Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica • Hacker News Board

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

#731

Post by Mawr » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 12:11 PM UTC

mattlondon wrote: post #526

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…

Have you been in a waymo? It knows when there are pedestrians around (it can often see over the top of parked cars) and it is very cautious when there are people near the road and it frequently slows down. I have no idea what happened here but in my experience of taking waymos in SF, they are very cautious and I'd struggle to imagine them speeding through an area with lots of pedestrians milling around. The fact that…

> I suspect that a waymo will out-react a human basically 100% of the time, and apply full braking force within a few 10s of milliseconds and well before a human has even begun to move their leg.

Correct. Human reaction time is at its very best ~250ms. And that's when you're hyper-focused on reacting to a specific stimuli and actively try to respond to it as fast as possible.

During normal driving, a focused driver will react on the order of 1s. However, that's assuming actively paying attention to the road ahead. If you were to say, be checking your mirrors or looking around for any other reason this can easily get into multiple seconds. If you're say, playing on your phone (consider how many drivers do this), forget it.

A machine however is 100% focused 100% of the time and is not subject to our poor reaction times. It can brake in On the other hand, a software fault could make it run into an obstacle that'd be obvious to a human at full speed.

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

#732

Post by derangedHorse » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 12:13 PM UTC

GoatInGrey wrote: post #413

okdood64 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Think of it like dog ownership: if my dog hurts someone, that's on me. Property that causes harm is the owner's responsibility. If I program a machine and it goes out into the world and hurts someone who did not voluntarily release my liability, that's on me.

There are many cases when the owner wouldn’t be liable as well, like if the victim was performing an illegal act like attacking the owner or dog, or trespassing. If a child isn’t following the law or being supervised by a parent, some consequences are inevitable and the driver isn’t instantly liable. For example, if a student jumps in front of a car in an attempted suicide, it would be very hard for a driver to avoid that in certain situations.

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

#733

Post by SapporoChris » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 12:36 PM UTC

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…

"I'd love to see video of the incident because driving 17mph (27kph for metric types) in this context is reckless and not something human would typically do"

I am not sure what your definition of typical is. The reason we have lower speed zones in school districts at specific times is because humans typically drive fast. The reason police officers frequently target these areas and write a plethora of tickets is because humans typically ignore speed limits.

Your claim seems to be that a human would drive much slower than the posted speed limit considering the conditions, but the laws and the court room suggest otherwise.

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

#734

Post by rdtsc » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 12:45 PM UTC

ffsm8 wrote: post #723

jjav wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that is missing the overall context that this was an elementary school during drop-off hours. That's when you crawl at 3 mph expecting kids to jump behind any car, and not going at 17mph. Indeed. Sure the car knows the limit, it knows it is a school zone, it can precisely track people within the reach of its sensors (but not behind blockages it can't see through). But it is missing the human understanding of th…

Urm, ime people frequently drive significantly over the speed limit in all these places, at all times of the day. Blows my mind how you guys confidently state this with authority as if that's the normal behavior, when the reality is that it probably should be - but isn't actually.

But if you’re plan on building a fleet of cars operating all over the country or the world, do you want to model them after the careful driver, who has awareness about the situation (school, drop off/pickup hours, etc) or say “what the heck, some drivers are not paying attention so neither will my robots, it’s fine”

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

#735

Post by no-name-here » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 12:54 PM UTC

kj4211cash wrote: post #637

It's interesting how polarized this comments section is. Lots of people claiming a human driver would definitely have been driving slower. Lots of people claiming statistics show that human drivers do worse in this scenario aggregate. Of course neither side presenting convincing evidence.

I tried to find some data: In a 20 mph school zone, ~70-80% of drivers drove 26 mph or faster, regardless of whether there were flashing lights, an always-20 zone, or a 20-when-schoolchildren-present zone. [1]

Although note that ~70-80% of drivers drove 6 or more mph over the speed limit in a school zone, while it seems like the claims in some of these comments are that a human driver would drive at less than 17 mph out of an abundance of caution.

[1] https://wtsc.wa.gov/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2023/12/1...

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

#736

Post by no-name-here » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 12:58 PM UTC

jsrozner wrote: post #203

So many tech lovers defending waymo. If you drive a car, you have a responsibility to do it safely. The fact that I am usually better than the bottom 50% of drivers, or that I am better than a drunk driver does not mean that when I hit someone it's less bad. A car is a giant weapon. If you drive the weapon, you need to do it safely. Most people these days are incredibly inconsiderate - probably because there's little…

> The fact that lots of drivers suck doesn't mean that waymo gets a pass.

But that fact does mean that we should encourage alternatives that reduce fatalities, and that not doing so results in fatalities that did not need to occur.

> The real solution? Get rid of cars.

I also support initiatives to improve public transit, etc. However, I don't think "get rid of cars" is a realistic idea to the general public right now, so let's encourage all of the things that improve things - robot drivers if they kill people less often than humans, public transit, etc. - let's not put off changes that will save lives on the hope that humanity will "get rid of cars" any time soon. Or when do you think humanity will "get rid of cars"?

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

#737

Post by no-name-here » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 1:08 PM UTC

qwertyuiop_ wrote: post #344

Couldn’t be anymore callous and clinical. This press release alone makes me want not to use their service. * “Following contact, the pedestrian stood up immediately, walked to the sidewalk, and we called 911. The vehicle remained stopped, moved to the side of the road, and stayed there until law enforcement cleared the vehicle to leave the scene,” Waymo wrote in the post.*

The 'next' comment after yours is "Alternate headline: Waymo saves child's life" and the 'prev' comment is "A human driver would most likely have killed this child. That's what should be on the ledger." - would either of those be less 'callous and clinical'?

Other accident reports I've seen (NTSB, etc) often seem to take a similar approach - is it a bad thing?

Or what kind of language wouldn't make you 'want not to use their service'?

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

#738

Post by baud147258 » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 1:10 PM UTC

Mawr wrote: post #726

mikepurvis wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're safer specifically for vehicles, as they convert many conflicts that would be t-bones (worst for passengers) into getting rear-ended (maximum crumple zone on both vehicles). Roundabouts are worse for land use though, which impacts walkability, and the safety story for pedestrians and bike users with them is decidedly not great as well.

> and the safety story for pedestrians and bike users with them is decidedly not great as well. The what now? Seriously, what in the world are you talking about? Roundabouts are heaven. They physically force drivers to slow down when approaching or leaving them, creating a safe environment for pedestrians and cyclists. For example, there's no such thing as "running a red light at full speed" at a roundabout, no speed…

As a cyclist, I'm not a big fan of roundabouts, because I'm always worried I'll get hit on the side by a car entering/leaving the roundabout whenever I don't take the first exit, mostly because I feel like I have less visibility in the direction from which the car might come from, compared to a standard crossing.

Though I've never been in an accident either on a crossing or roundabout, so I can't really judge how true my impression is.

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

#739

Post by cwillu » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

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…

30kph is the posted speed limit in school zones here, precisely because it's an appropriately slow speed for the context.

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

#740

Post by cwillu » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 1:24 PM UTC

well_ackshually wrote: post #697

mjevans wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The Waymo was speeding in a school zone

Source? The article doesn't list a speed limit, but highways.dot.gov suggests to me that the speed limit would be 25mph in the school zone, in which case the waymo was going significantly under the speed limit.