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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

#751

Post by franktankbank »

SapporoChris wrote: post #733
somenameforme wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 becau…

There is probably a multimodal distribution of behaviors for people in these situations. Any robotaxi ought to behave in the more cautious mode no? I drive at near idle speeds in these situations.

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

#752

Post by Marsymars »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #675
Marsymars wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get where you're coming from, but it's pretty hard to be sympathetic given the crimes we're talking about and the impact they have on others. Like that would sound nuts if we applied it to other things - e.g. "take away the professional license of a mid-career pilot/surgeon/schoolteacher/engineer because he was drinking on the job and his life collapses". Various people can't drive because of e.g. visual impairment…

> Like that would sound nuts if we applied it to other things - e.g. "take away the professional license of a mid-career pilot/surgeon/schoolteacher/engineer because he was drinking on the job and his life collapses". The analogy is closer to "take away their ability to get any job" and then it sounds even more harsh. > Various people can't drive because of e.g. visual impairments, age, poverty, etc. - I find it an u…

> The analogy is closer to "take away their ability to get any job" and then it sounds even more harsh.

If you take away the license of a pilot mid-career, they may be able to pivot to something else, but have a huge sunk cost of education and seniority where they ground out poor pay/schedules and then never made it to the part of the career with better pay. For a substantial segment of them, the career impact would be comparable to taking away the ability to drive from a random person.

> For poverty, you kinda still need a car no matter what, that's just how the US is set up in most areas.

You really don't. If you don't already live somewhere with public transit, you'll probably have to move. You'll have to make some sacrifices. But it's workable, I lived without a car and relied on city busses for all my transportation for several years. (And while I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, prior to that, I lived in a small town of ~4k people without transit service. I walked everywhere, and took the inter-city bus when I needed to leave the town.)

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

#753

Post by franktankbank »

veltas wrote: post #703
aanet wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But is 17mph a safe speed at an active school dropoff area? Now you're asking interesting questions... Technically, in CA, the speed limit in school zones are 25 mph (which local authorities can change to 15 mph, as needed). In this case, that would be something the investigation would check, of course. But regardless of that, 17 mph per se is not a very fast speed (my gut check: turning around intersections at > 1…

> Technically, in CA, the speed limit in school zones are 25 mph Legally a speed limit is a 'limit' on speed, not a suggested or safe speed. So it's never valid to argue legally that you were driving under the limit, the standard is that you slow down or give more room for places like a school drop-off while kids are being dropped off or picked up.

Yep, if I plow into stationary vehicles on the highway while going the "limit" that's not a very solid defense is it?

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

#754

Post by calibas »

no-name-here wrote: post #638
calibas wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A human driver travelling at the same speed would have hit that child at exactly 17 mph, before their brain even registered that child was there. Not sure where this is coming from, and it's directly contradicted by the article: > 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…

No, Waymo’s quote supports the grandparent comment - it was about a “fully attentive human driver” - unless you are arguing that human drivers are consistently “fully attentive”?

Fair enough, so then how fast would a semi-attentive driver stop?

The comment I originally replied to makes the claim a human's brain wouldn't have even responded fast enough to register the child was there. That's going WAY further than how Waymo is claiming a human would have responded.

I don't see how that's a more reasonable assumption that a human driver actually being "fully attentive", and I'm not sure Waymo's definition of that term is the same as what you're using.

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

#755

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

navigate8310 wrote: post #557
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans have this intuitive sense. Some do, some of the time. I'm always surprised by how much credence other people give to the idea that humans aren't on average very bad at things, including perception.

It's an autonomous vehicle fitted with a gazillion of sensors and data to drive itself. We can expect better from it than humans.

I'm not sure what your point is here since this was better than many humans. Was it better than all humans? No. But there also isn't a single human who's better than all humans.

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

#756

Post by Mawr »

SirMaster wrote: post #652
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.

If I was a human driver in that contextual situation I wouldn't even be going 14mph in the first place...

So you say, with hindsight. Regardless, what you would do is irrelevant. The question is: what would the ~average driver do? If you tell me the average driver goes <=14mph in that situation, I'm gonna look at you funny.

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

#757

Post by peddling-brink »

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…

While I completely agree with your premise, the software can be improved. It can be programmed to drop down to 5 miles an hour or less depending on street size, pedestrian proximity, school zone, etc.

If only the same could be said for the other parents in the school zone. I’ve seen people roar by in similar scenarios at 30+ miles an hour.

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

#759

Post by boogieknite »

Jean-Papoulos wrote: post #695
somenameforme wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

anecdotally a couple of kids were hit by cars every year at my very small school of 300 people. pedestrians and drivers both acting recklessly

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

#760

Post by mlsu »

bertil wrote: post #660
mlsu wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An honest account of this situation would place at least some blame on there being a tall SUV blocking visibility. These giant SUVs really are the worst when it comes to child safety

The best reaction from Waymo would have been to start to lobby against letting those monster-trucks park on streets near schools. They are killing so many children, I'm flabbergasted they are still allowed outside of worksites.

From a "my opinion" standpoint, yes, I would love to see this.

From a tactical PR standpoint, it would be a disaster. Muh big truuuucks is like a third rail because Americans are car obsessed as a culture. They already hit a kid, best to save some energy for the next battle.

Besides if Waymo wins (in general) private car ownership will decrease which is a win regardless. And maybe Waymo can slowly decrease the size of their fleet to ease up the pressure on this insane car size arms race.

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