4 ms·
If not “at fault”, everyone is probably doing something they could/should have done better or more safely. In this case, the pedestrian could have avoided cross
by skywhopper 3y ago
If not “at fault”, everyone is probably doing something they could/should have done better or more safely. In this case, the pedestrian could have avoided crossing against the light, and could have continued walking rather than stopping; the Nissan could have avoided the incident by noticing the pedestrian and stopping; the Cruise could have avoided its part of the incident by having more situational awareness, and knowing that when a pedestrian is acting strangely it should probably slow down, and when a pedestrian gets hit in the next lane, it should immediately stop.
All complex systems are in “failure mode” of some sort at all times. But complex systems that work have enough wiggle room and safety mechanisms that true failure doesn’t happen until there’s some criticality of overlapping errors.
Yes, there are some failure modes that are so devastating that everyone else could have been behaving perfectly and it would have made no difference, but likely many if not most traffic accidents are the confluence of multiple failures, even if most are minor and would never cause an accident on their own.