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Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica
- BugsJustFindMe 9mo agoFrom the Waymo blog... > the pedestrian suddenly entered the roadway from behind a tall SUV, moving directly into our vehicle's path. Our technology immediately detected the individual as soon as they began to emerge from behind the stopped vehicle. The Waymo Driver braked hard, reducing speed from approximately 17 mph to under 6 mph before contact was made. > Following contact, the pedestrian stood up immediately, walked to the sidewalk, and we called 911. The vehicle remained stopped, moved to the side of the road, and stayed there until law enforcement cleared the vehicle to leave the scene. > Following the event, we voluntarily contacted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that same day. I honestly cannot imagine a better outcome or handling of the situation.
- behringer 9mo agoWell done waymo!
- anovikov 9mo agoMost humans in that situation won't have reaction speed to do shit about it and it could result in a severe injury or death.
- jayd16 9mo agoHumans are not going to win on reaction time but prevention is arguably much more important.
- lokar 9mo agoHow would standard automatic breaking (standard in some brands) have performed here?
- gensym 9mo agoYeah. I'm a stickler for accountability falling on drivers, but this really can be an impossible scenario to avoid. I've hit someone on my bike in the exact same circumstance - I was in the bike lane between the parked cars and moving traffic, and someone stepped out between parked vehicles without looking. I had nowhere to swerve, so squeezed my brakes, but could not come to a complete stop. Fortunately, I was going slow enough that no one was injured or even knocked over, but I'm convinced that was the best I could have done in that scenario. The road design there was the real problem, combined with the size and shape of modern vehicles that impede visibility.
- pastage 9mo agoBuilding on my own experience I think you have to own that if you crash with someone you made a mistake. I do agree that car and road design for bicycles(?) makes it almost impossible to move around if you do not risk things like that.
- jobs_throwaway 9mo agoYup. And to add > Waymo said in its blog post that its “peer-reviewed model” shows a “fully attentive human driver in this same situation would have made contact with the pedestrian at approximately 14 mph.” It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse. With a distracted driver (a huge portion of human drivers) it could've been catastrophic.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- chaboud 9mo agoPossibly, but Waymos have recently been much more aggressive about blowing through situations where human drivers can (and generally do) slow down. As a motorcyclist, I've had some close calls with Waymos driving on the wrong side of the road recently, and I had a Waymo cut in front of my car at a one-way stop (t intersection) recently when it had been tangled up with a Rivian trying to turn into the narrow street it was coming out of. I had to ABS brake to avoid an accident. Most human drivers (not all) know to nose out carefully rather than to gun it in that situation. So, while I'm very supportive of where Waymo is trying to go for transport, we should be constructively critical and not just assume that humans would have been in the same situation if driving defensively.
- veltas 9mo agoAbsolutely, I can tell you right now that many human drivers are probably safer than the Waymo, because they would have slowed down even more and/or stayed further from the parked cars outside a school; they might have even seen the kid earlier in e.g. a reflection than the Waymo could see.
- onetokeoverthe 9mo ago[dead]
- mlyle 9mo agoIt seems it was driving pretty slow (17MPH) and they do tend to put in a pretty big gap to the right side when they can. There are kinds of human sensing that are better when humans are maximally attentive (seeing through windows/reflections). But there's also the seeing-in-all-directions, radar, superhuman reaction time, etc, on the side of the Waymo.
- random_duck 9mo agoThey they are being very transparent about it.
- direwolf20 9mo agoAs every company should, when they have a success. Are they also as transparent about their failures?
- voidUpdate 9mo agoIs this a success? There was still an incident. I'd argue this was them being transparent about a failure
- direwolf20 9mo agoThey handled an unpredictable emergency situation better than any human driver.
- mitthrowaway2 9mo agoWas it unpredictable? They drove past a blind corner (parked SUV) in a school zone. I'm constantly slowing down in these situations as I expect someone might run out at any second. Waymo seemed to default to the view that if it can't see anyone then nobody is there.
- TeMPOraL 9mo agoBeing transparent about such incidents is also what stops them from potentially becoming a business/industry-killing failures. They're doing the right thing here, but they also surely realize how much worse it would be if they tried to deny or downplay it.
- xnx 9mo ago> they also surely realize how much worse it would be if they tried to deny or downplay it. Indeed. Waymo is a much more thoughtful and responsible company than Cruise, Uber, or Tesla. "Cruise admits to criminal cover-up of pedestrian dragging in SF, will pay $500K penalty" https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/cruise-fine-criminal-cover-up-19920343.php https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/cruise-fine-criminal-cov...
- veltas 9mo agoEDIT: replies say I'm misremembering, disregard.
- chaboud 9mo agoThat was Cruise, and that was fixed by Cruise ceasing operations.
- seanmcdirmid 9mo agoI don’t think that was Waymo right? Cruise is already wound down as far as I know.
- dyauspitr 9mo agoIt’s great handling of the situation. They should release a video as well.
- dust42 9mo agoIndeed. Rather than having the company telling me that they did great I'd rather make up my own mind and watch the video.
- rdudek 9mo agoI honestly think that Waymo's reaction was spot on. I drop off and pick up my kid from school every day. The parking lots can be a bit of a messy wild west. My biggest concern is the size of cars especially those huge SUV or pickup trucks that have big covers on the back. You can't see anything incoming unless you stick your head out.
- scarmig 9mo agoIt depends on the situation, and we need more data/video. But if there are a bunch of children milling about an elementary school in a chaotic situation with lots of double parking, 17 mph is too fast, and the Waymo should have been driving more conservatively.
- drcongo 9mo agoWhoa! You're allowed to double park outside a school over there?!
- recursive 9mo agoWait, is double parking allowed anywhere?
- something765478 9mo agoPretty common at airports; of course, the `parking` only lasts a few minutes at most.
- acdha 9mo agoIt’s common but almost always illegal based on the posted signage.
- JBlue42 9mo agoYes, please visit LA. Edit: Not 'allowed' but people do it constantly. Regular drivers, delivery drivers, city workers, construction trucks, etc. There may be laws but very little enforcement.
- dboreham 9mo agoPeople loitering in their cars waiting for a space to pick up their kid. So not actually parked.
- trollbridge 9mo agoMore like standing, and quite common in a school zone. I would not race at 17 MPH through such an area. Of course, Waymo will find a way to describe themselves as the heroes of this situation.
- calchris42 9mo agoAV’s with enough sensing are generally quite good at stopping quickly. It is usually the behavior prior to the critical encounter that has room for improvement. The question will be whether 17 mph was a reasonably cautious speed for this specific scenario. Many school zones have 15 mph limits and when there are kids about people may go even slower. At the same time, the general rule in CA for school zone is 25 mph. Clearly the car had some level of caution which is good.
- dcanelhas 9mo agoIt does sound like a good outcome for automation. Though I suppose an investigation into the matter would arguably have to look at whether a competent human driver would be driving at 17mph (27km/h) under those circumstances to begin with, rather than just comparing the relative reaction speeds, taking the hazardous situation for granted. What I would like to see is a full-scale vehicle simulator where humans are tested against virtual scenarios that faithfully recreate autonomous driving accidents to see how "most people" would have acted in the minutes leading up to the event as well as the accident itself
- aaomidi 9mo ago17 mph is pretty slow unless it’s a school zone
- dcanelhas 9mo agoIndeed, 15 or 25 mph (24 or 40 km/h) are the speed limits in school zones (when in effect) in CA, for reference. But depending on the general movement and density and category of pedestrians around the road it could be practically reckless to drive that fast (or slow).
- Teknoman117 9mo agoIf my experience driving through a school zone on my way to work is anything to go off of, I rarely see people actually respecting it. 17 mph would be a major improvement over what I'm used to seeing.
- JBlue42 9mo ago>Though I suppose an investigation into the matter would arguably have to look at whether a competent human driver would be driving at 17mph (27km/h) under those circumstances to begin with, rather than just comparing the relative reaction speeds, taking the hazardous situation for granted. Sure but also throw in whether that driver is staring at their phone, distracting by something else, etc. I have been a skeptic of all this stuff for a while but riding in a Waymo in heavy fog changed my mind when questioning how well I or another driver would've done at that time of day and with those conditions.
- croes 9mo agoWe should take their reporting with grain of salt and wait for official results
- lostlogin 9mo ago> I honestly cannot imagine a better outcome or handling of the situation. If it can yell at the kid and send a grumpy email to the parents and school, the automation is complete.
- mholt 9mo agoThe autonomous vehicle should know what it can't know, like children coming out from behind obstructions. Humans have this intuitive sense. Apparently autonomous systems do not, and do not drive carefully, or slower, or give more space, in those situations. Does it know that it's in a school zone? (Hopefully.) Does it know that school is starting or getting out? (Probably not.) Should it? (Absolutely yes.) This is the fault of the software and company implementing it.
- BugsJustFindMe 9mo ago> Humans have this intuitive sense. Some do, some of the time. I'm always surprised by how much credence other people give to the idea that humans aren't on average very bad at things, including perception.
- navigate8310 9mo agoIt's an autonomous vehicle fitted with a gazillion of sensors and data to drive itself. We can expect better from it than humans.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- BugsJustFindMe 9mo agoI'm not sure what your point is here since this was better than many humans. Was it better than all humans? No. But there also isn't a single human who's better than all humans.
- recursive 9mo agoWhat's the success rate of this intuitive sense that humans have? Intuitions are wrong frequently.
- alphazard 9mo agoI'm picturing a 10 second clip showing a child with a green box drawn around them, and position of gas and brake, updating with superhuman reactions. That would be the best possible marketing that any of these self driving companies could hope for, and Waymo probably now has such a video sitting somewhere.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- WheatMillington 9mo agoI dont think Waymo is interested in using a video of their car striking a child as marketing.
- fragmede 9mo agoIt depends on the video. What they should do is arrange for the video to get leaked and let the Internet courts argue about it, and then based on the Internet verdict, come out and claim it's real and they fired somebody for leaking it, or it's AI generated. Love him or hate him, releasing the video is something I can see Elon doing because assuming a human driver would have done worse, it speaks for itself. Release a web video game where the child sometimes jumps out in front of the car, and see how fast humans respond like the "land Starship" game. Assuming humans would do worse, that is. If the child was clearly visible through the car or some how else avoidable by humans, then I'd be hiding the video too.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- barbazoo 9mo agoFor me it would be interesting to know if 17 mi/h was a reasonable speed to be driving in this environment under these conditions to begin with. In my school zones that's already close to the maximum speed allowed. What was the weather, were there cars parked which would make a defensive driver slow down even more?
- boh 9mo agoSo the TechCrunch headline should be "Waymo hits child better than a human driver would"? Not sure if the details reflect how the general public actually interprets this story (see the actual TC headline for exhibit A).
- moomoo11 9mo agoThe general public is stupid. That’s why they purchase goods and services (from others) and then cry about things they don’t and probably never will understand. And why they can be ignored and just fed some slop to feel better. I could lie but that’s the cold truth. Edit: I'm not sure if the repliers are being dense (highly likely), or you just skipped over context (you can click the "context" link if you're new here) > So the TechCrunch headline should be "Waymo hits child better than a human driver would"? Not sure if the details reflect how the general public actually interprets this story (see the actual TC headline for exhibit A). That is the general public sentiment I was referring to.
- boh 9mo agoSo if they were 100% self-sufficient and understood everything they'd be smart enough to interpret a child being hit at 6 mph as progress? Fun how "general public" is always a "they" vs "you".
- moomoo11 9mo agoThat's impossible though. And you and I are part of the general public as well, for things we don't understand. It isn't me vs them. It is just me being self-aware. Clearly, you had a problem with what I said so I must have struck a nerve. Welcome to the real world bro.
- butlike 9mo agoYour comment sounds like subconsciously you're trying to come off as stronger than the general public, which begs the question: Why? Why do you need to prove your strength over the populace?
- butlike 9mo agoTake that particular Waymo car off the road. Seems absurd, but they still hit someone.
- pizzafeelsright 9mo agoThe car is not the problem. The problem is the intersection of human and machine operating independently of each other with conflicting intention. I am personally a fan of entirely automated but slow traffic. 10mph limit with zero traffic is fast enough for any metro area.
- WalterBright 9mo agoWhen I was a boy, I ran into the street from between two parked cars. I did not notice the car coming, but he noticed me popping out from nowhere, and screeched to a stop. I was very very lucky.
- socalgal2 9mo agoI saw a girl dart out between to parked cars on a strode. She was less lucky. The car did slam on their breaks. I have no idea what speed it was ultimately going when they hit the girl. It wasn't enough to send her flying but it was enough to knock her over hard. The dad, was sitting in his front yard and had her up and in his car and I'm guessing rushed to the hospital. Those kind of neighborhoods where the outer houses face the fast large roads I think are less common now but lots of them left over from the 50+ years ago.
- WalterBright 9mo agoI once rounded a blind curve on a non-residential street only to find a man on a bicycle pulling a trailer with his baby in it, stopped in the middle of the road. I stopped and yelled at him, which surprised him. That incident still gives me the willies.
- jacquesm 9mo agoYou yelled at someone because you were in the wrong? Panic reaction?
- joha4270 9mo agoWhatever our human laws and morality says about right and wrong and fault, the laws of physics usually judges the car a winner when it hits somebody. Placing yourself somewhere where pedestrians are not expected (non-residental road) mostly hidden from oncoming traffic for an extended period is putting yourself in undue risk.
- 9mo ago
- dfxm12 9mo agoWaymo driver? The vehicles are autonomous. I otherwise applaud Waymo's response, and I hope they are as cooperative as they say they will be. However, referring to the autonomous vehicle as having a driver is a dangerous way to phrase it. It's not passive voice, per se, but it has the same effect of obscuring responsibility. Waymo should say we, Waymo LLC, subsidiary of Alphabet, Inc., braked hard... Importantly, Waymo takes full ownership for something they write positively: Our technology immediately detected the individual.... But Waymo weasels out of taking responsibility for something they write about negatively.
- packetslave 9mo ago> Waymo driver? The vehicles are autonomous the "Waymo Driver" is how they refer to the self-driving platform (hardware and software). They've been pretty consistent with that branding, so it's not surprising that they used it here. > Importantly, Waymo takes full ownership for something they write positively [...] But Waymo weasels out of taking responsibility for something they write about negatively Pretty standard for corporate Public Relations writing, unfortunately.
- mlsu 9mo agoAn honest account of this situation would place at least some blame on there being a tall SUV blocking visibility. These giant SUVs really are the worst when it comes to child safety
- javchz 9mo agoI bet we'll the the SUV mania in the future as something crazy, like smoking in a plane or using lead for gasoline. Irrational large size cars that people get because everyone it's afraid of another SUV hitting them in a sedan. The tragedy of the commons.
- mlsu 9mo agoYou're right, but there will be some brand new, even worse social psychosis by then, surely. Cigarette smoking actually makes more sense to me than giant cars -- at least it only hurts the person doing the smoking!
- bertil 9mo agoThe best reaction from Waymo would have been to start to lobby against letting those monster-trucks park on streets near schools. They are killing so many children, I'm flabbergasted they are still allowed outside of worksites.
- mlsu 9mo agoFrom a "my opinion" standpoint, yes, I would love to see this. From a tactical PR standpoint, it would be a disaster. Muh big truuuucks is like a third rail because Americans are car obsessed as a culture. They already hit a kid, best to save some energy for the next battle. Besides if Waymo wins (in general) private car ownership will decrease which is a win regardless. And maybe Waymo can slowly decrease the size of their fleet to ease up the pressure on this insane car size arms race.
- tommica 9mo agoWhat I find a bit confusing is that no one is putting any blame on the kid. I did the same thing as a kid, except it was a school bus instead of SUV, and that was a fucking stupid thing to do (I remember starting to run over the street, and the next thing is that I am in the hospital bed), even though I had been told to always cross the street from behind the bus, not in front of it. That day I learned why it was so.
- AndrewKemendo 9mo agoIn fact I would call that “superhuman” behavior across the board. The vast vast vast majority of human drivers would not have been able to accomplish that braking procedure that quickly, and then would not have been able to manage the follow up so quickly. I have watched other parent drivers in the car pick up line at public schools for the last 16 years and people are absolutely trash at navigating that whole process and parents drive so poorly it’s absurd. At least half parents I see on their phones while literally feet away from hitting some kid.
- mmooss 9mo agoHow do you know how quickly the software braked? A blog post by a company selling a product is not credible material. We need independent sources. > The vast vast vast majority of human drivers ... would not have been able to manage the follow up so quickly You are saying the "vast vast vast majority of human drivers" wouldn't pull over after hitting a child? I remember similar blind faith in and unlimited advocacy for anything Tesla and Musk said, and look how that has turned out. These are serious issues for the people in our communities, not a sporting event with sides.
- Tepix 9mo agoHuman drivers are smart enough to slow down when around a school where kids are being dropped of. This piece of software wasn't. Clearly not superhuman.
- raincole 9mo ago> I honestly cannot imagine a better outcome or handling of the situation. > From the Waymo blog Yeah, like, no shit Sherlock. We'd better wait for some videos before making our opinions.
- aucisson_masque 9mo agoCan’t trust a private company. Where is the video recording ?
- socalgal2 9mo agoThis is great. what about all the traffic violations though? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46814583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46814583
- ajdude 9mo ago> reducing speed from approximately 17 mph Isn't the speed limit normally 15 mph or less in a school zone? Was the robotaxi speeding?
- zx8080 9mo ago> remained stopped, moved to the side of the road Stopped or moved? Is it allowed in CA to move car at all after a serious accident happens?
- rapind 9mo agoIf the person got up and walked away I'm not sure what damage you'd be doing by reasonably removing your car from blocking others while waiting for police.
- zx8080 9mo agoIt can be not known to some, but it's not uncommon for person with serious injures to walk and run in the first monents after accident. Injuries can sometimes be hidden. So "walk away" cannot be a legal criteria for decision to move the car or not. There can be some very serious consequences for the "but I did not know" in case of the following collapse or any other damage.
- chmod775 9mo ago> I honestly cannot imagine a better outcome or handling of the situation. It's the "best outcome" if you're trying to go as fast as possible without breaking any laws or ending up liable for any damage. German perspective, but if I told people I've been going 30km/h next to a school with poor visibility as children are dropped off around me, I would be met with contempt for that kind of behavior. I'd also at least face some partial civil liability if I hit anyone. There's certainly better handling of the situation possible, it's just that US traffic laws and attitudes around driving do not encourage it. I suspect many human drivers would've driven slower, law or no law.
- ChrisMarshallNY 9mo agoI suspect the robotaxi may have done better than a human. Human reaction times are terrible, and lots of kids get seriously injured, or killed, when they run out from between cars.
- gerdesj 9mo ago"from behind a tall SUV, " I look for shadows underneath stationary vehicles. I might also notice pedestrians "vanishing". I have a rather larger "context" than any robot effort. However, I am just one example of human. My experience of never managing to run someone over is just an anecdote ... so far. The population of humans as a whole manages to run each other over rather regularly. A pretty cheap instant human sensor might be Bluetooth/BLE noting phones/devices in near range. Pop a sensor in each wing mirror and on the top and bottom. The thing would need some processing power but probably nothing that the built in Android dash screen couldn't handle. There are lots more sensors that car manufacturers are trying to avoid for cost reasons, that would make a car way better at understanding the context of the world around it. I gather that Tesla insist on optical (cameras) only and won't do LIDAR. My EV has four cameras and I find it quite hard to see what is going on when it is pissing down with rain, in the same way I do if I don't clean my specs.
- padjo 9mo agoIt's hardly surprising that the version of events from the PR department makes Waymo sound completely blameless.
- jacquesm 9mo agoI easily can: when in a school zone never every go so fast that you can't stop before hitting a kid, especially when visibility is limited.
- oliwarner 9mo ago> From the Waymo blog... I'll just remind anyone reading: they're under no obligation to tell the unvarnished truth on their blog. Even if the NHTSA eventually points out significant failures, getting this report out now has painted a picture of Waymo only having an accident a human would have handled worse. It would be wise to wait and see if the NHTSA agree. Would a driver have driven at 17mph in this sort of traffic or would they have viewed it as a situation where hidden infant pedestrians are likely to step out?
- jeffybefffy519 9mo agoI wonder if another waymo ahead could have seen that child earlier and told the main waymo. This would be pretty neat and have a large safety impact.
- belter 9mo ago>> I honestly cannot imagine a better outcome or handling of the situation. One better than: We investigated our own system and found ourselves to be at no fault?
- joshribakoff 9mo ago> The vehicle remained stopped, moved to the side of the road How do you remain stopped but also move to the side of the road? Thats a contradiction. Just like Cruise.
- callumgare 9mo agoMy reading of that is that they mean stopped the progression of the journey rather that made no movement whatsoever.
- lokar 9mo agoI agree, it’s poorly worded but I think that’s what they mean. I also assume a human took over (called the police, moved the car, etc) once it hit the kid.
- BugsJustFindMe 9mo agoThey mean the vehicle didn't drive away. It moved to the side of the road and then stopped and waited.
- bpodgursky 9mo agoA human driver would most likely have killed this child. That's what should be on the ledger.
- gortok 9mo agoFor me, the policy question I want answered is if this was a human driver we would have a clear person to sue for liability and damages. For a computer, who is ultimately responsible in a situation where suing for compensation happens? Is it the company? An officer in the company? This creates a situation where a company can afford to bury litigants in costs to even sue, whereas a private driver would lean on their insurance.
- jobs_throwaway 9mo agoSo you're worried that instead of facing off against an insurance agency, the plantiff would be facing off against a private company? Doesn't seem like a huge difference to me
- bpodgursky 9mo agoPersonally I'm a lot more interested in kids not dying than in making income for injury lawyers. But that's just me.
- rationalist 9mo agoYour comment implies that they are less interested in kids not dying. Nowhere do they say that.
- bpodgursky 9mo agoI'm not interested in the policy question.
- rationalist 9mo agoThen don't reply?? That still doesn't excuse trying to make them look bad.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- alkonaut 9mo agoAnd before the argument "Self driving is acceptable so long as the accident/risk is lower than with human drivers" can I please get that out of the way: No it's not. Self driving needs to be orders of magnitude safer for us to acknowledge it. If they're merely as safe or slightly safer than humans we will never accept it. Becase humans have a "skin in the game". If you drive drunk, at least you're likely to be in the accident, or have personal liability. We accept the risks with humans because those humans accept risk. Self driving abstracts the legal risk, and removes the physical risk. I'm willing to accept robotaxis, and accidents in robotaxis, but there needs to be some solid figures showing they are way _way_ safer than human drivers.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- jtrueb 9mo agoHave you been in a self driving car? There are some quite annoying hiccups, but they are already very safe. I would say safer than the average driver. Defensive driving is the norm. I can think of many times where the car has avoided other dangerous drivers or oblivious pedestrians before I realized why it was taking action.
- lokar 9mo agoI generally agree the bar is high. But, human drivers often face very little accountability. Even drunk and reckless drivers are often let off with a slap on the wrist. Even killing someone results in minimal consequences. There is a very strong bias here. Everyone has to drive (in most of America), and people tend to see themselves in the driver. Revoking a license often means someone can’t get to work.
- cameldrv 9mo agoThat’s an incentive to reduce risk, but if you empirically show that the AV is even 10x safer, why wouldn’t you chalk that up as a win?
- criddell 9mo agoOrders of magnitude? Something like 100 people die on the road in the US each day. If self-driving tech could save 10 lives per day, that’s wouldn’t be good enough?
- simojo 9mo agoI'm curious as to what kind of control stack Waymo uses for their vehicles. Obviously their perception stack has to be based off of trained models, but I'm curious if their controllers have any formal guarantees under certain conditions, and if the child walking out was within that formal set of parameters (e.g. velocity, distance to obstacle) or if it violated that, making their control stack switch to some other "panic" controller. This will continue to be the debate—whether human performance would have exceeded that of the autonomous system.
- energy123 9mo agoFrom a purely stats pov, in situations where the confusion matrix is very asymmetric in terms of what we care about (false negatives are extra bad), you generally want multiple uncorrelated mechanisms, and simply require that only one flips before deciding to stop. All would have to fail simultaneously to not brake, which becomes vanishingly unlikely (p^n) with multiple mechanisms assuming uncorrelated errors. This is why I love the concept of Lidar and optical together.
- red75prime 9mo agoThe true self-driving trolley problem. How many rear-end collisions and riders' annoyance caused by phantom braking a manufacturer (or a society) is going to tolerate to save one child per N million miles? Uncorrelated approach improves sensitivity at the cost of specificity. Early sensor fusion might improve both (maybe at the cost of somewhat lesser sensitivity).
- Dlanv 9mo agoWith above-average human reflexes, the kid would have been hit at 14mph instead of 6mph. About 5x more kinetic energy.
- samrus 9mo agoBut would a human be driving at 17 in a school zone during drop off hours? Id argue a human may be slower exactly because of this scenario
- henning 9mo agoQ: Why did the self-driving car cross the road? A: It thought it saw a child on the other side.
- direwolf20 9mo agoThat's Tesla. Waymo seems mostly ok.
- WarmWash 9mo agoOddly I cannot decide if this is cause for damnation or celebration Waymo hits a kid? Ban the tech immediately, obviously it needs more work. Waymo hits a kid? Well if it was a human driver the kid might well have been dead rather than bruised.
- Filligree 9mo ago> Waymo hits a kid? Ban the tech immediately, obviously it needs more work. > Waymo hits a kid? Well if it was a human driver the kid might well have been dead rather than bruised. These can be true at the same time. Waymo is held to a significantly higher standard than human drivers.
- micromacrofoot 9mo ago> Waymo is held to a significantly higher standard than human drivers. They have to be, as a machine can not be held accountable for a decision.
- TeMPOraL 9mo agoThe promise of self-driving cars being safer than human drivers is also kind of the whole selling point of the technology.
- myrmidon 9mo agoWhat? No? The main selling point is eliminating costs for a human driver (by enabling people to safely do other things from their car, like answering emails or doomscrolling, or via robotaxis).
- micromacrofoot 9mo agoSure, but the companies building them are just shoving billions of dollars into their ears so they don't have to answer "who's responsible when it kills someone?"
- Bukhmanizer 9mo agoPersonally in LA I had a Waymo try to take a right as I was driving straight down the street. It almost T-boned me and then honked at me. I don’t know if there has been a change to the algorithm lately to make them more aggressive but it was pretty jarring to see it mess up that badly
- jayd16 9mo agoIt honked at you? But local laws dictate that it angrily flashes its high beams at you.
- pengaru 9mo agoIn recent weeks I've found myself driving in downtown SF congestion more than usual, and observed Waymos doing totally absurd things on multiple occasions. The main saving grace is they all occurred at low enough speeds that the consequences were little more than frustrating/delaying for everyone present - pedestrians and drivers alike, as nobody knew what to expect next. They are very far from perfect drivers. And what's especially problematic is the nature of their mistakes seem totally bizarre vs. the kinds of mistakes human drivers make.
- ghthor 9mo agoThe unpredictability was jarring to me as a passenger in a Waymo.
- whynotminot 9mo agoI’m actually pretty surprised Waymo as a general rule doesn’t completely avoid driving in school zones unless absolutely unavoidable. Any accident is bad. But accidents involving children are especially bad.
- dylan604 9mo agoThat would be one hell of a convoluted route to avoid school zones. I wonder if it would even be possible for a large majority of routes, especially in residential areas.
- whynotminot 9mo agoIt might not be possible for a lot of places — I don’t really know. But I know when I drive, if it’s a route I’m familiar with, I’ll personally avoid school zones for this very reason: higher risk of catastrophe. But also it’s annoying to have to slow down so much. Maybe this personal decision doesn’t really scale to all situations, but I’m surprised Waymo doesn’t attempt this. (Maybe they do and in this specific scenario it just wasn’t feasible)
- dylan604 9mo agoMost people prefer the shortest ride. Circling around school zones would be the opposite of that. Rides are charged based on distance, so maybe this would interest Waymo, but one of the big complaints about taxi drivers was how drivers would "take them for a ride" to increase the fare.
- whynotminot 9mo agoSeems like a solvable problem: make it clear on the app/interior car screens that a school zone is being avoided — I think most riders will understand this. You also have to drive much more slowly in a school zone than you do on other routes, so depending on the detour, it may not even be that much longer of a drive. At worst, maybe Waymo eats the cost difference involved in choosing a more expensive route. This certainly hits the bottom line, but there’s certainly also a business and reputational cost from “child hit by Waymo in school zone” in the headlines. Again, this all seems very solvable.
- maerF0x0 9mo agoMeanwhile the news does not report the other ~7,000 children per year injured as pedestrians in traffic crashes in the US. I think the overall picture is a pretty fantastic outcome -- even a single event is a newsworthy moment _because it's so rare_ . > The NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation is investigating “whether the Waymo AV exercised appropriate caution given, among other things, its proximity to the elementary school during drop off hours, and the presence of young pedestrians and other potential vulnerable road users.” Meanwhile in my area of the world parents are busy, stressed, and on their phones, and pressing the accelerator hard because they're time pressured and feel like that will make up for the 5 minutes late they are on a 15 minute drive... The truth is this technology is, as far as i can tell, superior to humans in a high number of situations if only for a lack of emotionality (and inability to text and drive / drink and drive)... but for some reason the world wants to keep nit picking it. A story, my grandpa drove for longer than he should have. Yes him losing his license would have been the optimal case. But, pragmatically that didn't happen... him being in and using a Waymo (or Cruise, RIP) car would have been a marginal improvement on the situation.
- Veserv 9mo agoErr, that is not the desirable statistic you seem to think it is. American drivers average ~3 trillion miles per year [1]. That means ~7000 child pedestrian injurys per year [2] would be ~1 per 430 million miles. Waymo has done on the order of 100-200 million miles autonomously. So this would be ~2-4x more injurys than the human average. However, the child pedestrian injury rate is only a official estimate (it is possible it may be undercounting relative to highly scrutinized Waymo vehicle-miles) and is a whole US average (it might not be a comparable operational domain), but absent more precise and better information, we should default to the calculation of 2-4x the rate. [1] https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10315 https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10315 [2] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/813712 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/8137...
- maerF0x0 9mo agoIf that's the case, then that's great info. Thank you for adding :)
- pmontra 9mo agoWho is legally responsible in case a Waymo hits a pedestrian? If I hit somebody, it's me in front of a judge. In the case of Waymo?
- hiddencost 9mo agoAre you thinking of civil liability or criminal liability? Waymo is liable in a civil sense and pays whatever monetary amount is negotiated or awarded. For a criminal case, some kind of willful negligence would have to be shown. That can pierce corporate veils. But as a result Waymo is being extremely careful to follow the law and establish processes which shield their employees from negligence claims.
- trollbridge 9mo agoWaymo is going to make sure they are never criminally liable for anything, and even if they were, a criminal case against a corporation just ends up being a modest fine.
- jeffbee 9mo agoA person who hits a child, or anyone, in America, with no resulting injury, stands a roughly 0% chance of facing a judge in consequence. Part of Waymo's research is to show that even injury accidents are rarely reported to the police.
- ssl-3 9mo agoWhen I was a kid (age 12, or so), I got hit by a truck while crossing the road on my bike. In that particular instance, I was cited myself -- after the fact, at the hospital -- and eventually went before a judge. In that hearing, it was established that I was guilty of failing to yield at an intersection. (That was a rather long time ago and I don't remember the nature of the punishment that resulted. It may have been as little as a stern talking-to by the judge.)
- NoGravitas 9mo agoThat sucks, and I love to hate on "self driving" cars. But it wasn't speeding to start with (assuming speed limit in the school zone was 20 or 25), braked as much as possible, and the company took over all the things a human driver would have been expected to do in the same situation. Could have been a lot worse, probably wouldn't have been any better with a human driver (just going to ignore as no-signal Waymo's models that say an attentive human driver would have been worse). It's "fine". In this situation, cars period are the problem, not "self driving" cars.
- CaliforniaKarl 9mo agoFor reference, here's a link to Waymo's blog post: https://waymo.com/blog/2026/01/a-commitment-to-transparency-and-road-safety https://waymo.com/blog/2026/01/a-commitment-to-transparency-...
- ripped_britches 9mo agoWow this is why I feel comfortable in a Waymo. Accidents are inevitable and some point and this handling was well-rehearsed and highly ethical. Amazing company
- xnx 9mo agoAlternate headline: Waymo saves child's life
- recursive 9mo agoIn this timeline, we want our headlines to somehow reflect the contents of the story. Saved child from what? From themselves. You can't take full credit for partially solving a problem that you, yourself, created.
- Dlanv 9mo agoBasically Waymo just prevented a kids potential death. Bad any other car been there, probably including Tesla, the poor kid would have been hit with 4-10x more force.
- Petersipoi 9mo agoYou just invented a hypothetical situation in your head then drew conclusions from it. In my version, the other car misses the kid entirely.
- dzhiurgis 9mo ago> any other car been there, probably including Tesla Cheap shots. If this was Tesla there would be live media coverage across every news outlet around the world and congressmen racing to start investigation. Look at any thread where Tesla is mentioned and how many waymo simps are mansplaning lidar.
- aimor 9mo agoThe school speed limit there is 15 mph, and that wasn't enough to prevent an accident. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/child-struck-waymo-near-elementary-155142925.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/child-struck-waymo-near-... https://maps.app.goo.gl/7PcB2zskuKyYB56W8?g_st=ac https://maps.app.goo.gl/7PcB2zskuKyYB56W8?g_st=ac
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 9mo agoThe interesting thing is a 12 mph speed limit would be honored by an autonomous vehicle but probably ignored by humans.
- nkrisc 9mo agoIgnored by some, not all humans. I absolutely drive extra slowly and cautiously when driving past an elementary school during drop off and pick up precisely because kids do dumb stuff like this. Others do too, though not everyone of course, incredibly.
- saalweachter 9mo agoThe great thing about doing things like driving the speed limit in school zones is you get to witness other drivers drive even worse, like passing you in a no passing zone in front of the school, because they can't bear to drive slow for three blocks.
- toast0 9mo agoIf the speed limit was 15 mph, and the Waymo vehicle was traveling at 17 mph before braking, why do you believe the Waymo vehicle would honor a 12 mph speed limit? It didn't honor the 15 mph limit.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
- dlg 9mo agoI was just dropping my kids off at their elementary school in Santa Monica, but not at Grant Elementary where this happened. While it's third-hand, word on the local parent chat is that the parent dropped their kid off on the opposite side of the street from Grant. Even though there was a crossing guard, the kid ran behind a car an ran right out in to the street. If those rumors are correct, I'll say the kid's/family's fault. That said, I think autonomous vehicles should probably go extra-slowly near schools, especially during pickup and dropoff.
- sowbug 9mo agoWhen my kids were school age, I taught them that the purpose of crosswalk lines is to determine who pays for your funeral. They got the point.
- joefarish 9mo agoThis is a very good way of putting it.
- trollbridge 9mo agoI do not like the phase "it's the kid's fault" for a kid being hit by a robot-car. It is never a 6 year old's fault if they get struck by a robot.
- blell 9mo agoExactly. It’s his parents fault.
- IAmBroom 9mo agoNo-fault accidents happen. Accidents can have causes that are not legal nor moral blame.
- scottbez1 9mo agoThe US commercial aviation industry did not get to its excellent safety record by simply shrugging and accepting a “no-fault accident”. There are always systemic factors that can be improved, for example working on street design to separate dangerous cars from children, or transportation policy by shifting transportation to buses, bikes, and walking where the consequences of mistakes are significantly reduced. Cars are the #2 killer of children in the US, and it’s largely because of attitudes like this that ignore the extreme harm that is caused by preventable “accidents”
- tekno45 9mo agocan we just get waymo tech in busses? Big vehicles that demand respect and aren't expected to turn on a dime, known stops.
- Zigurd 9mo agoVehicle design also plays a role: passenger cars have to meet pedestrian collision standards. Trucks don't. The silly butch grilles on SUVs and pickups are deadly. This is more of an argument for not seeing transportation as a fashion or lifestyle statement. Those truck designs are about vanity and gender affirming care. It's easier to make rational choices when it's a business that's worried about liability making those choices.
- koolba 9mo ago> Waymo said its robotaxi struck the child at six miles per hour, after braking “hard” from around 17 miles per hour. The young pedestrian “suddenly entered the roadway from behind a tall SUV, moving directly into our vehicle’s path,” the company said in its blog post. Waymo said its vehicle “immediately detected the individual as soon as they began to emerge from behind the stopped vehicle.” As this is based on detection of the child, what happens on Halloween when kids are all over the place and do not necessarily look like kids?
- sowbug 9mo agoYou're right: a quick search shows that pedestrian fatalities are 43% higher on Halloween.
- Rudybega 9mo agoThat's probably more a function of more people being in the road than people not understanding what object they're about to hit.
- sowbug 9mo agoSorry, 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 overall number of mistakes will be smaller. Suppose you could wave your magic wand and have a The Purge-style situation where AVs had a perfect safety record 364 days of the year, but for some reason had a tricky bug that caused them to run over tiny Spidermen and princesses on Halloween. The number of fatalities in the US would drop from 40,000 annually to 40. Would you wave that wand?
- catlikesshrimp 9mo ago"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_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
- Archio 9mo agoIt's hard to imagine how any driver could have reacted better in this situation. The argument that questions "would a human be driving 17mph in a school zone" feels absurd to the point of being potentially disingenuous. I've walked and driven through many school zones before, and human drivers routinely drive above 17mph (in some cases, over the typical 20mph or 25mph legal limit). It feels like in deconstructing some of these incidences, critics imagine a hypothetical scenario in which they are driving a car and its their only job to avoid a specific accident that they know will happen in advance, rather than facing the reality of what human drivers are actually like on the road.
- fortran77 9mo agoI'm a big fan of Waymo and have enjoyed my Waymo rides. And I don't think Waymno did anything "bad" here. > The young pedestrian “suddenly entered the roadway from behind a tall SUV, moving directly into our vehicle’s path,” the company said in its blog post. Waymo said its vehicle “immediately detected the individual as soon as they began to emerge from behind the stopped vehicle.” BUT! As a human driver, I avoid driving near the schools when school's letting out. There's a high school on my way home and kids saunter and jaywalk across the street, and they're all 'too cool' to press the button that turns on the blinking crosswalk. So I go a block out of my way to bypass the whole school area when I'm heading home that way. Waymos should use the same rationale. If you can avoid going past a school zone when kids are likely to be there, do it!
- trollbridge 9mo agoWaymo will 100% go down a route human drivers avoid because it will have "less traffic".
- chasd00 9mo ago> Waymos should use the same rationale. If you can avoid going past a school zone when kids are likely to be there, do it! I can see that, prioritize obstacle predictability over transit time. A school zone at certain times of day is very unpredictable with respect to obstacles but a more car congested area would be easier to navigate but slower. Same goes for residential areas during Halloween.
- jsrozner 9mo agoSo many tech lovers defending waymo. If you drive a car, you have a responsibility to do it safely. The fact that I am usually better than the bottom 50% of drivers, or that I am better than a drunk driver does not mean that when I hit someone it's less bad. A car is a giant weapon. If you drive the weapon, you need to do it safely. Most people these days are incredibly inconsiderate - probably because there's little economic value in being considerate. The fact that lots of drivers suck doesn't mean that waymo gets a pass. Waymos have definitely become more aggressive as they've been successful. They drive the speed limit down my local street. I see them and I think wtf that's too fast. It's one thing when there are no cars around. But if you've got cars or people around, the appropriate speed changes. Let's audit waymo. They certainly have an aggressiveness setting. Let's see the data on how it's changing. Let's see how safety buffers have decreased as they've changed the aggressiveness setting. The real solution? Get rid of cars. Self-driving individually owned vehicles were always the wrong solution. Public transit and shared infra is always the right choice.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- no-name-here 9mo ago> The fact that lots of drivers suck doesn't mean that waymo gets a pass. But that fact does mean that we should encourage alternatives that reduce fatalities, and that not doing so results in fatalities that did not need to occur. > The real solution? Get rid of cars. I also support initiatives to improve public transit, etc. However, I don't think "get rid of cars" is a realistic idea to the general public right now, so let's encourage all of the things that improve things - robot drivers if they kill people less often than humans, public transit, etc. - let's not put off changes that will save lives on the hope that humanity will "get rid of cars" any time soon. Or when do you think humanity will "get rid of cars"?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- aanet 9mo agoThis is the classic Suddenly Revealed Pedestrian test case, which afaik, most NCAP (like EuroNCAP, Japan NCAP) have as part of their standard testing protocols. Having performed this exact test on 3 dozen vehicles (L2/L3/L4) for several AV companies in the Bay Area [1], I would say that Waymo's response, per their blog post [2] has been textbook compliance. (I'm not defending their performance... just their response to the collision). This test / protocol is hard for any driver (including human driven vehicles), let alone ADAS/L3/L4 vehicles, for various reasons, including: pedestrian occlusion, late ped detection, late braking, slick roads, not enough braking, etc. etc. Having said all that, full collision avoidance would have been best outcome, which, in this case, it wasn't. Wherever the legal fault may lie -- and there will be big debate here -- Waymo will still have to accept some responsibility, given how aggressively they are rolling out their commercial services. This only puts more onus on their team to demonstrate a far higher standard of driving than human drivers. Sorry, that's just the way societal acceptance is. We expect more from our robots than from our fellow humans. [1] Yes, I'm an AV safety expert [2] https://waymo.com/blog/2026/01/a-commitment-to-transparency-and-road-safety https://waymo.com/blog/2026/01/a-commitment-to-transparency-... (edit: verbiage)
- okdood64 9mo ago> Waymo will still have to accept some responsibility Why? This is only true if they weren't supposed to be on the road in the first place. Which is not true.
- danpalmer 9mo agoIn a technical sense, maybe, but it's all going to be about optics. They have a responsibility to handle the situation well even if it's not their fault, and the public will hold them accountable for what they deem the involvement was, which may not be the actual scenario.
- aanet 9mo ago> In a technical sense, maybe, but it's all going to be about optics. Indeed, it is, and that is exactly why Waymo will have to accept some responsibility. I can bet that internally Waymo's PR and Legal teams are working overtime to coordinate the details with NHTSA. We, the general public, may or may not know the details at all, if ever. However, Waymo's technical teams (Safety, etc) will also be working overtime to figure out what they could have done better. As I mentioned, this is a standard test, and Waymo likely has 1000s of variations of this test in their simulation platforms; they will sweep across all possible parameters to make this test tighter, including the MER (minimum expected response from the AV) and perhaps raise the bar on MER (e.g. brake at max deceleration in some cases, trading off comfort metrics in those cases; etc.) and calculate the effects on local traffic (e.g. "did we endanger the rear vehicles by braking too hard? If so, by how much??" etc). All these are expected actions which the general public will never know (except, perhaps via some technical papers). Regardless, the PR effects of this collision do not look good, especially as Waymo is expanding their service to other cities (Miami just announced; London by EOY2026). This PR coverage has potential to do more damage to the company than the actual physical damage to the poor traumatized kid and his family. THAT is the responsibility only the company will pay for. To be sure, my intuition tells me this is not the last such collision. Expect to see some more, by other companies, as they commercialize their own services. It's a matter of statistics.
- Zopieux 9mo agoCheers to cities pedestrianizing school streets even in busy capitals (e.g. Paris). Cars have no place near school entrances. Fix your urbanism and public transportation. Yes, kids in developed countries have the autonomy to go to school by themselves from a very young age, provided the correct mindset and a safe environment. That's a combination of: * high-trust society: commuting alone or in a small group is the norm, soccer moms a rare exception, * safe, separated lanes for biking/walking when that's an option.
- luses 9mo agoyou're exactly right. the fixation on human vs AV error rates completely misses the point. even if we achieve 'perfect' AVs, mixing heavy machinery with children guarantees conflict. physics dictate cars can't stop instantly. the only solution is removing cars, not better drivers. most commenters here are ignoring the structural incentives. the long term threat of waymo isn't safety, its the enclosure of public infrastructure. these companies are building a permission structure to lobby personal vehicles and public transit off the road. transportation demand is inelastic. if we allow a transition where mobility is captured by private platforms, the consumer loses all leverage. the endgame is the american healthcare model: capture the market, kill alternatives, and extract max rent because the user has no choice. we need dense urban cores and mass transit, not a dependency on rent seeking oligopolies
- Zopieux 9mo agoYup, nailed it.
- insane_dreamer 9mo agoWho is liable when FSD is used? In Waymo's case, they own and operate the vehicle so obviously they are fully liable. But in a human driver with FSD on, are they liable if FSD fails? My understanding is yes, they are. Tesla doesn't want that liability. And to me this helps explain why FSD adoption is difficult. I don't want to hand control over to a probabilistic system that might fail but I would be at fault. In other words, I trust my own driving more than the FSD (I could be right or wrong, but I think most people will feel the same way).
- 0xffff2 9mo agoI believe Mercedes is the only consumer car manufacturer that is advertising an SAE Level 3 system. My understanding is that L3 is where the manufacturer says you can take your attention off the road while the system is active, so they're assuming liability. https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot
- Veserv 9mo agoAbsent 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 miles [3][4]. That means they average 1 child pedestrian injury per ~100-200 million miles. That is a injury rate ~2-4x higher than the human average. However, the child pedestrian injury rate is only a official estimate (possible undercounting relative to highly scrutinized Waymo miles) and is a whole US average (operational domain might not be comparable, though this could easily swing either way), but absent more precise and better information, we should default to the calculated 2-4x higher injury rate; it is up to Waymo to robustly demonstrate otherwise. Furthermore, Waymo has published reasonably robust claims arguing they achieve ~90% crash reduction [5] in total. The most likely new hypotheses in light of this crash are: A. Their systems are not actually robustly 10x better than human drivers. Waymos claims are incorrect or non-comparable. B. There are child-specific risk factors that humans account for that Waymo does not that cause a 20-40x differential risk around children relative to normal Waymo driving. C. This is a fluke child pedestrian injury. Time will tell. Given their relatively robustly claimed 90% crash reduction, it is likely prudent to allow further operation in general, though possibly not in certain contexts. [1] https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10315 https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10315 [2] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/813712 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/8137... [3] https://www.therobotreport.com/waymo-reaches-100m-fully-autonomous-miles-across-all-deployments/ https://www.therobotreport.com/waymo-reaches-100m-fully-auto... [4] https://waymo.com/blog/2025/12/demonstrably-safe-ai-for-autonomous-driving https://waymo.com/blog/2025/12/demonstrably-safe-ai-for-auto... [5] https://waymo.com/safety/impact/ https://waymo.com/safety/impact/
- nearbuy 9mo agoI don't think this comparison is meaningful given the sample size of 1 and the differences between the between your datasets. The standard error margins from the small sample size alone are so large that you could not reasonably claim humans are safer (95% CI for Waymo is about 1 per 20 million miles to 1 per 8 billion miles). Then there are the dataset differences: 1. The NHTSA data is based on police-reported crash data, which reports far fewer injuries than the CDC reports based on ED visits. The child in this case appeared mostly unharmed and situations like this would likely not be counted in the NHTSA data. 2. Waymo taxis operate primarily in densely populated urban environments while human driver milage includes highways and rural roads where you're much less likely to collide with pedestrians per mile driven. Waymo's 90% crash reduction claim is at least an apples-to-apples comparison.
- bhewes 9mo agoThe a human would do it better people are hilarious. Given how many times I have been hit by human drives on my bike and watched others get creamed by a cars. One time in Boulder at a flashing cross walk a person ran right through it and the biker they creamed got stuck in the roof rack.
- Analemma_ 9mo agoYeah I have to wonder if any of the "humans would do it better" people actually have children and have dropped them off in a school zone. Drivers are on their phones rolling through school zones at 25-30 during pickup/dropoff hours all the fucking time.
- franktankbank 9mo agoHumans do it better and worse. Which one should the robo tend towards?
- phainopepla2 9mo agoFor real, I am convinced these are people who never walk or bike, at least around cities like Santa Monica. I am an everyday urban walker and I have to constantly be on alert not to be hit, even when I'm behaving predictably and with the right of way.
- qwertyuiop_ 9mo agoCouldn’t be anymore callous and clinical. This press release alone makes me want not to use their service. * “Following contact, the pedestrian stood up immediately, walked to the sidewalk, and we called 911. The vehicle remained stopped, moved to the side of the road, and stayed there until law enforcement cleared the vehicle to leave the scene,” Waymo wrote in the post.*
- no-name-here 9mo agoThe 'next' comment after yours is "Alternate headline: Waymo saves child's life" and the 'prev' comment is "A human driver would most likely have killed this child. That's what should be on the ledger." - would either of those be less 'callous and clinical'? Other accident reports I've seen (NTSB, etc) often seem to take a similar approach - is it a bad thing? Or what kind of language wouldn't make you 'want not to use their service'?
- IAmBroom 9mo agoThe statistically relevant question is: How many human drivers have hit children near elementary schools, since Waymo's last accident? If Waymo has fewer accidents where a pedestrian is hit than humans do, Waymo is safer. Period. A lot of people are conjecturing how safe a human is in certain complicated scenarios (pedestrian emerging from behind a bus, driver holds cup of coffee, the sun is in their eyes, blah blah blah). These scenarios are distractions from the actual facts. Is Waymo statistically safer? (spoiler: yes)
- gjm11 9mo agoThis is wrong, although something quite like it is right. Imagine that there are only 10 Waymo journeys per year, and every year one of them hits a child near an elementary school, while there are 1000000 non-Waymo journeys per year, and every year two of them hit children near elementary schools. In this scenario Waymo has half as many accidents but is clearly much more dangerous. Here in the real world, obviously the figures aren't anywhere near so extreme, but it's still the case that the great majority of cars on the road are not Waymos, so after counting how many human drivers have had similar accidents you need to scale that figure in proportion to the ratio of human to Waymo car-miles. (Also, you need to consider the severity of the accidents. That comparison probably favours Waymo; at any rate, they're arguing that it does in this case, that a human driver in the same situation would have hit the child at a much higher and hence more damaging speed.)
- confidantlake 9mo agoSo confident yet so wrong.
- kj4211cash 9mo agoPlease read this article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-01-06/are-autonomous-vehicles-safer-than-human-drivers-we-don-t-know-yet https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-01-06/are-auton... Spoiler: we definitely don't know yet whether Waymo is statistically safer
- ctchocula 9mo ago
- moktonar 9mo agoThe Waymo driver tech is impressive. That said an experienced driver might have recognized the pattern where a stopped big vehicle occludes a part of the road leading to such situation, and might have stopped or slowed down almost to a halt before passing. The Waymo driver reacts faster but is not able to predict such scenarios by filling the gaps, simulating the world to inform decisions. Chapeau to Waymo anyways
- null_deref 9mo agoI think this definitely an improvement to consider, but when comparing I think that big number, i.e. statistics are the only thing that matters. Some human could detect the pattern and come to full halt another human driver could be speeding while texting
- ra7 9mo agoThere have been many instances of Waymo preventing a collision by predicting pedestrians emerging from occlusion. This isn’t new information at all for them. Some accidents are simply physically impossible to prevent. I don’t know for sure if this one was one of those, but I’m fairly confident it couldn’t have been from prediction failure. See past examples: https://youtube.com/watch?v=hubWIuuz-e4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=hubWIuuz-e4 — first save is a child emerging from a parked car. Notice how Waymo slows down preemptively before the child starts moving. https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/s/ivQPuExwNW https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/s/ivQPuExwNW — detects foot movement from under the bus. https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/s/LURJ8isQJ6 https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/s/LURJ8isQJ6 — stops for dogs and children running onto the street at night.
- ghthor 9mo agoThis one should have been prevented because the Waymo should have been driving at max 10mph
- moktonar 9mo ago> detects foot movement .. That’s probably how they do it, which is again very clever stuff, chapeau. But they do it like that b/c they can’t really predict the world around them fast enough. It might be possible in the future with AI World Models though
- gooseyard 9mo agorelated: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ntsb-investigation-waymo-robotaxis-passing-school-buses-austin-texas/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ntsb-investigation-waymo-robota...
- RomanPushkin 9mo agoWill post it here: > In October 2025, a Waymo autonomous robotaxi struck and killed KitKat, a well-known bodega cat at Randa's Market in San Francisco's Mission District, sparking debates over self-driving car safety It's a child now. All I wanna ask - what should happen, so they stop killing pets and people?
- GoatInGrey 9mo agoThe real but contentious answer is to change our street and urban design. You can only do so much to make a giant metal machine safe for children and small animals to be struck by. Reducing the frequency of cars and pedestrians occupying the same space will go further than trying to engineer the equivalent of a pool that is impossible to drown in.
- NewJazz 9mo agoDo you think that a company that operates autonomous vehicles will support legislation that makes it easier and safer to move around on foot without getting hit by a car? Or will they lobby for car-centric urban design, like many many companies before them?
- fragmede 9mo agoAbsolutely. Because the next step is to ban human driven cars from those areas, and in that case, who makes boat loads of money?
- aucisson_masque 9mo ago> The young pedestrian “suddenly entered the roadway from behind a tall SUV, moving directly into our vehicle’s path,” the company said in its blog post. The issue is that I don’t trust a private company word. You can’t even trust the president of the USA government nowadays… release the video footage or get lost.
- jeffrallen 9mo agoWhen is enough, enough? Software devs working on autonomous driving: look in your soul and update your resume.
- elzbardico 9mo agoI don't like even the very idea o self-driving cars, but based on the description of the accident, I think the machine passed this with flying colors.
- rsch 9mo agoA human driver travelling at the same speed would have hit that child at exactly 17 mph, before their brain even registered that child was there. If that driver would also have been driving a large SUV that child would have been pushed on the ground and ran over, so probably a fatality. And also functionally nobody would have given a shit apart from some lame finger pointing at (probably) the kid’s parents. And it is not the child’s or their parents’ fault either: Once you accept elementary school aged children exist, you have to accept they will sometimes run out like this. Children just don’t have the same impulse control as adults. And honestly even for adults stepping out a bit from behind an obstacle in the path of a car is an easy mistake to make. Don’t forget that for children an SUV is well above head height so it isn’t even possible for them to totally avoid stepping out a bit before looking. (And I don’t think stepping out vs. running out changes the outcome a lot) This is why low speed limits around schools exist. So I would say the Waymo did pretty well here, it travelled at a speed where it was still able to avoid not only a fatality but also major injury.
- seanmcdirmid 9mo ago> And it is not the child’s or their parents’ fault either: Once you accept elementary school aged children exist, you have to accept they will sometimes run out like this. Children just don’t have the same impulse control as adults. I get what you are trying to say and I definitely agree in spirit, but I tell my kid (now 9) "it doesn't matter if it isn't your fault, you'll still get hurt or be dead." I spent a lot of time teaching him how to cross the street safely before I let him do it on his own, not to trust cars to do the right thing, not to trust them to see you, not to trust some idiot to not park right next to cross walk in a huge van that cars have no chance of seeing over. If only we had a Dutch culture of pedistrian and road safety here.
- calibas 9mo ago> A human driver travelling at the same speed would have hit that child at exactly 17 mph, before their brain even registered that child was there. Not sure where this is coming from, and it's directly contradicted by the article: > Waymo said in its blog post that its “peer-reviewed model” shows a “fully attentive human driver in this same situation would have made contact with the pedestrian at approximately 14 mph.” The company did not release a specific analysis of this crash.
- cryptoegorophy 9mo agoWaymo failed to stop and hit a child. Normal person would drive carefully around blind spots. I wonder what would comments be if Tesla hit a child.
- seanmcdirmid 9mo ago> Normal person would drive carefully around blind spots. I can't tell if you are using sarcasm here or are serious. I guess it depends on your definition of normal person (obviously not average, but an idealized driver maybe?).
- namuol 9mo agoThe only question I have is whether the speed it was going was situationally appropriate and whether we’d expect a human to be considered reckless under the same circumstances. 17mph sounds pretty slow but it really depends on context.
- wackget 9mo agoI know submissions are not meant to contain modifications to article titles, but would it be so bad to have added "at 6mph" and/or "minor injuries" to the title?
- voxadam 9mo agoI don't disagree with you but unfortunately I needed to keep from editorializing and I was restricted by a strict title length limit.
- mrcwinn 9mo ago>To put this in perspective, our peer-reviewed model shows that a fully attentive human driver in this same situation would have made contact with the pedestrian at approximately 14 mph. This significant reduction in impact speed and severity is a demonstration of the material safety benefit of the Waymo Driver. Our car hits better is a win, I guess? Glad the child is okay.
- anon115 9mo agohmm idk how i feel about taking one in the freeway anymore.
- naet 9mo agoWe should all think twice before taking a company PR statement completely at face value and praising them for slowing down faster than their own internal "model" says a human driver would. Companies are heavily interested in protecting their bottom line and in a situation like this probably had 5-10 people carefully craft every single word of the statement for maximum damage control. Surprised at how many comments here seem eager to praise Waymo based off their PR statement. Sure it sounds great if you read that the Waymo slowed down faster than a human. But would a human truly have hit the child here? Two blocks from a school with tons of kids, crossing guards, double parked cars, etc? The same Waymo that is under investigation for passing school busses illegally? It may have been entirely avoidable for the average human in this situation, but the robotaxi had a blind spot that it couldn't reason around and drove negligently. Maybe the robotaxi did prevent some harm by braking with superhuman speed. But I am personally unconvinced it was a completely unavoidable freak accident type of situation without seeing more evidence than a blog post by a company with a heavily vested interest in the situation. I have anecdotally seen Waymo in my area drive poorly in various situations, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. There's the classic "humans are bad drivers" but I don't think that is an excuse to not look critically into robotaxi accidents. A human driver who hit a child next to a school would have a personal responsibility and might face real jail time or at the least be put on trial and investigated. Who at Waymo will face similar consequences or risk for the same outcome?
- tokioyoyo 9mo agoIt's going to sound batshit insane what I say - the problem is, if we don't praise company PR, the other side will use this as an excuse to push even harder regulations, not allow them in newer cities, slow down the adoption rate, while factually ignoring that this is just a safer method of transport. I wish I was not a bootlicker, but I really want robotaxis to be available everywhere in the world at some point, and such issues should not slow them down IF it's better, and especially, not worse than humans on average.
- padjo 9mo agoYou're right, what you're saying is batshit insane.
- metalman 9mo agoOK Its like this!, If I hit a child in a school district, I loose my licence for many years, and if I dont or cant show remourse, it could be longer, I pay fines, etc Therefor waymo, must have it's algorythm terminated, ie: totaly destroyed, all the hardware smashed, and they never get to try again with any derivitive of this technology, as there is no reasonable, understandable path towards repentence and rehabilitation, it is litteraly a monster running over children. or was it carrying an ICE team, then nevermind.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo agoWaymo is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. the same parent company as Google LLC It was formerly known as the Google Self Driving Car Project
- ycui1986 9mo agoIf what Waymo wrote is true, this sounds more like kids fault or guardian’s.
- andsoitis 9mo agoFrom the Waymo blog... > The Waymo Driver braked hard... By Waymo Driver, they don't mean a human, do they?
- opinion-is-bad 9mo agoNo, this is the term they use to refer to their package of sensors, compute, and software.
- bikamonki 9mo agoSeems the robotaxi saved a life.
- t1234s 9mo agoThis is sad but unfortunately probably happens more frequently with human drivers and people walking out into traffic and you never hear about it.
- ProAm 9mo agoStraw man argument.
- OhMeadhbh 9mo agoDog. Bites. Man.
- mrcwinn 9mo agoAmazing response to this situation. Great job, Waymo, for maybe hitting a little kid less than your study assumes a human would have! Is that study legit? Who cares, we trust you! If this had been Tesla, HN would have crashed from all the dunking.
- jaimex2 9mo agoLaws broken: 0 Nothing to see here.
- kj4211cash 9mo agoIt's interesting how polarized this comments section is. Lots of people claiming a human driver would definitely have been driving slower. Lots of people claiming statistics show that human drivers do worse in this scenario aggregate. Of course neither side presenting convincing evidence.
- padjo 9mo agoAnd a truly disappointing number of people just accepting company PR as a complete account.
- no-name-here 9mo agoI tried to find some data: In a 20 mph school zone, ~70-80% of drivers drove 26 mph or faster, regardless of whether there were flashing lights, an always-20 zone, or a 20-when-schoolchildren-present zone. [1] Although note that ~70-80% of drivers drove 6 or more mph over the speed limit in a school zone, while it seems like the claims in some of these comments are that a human driver would drive at less than 17 mph out of an abundance of caution. [1] https://wtsc.wa.gov/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2023/12/16_Driver-Speeding-in-School-Zones_Dec2023.pdf https://wtsc.wa.gov/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2023/12/1...
- rewilder12 9mo agoMy read is the Waymo was operating normally in a situation a human would operate with heightened awareness and caution. This is not the win they think it is.
- wbobeirne 9mo agoSome humans would operate with heightened awareness and caution. Some other humans might be drunk or looking at their phone.
- ivanstepanovftw 9mo agoThe car could have stopped by turning the steering wheel to the side and collided with another car, not the child.