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Yup. 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 conta

Yup. 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.

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chaboud 9mo ago
Possibly, 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 ago
  Absolutely, 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 ago
    It 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.
    - jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
      And the fact that Waymo is never drunk/high/tired/texting, which an astounding portion of human drivers are.
    - davorak 9mo ago
      17MPH is way to fast, depending on the details. I do not think the article gives the details to know if it was a reasonable speed to be going or not, enough details to know it might be to fast, like proximity to a school and children present, yes.
- jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
  Certainly, I'm not against constructive criticism of Waymo. I just think it's important to consider the counterfactual. You're right too that an especially prudent human driver may have avoided the scenario altogether, and Waymo should strive to be that defensive.
  - themafia 9mo ago
    > I'm not against constructive criticism of Waymo. I feel like you have to say this out loud because many people in these discussions don't share this view. Billion dollar corporate experiments conducted in public are sacrosanct for some reason. > I just think it's important to consider the counterfactual More than 50% of roadway fatalities involve drugs or alcohol. If you want to spend your efforts improving safety _anywhere_ it's right here. Self driving cars do not stand a chance of improving outcomes as much as sensible policy does. Europe leads the US here by a wide margin.
    - jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
      > I feel like you have to say this out loud because many people in these discussions don't share this view. Billion dollar corporate experiments conducted in public are sacrosanct for some reason. Yes, and I find it annoying that some people do seem to think Waymo should never be criticized. That said, we already have an astounding amount of data, and that data clearly shows that the experiment is successful in reducing crashes. Waymos are absolutely, without question already making streets safer than if humans were driving those cars. > If you want to spend your efforts improving safety _anywhere_ it's right here. We can and should do both. And as your comment seems to imply but does not explicitly state, we should also improve road design to be safer, which Europe absolutely kicks America's ass on.
      - themafia 9mo ago
        > and that data clearly shows that the experiment is successful in reducing crashes I disagree. You need way more data, like orders of magnitude more. There are trillions of miles driven in the US every year. Those miles often include driving in inclement weather which is something Waymo hasn't even scraped the surface of yet. > without question There are _tons_ of questions. This is not even a simple problem. I cannot understand this prerogative. It's far too eager or hopeful. > We can and should do both Well Google is operating Waymo and "we" control road policy. One of these things we can act on today and the other relies on huge amounts of investments paying off in scenarios that haven't even been tested successfully yet. I see an environment forming where we ignore the hard problems and pray these corporate overlords solve the problem on their own. It's madness.
torginus 9mo ago
I usually take extra care when going through a school zone, especially when I see some obstruction ('behind a tall SUV', was the waymo overtaking?), and overtaking is something I would probably never do (and should be banned in school zones by road signs). This is a context that humans automatically have and consider. I'm sure Waymo engineers can mark spots on the map where the car needs to drive very conservatively.
- ndsipa_pomu 9mo ago
  I appreciate your sensible driving, but here in the UK, roads outside schools are complete mayhem at dropping off/picking up times. Speeding, overtaking, wild manoeuvres to turn round etc. When reading the article, my first thought was that only going at 17mph was due to it being a robotaxi whereas UK drivers tend to be strongly opposed to 20mph speed limits outside schools.
  - zdragnar 9mo ago
    Most US states cap speed limits around schools at 15mph when children are present. There may also be blinking lights above these signs during times that will be likely. I'm not sure how much of that Waymo's cars take into account, as the law technically takes into account line of sight things that a person could see but Waymo's sensors might not, such as children present on a sidewalk.
    - jefftk 9mo ago
      > Most US states cap speed limits around schools at 15mph when children are present. Are you sure? The ones I've seen have usually been 20 or 25mph. Looking on Image Search (https://www.google.com/search?q=school+zone+speed+limit+sign https://www.google.com/search?q=school+zone+speed+limit+sign) and limiting just to the ones that are photos of real signs by the side of the road, the first 10 are: 25, 30, 25, 20, 35, 15, 20, 55, 20, 20. So only one of these was 15.
      - enlightens 9mo ago
micromacrofoot 9mo ago
It's possible, but likely is a heavy assertion. It's also possible a human driver would have been more aware of children being present on the sidewalk and would have approached more cautiously given obstructed views. Please please remember that any data from Waymo will inherently support their position and can not be taken at face value. They have significant investment in making this look more favorable for them. They have billions of dollars riding on the appearance of being safe.
IncreasePosts 9mo ago
I wonder if that is a "fully attentive human drive who drove exactly the same as the Waymo up until the point the child appeared"? Personally, I slow down and get extra cautious when I know I am near a place where lots of kids are and sight lines are poor. Even if the area is signed for 20 I might only be doing 14 to begin with, and also driving more towards the center of the road if possible with traffic.
- jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
  I do the same, and try to actively anticipate and avoid situations like this. Sadly, in my experience most drivers instead fixate on getting to their destination as fast as possible.
JKCalhoun 9mo ago
I think my problem is that it reacted after seeing the child step out from behind the SUV. An excellent driver would have already seen that possible scenario and would have already slowed to 10 MPH or less to begin with. (It's how I taught my daughter's to drive "defensively"—look for "red flags" and be prepared for the worst-case scenario. SUV near a school and I cannot see behind it? Red flag—slow the fuck down.)
- kakacik 9mo ago
  Yes and no. Tons of situations where this is simply not possible, whole traffic goes full allowed speed next to row of parked cars. If somebody unexpectedly pops up distracted, its a tragedy guaranteed regardless of driver's skills and experience. In low traffic of course it can be different. But its unrealistic to expect anybody to drive in expectation that behind every single car passed there may be a child jumping right in front of the car. That can be easily thousands of cars, every day, whole life. Impossible. We don't read about 99.9% of the cases where even semi decent driver can handle it safely, but rare cases make the news.
  - JKCalhoun 9mo ago
    I kind of drive that way. I slow down, move as far away in my lane from the parked cars as possible. It's certainly what I would expect from a machine that would claim to be as good as the best human driver.
    - jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
      > a machine that would claim to be as good as the best human driver. Does Waymo claim that? If so I haven't seen it. That should of course be the goal, but "better than the average human driver" should be the bar.
      - JKCalhoun 9mo ago
        If they don't clim that, why would I be interested in their tech?
jjav 9mo ago
> It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse. We'd have to see video of the full scene to have a better judgement, but I wouldn't call it likely. The car reacted quickly once it saw the child. Is that enough? But most humans would have been aware of the big picture scenario much earlier. Are there muliple kids milling around on the sidewalk? Near a school? Is there a big truck/SUV parked there? If that's the scenario, there is a real probability that a child might appear, so I'm going to be over-slowing way down pre-emptively even thought I haven't seen anyone, just in case. The car only slows down after seeing someone. The car can react faster that I can after seeing someone, but as a human I can pre-react much earlier based on the big picture, which is much better.
- usefulposter 9mo ago
  Precisely. Environmental context is not considered in Waymo's "peer-reviewed model" (I encourage reflexive commenters to first read it: https://waymo.com/safety/collision-avoidance-benchmarking https://waymo.com/safety/collision-avoidance-benchmarking), only basic driver behavior and traffic signal timings. Note the weaselly "immediately detected the individual as soon as they began to emerge" in the puff piece from Waymo Comms. No indication that they intend to account for environmental context going forward. If they already do this, why isn't it factored in the model?
  - jefftk 9mo ago
    How is "immediately detected the individual as soon as they began to emerge" worded weaselly?
    - jjav 9mo ago
      Not OP but I interpret that as they are focusing exclusively on what happened after the car saw the kid. And I completely agree that from that instant forward, the car did everything correctly. But if I was the accident investigator for this, I would be far more interested in what happened in the 30 seconds before the car saw the kid. Was the kid visible earlier and then disappear behind an obstruction? Or did the kid arrive from the side and was never earlier visible? These are the more important questions.
shaky-carrousel 9mo ago
A fully attentive human would've known he was near a school and wouldn't have been driving at 17 mph to begin with.
- ahahahahah 9mo ago
  You clearly don't spend much time around a school measuring the speed of cars. Head on down and see for yourself how often or not a human driver goes >17mph in such a situation.
  - shaky-carrousel 9mo ago
    I said "a fully attentive human". At the very least try to understand my comment before spouting the usual HN snarky reply.
- jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
  Doubt
  - shaky-carrousel 9mo ago
    I said "fully attentive human", not "walking plant".
drunner 9mo ago
A human driver in a school zone during morning drop off would be scanning the sidewalks and paying attention to children that disappear behind a double parked suv or car in the first place, no? As described by the nhtsa brief: "within two blocks of a Santa Monica, CA elementary school during normal school drop off hours; that there were other children, a crossing guard, and several double-parked vehicles in the vicinity" The "that there were other children, a crossing guard, and several double-parked vehicles in the vicinity" means that waymo is driving recklessly by obeying the speed limit here (assuming it was 20mph) in a way that many humans would not.
- jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
  Some human drivers? Yes, certainly. Your median human driver? Sadly, I think not. Most would be rushing, or distracted, or careless. > waymo is driving recklessly by obeying the speed limit here (assuming it was 20mph) in a way that many humans would not. I don't think we can say at all that the Waymo was driving recklessly with the data we currently have
- Rebelgecko 9mo ago
  I live near a school zone in LA and most drivers do not obey school zone speed limits. You will get honked at by aggro drivers if you slow down to the school zone speed limit of 25mph. Most cars go 40ish. And ofc a decent chunk of those drivers are on tiktok, tinder, Instagram, etc
tintor 9mo ago
"fully attentive human driver ..." is Waymo's claim, and it could be biased in their favor.
- jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
  Could be! In aggregate though, Waymos have shown to be safer than human drivers, so my prior is that that holds here.
themafia 9mo ago
> It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse. > a huge portion of human drivers What are you basing any of these blind assertions off of? They are not at all born out by the massive amounts of data we have surrounding driving in the US. Of course Waymo is going to sell you a self-serving line but here on Hacker News you should absolutely challenge that. In particular because it's very far out of line with real world data provided by the government.
- jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
  If you have contradicting data I'd be glad to see it >It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse. Is based off the source I gave in my comment, the peer-reviewed model > a huge portion of human drivers Is based on my experience and bits of data like 30% of fatal accidents involving alcohol Like I said, if you have better data I'm glad to see it
  - themafia 9mo ago
    > based on my experience The data completely disagrees with you. > Like I said, if you have better data I'm glad to see it We all have better data. It's been here the entire time: https://www.nhtsa.gov/research-data/fatality-analysis-reporting-system-fars https://www.nhtsa.gov/research-data/fatality-analysis-report...
    - yesfitz 9mo ago
      What data completely disagrees with them and what does it disagree with them about? The "Persons Killed, by Highest Driver Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) in the Crash"[1] report shows that in 2023, 30% of fatal crashes involved at least one driver with a BAC > 0.08 (the legal limit), and 36% involved a BAC > 0.01. Interesting that "Non-motorist" fatalities have dropped dramatically for everyone under the age of 21, but increased for everyone between 21 and 74.[2] Those are raw numbers, so it'd be even more interesting to display them as a ratio of the group's size. Are less children being killed by drivers because there are less children generally? Changes in parents' habits? Backup cameras? 1: https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Trends/TrendsAlcohol.aspx https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Trends/TrendsAlcohol.aspx 2: https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Trends/TrendsNonMotorist.aspx https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Trends/TrendsNonMotorist.aspx
almosthere 9mo ago
I remember someone using similar language when Uber self driving killed someone - and when the video was released, it was laughable. It is also crazy that this happened 6 days ago at this point and video was NOT part of the press releases. LOL
- jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
  LOL
  - almosthere 9mo ago
    OLO
GuinansEyebrows 9mo ago
who benefits from a statement like this?
- jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
  People who reflexively assume a human driver would do better
drewda 9mo ago
Waymo is intentionally leaving out the following details: - Their "peer-reviewed model" compares Waymo vehicles against only "Level 0" vehicles. However even my decade-old vehicle is considered "Level 1" because it has an automated emergency braking system. No doubt my Subaru's camera-based EBS performs worse than Waymo's, still it's not being included in their "peer-reviewed model." That comparison is intentionally comparing Waymo performance against the oldest vehicles on the road -- not the majority of cars sold currently. - This incident happened during school dropoff. There was a double-parked SUV that occluded the view of the student. This crash was the fault of that double-parked driver. But why was the uncrewed Waymo driving at 17 mph to begin with? Do they not have enough situational awareness to slow the f*ck down around dropoff time immediately near an elementary school? Automotive sensor/control packages are very useful and will be even more useful over time -- but Waymo is intentionally making their current offering look comparatively better than it actually is.
- ajross 9mo ago
  Emergency braking in non-camera/non-LIDAR cars requires a significant radar signal which you're only going to get from another vehicle (and even then it's noisy and tends to produce frustrating false positives, leading to later-than-you-want stops). It very likely won't detect a child or a dog, I'm not aware of a single instance of an EBS claiming to have done so in practice (and kids and dogs get hit every day!).
accidc 9mo ago
It depends. A driver may have seen a child dart behind a car and expect them to emerge on the other side. Does Waymo have the same object permanence and trajectory prediction (combined) to that of a human? Once the video evidence it out, it might become evident. Generally Waymo seems to be a responsible actor so maybe that is the case and this can help demonstrate potential benefits of autonomous vehicles. Alternatively, if even they can't get this right then it may cast doubts about the maturity of the entire ecosystem
- kyleee 9mo ago
  “Does Waymo have the same object permanence and trajectory prediction (combined) to that of a human?” Good technical question
- minimaltom 9mo ago
  > Does Waymo have the same object permanence and trajectory prediction (combined) to that of a human? On this note specifically ive actually been impressed, ie when driving down Oak st in SF (fast road, tightly parked cars) I've often observed it slow if someone on a scooter on the sidewalk turns to look toward oncoming traffic (as if to start riding), or to slow passing parked box trucks (which block vision of potential pedestrians)
rpdillon 9mo ago
This exact scenario happened with my dad 50 years ago when a little girl ran out to the street from between some parked cars. It's an extremely difficult scenario to avoid an accident in.
hn_user82179 9mo ago
multiple children in my area have died due to being hit by distracted drivers driving near schools. One incident resulted in 2 children being dragged 60 yards. Here's a snippet from an article about the death I was referencing: > The woman told police she was “eating yogurt” before she turned onto the road and that she was late for an appointment. She said she handed her phone to her son and asked him to make a call “but could not remember if she had held it so face recognition could … open the phone,” according to the probable cause statement. > The police investigation found that she was traveling 50 mph in a 40 mph zone when she hit the boys. She told police she didn’t realize she had hit anything until she saw the boys in her rearview mirror. The Waymo report is being generous in comparing to a fully-attentive driver. I'm a bit annoyed at the headline choice here (from OP and the original journalist) as it is fully burying the lede.
linsomniac 9mo ago
>It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse. Maybe. Depends on the position of the sun and shadows, I'm teaching my kids how to drive now and showing them that shadows can reveal human activity that is otherwise hidden by vehicles. I wonder if Waymo or other self-driving picks up on that.
belorn 9mo ago
If you drive in Sweden you will occasionally come up to a form of speed reduction strategy that may seem counterintuitive. They all add to make driving harder and feel more dangerous in order to force attention and lower speed. One is to merge opposite directional roads into a single lane, forcing drivers to cooperate and take turn to pass it, one car at a time. For a combined car and pedestrian road (max speed of 7km/h) near where I live, they intentionally added large obfuscating objects on the road that limited visibility and harder to navigate. This forces drivers to drive very slow, even when alone on the road, as they can't see if a car or person may be behind the next object. In an other road they added several tight S curves in a row, where if you drive anything faster than 20km/h you will fail the turns and drive onto the artificial constructed curbs. In other roads they put a sign in the middle of two way roads while at the same time drastically limiting the width to the curb, forcing drivers to slow down in order to center the car in the lane and squeeze through. In each of those is that a human driver with human fear of crashing will cause drivers to pay extra attention and slow down.
- dkarbayev 9mo ago
  It's fairly common at least in the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland too. In Switzerland they also place street parking spots on alternating sides on narrow streets, which also makes you more attentive and lower your speed.
- tombert 9mo ago
  I've heard that that is why roundabouts are safer than their alternatives: counterintuitively, they're safer because they're less safe, forcing the user to pay more attention as a result.
  - reddalo 9mo ago
    >they're safer because they're less safe Roundabouts are safer. They're safer because they prevent everybody from speeding through the intersection. And, even in case of an accident, no head-on collisions happen in a roundabout.
    - 9mo ago
mmooss 9mo ago
> It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse. Why is it likely? Are we taking the vendor's claims in a blog post as truth?
Bud 9mo ago
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somenameforme 9mo ago
You're omitting the context provided by the article. This wasn't just a random scenario. Not only was this by an elementary school, but during school drop off hours, with both children and doubled parked cars in the vicinity. If somebody doesn't know what double parking is - it's when cars parallel park beside one another, implicitly on the road, making it difficult to see what's beyond them. So you are around young children with visibility significantly impaired because of double parking. I'd love to see video of the incident because driving 17mph (27kph for metric types) in this context is reckless and not something human would typically do, because a kid popping out from behind one of those cars is not only unsurprising but completely expected. Another reason you also slow way down in this scenario is one of those cars suddenly swinging open their door which, again, would not be particularly surprising in this sort of context.
- deleted 9mo ago
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- rdtsc 9mo ago
  That's my thinking as well. Taken in some abstract scenario, all those steps seems very reasonable, and in that abstract scenario we can even say it would do better than an average human would. But that is missing the overall context that this was an elementary school during drop-off hours. That's when you crawl at 3 mph expecting kids to jump behind any car, and not going at 17mph.
  - jjav 9mo ago
    > But that is missing the overall context that this was an elementary school during drop-off hours. That's when you crawl at 3 mph expecting kids to jump behind any car, and not going at 17mph. Indeed. Sure the car knows the limit, it knows it is a school zone, it can precisely track people within the reach of its sensors (but not behind blockages it can't see through). But it is missing the human understanding of the situation. Does it know that tiny humans behave far more erratically then the big ones? Obvious to us humans, but does the car take that into account? Does it consider that in such a situation, it is likely that a kid that its sensors can't possibly detect has a high probability to suddenly dart out from behind an obstacle? Again obvious to us humans because we understand kids, but does the car know?
SirMaster 9mo ago
If I was a human driver in that contextual situation I wouldn't even be going 14mph in the first place...
- Mawr 9mo ago
  So you say, with hindsight. Regardless, what you would do is irrelevant. The question is: what would the ~average driver do? If you tell me the average driver goes <=14mph in that situation, I'm gonna look at you funny.
  - SirMaster 9mo ago
    I say because I actually do when I drive through places like active school zones like that. I don't care what the average driver does, that's a dumb excuse IMO. I care what I do. If I am going to make my car self-driving, it better be at least as good if not better than me if I am going to trust it to transport my family etc. We should hold self driving to a higher standard than "average driver" because average is bad.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 9mo ago
I don't fail to believe that, a child running from behind an suv is really scary
dietr1ch 9mo ago
Is there footage available? A fully attentive human could've read cues from the environment and maybe avoid the accident or at least increased the error margin for that emergency stop. If that wasn't an option I guess a fast reacting driver would have done a bit worse and an unattentive driver might have even ran ever the kid.

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chaboud 9mo ago

Possibly, 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 ago
Absolutely, 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
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- mlyle 9mo ago
  It 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.
  - jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
    And the fact that Waymo is never drunk/high/tired/texting, which an astounding portion of human drivers are.
  - davorak 9mo ago
    17MPH is way to fast, depending on the details. I do not think the article gives the details to know if it was a reasonable speed to be going or not, enough details to know it might be to fast, like proximity to a school and children present, yes.
jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
Certainly, I'm not against constructive criticism of Waymo. I just think it's important to consider the counterfactual. You're right too that an especially prudent human driver may have avoided the scenario altogether, and Waymo should strive to be that defensive.
- themafia 9mo ago
  > I'm not against constructive criticism of Waymo. I feel like you have to say this out loud because many people in these discussions don't share this view. Billion dollar corporate experiments conducted in public are sacrosanct for some reason. > I just think it's important to consider the counterfactual More than 50% of roadway fatalities involve drugs or alcohol. If you want to spend your efforts improving safety _anywhere_ it's right here. Self driving cars do not stand a chance of improving outcomes as much as sensible policy does. Europe leads the US here by a wide margin.
  - jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
    > I feel like you have to say this out loud because many people in these discussions don't share this view. Billion dollar corporate experiments conducted in public are sacrosanct for some reason. Yes, and I find it annoying that some people do seem to think Waymo should never be criticized. That said, we already have an astounding amount of data, and that data clearly shows that the experiment is successful in reducing crashes. Waymos are absolutely, without question already making streets safer than if humans were driving those cars. > If you want to spend your efforts improving safety _anywhere_ it's right here. We can and should do both. And as your comment seems to imply but does not explicitly state, we should also improve road design to be safer, which Europe absolutely kicks America's ass on.
    - themafia 9mo ago
      > and that data clearly shows that the experiment is successful in reducing crashes I disagree. You need way more data, like orders of magnitude more. There are trillions of miles driven in the US every year. Those miles often include driving in inclement weather which is something Waymo hasn't even scraped the surface of yet. > without question There are _tons_ of questions. This is not even a simple problem. I cannot understand this prerogative. It's far too eager or hopeful. > We can and should do both Well Google is operating Waymo and "we" control road policy. One of these things we can act on today and the other relies on huge amounts of investments paying off in scenarios that haven't even been tested successfully yet. I see an environment forming where we ignore the hard problems and pray these corporate overlords solve the problem on their own. It's madness.

torginus 9mo ago

I usually take extra care when going through a school zone, especially when I see some obstruction ('behind a tall SUV', was the waymo overtaking?), and overtaking is something I would probably never do (and should be banned in school zones by road signs). This is a context that humans automatically have and consider. I'm sure Waymo engineers can mark spots on the map where the car needs to drive very conservatively.

ndsipa_pomu 9mo ago
I appreciate your sensible driving, but here in the UK, roads outside schools are complete mayhem at dropping off/picking up times. Speeding, overtaking, wild manoeuvres to turn round etc. When reading the article, my first thought was that only going at 17mph was due to it being a robotaxi whereas UK drivers tend to be strongly opposed to 20mph speed limits outside schools.
- zdragnar 9mo ago
  Most US states cap speed limits around schools at 15mph when children are present. There may also be blinking lights above these signs during times that will be likely. I'm not sure how much of that Waymo's cars take into account, as the law technically takes into account line of sight things that a person could see but Waymo's sensors might not, such as children present on a sidewalk.
  - jefftk 9mo ago
    > Most US states cap speed limits around schools at 15mph when children are present. Are you sure? The ones I've seen have usually been 20 or 25mph. Looking on Image Search (https://www.google.com/search?q=school+zone+speed+limit+sign https://www.google.com/search?q=school+zone+speed+limit+sign) and limiting just to the ones that are photos of real signs by the side of the road, the first 10 are: 25, 30, 25, 20, 35, 15, 20, 55, 20, 20. So only one of these was 15.
    - enlightens 9mo ago

micromacrofoot 9mo ago

It's possible, but likely is a heavy assertion. It's also possible a human driver would have been more aware of children being present on the sidewalk and would have approached more cautiously given obstructed views. Please please remember that any data from Waymo will inherently support their position and can not be taken at face value. They have significant investment in making this look more favorable for them. They have billions of dollars riding on the appearance of being safe.

IncreasePosts 9mo ago

I wonder if that is a "fully attentive human drive who drove exactly the same as the Waymo up until the point the child appeared"? Personally, I slow down and get extra cautious when I know I am near a place where lots of kids are and sight lines are poor. Even if the area is signed for 20 I might only be doing 14 to begin with, and also driving more towards the center of the road if possible with traffic.

jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
I do the same, and try to actively anticipate and avoid situations like this. Sadly, in my experience most drivers instead fixate on getting to their destination as fast as possible.

JKCalhoun 9mo ago

I think my problem is that it reacted after seeing the child step out from behind the SUV. An excellent driver would have already seen that possible scenario and would have already slowed to 10 MPH or less to begin with. (It's how I taught my daughter's to drive "defensively"—look for "red flags" and be prepared for the worst-case scenario. SUV near a school and I cannot see behind it? Red flag—slow the fuck down.)

kakacik 9mo ago
Yes and no. Tons of situations where this is simply not possible, whole traffic goes full allowed speed next to row of parked cars. If somebody unexpectedly pops up distracted, its a tragedy guaranteed regardless of driver's skills and experience. In low traffic of course it can be different. But its unrealistic to expect anybody to drive in expectation that behind every single car passed there may be a child jumping right in front of the car. That can be easily thousands of cars, every day, whole life. Impossible. We don't read about 99.9% of the cases where even semi decent driver can handle it safely, but rare cases make the news.
- JKCalhoun 9mo ago
  I kind of drive that way. I slow down, move as far away in my lane from the parked cars as possible. It's certainly what I would expect from a machine that would claim to be as good as the best human driver.
  - jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
    > a machine that would claim to be as good as the best human driver. Does Waymo claim that? If so I haven't seen it. That should of course be the goal, but "better than the average human driver" should be the bar.
    - JKCalhoun 9mo ago
      If they don't clim that, why would I be interested in their tech?

jjav 9mo ago

> It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse. We'd have to see video of the full scene to have a better judgement, but I wouldn't call it likely. The car reacted quickly once it saw the child. Is that enough? But most humans would have been aware of the big picture scenario much earlier. Are there muliple kids milling around on the sidewalk? Near a school? Is there a big truck/SUV parked there? If that's the scenario, there is a real probability that a child might appear, so I'm going to be over-slowing way down pre-emptively even thought I haven't seen anyone, just in case. The car only slows down after seeing someone. The car can react faster that I can after seeing someone, but as a human I can pre-react much earlier based on the big picture, which is much better.

usefulposter 9mo ago
Precisely. Environmental context is not considered in Waymo's "peer-reviewed model" (I encourage reflexive commenters to first read it: https://waymo.com/safety/collision-avoidance-benchmarking https://waymo.com/safety/collision-avoidance-benchmarking), only basic driver behavior and traffic signal timings. Note the weaselly "immediately detected the individual as soon as they began to emerge" in the puff piece from Waymo Comms. No indication that they intend to account for environmental context going forward. If they already do this, why isn't it factored in the model?
- jefftk 9mo ago
  How is "immediately detected the individual as soon as they began to emerge" worded weaselly?
  - jjav 9mo ago
    Not OP but I interpret that as they are focusing exclusively on what happened after the car saw the kid. And I completely agree that from that instant forward, the car did everything correctly. But if I was the accident investigator for this, I would be far more interested in what happened in the 30 seconds before the car saw the kid. Was the kid visible earlier and then disappear behind an obstruction? Or did the kid arrive from the side and was never earlier visible? These are the more important questions.

shaky-carrousel 9mo ago

A fully attentive human would've known he was near a school and wouldn't have been driving at 17 mph to begin with.

ahahahahah 9mo ago
You clearly don't spend much time around a school measuring the speed of cars. Head on down and see for yourself how often or not a human driver goes >17mph in such a situation.
- shaky-carrousel 9mo ago
  I said "a fully attentive human". At the very least try to understand my comment before spouting the usual HN snarky reply.
jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
Doubt
- shaky-carrousel 9mo ago
  I said "fully attentive human", not "walking plant".

drunner 9mo ago

A human driver in a school zone during morning drop off would be scanning the sidewalks and paying attention to children that disappear behind a double parked suv or car in the first place, no? As described by the nhtsa brief: "within two blocks of a Santa Monica, CA elementary school during normal school drop off hours; that there were other children, a crossing guard, and several double-parked vehicles in the vicinity" The "that there were other children, a crossing guard, and several double-parked vehicles in the vicinity" means that waymo is driving recklessly by obeying the speed limit here (assuming it was 20mph) in a way that many humans would not.

jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
Some human drivers? Yes, certainly. Your median human driver? Sadly, I think not. Most would be rushing, or distracted, or careless. > waymo is driving recklessly by obeying the speed limit here (assuming it was 20mph) in a way that many humans would not. I don't think we can say at all that the Waymo was driving recklessly with the data we currently have
Rebelgecko 9mo ago
I live near a school zone in LA and most drivers do not obey school zone speed limits. You will get honked at by aggro drivers if you slow down to the school zone speed limit of 25mph. Most cars go 40ish. And ofc a decent chunk of those drivers are on tiktok, tinder, Instagram, etc

tintor 9mo ago

"fully attentive human driver ..." is Waymo's claim, and it could be biased in their favor.

jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
Could be! In aggregate though, Waymos have shown to be safer than human drivers, so my prior is that that holds here.

themafia 9mo ago

> It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse. > a huge portion of human drivers What are you basing any of these blind assertions off of? They are not at all born out by the massive amounts of data we have surrounding driving in the US. Of course Waymo is going to sell you a self-serving line but here on Hacker News you should absolutely challenge that. In particular because it's very far out of line with real world data provided by the government.

jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
If you have contradicting data I'd be glad to see it >It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse. Is based off the source I gave in my comment, the peer-reviewed model > a huge portion of human drivers Is based on my experience and bits of data like 30% of fatal accidents involving alcohol Like I said, if you have better data I'm glad to see it
- themafia 9mo ago
  > based on my experience The data completely disagrees with you. > Like I said, if you have better data I'm glad to see it We all have better data. It's been here the entire time: https://www.nhtsa.gov/research-data/fatality-analysis-reporting-system-fars https://www.nhtsa.gov/research-data/fatality-analysis-report...
  - yesfitz 9mo ago
    What data completely disagrees with them and what does it disagree with them about? The "Persons Killed, by Highest Driver Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) in the Crash"[1] report shows that in 2023, 30% of fatal crashes involved at least one driver with a BAC > 0.08 (the legal limit), and 36% involved a BAC > 0.01. Interesting that "Non-motorist" fatalities have dropped dramatically for everyone under the age of 21, but increased for everyone between 21 and 74.[2] Those are raw numbers, so it'd be even more interesting to display them as a ratio of the group's size. Are less children being killed by drivers because there are less children generally? Changes in parents' habits? Backup cameras? 1: https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Trends/TrendsAlcohol.aspx https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Trends/TrendsAlcohol.aspx 2: https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Trends/TrendsNonMotorist.aspx https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Trends/TrendsNonMotorist.aspx

almosthere 9mo ago

I remember someone using similar language when Uber self driving killed someone - and when the video was released, it was laughable. It is also crazy that this happened 6 days ago at this point and video was NOT part of the press releases. LOL

jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
LOL
- almosthere 9mo ago
  OLO

GuinansEyebrows 9mo ago

who benefits from a statement like this?

jobs_throwaway 9mo ago
People who reflexively assume a human driver would do better

drewda 9mo ago

Waymo is intentionally leaving out the following details: - Their "peer-reviewed model" compares Waymo vehicles against only "Level 0" vehicles. However even my decade-old vehicle is considered "Level 1" because it has an automated emergency braking system. No doubt my Subaru's camera-based EBS performs worse than Waymo's, still it's not being included in their "peer-reviewed model." That comparison is intentionally comparing Waymo performance against the oldest vehicles on the road -- not the majority of cars sold currently. - This incident happened during school dropoff. There was a double-parked SUV that occluded the view of the student. This crash was the fault of that double-parked driver. But why was the uncrewed Waymo driving at 17 mph to begin with? Do they not have enough situational awareness to slow the f*ck down around dropoff time immediately near an elementary school? Automotive sensor/control packages are very useful and will be even more useful over time -- but Waymo is intentionally making their current offering look comparatively better than it actually is.

ajross 9mo ago
Emergency braking in non-camera/non-LIDAR cars requires a significant radar signal which you're only going to get from another vehicle (and even then it's noisy and tends to produce frustrating false positives, leading to later-than-you-want stops). It very likely won't detect a child or a dog, I'm not aware of a single instance of an EBS claiming to have done so in practice (and kids and dogs get hit every day!).

accidc 9mo ago

It depends. A driver may have seen a child dart behind a car and expect them to emerge on the other side. Does Waymo have the same object permanence and trajectory prediction (combined) to that of a human? Once the video evidence it out, it might become evident. Generally Waymo seems to be a responsible actor so maybe that is the case and this can help demonstrate potential benefits of autonomous vehicles. Alternatively, if even they can't get this right then it may cast doubts about the maturity of the entire ecosystem

kyleee 9mo ago
“Does Waymo have the same object permanence and trajectory prediction (combined) to that of a human?” Good technical question
minimaltom 9mo ago
> Does Waymo have the same object permanence and trajectory prediction (combined) to that of a human? On this note specifically ive actually been impressed, ie when driving down Oak st in SF (fast road, tightly parked cars) I've often observed it slow if someone on a scooter on the sidewalk turns to look toward oncoming traffic (as if to start riding), or to slow passing parked box trucks (which block vision of potential pedestrians)

rpdillon 9mo ago

This exact scenario happened with my dad 50 years ago when a little girl ran out to the street from between some parked cars. It's an extremely difficult scenario to avoid an accident in.

hn_user82179 9mo ago

multiple children in my area have died due to being hit by distracted drivers driving near schools. One incident resulted in 2 children being dragged 60 yards. Here's a snippet from an article about the death I was referencing: > The woman told police she was “eating yogurt” before she turned onto the road and that she was late for an appointment. She said she handed her phone to her son and asked him to make a call “but could not remember if she had held it so face recognition could … open the phone,” according to the probable cause statement. > The police investigation found that she was traveling 50 mph in a 40 mph zone when she hit the boys. She told police she didn’t realize she had hit anything until she saw the boys in her rearview mirror. The Waymo report is being generous in comparing to a fully-attentive driver. I'm a bit annoyed at the headline choice here (from OP and the original journalist) as it is fully burying the lede.

linsomniac 9mo ago

>It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse. Maybe. Depends on the position of the sun and shadows, I'm teaching my kids how to drive now and showing them that shadows can reveal human activity that is otherwise hidden by vehicles. I wonder if Waymo or other self-driving picks up on that.

belorn 9mo ago

If you drive in Sweden you will occasionally come up to a form of speed reduction strategy that may seem counterintuitive. They all add to make driving harder and feel more dangerous in order to force attention and lower speed. One is to merge opposite directional roads into a single lane, forcing drivers to cooperate and take turn to pass it, one car at a time. For a combined car and pedestrian road (max speed of 7km/h) near where I live, they intentionally added large obfuscating objects on the road that limited visibility and harder to navigate. This forces drivers to drive very slow, even when alone on the road, as they can't see if a car or person may be behind the next object. In an other road they added several tight S curves in a row, where if you drive anything faster than 20km/h you will fail the turns and drive onto the artificial constructed curbs. In other roads they put a sign in the middle of two way roads while at the same time drastically limiting the width to the curb, forcing drivers to slow down in order to center the car in the lane and squeeze through. In each of those is that a human driver with human fear of crashing will cause drivers to pay extra attention and slow down.

dkarbayev 9mo ago
It's fairly common at least in the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland too. In Switzerland they also place street parking spots on alternating sides on narrow streets, which also makes you more attentive and lower your speed.
tombert 9mo ago
I've heard that that is why roundabouts are safer than their alternatives: counterintuitively, they're safer because they're less safe, forcing the user to pay more attention as a result.
- reddalo 9mo ago
  >they're safer because they're less safe Roundabouts are safer. They're safer because they prevent everybody from speeding through the intersection. And, even in case of an accident, no head-on collisions happen in a roundabout.
  - 9mo ago

mmooss 9mo ago

> It's likely that a fully-attentive human driver would have done worse. Why is it likely? Are we taking the vendor's claims in a blog post as truth?

Bud 9mo ago

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somenameforme 9mo ago

You're omitting the context provided by the article. This wasn't just a random scenario. Not only was this by an elementary school, but during school drop off hours, with both children and doubled parked cars in the vicinity. If somebody doesn't know what double parking is - it's when cars parallel park beside one another, implicitly on the road, making it difficult to see what's beyond them. So you are around young children with visibility significantly impaired because of double parking. I'd love to see video of the incident because driving 17mph (27kph for metric types) in this context is reckless and not something human would typically do, because a kid popping out from behind one of those cars is not only unsurprising but completely expected. Another reason you also slow way down in this scenario is one of those cars suddenly swinging open their door which, again, would not be particularly surprising in this sort of context.

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rdtsc 9mo ago
That's my thinking as well. Taken in some abstract scenario, all those steps seems very reasonable, and in that abstract scenario we can even say it would do better than an average human would. But that is missing the overall context that this was an elementary school during drop-off hours. That's when you crawl at 3 mph expecting kids to jump behind any car, and not going at 17mph.
- jjav 9mo ago
  > But that is missing the overall context that this was an elementary school during drop-off hours. That's when you crawl at 3 mph expecting kids to jump behind any car, and not going at 17mph. Indeed. Sure the car knows the limit, it knows it is a school zone, it can precisely track people within the reach of its sensors (but not behind blockages it can't see through). But it is missing the human understanding of the situation. Does it know that tiny humans behave far more erratically then the big ones? Obvious to us humans, but does the car take that into account? Does it consider that in such a situation, it is likely that a kid that its sensors can't possibly detect has a high probability to suddenly dart out from behind an obstacle? Again obvious to us humans because we understand kids, but does the car know?

SirMaster 9mo ago

If I was a human driver in that contextual situation I wouldn't even be going 14mph in the first place...

Mawr 9mo ago
So you say, with hindsight. Regardless, what you would do is irrelevant. The question is: what would the ~average driver do? If you tell me the average driver goes <=14mph in that situation, I'm gonna look at you funny.
- SirMaster 9mo ago
  I say because I actually do when I drive through places like active school zones like that. I don't care what the average driver does, that's a dumb excuse IMO. I care what I do. If I am going to make my car self-driving, it better be at least as good if not better than me if I am going to trust it to transport my family etc. We should hold self driving to a higher standard than "average driver" because average is bad.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 9mo ago

I don't fail to believe that, a child running from behind an suv is really scary

dietr1ch 9mo ago

Is there footage available? A fully attentive human could've read cues from the environment and maybe avoid the accident or at least increased the error margin for that emergency stop. If that wasn't an option I guess a fast reacting driver would have done a bit worse and an unattentive driver might have even ran ever the kid.