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I was biking in SF the other day, pulling my kid in a bike trailer. A waymo vehicle pulled up behind me while I was waiting for the traffic light. I was pleasan
by greesil 5y ago
I was biking in SF the other day, pulling my kid in a bike trailer. A waymo vehicle pulled up behind me while I was waiting for the traffic light. I was pleasantly surprised that it waited for me when the light turned green and didn't run me over. Robot anxiety is real though.
Edit: anxiety also because I wasn't sure it would recognize the bike trailer as a real thing. How many bike trailers end up in the training set?
- omnicognate 5y agoI wonder what the stats are on those bike trailers. I see people using them in traffic and they look plain terrifying: a child dangling out in a flimsy canvas pod behind the cyclists's back, too low for drivers to see when close, surrounded by vehicle wheels... yikes.
- cjrp 5y agoThere shouldn't be anything inherently dangerous about them, a car shouldn't be getting that close to the back of a bicycle really. I've seen some that have a tall flag-like thing, I guess that's to help show that there's something behind the bicycle
- omnicognate 5y agoShouldn't doesn't mean doesn't. Seems to me that common sense suggests they're pretty dangerous to use in traffic, but I'm not claiming that is actually the case. I'm just wondering what the stats are - the only real way to know. For context, I live in a major city. I've seen people pulling these things round busy multi-lane roundabouts and the like.
- bckr 5y agoMany people seem really careless with their children on the road. Another example is walking out into a crosswalk with a stroller without looking both ways. Yes, it's my responsibility to slow down. But for god's sake don't assume I'm going to!
- jacquesm 5y agoThose aren't strollers they are traffic testers.
- r0m4n0 5y agoAgreed... I was thinking about this other day with my 4 month old. We were looking at four or so houses to purchase with a real estate agent. We were having to load her in and out of her car seat in the car repeatedly which is not fun (she cries when you set her in the thing). One of the houses was 1/2 a mile or so away and it crossed my mind that I could just hold her in the back seat while we coast through a few intersections. I then pictured the outcome of a minor accident and decided that it was worth the additional effort to ensure that my kid wouldn't be ejected. Everything we do is a risk calculation and some people have decided that the risk is worth the convenience or cost. I suppose my thought was illegal while toting your child around in a bike trailer isn't so there is that factor too... Those kid trailers seem very dangerous, I ride my bike in cities all the time (NYC and SF) and get very close to reckless drivers. I have to imagine being a passenger in a bike trailer, in a city, is quite a risk
- tokai 5y agoThe most common accident from biking is falling. Much of the danger of falls are removed for a child in a proper bike trailer. With a flag and reflectors helping visibility my intuition tells me that it is much safer for children in trailers. Safer than riding their own bike or with a child seat on the adults bike.
- yupper32 5y agoMost people I know who regularly bike in SF (for commuting at least), have been hit by a car in some capacity. I have no idea why parents use those bike with the kids in the back. Why not just use a car? It's not even like those bikes are particularly cheap. The ones I see sell for thousands of dollars.
- mdoms 5y agoIt must feel very gratifying to be able to say, "hey, you shouldn't have done that" after a driver crushes your child into a paste. Never rely on what drivers "should" or "shouldn't" do.
- cjrp 5y agoAs a motorcyclist, I'm well versed in not relying on drivers. SMIDSY all day. My point is that it should be safe; if it isn't, something is wrong with the system.
- gruturo 5y agoIn Germany many bike trailers have a small brightly colored flag on top, so there's an object in your field of view even if it's very close to your car.
- greesil 5y agoThere's a subset of cyclists that don't seem to have fear. Not me though. When I take by kiddo of out I'm very careful with route planning. They're harder to see because they're lower down, but the kid literally can't fall out of it if I take a fall. That, and it effectively has a roll cage.
- asdff 5y agoThe stats are that probably hardly anything happens with them. Dying on a bike is extraordinarily rare in the first place. For example in my city of some 4 million, 30 people on bikes die a year which seems like such small odds.
- whimsicalism 5y agoMerely because so few people bike in a commuter/traffic heavy setting.
- asdff 5y agoI decided to go ahead and do some ballpark math. about 2% of my city bikes to work: 36/80,000 = 0.00045 80% drive a car and about 250 die a year: 250/3200000 = 0.000078125 So its not quite a full order of magnitude more dangerous, but either way I'd say your odds are pretty low in either case. Even lower if you choose to bike safely, such as taking less busy residential streets vs commercial arteries or even opting for the sidewalk on those busy arteries, wearing helmets and using lights, using defensive bike strategies like avoiding lefts in favor of utilizing a perpendicular street, not being drunk, etc. I bet out of those 36 deaths in my city, none took place on like a 25mph residential street.
- ehsankia 5y agoThey sometimes post videos of situations they deal with, especially around bikers and pedestrians. It's quite impressive how well it handles such cases. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWvhw1KCmbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWvhw1KCmbo
- yellow_lead 5y agoThe marketing video vs. the in-the-field video: https://youtu.be/zdKCQKBvH-A?t=833 https://youtu.be/zdKCQKBvH-A?t=833
- ra7 5y ago500k fully driverless miles in Arizona and this is still the only video where it’s actually demonstrated a “failure”. That says something. In fact, the very same channel (JJ Ricks) has a ton of in-the-field Waymo videos where it works exceedingly well.
- darknavi 5y ago> That says something. Perhaps that not everyone records a taxi ride and posts it on YouTube.
- DominikPeters 5y agoThis is a very safe way to fail though, with no vulnerable road users nearby.
- kfarr 5y agoYeah same experiences here, already feeling like robot cars are much safer for cyclists and pedestrians than aggressive humans
- NegativeLatency 5y agoI’d trust a waymo more than a tesla though
- ajross 5y agoTesla FSD beta has something like three orders of magnitude more miles driven under full autonomy now, almost all of it by non-corporate users free to post whatever mistakes or mishaps they can find. Waymo has one (now two) heavily geofenced service areas with a few dozen cars. It won't take highways. It won't enter certain intersections or transit certain neighborhoods. Just recognize that there's some level of cherry-picking error in this kind of analysis. FSD beta and Waymo both make mistakes (mine curbed a tire once, there's the now-famous video of the car hitting the plastic bollard in San Jose, etc...), but you're going to see far more of those from one system than the other.
- ra7 5y ago> Tesla FSD beta has something like three orders of magnitude more miles driven under full autonomy now Wait. “Keep your hands on the wheel” drives are NOT fully autonomous. By definition.
- hiddencost 5y agoGlad to see this is getting thoroughly downvoted. -> Tesla is actively killing people. -> Tesla has much higher rate of requiring driver intervention, and mostly drives in safer environments. I really struggle w/ how to communicate to non-industry people how deeply wrong-misleading the Tesla pitch is.
- NegativeLatency 5y ago> Waymo has one (now two) heavily geofenced service areas with a few dozen cars. It won't take highways. It won't enter certain intersections or transit certain neighborhoods. Literally this is why I trust it more, the people running the company are willing to realistically evaluate the limitations of their systems and act responsibly
- hirundo 5y agoIf you were unpleasantly unsurprised to be run over the other day you wouldn't be posting.
- jefftk 5y agoIt would be massive news, and we would still hear about it. (There has been one death so far, with Uber behaving super irresponsibly: https://www.jefftk.com/p/uber-self-driving-crash https://www.jefftk.com/p/uber-self-driving-crash)
- spiderice 5y agoIt would likely have it's own HN post rather than just a comment, lol
- wutbrodo 5y agoThis is clearly untrue, given the fact that a biker being run over by an at-fault AV would be national news.
- Geee 5y agoYeah, survival bias.
- mikotodomo 5y agoYeah it's funny how human psychology works! We know the rational truth is that the AI drivers are millions of times less likely to run us over than human drivers, but we still can't get rid of the image of evil robots going bezerk from Hollywood movies and the (extremely unlikely) possibility of a malfunction in the back of our minds!
- simondw 5y agoI think the problem is that (at least for now), we don't have good mental models of AI drivers and what their failure modes might be. Dangerous human drivers are likely to be consistently erratic (e.g., drunk), or distracted and oblivious in certain situations (bikes, intersections, lane changes). For all we know, an AI driver might drive perfectly for three hours, and then accelerate full speed onto the sidewalk.
- bckr 5y agoUh... people have already been killed by autonomous cars. And they're very new. I don't think it's funny/weird at all that someone would be nervous about being in front of one, without an airbag.
- jeffbee 5y agoThe fact that someone was killed by a car with an Uber computer on board does not mean that people have been killed by autonomous cars. It's easy to draw a bright line between realistic, responsible self-driving tech companies like Cruise and Waymo and the move-fast-kill-people shenanigans of Uber and Tesla. They are really two different categories.
- bckr 5y agoMaybe for someone who is paying close attention, or even works in the industry, this distinction can be made. And that's valid for now. That a company has not had a major accident so far does not mean that I'm not going to be their first victim. I love the idea of self driving cars. But they are also really scary. They're being brought to us by the same industry that gave us * BSOD * "why the heck can't I share my screen right now? can you share your screen? yes? well why can't I share my screen?" * Your account has been terminated for breaking the terms and conditions. You cannot appeal this decision. We are now deleting 4TB of your life's work. * An attacker has gained access to your email account. Your life is now ruined. `But they're safer than human drivers!` So what. They're new, they're capable of killing you, they're brought to you by tech. They're f'n scary. Self-driving advocates will do well to acknowledge this rather than being dismissive.
- antattack 5y agoI would like some kind of visual feedback (maybe countdown timer for how long it has stopped for?) from autonomous car. Something similar to checking if driver is paying attention and is aware that I'm going to cross in front of their car by looking at direction where driver is looking or a hand gesture.
- bckr 5y agoI really want this, too. I highly depend on eye contact with other drivers for safety.
- kevinventullo 5y agoInteresting! Like a higher fidelity turn signal.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoThis is a great idea. Disney/Pixar have this figured out, why not turn fiction into reality for a good use case?
- greesil 5y agoWith a human I try to make eye contact. At least that way if I get run over I know it's intentional :) Maybe they were on to something with the Jonny Cab mannequin in Total Recall.
- snaily 5y agoScania did a neat affordance for this in their (otherwise rather incremental) autonomous AXL concept. A band of LEDs around the vehicle that light up "towards" a pedestrian once the vehicle takes them into account: https://youtu.be/0WN9xvAvEls?t=499 https://youtu.be/0WN9xvAvEls?t=499
- dilap 5y agoIt's been about a year now, but I used to skate around the city all the time -- even then I found the self-driving test cars to be way less treacherous than the human-driven ones! Pulling your kid in a bike trailer in SF is awesome and admirable, but also a little bit crazy :-)
- imperialdrive 5y agoI bike around the city often, mostly at night. In the last week I almost got hit by one turning in front of me, and I watched another blow through a red on 9th and Judah. I've also observed them slowing drivers down with erratic behavior. Now I understand why the sudden uptick in volume, but am predicting it gets locked back down soon bc from what I've seen they have much more to learn. I'm very cautious around them. Good for the company and team behind it tho, it's a good fight to wage. Fingers crossed.
- mgraczyk 5y agoWaymo and cruise vehicles are much safer for bikes than other drivers in my experience. I've been commuting by bike in SF for years, have a near miss every few days but never even close with a waymo vehicle. Every single time I've been hit has been a door, another bike, or a taxi. Taxi drivers in SF seem to see themselves as natural predators for bicycles.
- screye 5y agoWaymo has taken a responsible approach to self-driving (level 5 only, Lidar) over Tesla's collateral reduction approach. Lidar gives you exact distance to obstacles around it. Given those 2 factors, I expect Waymo to have an inbuilt hard-stop for when it is on collision course inside of braking distance. I expect it to be friendlier to bikers and pedestrians than human drivers. As a biker, most of close calls are due to impatient drivers who try to overtake me through close calls and when they enter turns without looking first. AFAIK, Self-driving cars do not initiate same-lane overtakes and can be hardcoded to be paragons of patience. With how hostile American drivers are towards bikers, self-driving cars would need Skynet-esque malice towards us to match those injury rates.
- tigershark 5y agoWaymo is level 4, not level 5, and if I remember correctly the CEO said that it won’t be level 5 for decades.
- me_me_me 5y agoThats a refreshingly honest statement, especially contrasted with claims by Musk that Tesla Lvl 5 will be easy to do and available to purchase by 2020.
- drcode 5y agoIt can't have a total "hard-stop" because otherwise it would break hard for a paper bag or some exhaust smoke.
- screye 5y agoDoes exhaust smoke consistently reflect lasers ? In my experience, a dense lidar will see a subset of the lasers go through such occlusions and get a 2nd return from the truly opaque object behind the smoke. LIDAR can usually distinguish translucent smoke from solid objects like bikes/pedestrians even before the ML algorithm kicks in. Paper bags are tricky, because a bag on the ground could just as likely be a solid object that the car should be stopping for. Stopping or slowing down for bags may be a good idea.
- p1necone 5y agoSurely you don't solve this problem by recognizing specific objects, you just identify "is there /anything/ in front of me except for road or vehicle travelling at a similar speed to me/within a certain distance of me" and stop if so.