dylan604 3 days ago

How is hitting a child not a failure? And actually, how can you call this a success? Do you think this was a GTA side mission?

  • direwolf20 3 days ago

    Immediately hitting the brakes when a child suddenly appears in front of you, instead of waiting 500ms like a human, and thereby hitting the child at a speed of 6 instead of 14 is a success.

    What else to you expect them to do, only run on grade–separated areas where children can't access? Blare sirens so children get scared away from roads? Shouldn't human–driven cars do the same thing then?

    • recursive 3 days ago

      I don't know the implementation details, but success would be not hitting pedestrians. You have some interesting ideas on how to achieve that but there might be other ways, I don't know.

      • gruez 3 days ago

        >I don't know the implementation details, but success would be not hitting pedestrians.

        So by that logic, if we cured cancer but the treatment came with terrible side effects it wouldn't be considered a "success"? Does everything have to perfect to be a success?

    • orwin 3 days ago

      17 mph is way too fast near a school if it's around the time children are getting out (or in).

      • seanmcdirmid 3 days ago

        The limit is 20 MPH in Washington state, in California the default is 25 MPH, but is going to 20 MPH soon and can be further lowered to 15 MPH with special considerations.

        The real killer here is the crazy American on street parking, which limits visibility of both pedestrians and oncoming vehicles. Every school should be a no street parking zone. But parents are going to whine they can't load and unload their kids close to the school.

      • [removed] 3 days ago
        [deleted]
    • parl_match 3 days ago

      "and thereby hitting the child ... is a success."

      > What else to you expect them to do, only run on grade–separated areas where children can't access?

      no, i expect them to slow down when children may be present

    • dylan604 3 days ago

      This isn't Apollo 13 with a successful failure. A driverless car hit a human that just happened to be a kid. Doesn't matter if a human would have as well, the super safe driverless car hit a kid. Nothing else matters. Driverless car failed.

      • direwolf20 3 days ago

        If failure is defined such that failure is the only possible outcome, I don't think it's a useful part of an evaluation.

BugsJustFindMe 3 days ago

Well, as a comparison, we know that Tesla has failed to report to NHTSA any collisions that didn't deploy the airbag.

  • red75prime 3 days ago

    Tesla report ids from SGO-2021-01_Incident_Reports_ADAS.csv with no or unknown airbag deployment status: 13781-13330, 13781-13319, 13781-13299, 13781-13208, 13781-8843, 13781-13149, 13781-13103, 13781-13070, 13781-13052... and more

voidUpdate 3 days ago

Is this a success? There was still an incident. I'd argue this was them being transparent about a failure

  • TeMPOraL 3 days ago

    Being 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.

  • direwolf20 3 days ago

    They handled an unpredictable emergency situation better than any human driver.

    • mitthrowaway2 3 days ago

      Was 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.