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If Waymo is truly as much better than Cruise as the statistics claim, this is a perfect opportunity to release the full video of the incident. Most collisions a
by xianshou 3y ago
If Waymo is truly as much better than Cruise as the statistics claim, this is a perfect opportunity to release the full video of the incident. Most collisions are avoidable, but a few are the result of a perfect storm of conditions that would be difficult to navigate for even the most skilled human driver. To know whether the truck's occlusion of the cyclist is one of those cases requires the actual footage.
- fastball 3y agoYes, they definitely have full footage. I would appreciate seeing it.
- muglug 3y ago> this is a perfect opportunity to release the full video of the incident I hope they’ve released the full video to investigators, but they’re in a tight spot — SF city government is looking for reasons to come down harshly on the company, and trying to sway public opinion ahead of the city’s verdict won’t help.
- PeterisP 3y agoWhy wouldn't it help? I think entirely the opposite, if they believe that SF city government has political reasons to misinterpret the evidence, then putting the evidence to the general public can act as a check to the SF government, preventing them from any shenanigans asserting that the video shows something other than most members of the public saw there.
- jtriangle 3y agoOnly way that happens is if the cyclist signs a boatload of paperwork to waive his right to litigation. And on top of that, I'm far less interested in the footage than I am the telemetry. What was the state of the gas and brake, what was the steering angle, how long was it from detection to action. Those things concretely answer the question of "would a human have done better or worse in this situation?", which is ultimately the only question that matters.
- bagels 3y agoIt would have to be provided if the cyclist sues Waymo and reaches discovery.
- lmm 3y ago> And on top of that, I'm far less interested in the footage than I am the telemetry. What was the state of the gas and brake, what was the steering angle, how long was it from detection to action. Those things concretely answer the question of "would a human have done better or worse in this situation?" You absolutely cannot answer that question without looking at the video and considering how easy or hard it would have been for a human to detect (or suspect) the cyclist in that situation.
- jtriangle 3y agoI don't think you can "absolutely" answer the question with the information that, at least could be, available. You can certainly form an opinion that's closer to agreeing with reality however, which is mostly what I'm interested in.
- Terr_ 3y ago> I'm far less interested in the footage than I am the telemetry [...] how long was it from detection to action It sounds like you're making a deeply unreasonable assumption that no human could have detected or anticipated the cyclist faster than the computer did. Given the current state of the art, those times are frequently not the same, and the difference cannot be answered without seeing the human-consumable video footage of a prospective human driver.
- hx8 3y agoIf the footage is not released to the public I'm going to assume it makes Waymo look bad.
- belltaco 3y agoThey did say that the Waymo only braked after the cyclist was 'fully visible'. They won't be releasing the footage on their own.
- mint2 3y agoYeah that was an interesting weasel word. It raised a lot of questions.
- ikiris 3y agoBased on actual experience driving and living in SF, I just assume any cyclist involved in an accident was ignoring the traffic laws and found out why they exist the hard way.
- babl-yc 3y agoI agree it would be good to share video if possible, but Waymo cannot realistically expect that there will never be an accident where they look bad. There are 43,000 US road deaths per year. If all driving was autonomous, even if autonomous driving was 100x safer than humans, that would still be 430 deaths per year. And some of those accidents will be failures that a human would not make (sensor failure, bad software update, edge cases). What you _can't_ do is what Cruise did and hide evidence from the public and regulators fearing that the truth would impact your business.
- thereisnospork 3y agoSeriously -- automated cars are going to kill a lot of people[0] yet by every objective measure that is a good thing. There's a cognitive dissonance here that needs to be overcome else society will pay to the tune of tens of thousands of lives per year. [0]captured in multi-angle 4k, replete with gore and blood splatter. leaked to the press, compiled into tic Tok reaction videos, etc.
- aaomidi 3y agoThis is one of those things that should be legally required tbh.
- CobrastanJorji 3y agoWell, maybe. It should definitely be required that they turn any accident records over to regulators, other parties in the accident, and police. But to the public? Imagine if it were gruesome. I doubt I'd appreciate video of a family member violently dying going viral.
- ra7 3y agoAny accident involving a self driving car is already reported to regulators (CA DMV and NHTSA). It’s required by law. These records end up in a public database. What’s not public is the video footage. It’s still shown to the regulators when they want to examine, it’s just not publicly released.
- 1024core 3y agoWhat about the privacy of the bicyclist? What if it was his/her mistake and they don't want to be ridiculed by the entire world?
- NewJazz 3y agoYou can blur their face?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- godelski 3y agoYou can still be identified by things other than your face.
- userbinator 3y agoThere is no expectation of privacy with what happens on a public road. See all the dashcam videos on YouTube.
- godelski 3y ago> There is no expectation of privacy with what happens on a public road. There's a common misconception that there is not an expectation of privacy in public but this is not supported by the law. The notion does not help people but does help those that wish to surveil. Be careful with this claim.
- BHSPitMonkey 3y agoThe question isn't about the cyclist asserting a right to privacy, it's about whether it's a decent thing for Waymo to do regardless. There are more downsides than upsides (to the company) if they did do a public release of footage.
- 1024core 3y agoCounter: see all the blurring in Google Maps Streetview. IIRC they were sued about identifying people and car plates.
- ra7 3y agoThey have no reason to release it to the public. They don’t want to set a precedent. They will show the video to the regulators (CA DMV) and if they’re not happy, they will take action. It’s regulation working as intended.
- fprog 3y agoPublic trust is a pretty good reason.
- ra7 3y agoThere’s enough to establish public trust with their voluntary release of safety data and regulators closely overseeing their operations. Setting a precedent for releasing footage means fault is automatically assumed when they don’t voluntarily release it. It’s a problem if they’re not even releasing it to the regulators, but that’s not happening here.
- godelski 3y agoThis sounds like a bad idea. I doubt people will respond with proper context, especially given that it will still be lacking in information. We already see people here making assumptions without sufficient evidence. Anything with cars and cyclists is always heated and we just get a lot of biases. I think it is better that we distinguish that this type of event does not actually inform us about the safety of driverless cars nor does it provide enough information to adequately update our positions in either direction. It is void of so much context that it is essentially just noise. These things are hard to measure and even harder to make accurate decisions on. In an extreme case, it is possible for driverless cars to be "better than humans" at driving in the notion of accidents per mile (even normalized) while also being "worse than humans" in the notion of striking cyclists or pedestrians. "Accidents per mile" marginalizes the type of accident, but this would be important information as to making effective policy about when and where a driverless car can deploy (e.g. on average fewer accidents but most miles are on the highways. If there's a high rate of failure in detecting children in suburban settings, I sure wouldn't want that car driving in residential areas. The nuance matters). I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of us here on HN have a poor concept as to what the actual nuanced data says here and personally I feel like a video would only further sensationalize the event. I would not be surprised if a video were released which showed that Waymo could have not performed any better (without x-ray vision or omniscience) yet it also be used to further cases against them. I'm sure most people would make an accurate and reasonable conclusion upon seeing the video, but I still don't have faith that that means it wouldn't end up being sensationalized.
- ExoticPearTree 3y ago> This sounds like a bad idea. I doubt people will respond with proper context, especially given that it will still be lacking in information. Waymo has 360 degrees cameras. There's absolutely no lack of context if the video starts 2-3 minutes before the incident and stops when everything was sorted out at the scene. Bonus points if it has audio also.
- ragazzina 3y agoThe video would be cut to only show the most dramatic moment a minute after released, and it would be the shorter version to become popular.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoThe public are not entitled to that video. Regulators and engineers, sure, but to release it to the armchair uninformed public because of their morbid curiosity does nothing to advance safety engineering.