. Waymo, another company working on autonomous vehicles also has an accident! Sounds news worthy to me.

Of course reporting on a crash will always have some negative connotation for Waymo, and I hope the regulators look at more than individual incidents to evaluate the safety of Waymo's autonomous vehicles. I did learn that Waymo recently had an accident in a time period of scrutiny for autonomous vehicles as they further integrate into roads.

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

#735

Post by eurleif »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #721
mh- wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> identifying people like GGP's mother and excluding them from requirement for self-driving is prohibitively expensive (and icky in all kinds of ways) Not sure I follow the thinking here. We already have ability tests in driver's license exams.

Yes, and every mad or reckless driver passed them with flying colors, kind of by definition, otherwise we'd be talking about drivers illegally operating road vehicles. Approximately all traffic accidents involving drivers is involving drivers with valid license, who passed ability tests.

A simple Google search reveals that the number of accidents caused by unlicensed drivers is ~20%, not ~0%: https://usclaims.com/educational-resources/non-licensed-driv...

Moreover, the requirement to receive a license is only to pass, not to pass "with flying colors".

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

#736

Post by mlyle »

lesuorac wrote: post #714
gwill wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it isn't priority by vehicle type, but by time that you arrive at the stop sign. everyone has to follow the rules equally. approach the sign, come to a complete stop, whoever was there first goes. if the intersection is full, then opposite pairs alternate with whoever is going straight getting right of way, followed by whoever's turning.

The alternating pairs is just convention and isn't actually law. The actual law is that you need to complete stop first, yield to any vehicles already in the intersection, yield to the first car (tie goes to your right). Which allows for an interesting scenario to occur. 1) East-bound truck arrives at intersection and stops first before proceeding into intersection. 2) South-bound bicyclist arrives at intersection an…

Alternating pairs emerges directly from those rules. Once one person goes north, a non-conflicting person can go south. Then, the current east and west people have arrived before the new north and south people.

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

#737

Post by lesuorac »

mlyle wrote: post #736
lesuorac wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternating pairs is just convention and isn't actually law. The actual law is that you need to complete stop first, yield to any vehicles already in the intersection, yield to the first car (tie goes to your right). Which allows for an interesting scenario to occur. 1) East-bound truck arrives at intersection and stops first before proceeding into intersection. 2) South-bound bicyclist arrives at intersection an…

Alternating pairs emerges directly from those rules. Once one person goes north, a non-conflicting person can go south. Then, the current east and west people have arrived before the new north and south people.

It doesn't though.

Unless the North & South people arrive at the intersection at the exact same time they must still come to a complete stop. While say the South person is stopping an East person could have finished their stop and since the North car has passed by them they can enter the intersection.

Sure as the intersection backs up it becomes very likely that the North-bound person will be blocking an East person from entering the intersection such that the South person can enter. But just because a car is coming at you in an intersection doesn't mean you can legally enter it.

By convention though, literally every East bound person is going to expect the South bound person to travel at the same time as the North bound one. My point is strictly that the law doesn't require this and under some circumstances the South bound person may be breaking the law.

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

#738

Post by InTheFutureRob »

magnetowasright wrote: post #693
sandos wrote: post #457

Uhh.... thinking ahead of risks, and especially hidden cyclists and pedestrians is something that is taught in basic drivers ed here in Sweden. How can this not be the fault of the car? It should have realized that, yes, I am completely blind regarding whoever comes out from behind the truck, I should slow down. I guess there are some qualifications here. If there was a severely low probability of a cyclist there, an…

Agreed. Where I live, you cannot take the drive test to get your provisional license (allowing drivers to drive without the supervision of a fully licensed driver) without passing a 'hazards test' which involves a bunch of (crappy) videos with situations like these where you have to click the mouse when it is safe for you to start moving the car. Unsafe intersections are a reality. Cyclists and pedestrians (and other…

SO? You could do everything right, and still have a crash. Can you prove that Waymo did anything WRONG or unsafe? That will come out with inquiry

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

#739

Post by Fricken »

dtdynasty wrote: post #734
Fricken wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having access to a comprehensive database of incidents and near misses would be informative. A single incident where only incomplete information is available doesn't tell us much.

> Having access to a comprehensive database of incidents and near misses would be informative. A single incident where only incomplete information is available doesn't tell us much. Agreed! I wasn't commenting from a safety perspective, but from a news perspective. Recently Cruise has had regulatory action taken against them from the California Department of Motor Vehicles due to an autonomous vehicle accident. Waymo…

When Waymo was known as the Google Self-Driving car project they were cavalier about safety, but became much more conservative after spinning out as Waymo under John Krafcik in 2017.

Waymo has not had any serious incidents and these days it seems they're doing what they can to remain low-key and avoid attracting negative attention to themselves. Like you said, when Cruise, Uber or Tesla behave recklessly, it can't help but bode poorly upon Waymo in the eyes of the public.

We can't directly compare what these companies have going on under the hood because it's all quite proprietary. Waymo nonetheless has been chipping away at the problem for longer and with more resources at their disposal than any competitor. Waymo's 'Driver' is far and away the most experienced. While I'm fully confident making that claim, there's no easy way to measure it or make an emprirical comparison to other drivers.

If you want to play this game and you aren't very experienced, you can fake it by being reckless. You can make it seem to investors that you're better than you are by putting hundreds of vehicles on the road. Investors want results. You have to be able to point to a line on a graph that goes up and to the right and say "look at all these new benchmarks we hit! More cars! More miles!"

Waymo is effectively patronized and will run at a loss for as long as they need to without any pressure to fake it until they either make it or break it. It's Larry and Sergey's pet project. It's the one they won't let go of. A single scandal can really mess things up.

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

#740

Post by ExoticPearTree »

smsm42 wrote: post #680
ExoticPearTree wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fundamental problem of self-driving cars in cities is that they are expected to be 100% safe. They could be 10 times as safe as regular cars, but it wouldn't save them from headlines of "robot car kills an innocent person". Well, yes, because all the proponents of self-driving cars tout the fact that computer driven cars are way safer than human drivers. And they're not. Those 10 times safer than humans have no…

> the proponents of self-driving cars tout the fact that computer driven cars are way safer than human drivers. And they're not. It sounds like you conflating two claims: safety(computer car) == 100% and safety(computer car) > safety(human driver). Refuting the former (which is easy) does not refute the latter, though the converse would be true of course. But is it true that human driver is safer or the same? > becau…

> You make impossible demand - no mechanism or system could be ready for "anything that might happen", and nobody - at least nobody not having super-natural clairvoyance - could be aware of absolutely everything everywhere. There will always be weird coincidences and hidden things, the question is how fast the system can adapt and find a safe(r) solution.

Actually a human tends to figure out from the surrounding environment that a specific street has its oddities (maybe its a one way street with a single lane and people cross wherever they want so the driver drives a bit slower to avoid the insurance paperwork), or if it is raining it is going to be a bit more careful because puddles can hide dangers, high speed can cause aqua planning and so on. A computer driven car cannot do these things (at least not now or in the foreseeable future), so it is no better than a human. It might see better than a human because radar, but besides braking faster let's say, it cannot do anything else with the available information. i do not know specifically how fast Waymo cars navigate busy intersections, but I've seen Tesla cars and they're pretty slow compared to a human driver.

> They certainly have a system analogous to "instinct", and they can learn (even if not in the same way as humans, but who says it's the only way?). It is true that they don't really understand the context, but I wonder how important that is compared to the speed of reaction, lack of distractions and ability to control the vehicle?

The context matters to the reaction, because if you see a something that you know it is not going to hurt your car in any way, you have no reason to slam on the brakes, but a radar will see an obstacle and slam the brakes. I may not be able to perfectly explain why I don't feel like jumping on the driverless cars bandwagon, but they are a very long way from being a safe alternative to actual drivers.

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