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I'm disappointed in all the folks immediately blaming the cyclist without further information, and I'm similarly disappointed in all the folks blaming Waymo for

I'm disappointed in all the folks immediately blaming the cyclist without further information, and I'm similarly disappointed in all the folks blaming Waymo for the same reason. But, unless they somehow have extra information we're not privy to, I'm much more disappointed in the S.F. Supervisor quoted in the article, Shamann Walton, for immediately going online to say "so much for safety." Us internet weenies are always going to have our hot takes, but someone in charge of the city has a responsibility to at least try to be better.

efitz 3y ago
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ehsankia 3y ago
I think more impressively, even in this seemingly worst case scenario where everything lined up as poorly as it could have, the car was still able to react quite aggressively and the situation ended only with minor scratches it seems? Honestly, if anything, this is probably proof that self-driving is the future, as I would bet any human would've most definitely done much worse in the same scenario.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  I wonder if a human driver would have (for better or worse) swerved to avoid hitting the cyclist. That is, the Waymo might be programmed to only execute certain types of evasive maneuvers, whereas a human would instinctively do other things as well. Of course, if there were someone in the vehicle's blind spot, it's possible this would have resulted in a worse accident, since there would have been no time for a human driver to double check.
  - petre 3y ago
    In a recent accident that happened in my country, a human driver swerved to avoid a cyclist that was quickly switching lanes without signaling in order to cross from one side to another. The swerving car went over the sidewalk and killed a pedestrian. You should draw your own conclusions.
    - viraptor 3y ago
      This is my pet peeve with people being so sure online about their abilities of avoiding things on the road. Yeah, maybe you could avoid it with your super human reflexes, but there physically no way you could check that side of your car, register what's there, decide whether you can move that way and then did it. The kneejerk avoidance reaction may be extremely dangerous on its own. (Also in Oz, rolling your car when you try to swerve to avoid a kangaroo is so common that you're normally taught to just break instead)
      - panopticon 3y ago
        I swerved into another lane to avoid another car cutting me off during rush hour once. It all happened so fast, and I will always remember how incredibly lucky I was that no one was in the lane I moved into.
      - cgriswald 3y ago
        Do people really not mentally track the vehicles around them? I remember in driver’s ed even before we were behind the wheel to have “exit strategies” for situations exactly like this. Cars don’t just appear magically next to you.
        viraptor 3y ago
        > Cars don’t just appear magically next to you. They don't, but: 1. Your perception is not perfect. 2. A truck passing you means there was a blind spot and you have no idea what was there. 3. There are areas with many lanes merging / splitting, where it takes most of your attention to know where you're going; little left to track everything around. Tracking your surrounding is great. Accepting that you're going to make mistakes, adjusting for that and also allowing assistive tech is even better.
        gnicholas 3y ago
        People try to, but are imperfect at doing so. For example, most people do not closely track what is happening 2 lanes away. But someone can move from your blind spot 2 lanes away into your blind spot right next to you. Also, if something potentially dangerous/important is happening to your left, you will focus your attention there and not be aware of things happening to your right, even if you normally would have seen those things had you been looking straight ahead. I try to know what is going on around me, for the reason you describe (exit strategies), but I'm aware that sometimes I simply do not know what is to my left — and would not want to swerve there. Having seen friends driving Teslas, I can see how the surround-view could be useful for situations like this. However, I have also seen that cars appear/vanish for no reason, and it is clearly not reliable at this point.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    Broadly speaking (and this is a very broad brush, details may differ), autonomous vehicles will resolve collision avoidance by doing something legal. Swerving is not legal and it's not legal because you might hit something you can't see. On the other hand, an autonomous vehicle maintains perpetual 360° situational awareness so it already knows whether it's safe to swerve.
    - lozenge 3y ago
      Can you provide a source that swerving to prevent a collision is not legal?
    - gnicholas 3y ago
      > Swerving is not legal and it's not legal because you might hit something you can't see. If I'm driving down the road and someone pushes a kid in front of my car, I'm very likely to swerve, even if I'm not 100% sure if there is someone next to me. If I hit a car next to me and cause damage/injure people, there is a good chance that a jury would find in my favor because a "reasonable person" (the relevant legal standard in a civil case) would seek to avoid the certain death of a faultless child, even if it means a chance of injury to passengers in a vehicle that might be nearby. I wouldn't swerve if I thought a bicyclist were there, but I would likely swerve into a vehicle, which affords occupants significant protection. And I certainly would not be found guilty of a crime ("beyond a reasonable doubt", the standard in a criminal trial) because it is not criminally negligent to swerve when faced with the certainty of killing a child. Under the "defense of self/others" doctrine, you can do many things that would normally be illegal, if you are doing them to prevent the imminent death of yourself or someone else. (These analyses are not super detailed, but IAAL.)
      - shadowgovt 3y ago
        AVs aren't doing near enough calculus to make a decision like that; they have obstacles and they avoid them. Their avoidance can allow for lane departure (that 360 situational awareness is handy), but they aren't going to solve a trolley problem in realtime if boxed in. The thing is... Neither are people. A kid darts out on front of you and you won't have time to make a conscious decision. The maneuver you make will be too fast for rational thought, and your brain will explain to itself why it did that later. ... Incidentally, this is one of the things that scares me about human drivers. Put a human on the stand to testify and most will say they never saw that kid, no matter what physical process happened to their eyes and neurons. I think most even actually believe it. In any case, I'm glad that in this incident they'll be able to do a full NHTSA workup, pull logs, and reprogram the machine to avoid an accident like this in the future. Can't do that to a human driver.
- zx8080 3y ago
  Thare's a, probably not very obvious, situation when human could have no such accident in the same scenario. At all. Preventing an accident does not leave any trace. No one knows about the scenario if there's no accident. How many similar (and others) accidents are being prevented by human drivers daily, and no one knows about them, at all? We just don't know. That's why I take any stats of "human vs AI" driving with a grain of salt.
  - CityOfThrowaway 3y ago
    We can compare this statistically by looking at accidents per 1,000,000 miles driven of autonomous cars vs humans. Over long mileage, the rate of prevented accidents shows up in the data as a lower overall accident rate. I don't have the stats at hand but Waymo does great on this stat. Now, that's not to say that Waymo would avoid any specific accident better than a human. But from a public health standpoint, that's not really the right way to think about it anyways.
    - talldatethrow 3y ago
      IMO these are a slightly fake stat. You're comparing to overall stats, that include the drunk, the high, the sleep deprived, and the crazy wild aggressive wreckless. If you compare to my mother driving, the injuries per mile are higher in autonomous. You can argue that I'm making an unfair distinction since those people exist, but I'd say the people driving under those conditions are commiting a crime and shouldn't be counted the same.
      - resolutebat 3y ago
        You're making a classic is-ought fallacy here. Drunk, high, sleep deprived or "crazy wild aggressive reckless" human drivers ought not to exist, but they do, and thus it's absolutely fair to compared autonomous drivers against them.
        eurleif 3y ago
        If GP's mother switches from driving for herself to having Waymo drive for her, her risk of injury will increase. Therefore, if her goal is to avoid injury, it would be counterproductive for her to make that switch. That conclusion does not require any is-ought fallacy.
- qwertox 3y ago
  Yet it makes me wonder how the car would react if it came to a stop on top of the leg of the cyclist or in some situation where a normal driver would notice that he should get into the car again and back up a couple of feet. I'm not against Waymo.
  - Mageek 3y ago
    My mom was hit by a driver when she was biking and fell with her arm in front of the wheel. The driver then decided to pull forward and drove over her arm. So humans don’t really solve that problem.
- smcl 3y ago
  Getting big "this is actually good for Bitcoin!" vibes from this. I don't think we can fairly assess who was at fault, given that none of us were there. But it is insane to just assume a manned vehicle would have fared worse, and declare it a victory for driverless cars.
dmix 3y ago
The supervisor is up for election in SF so probably trying to sound important or useful.
- orange_county 3y ago
  No he's not. He's termed out.
justinzollars 3y ago
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godelski 3y ago
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- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  I don't hate cyclists, I've used a bike as a primary form of transport for much of my life. But especially in the US, dangerous behavior from cyclists seems to be proportionally much more common than dangerous behavior by Waymos. So yeah, it's easy to believe that a cyclist just kind of blew the stop sign when they shouldn't have.
  - godelski 3y ago
    > behavior from cyclists seems to be proportionally much more common than dangerous behavior by Waymos I'm not trying to take any position to this notion. I don't know the facts. I only know that not coming to a complete stop (different from blowing throw an intersection!) does not equate to dangerous behavior. You'll find another link that shows evidence otherwise. "Stop-as-yield" laws would be worth looking into if you're interested.
    - TulliusCicero 3y ago
      I'm well aware of the Idaho stop, I'd advocated for it on many occasions. However, I'm also aware that a lot of cyclists don't 'yield' so much as 'continue at full speed through the 4-way stop sign'. So far, Waymo seems to have a culture of playing things very by the book and safely, or at least as safe as possible given the constraints of developing self-driving cars on public roads. I think it's very unlikely they'd lie, knowing that they'll have to hand over footage of the incident over to the authorities, and especially given what recently happened with Cruise semi-lying and being absolutely thrashed in the press because of it.
pb7 3y ago
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- godelski 3y ago
  > You must not live in SF if this is unexpected for you. OP didn't say surprised, they said disappointed. For example: I am not surprised that I burn my food because I left it in the oven too long, but I am disappointed that my food is ruined. Be careful not to conflate the two and impose beliefs on another person that they may or may not have. If you're talking politicians, I would say that such notions (pinning fictitious ideals to a person or group) are common tactics and this seems explicitly what you are upset about (as I think many are). So let's not engage in similar behavior, it only enables those tactics.
rahimnathwani 3y ago
Nothing should surprise you about Shamann Walton. This is the man who refused to adhere to the City Hall's security procedures (on camera) and allegedly threatened the person who asked him to comply: https://sfstandard.com/2022/08/05/video-supervisor-shamann-walton-sheriff-cadet-confrontation/ https://sfstandard.com/2022/08/05/video-supervisor-shamann-w... He also bought a home outside San Francisco, with a mortgage condition that says it must be his principal residence. But if doesn't live in SF, how can he represent the people of SF? https://susanreynolds.substack.com/p/where-does-shamann-walton-live https://susanreynolds.substack.com/p/where-does-shamann-walt...
- godelski 3y ago
  I'm not surprised by the content of your links, but I can say I'm disappointed. After all, surprise and disappointment are different things.
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    > After all, surprise and disappointment are different things. Hmmm... I think I gave it a honest try, but I'm still having trouble making that fit. I mean, both are when the unexpected occurs, one is just more-specific, where the unexpected leads to a negative emotional response. Perhaps shocked versus disappointed?
    - godelski 3y ago
      In a similar comment I gave an example and maybe that'll help. I can leave my food in the oven too long and I will not be surprised to find that it is burnt, but I will definitely be disappointment that I ruined my meal. I think this should clarify and why I was a bit snarky lol. While they often correlate they are not the same.
      - Terr_ 3y ago
        > I can leave my food in the oven too long and I will not be surprised to find that it is burnt, but I will definitely be disappointment that I ruined my meal. Wading deep into the philosophical weeds here, my instinct is saying that's not an apples-to-apples scenario, because each term is being used in connection to different sets of events. For example, "when I realized my alarm hadn't gone off" versus "when I got home and opened the oven door." Perhaps the easiest way to illustrate that is to imagine the opposite scenario, where all discoveries and all self-analysis occur at the same moment in time: 1. You ask someone else to bake a pie, let it cool, and deliver the result to you later in the day. 2. A few hours later, an opaque and airtight box arrives, on time. (No clues, no warnings.) You still anticipate it contains your favorite pie. 3. You open the box to discover a blackened stinky mess! 4. At this moment you are experience both surprise (in general) and also a specific sub-type of surprise which is disappointed surprise.
stevebmark 3y ago
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repeekad 3y ago
Based on waymos description, it seems pretty cut and dry that this was literally an “accident” where the biker maybe should have waited until the lane cleared and any car would have hit them in the same situation. If anything they can use this data to see how it maybe could be prevented in the future. Maybe waymo was still in the wrong for some reason? Sadly the article that goes in depth after we have more details and can more clearly report if waymo is to blame will likely not get nearly as much traction as this headline.
- incompatible 3y ago
  I'd like to see a video. If a car is turning, it would presumably be travelling slowly, and wouldn't be trying to cut right behind a passing truck when there's no visibility.
  - MobiusHorizons 3y ago
    I believe based on the description that no one was turning. The truck and the waymo vehicle were traveling parallel to one another, and the cyclist was at 90 degrees. If this is correct the “behind the truck” would mean occluded by the truck rather than following the rear of the truck. If that is true the cyclist and the waymo vehicle couldn’t see one another due to the truck, and both began entering the intersection. My guess is the cyclist was also unable to come to a stop when they saw the waymo vehicle. I think we would need to know a lot more to assign fault though.
- rob74 3y ago
  Maybe the accident could have been avoided completely if the Waymo car drove more defensively? The article doesn't mention how fast it was travelling before it applied the brakes, but maybe it would be better to drive extra slowly while it can't "see" to the left because of a truck when driving through an intersection? Or not proceed into the intersection at all before it has a clear field of view? Of course there is also a balance between safety and practicality here. Above a certain level of traffic congestion, I assume even Waymo cars have to be a bit "assertive", otherwise they would wait for hours at a stop sign...
teekert 3y ago
I’m happy that in the Netherlands it’s ALWAYS the car driver’s responsibility (she always pays).
- flakes 3y ago
  I don't agree with most laws that impose absolutes. The courts exist to deal with grey areas. A large number of pedestrians struck by cars each year (at least in North America), are themselves intoxicated, and not fit to walk along roadways. There are many cases where the driver should not reasonably be at fault for a pedestrians erratic behavior. There's also the "hit-to-kill" phenomenon in China, where it can be financially devastating to leave a person living with significant injuries, but affordable if you had simply killed them (50K USD vs 1M over a lifetime). In extremely sad circumstances, this has motivated people to hit the victim multiple times.
  - teekert 3y ago
    You mean laws that forbid pedestrians from crossing roads? It’s just a matter of where you put your priorities. Here we prioritize our bike based transportation. Drivers just have to be careful, also insurance is obligatory so drivers don’t really feel it financially. They just pay collectively for all the other traffic participants they hit. We have a very different system, nobody goes bankrupt from causing an accident or from healthcare related costs.
    - zilti 3y ago
      I am a cyclist myself, and let me tell you... cyclists are the fucking worst. Many of them drive so recklessly, like going full-speed through an intersection while their traffic light is red. There is just no way in many cases for a car driver to avoid hitting such idiots, no matter how much attention they pay. Neither cars nor bicycles can just stop on a whim, they need a couple meters to do so.
      - teekert 3y ago
        That is a US perspective. We don't have "cyclists" everybody uses a bike from time to time, our infrastructure is build for it [0], and when you get your driver’s license your learn how to deal with it. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynwMN3Z9Og8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynwMN3Z9Og8
hot_gril 3y ago
Maybe "so much for safety" refers to the cyclist turning left without looking.
- SllX 3y ago
  I appreciate your optimism.
apapapa 3y ago
I'm disappointed with all the folks like you who blame no one but an SF employee
CalRobert 3y ago
As somebody who uses a bike as primary mode of transport for myself and my entire family, it's pretty normal for American officials to immediately blame people on bikes for getting killed. I would be thrilled to see them be as concerned about humans killing people with cars as about computers doing it. Honestly I'd feel much safer if all cars were not driven by humans.
infecto 3y ago
I was struck by that supervisor comment too. I don’t live there anymore but when I did that was always the looming issue.
deleted 3y ago
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efitz 3y ago

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ehsankia 3y ago

I think more impressively, even in this seemingly worst case scenario where everything lined up as poorly as it could have, the car was still able to react quite aggressively and the situation ended only with minor scratches it seems? Honestly, if anything, this is probably proof that self-driving is the future, as I would bet any human would've most definitely done much worse in the same scenario.

gnicholas 3y ago
I wonder if a human driver would have (for better or worse) swerved to avoid hitting the cyclist. That is, the Waymo might be programmed to only execute certain types of evasive maneuvers, whereas a human would instinctively do other things as well. Of course, if there were someone in the vehicle's blind spot, it's possible this would have resulted in a worse accident, since there would have been no time for a human driver to double check.
- petre 3y ago
  In a recent accident that happened in my country, a human driver swerved to avoid a cyclist that was quickly switching lanes without signaling in order to cross from one side to another. The swerving car went over the sidewalk and killed a pedestrian. You should draw your own conclusions.
  - viraptor 3y ago
    This is my pet peeve with people being so sure online about their abilities of avoiding things on the road. Yeah, maybe you could avoid it with your super human reflexes, but there physically no way you could check that side of your car, register what's there, decide whether you can move that way and then did it. The kneejerk avoidance reaction may be extremely dangerous on its own. (Also in Oz, rolling your car when you try to swerve to avoid a kangaroo is so common that you're normally taught to just break instead)
    - panopticon 3y ago
      I swerved into another lane to avoid another car cutting me off during rush hour once. It all happened so fast, and I will always remember how incredibly lucky I was that no one was in the lane I moved into.
    - cgriswald 3y ago
      Do people really not mentally track the vehicles around them? I remember in driver’s ed even before we were behind the wheel to have “exit strategies” for situations exactly like this. Cars don’t just appear magically next to you.
      - viraptor 3y ago
        > Cars don’t just appear magically next to you. They don't, but: 1. Your perception is not perfect. 2. A truck passing you means there was a blind spot and you have no idea what was there. 3. There are areas with many lanes merging / splitting, where it takes most of your attention to know where you're going; little left to track everything around. Tracking your surrounding is great. Accepting that you're going to make mistakes, adjusting for that and also allowing assistive tech is even better.
      - gnicholas 3y ago
        People try to, but are imperfect at doing so. For example, most people do not closely track what is happening 2 lanes away. But someone can move from your blind spot 2 lanes away into your blind spot right next to you. Also, if something potentially dangerous/important is happening to your left, you will focus your attention there and not be aware of things happening to your right, even if you normally would have seen those things had you been looking straight ahead. I try to know what is going on around me, for the reason you describe (exit strategies), but I'm aware that sometimes I simply do not know what is to my left — and would not want to swerve there. Having seen friends driving Teslas, I can see how the surround-view could be useful for situations like this. However, I have also seen that cars appear/vanish for no reason, and it is clearly not reliable at this point.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  Broadly speaking (and this is a very broad brush, details may differ), autonomous vehicles will resolve collision avoidance by doing something legal. Swerving is not legal and it's not legal because you might hit something you can't see. On the other hand, an autonomous vehicle maintains perpetual 360° situational awareness so it already knows whether it's safe to swerve.
  - lozenge 3y ago
    Can you provide a source that swerving to prevent a collision is not legal?
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    > Swerving is not legal and it's not legal because you might hit something you can't see. If I'm driving down the road and someone pushes a kid in front of my car, I'm very likely to swerve, even if I'm not 100% sure if there is someone next to me. If I hit a car next to me and cause damage/injure people, there is a good chance that a jury would find in my favor because a "reasonable person" (the relevant legal standard in a civil case) would seek to avoid the certain death of a faultless child, even if it means a chance of injury to passengers in a vehicle that might be nearby. I wouldn't swerve if I thought a bicyclist were there, but I would likely swerve into a vehicle, which affords occupants significant protection. And I certainly would not be found guilty of a crime ("beyond a reasonable doubt", the standard in a criminal trial) because it is not criminally negligent to swerve when faced with the certainty of killing a child. Under the "defense of self/others" doctrine, you can do many things that would normally be illegal, if you are doing them to prevent the imminent death of yourself or someone else. (These analyses are not super detailed, but IAAL.)
    - shadowgovt 3y ago
      AVs aren't doing near enough calculus to make a decision like that; they have obstacles and they avoid them. Their avoidance can allow for lane departure (that 360 situational awareness is handy), but they aren't going to solve a trolley problem in realtime if boxed in. The thing is... Neither are people. A kid darts out on front of you and you won't have time to make a conscious decision. The maneuver you make will be too fast for rational thought, and your brain will explain to itself why it did that later. ... Incidentally, this is one of the things that scares me about human drivers. Put a human on the stand to testify and most will say they never saw that kid, no matter what physical process happened to their eyes and neurons. I think most even actually believe it. In any case, I'm glad that in this incident they'll be able to do a full NHTSA workup, pull logs, and reprogram the machine to avoid an accident like this in the future. Can't do that to a human driver.
zx8080 3y ago
Thare's a, probably not very obvious, situation when human could have no such accident in the same scenario. At all. Preventing an accident does not leave any trace. No one knows about the scenario if there's no accident. How many similar (and others) accidents are being prevented by human drivers daily, and no one knows about them, at all? We just don't know. That's why I take any stats of "human vs AI" driving with a grain of salt.
- CityOfThrowaway 3y ago
  We can compare this statistically by looking at accidents per 1,000,000 miles driven of autonomous cars vs humans. Over long mileage, the rate of prevented accidents shows up in the data as a lower overall accident rate. I don't have the stats at hand but Waymo does great on this stat. Now, that's not to say that Waymo would avoid any specific accident better than a human. But from a public health standpoint, that's not really the right way to think about it anyways.
  - talldatethrow 3y ago
    IMO these are a slightly fake stat. You're comparing to overall stats, that include the drunk, the high, the sleep deprived, and the crazy wild aggressive wreckless. If you compare to my mother driving, the injuries per mile are higher in autonomous. You can argue that I'm making an unfair distinction since those people exist, but I'd say the people driving under those conditions are commiting a crime and shouldn't be counted the same.
    - resolutebat 3y ago
      You're making a classic is-ought fallacy here. Drunk, high, sleep deprived or "crazy wild aggressive reckless" human drivers ought not to exist, but they do, and thus it's absolutely fair to compared autonomous drivers against them.
      - eurleif 3y ago
        If GP's mother switches from driving for herself to having Waymo drive for her, her risk of injury will increase. Therefore, if her goal is to avoid injury, it would be counterproductive for her to make that switch. That conclusion does not require any is-ought fallacy.
qwertox 3y ago
Yet it makes me wonder how the car would react if it came to a stop on top of the leg of the cyclist or in some situation where a normal driver would notice that he should get into the car again and back up a couple of feet. I'm not against Waymo.
- Mageek 3y ago
  My mom was hit by a driver when she was biking and fell with her arm in front of the wheel. The driver then decided to pull forward and drove over her arm. So humans don’t really solve that problem.
smcl 3y ago
Getting big "this is actually good for Bitcoin!" vibes from this. I don't think we can fairly assess who was at fault, given that none of us were there. But it is insane to just assume a manned vehicle would have fared worse, and declare it a victory for driverless cars.

dmix 3y ago

The supervisor is up for election in SF so probably trying to sound important or useful.

orange_county 3y ago
No he's not. He's termed out.

justinzollars 3y ago

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godelski 3y ago

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TulliusCicero 3y ago
I don't hate cyclists, I've used a bike as a primary form of transport for much of my life. But especially in the US, dangerous behavior from cyclists seems to be proportionally much more common than dangerous behavior by Waymos. So yeah, it's easy to believe that a cyclist just kind of blew the stop sign when they shouldn't have.
- godelski 3y ago
  > behavior from cyclists seems to be proportionally much more common than dangerous behavior by Waymos I'm not trying to take any position to this notion. I don't know the facts. I only know that not coming to a complete stop (different from blowing throw an intersection!) does not equate to dangerous behavior. You'll find another link that shows evidence otherwise. "Stop-as-yield" laws would be worth looking into if you're interested.
  - TulliusCicero 3y ago
    I'm well aware of the Idaho stop, I'd advocated for it on many occasions. However, I'm also aware that a lot of cyclists don't 'yield' so much as 'continue at full speed through the 4-way stop sign'. So far, Waymo seems to have a culture of playing things very by the book and safely, or at least as safe as possible given the constraints of developing self-driving cars on public roads. I think it's very unlikely they'd lie, knowing that they'll have to hand over footage of the incident over to the authorities, and especially given what recently happened with Cruise semi-lying and being absolutely thrashed in the press because of it.

pb7 3y ago

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godelski 3y ago
> You must not live in SF if this is unexpected for you. OP didn't say surprised, they said disappointed. For example: I am not surprised that I burn my food because I left it in the oven too long, but I am disappointed that my food is ruined. Be careful not to conflate the two and impose beliefs on another person that they may or may not have. If you're talking politicians, I would say that such notions (pinning fictitious ideals to a person or group) are common tactics and this seems explicitly what you are upset about (as I think many are). So let's not engage in similar behavior, it only enables those tactics.

rahimnathwani 3y ago

Nothing should surprise you about Shamann Walton. This is the man who refused to adhere to the City Hall's security procedures (on camera) and allegedly threatened the person who asked him to comply: https://sfstandard.com/2022/08/05/video-supervisor-shamann-walton-sheriff-cadet-confrontation/ https://sfstandard.com/2022/08/05/video-supervisor-shamann-w... He also bought a home outside San Francisco, with a mortgage condition that says it must be his principal residence. But if doesn't live in SF, how can he represent the people of SF? https://susanreynolds.substack.com/p/where-does-shamann-walton-live https://susanreynolds.substack.com/p/where-does-shamann-walt...

godelski 3y ago
I'm not surprised by the content of your links, but I can say I'm disappointed. After all, surprise and disappointment are different things.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  > After all, surprise and disappointment are different things. Hmmm... I think I gave it a honest try, but I'm still having trouble making that fit. I mean, both are when the unexpected occurs, one is just more-specific, where the unexpected leads to a negative emotional response. Perhaps shocked versus disappointed?
  - godelski 3y ago
    In a similar comment I gave an example and maybe that'll help. I can leave my food in the oven too long and I will not be surprised to find that it is burnt, but I will definitely be disappointment that I ruined my meal. I think this should clarify and why I was a bit snarky lol. While they often correlate they are not the same.
    - Terr_ 3y ago
      > I can leave my food in the oven too long and I will not be surprised to find that it is burnt, but I will definitely be disappointment that I ruined my meal. Wading deep into the philosophical weeds here, my instinct is saying that's not an apples-to-apples scenario, because each term is being used in connection to different sets of events. For example, "when I realized my alarm hadn't gone off" versus "when I got home and opened the oven door." Perhaps the easiest way to illustrate that is to imagine the opposite scenario, where all discoveries and all self-analysis occur at the same moment in time: 1. You ask someone else to bake a pie, let it cool, and deliver the result to you later in the day. 2. A few hours later, an opaque and airtight box arrives, on time. (No clues, no warnings.) You still anticipate it contains your favorite pie. 3. You open the box to discover a blackened stinky mess! 4. At this moment you are experience both surprise (in general) and also a specific sub-type of surprise which is disappointed surprise.

stevebmark 3y ago

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repeekad 3y ago

Based on waymos description, it seems pretty cut and dry that this was literally an “accident” where the biker maybe should have waited until the lane cleared and any car would have hit them in the same situation. If anything they can use this data to see how it maybe could be prevented in the future. Maybe waymo was still in the wrong for some reason? Sadly the article that goes in depth after we have more details and can more clearly report if waymo is to blame will likely not get nearly as much traction as this headline.

incompatible 3y ago
I'd like to see a video. If a car is turning, it would presumably be travelling slowly, and wouldn't be trying to cut right behind a passing truck when there's no visibility.
- MobiusHorizons 3y ago
  I believe based on the description that no one was turning. The truck and the waymo vehicle were traveling parallel to one another, and the cyclist was at 90 degrees. If this is correct the “behind the truck” would mean occluded by the truck rather than following the rear of the truck. If that is true the cyclist and the waymo vehicle couldn’t see one another due to the truck, and both began entering the intersection. My guess is the cyclist was also unable to come to a stop when they saw the waymo vehicle. I think we would need to know a lot more to assign fault though.
rob74 3y ago
Maybe the accident could have been avoided completely if the Waymo car drove more defensively? The article doesn't mention how fast it was travelling before it applied the brakes, but maybe it would be better to drive extra slowly while it can't "see" to the left because of a truck when driving through an intersection? Or not proceed into the intersection at all before it has a clear field of view? Of course there is also a balance between safety and practicality here. Above a certain level of traffic congestion, I assume even Waymo cars have to be a bit "assertive", otherwise they would wait for hours at a stop sign...

teekert 3y ago

I’m happy that in the Netherlands it’s ALWAYS the car driver’s responsibility (she always pays).

flakes 3y ago
I don't agree with most laws that impose absolutes. The courts exist to deal with grey areas. A large number of pedestrians struck by cars each year (at least in North America), are themselves intoxicated, and not fit to walk along roadways. There are many cases where the driver should not reasonably be at fault for a pedestrians erratic behavior. There's also the "hit-to-kill" phenomenon in China, where it can be financially devastating to leave a person living with significant injuries, but affordable if you had simply killed them (50K USD vs 1M over a lifetime). In extremely sad circumstances, this has motivated people to hit the victim multiple times.
- teekert 3y ago
  You mean laws that forbid pedestrians from crossing roads? It’s just a matter of where you put your priorities. Here we prioritize our bike based transportation. Drivers just have to be careful, also insurance is obligatory so drivers don’t really feel it financially. They just pay collectively for all the other traffic participants they hit. We have a very different system, nobody goes bankrupt from causing an accident or from healthcare related costs.
  - zilti 3y ago
    I am a cyclist myself, and let me tell you... cyclists are the fucking worst. Many of them drive so recklessly, like going full-speed through an intersection while their traffic light is red. There is just no way in many cases for a car driver to avoid hitting such idiots, no matter how much attention they pay. Neither cars nor bicycles can just stop on a whim, they need a couple meters to do so.
    - teekert 3y ago
      That is a US perspective. We don't have "cyclists" everybody uses a bike from time to time, our infrastructure is build for it [0], and when you get your driver’s license your learn how to deal with it. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynwMN3Z9Og8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynwMN3Z9Og8

hot_gril 3y ago

Maybe "so much for safety" refers to the cyclist turning left without looking.

SllX 3y ago
I appreciate your optimism.

apapapa 3y ago

I'm disappointed with all the folks like you who blame no one but an SF employee

CalRobert 3y ago

As somebody who uses a bike as primary mode of transport for myself and my entire family, it's pretty normal for American officials to immediately blame people on bikes for getting killed. I would be thrilled to see them be as concerned about humans killing people with cars as about computers doing it. Honestly I'd feel much safer if all cars were not driven by humans.

infecto 3y ago

I was struck by that supervisor comment too. I don’t live there anymore but when I did that was always the looming issue.

deleted 3y ago

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