Comment by aanet

I bet most drivers plow through that area at 30mph (since it's 25mph limit) instead if driving as slow as 16.

Even people being all indignant on HN.

> But is 17mph a safe speed at an active school dropoff area?

Now you're asking interesting questions... Technically, in CA, the speed limit in school zones are 25 mph (which local authorities can change to 15 mph, as needed). In this case, that would be something the investigation would check, of course. But regardless of that, 17 mph per se is not a very fast speed (my gut check: turning around intersections at > 10-11 mph feels fast, but going straight at 15-20 mph doesnt feel fast; YMMV). But more generally, in the presence of child VRUs (vulnerable road users), it is prudent to drive slowly just because of the randomness factor (children being the most unaware of critters). Did the Waymo see the kids around in the area? If so, how many and where? and how/where were they running/moving to? All of that is investigation data...

My 2c is that Waymo already took all of that into account and concluded that 17 mph was indeed a good speed to move at...

...which leads to your observation below:

> (My general impression observing Waymo vehicles is that they’ve gone from being obnoxiously cautious to often rather aggressive.)

Yes, I have indeed made that same observation. The Waymos of 2 years ago were very cautious; now they seem much more assertive, even a bit aggressive (though that would be tough to define). That is a driving policy decision (cautious vs assertive vs aggressive).

One could argue if indeed 17 mph was the "right" decision. My gut feel is Waymo will argue that (but likely they might make the driving policy more cautious esp in presence of VRUs, and child VRUs particularly)

> In your opinion as an AV safety expert, has Waymo already demonstrated a far higher standard of driving than human drivers in collision avoidance scenarios?

That's a difficult question to answer, and the devil really is in the details, as you may have guessed. What I can say that Waymo is, by far, the most prolific publisher of research on AV safety on public roads. (yes, those are my qualifiers...)

Here's their main stash [1] but notably, three papers talk about comparison of Waymo's rider-only (i.e. no safety driver) performance vis-a-vis human driver, at 7.1 million miles [2], 25 million miles [3], 56 million miles [4]. Waymo has also been a big contributor to various AV safety standards as one would expect (FWIW, I was also a contributor to 3 of the standards... the process is sausage-making at its finest, tbh).

I haven't read thru all their papers, but some notable ones talk about the difficulty of comparing AV vs human drivers [5], and various research on characterising uncertainty / risk of collision, comparing AVs to non-impaired, eyes-on human driver [6]

As one may expect, at least one of the challenges is that human-driven collisions are almost always very _lagging indicators_ of safety (i.e. collision happened: lost property, lost limbs, lost lives, etc.)

So, net-net, Waymo still has a VERY LONG WAY to go (obviously) to demonstrate better than human driving behavior, but they are showing that their AVs are better-than-humans on certain high-risk (potential) collisions.

As somebody remarked, the last 1% takes 90% of time/effort. That's where we are...

---

[1] https://waymo.com/safety/research

[2] https://waymo.com/research/comparison-of-waymo-rider-only-cr...

[3] https://waymo.com/research/do-autonomous-vehicles-outperform...

[4] https://waymo.com/research/comparison-of-waymo-rider-only-cr...

[5] https://waymo.com/research/comparative-safety-performance-of...

[6] https://waymo.com/blog/2022/09/benchmarking-av-safety/

[edit: reference]

> In your experience, where do we find a credible source of info? Do we need to wait for the government's investigation to finish?

Most likely, yes, the NHTSA investigation will be credible source of info for this case. HOWEVER, Waymo will likely fight it tooth-and-nail from letting it be public. They will likely cite "proprietary algorithms / design", etc. to protect it from being released publicly. So, net-net, I dunno... Will have to wait and see :shrug.gif:

But meanwhile, personally I would read reports from experts like Phil Koopman [1] and Missy Cummings [2] to see their take.

> Remember Tesla's blog posts?

You, Sir, cite two companies that are diametrically opposite on the safety spectrum, as far as good behavior is concerned. Admittedly, one would have less confidence in Waymo's own public postings about this (and I'd be mighty surprised if they actually made public their investigation data, which would be a welcome and an pioneering move).

On the other hand, the other company you mentioned, the less said the better.

[1] http://www.koopman.us/

[2] https://www.gmu.edu/profiles/cummings

Think of it like dog ownership: if my dog hurts someone, that's on me. Property that causes harm is the owner's responsibility.

If I program a machine and it goes out into the world and hurts someone who did not voluntarily release my liability, that's on me.

In 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.

The performance of a human is inherently limited by biology, and the road rules are written with this in mind. Machines don't have this inherent limitation, so the rules for machines should be much stronger.

I think there is an argument for incentivising the technology to be pushed to its absolute limits by making the machine 100% liable. It's not to say the accident rate has to be zero in practice, but it has to be so low that any remaining accidents can be economically covered by insurance.

Bringing a vehicle onto the public roads is a privilege not a right. Any harm to pedestrians that results is your responsibility, not anyone else's.

"Waymo Driver" is their term for their self driving software.

Though given the situation a human driver would not have been going 17 mph in a school zone during drop-off near double parked vehicles