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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

#771

Post by micromacrofoot »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #768
micromacrofoot wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In traditional vehicles, liability is structurally centered on the human driver, and product liability exists but is difficult to assert absent clear or systemic defects. Autonomous driving systems disrupt this by directly assuming the driving function, forcing liability upstream (where it's significantly more difficult to navigate). So now it's driver vs injured party. Self-driving makes it trillion dollar company v…

> now it's driver vs injured party. Self-driving makes it trillion dollar company vs injured party It’s historically been my insurance company versus your insurance company or an uninsured driver. (Or I’m Apple Paying you $5k so my fender bender doesn’t show up on insurance.) Now it’s my insurance company versus the insurance company of a client who can pay damages. The number of cases where drivers are individually…

yes, so now it's me and my consumer insurance vs an entire department of people at an incredibly well funded company and their corporate insurance company — it's an entirely different scenario that starts looking a lot more like individual litigation for the consumer, even for otherwise run-of-the-mill insurance claims

not to mention that "driver error" becomes an argument with a black box

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

#772

Post by sowbug »

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #678
sowbug wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I was being oblique. Humans kill other humans with cars every day. They kill even more on Halloween. Let's start addressing that problem before worrying whether Waymos might someday decide it's OK to drive through ghosts. Autonomous vehicles won't be perfect. They'll surely make different mistakes from the ones humans currently make. People will die who wouldn't have died at the hands of human drivers. But the…

"The number of fatalities in the US would drop from 40,000 annually to 40. Would you wave that wand?" This strawmam is bordering offtopic fiction. Only the 40k yearly deaths is based on reality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

So is the trolley problem, which this problem restates. I'm not sure what you're adding by observing that a hypothetical situation is hypothetical.

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

#773

Post by yibg »

rsch wrote: post #498
yibg wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that's feasible without introducing a lot of friction. Near my house, almost the entire trip from the freeway to my house is via a single lane with parked cars on the side. I would have to drive 10 MPH the entire way (speed limit is 25, so 2.5x as long).

Yes. - Parked cars on the street. - Drive somewhat fast. - Avoid killing people. Pick two.

Sure that's a valid choice. And if we as a society chooses safety then lower the speed limit. But it's not reasonable to expect everyone to drive 40% of the speed limit under what are normal conditions (the parked cars are almost always there).

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

#774

Post by TulliusCicero »

belorn wrote: post #712
expressadmin wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently visited a friend that lives in Sweden (couple hours south of Stockholm). Something he said while I visited stuck with me: "Sweden hates cars." There must be a happy medium somewhere in between.

I would say it depend on where you are. City driving is generally not a great experience and its not that uncommon to see a speed bump before almost every crossing, to the point where you get surprised if there isn't one. That said, as long you don't leave the designated main roads that goes through the city areas it is not that bad. They do demand a lot of attention. Street parking has mostly been turned into exclus…

Major cities in the world where driving there is fun:

*

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

#775

Post by BurningFrog »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #641
BurningFrog wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo is driving the car and should be held accountable like any other driver. I assume that's how it works already.

I hope so too. I'll be keeping a close eye on how they handle this, though. My benefit of the doubt for tech was already long drained, and is especially critical for safety critical industries.

I think this is more about the legal system than tech credibility.

That is, I expect that Waymo will be required to pay for accidents they cause, whether they want to or not.

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

#776

Post by aanet »

franktankbank wrote: post #753
veltas wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

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

Well, people are doing a lot of what-about-ism in this situation. Some of that is warranted, but I'd posit that analyzing one "part" of this scenario in isolation is not helpful, nor is this the way Waymo will go about analyzing this scenario with their tech teams.

Let's consider, for argument's sake, if the Waymo bot had indeed slammed at the brakes with max decel, and had come to a complete (and sudden) stop barely 5cm in front of the kid. Would THAT be considered a safe response??

If I'm a regulator, I'd still ding the bot with an "unsafe response" ticket and send that report to Waymo. If YOU were that pedestrian, you'd feel unsafe too. (I definitely have seen such responses in my AV testing experience). One could argue, again, that that woulda been legally not-at-fault, but socially that would be completely unacceptable (as one would guess rightly).

And so it is.

The full behavior sequence is in question: When did Waymo see the kid(s), where+ how were they moving, how did it predict (or fail to) where they will move in the next 2s, etc. etc. The entire sequence -- from perception to motion prediction to planning to control -- will be evaluated to understand where the failure for a proper response may have occurred.

As I mentioned earlier, the proper response is, under ideal conditions, one that would have caused the vehicle to stop at a safe distance from the VRU (0.5m-1m, ideally). Failing which, to reduce the kinetic energy to a minimum possible ("min expected response")... which may still imply a "contact" (=collision) but at reduced momentum, to minimize the chance of damage.

I suspect (though I dont know for sure) that Waymo executed the minimum expected response, and that likely was due to the driving policy.

We won't know until we see the full sequence from inside the Waymo. Everything else is speculation.

[Disclaimer: I dont work for Waymo; no affiliation, etc etc]

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

#777

Post by johnnyanmac »

BurningFrog wrote: post #775
johnnyanmac wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope so too. I'll be keeping a close eye on how they handle this, though. My benefit of the doubt for tech was already long drained, and is especially critical for safety critical industries.

I think this is more about the legal system than tech credibility. That is, I expect that Waymo will be required to pay for accidents they cause, whether they want to or not.

I believe how they navigate the legal system through this will indeed affect their credibility. It's the one channel where you need to be the most honest (if you aren't the government itself), so I hold a lot more weight on that than on PR statements.

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

#778

Post by foxglacier »

aembleton wrote: post #492
foxglacier wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the drivers fault when they hit a kid who darts out in front of them and they had no time to react and weren't doing anything illegal like speeding.

They could have driven with more care and attention if they're passing large vehicles that block their view of any children.

I mean legally. But your suggestion is ridiculous. Might as well say "don't drive ever".

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

#779

Post by thewebguyd »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #653
thewebguyd wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely is reasonable to expect people to drive below the limit. Speed limits are just that, maximum upper bounds of how fast you legally can go, not "recommended" speeds or minimum speeds, nor are they necessarily "safe" speeds. It's just a legal upper bounds. It is a drivers responsibility to drive for the conditions. If conditions are calling for driving 40% slower, then that's what you do and suck it up. If…

Driving for the conditions mostly means weather. If there's cars parked on the side constantly, and that's supposed to slow you down significantly, it should be baked into the speed limit. From what I'm aware of, you're not actually expected to slow down drastically from parked cars.

Maybe not, but if parking is so dense as to cause safety issues, and cause conditions to require slower driving, the city should still be addressing it.

I know, it's not reality in most cases, but it goes to show how poor our infrastructure is and underinvested in.

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

#780

Post by Jblx2 »

HALtheWise wrote: post #682
Veserv wrote: post #306

Absent more precise information, this is a statistical negative mark for Waymo putting their child pedestrian injury rate at ~2-4x higher than the US human average. US human drivers average ~3.3 trillion miles per year [1]. US human drivers cause ~7,000 child pedestrian injurys per year [2]. That amounts to a average of 1 child pedestrian injury per ~470 million miles. Waymo has done ~100-200 million fully autonomous…

Do we even know that the child was injured? All I've seen anyone officially claim is that the Waymo made contact, the kid fell over, then stood up and walked to the side of the road. Assuming the Waymo was still braking hard, 6mph means it was about 1/4s and about 30cm from reaching a full stop, so it could be a very minor incident we're talking about here. I'm not aware of any statistics for how often children come…

Here is what I think we know, in table form:

                 |               | Injuries | Undesired  |
                 | Miles         |    to    | Pedestrian | Feline
                 | Driven        | Children | Contacts   | Fatalities
  +--------------+---------------+----------+------------+------------
  | U.S. Drivers | ~3e12         |  ~7000   |     ?      |     ?
  |--------------+---------------+----------+------------|------------
  | Waymo        | 100e6 - 200e6 |    0*    |     1      |     1
  +--------------+---------------+----------+------------+------------
* for all we can tell, this incident doesn't rise to the level of injury that results in a reporting event that is captured in the 7,000 number.
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