Comment by somenameforme

Comment by somenameforme 2 days ago

22 replies

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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.

rdtsc 2 days 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.

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  • jjav 2 days 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?

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    • ffsm8 2 days ago

      Urm, ime people frequently drive significantly over the speed limit in all these places, at all times of the day.

      Blows my mind how you guys confidently state this with authority as if that's the normal behavior, when the reality is that it probably should be - but isn't actually.

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      • griffzhowl 2 days ago

        So you're confidently stating it's not the normal behaviour... Can you tell me what the average speed is for human drivers outside elementary schools at drop-off times?

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      • jjav a day ago

        > Urm, ime people frequently drive significantly over the speed limit in all these places, at all times of the day.

        The focus on speed limit as some truth is not the best way to think about it.

        It might be 15/20/25 (varies, but those are the most common values I've seen).

        But in terms of what is safe, it varies far more.

        There will be circumstances where driving double that limit is 100% safe in front of the school. (For example, small numbers of high-school kids standing around but far from the street, so even if they did a mad dash to the street (which that age kids will not do), they still couldn't get in a spot to be hit by the car.)

        And there will be circumstances where even a one-tenth of that speed will be far too dangerous to consider. (For example, high density of elementary school kids on a narrow sidewalk with many visual obstructions.)

        I have a hard time believing that you, or anyone, would drive the same speed in both scenarios without any consideration to the circumstances of the moment.

        I know I most certainly would never. If there is obviously zero chance of an accident I'll drive the limit or above. If there are tons of tiny kids in brownian motion, I'll slow down to a crawl or even stop if I sense risk (like a kid disappearing behind a parked car and now I don't know where they'll pop up).

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      • rdtsc 2 days ago

        But if you’re plan on building a fleet of cars operating all over the country or the world, do you want to model them after the careful driver, who has awareness about the situation (school, drop off/pickup hours, etc) or say “what the heck, some drivers are not paying attention so neither will my robots, it’s fine”

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    • dietr1ch a day ago

      Trusting the speed limits to be reasonable and all you need to be safe is insane.

      Around a school understanding the environment is way much more than understanding just the speed limits and lane boundaries.

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SapporoChris 2 days ago

"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"

I am not sure what your definition of typical is. The reason we have lower speed zones in school districts at specific times is because humans typically drive fast. The reason police officers frequently target these areas and write a plethora of tickets is because humans typically ignore speed limits.

Your claim seems to be that a human would drive much slower than the posted speed limit considering the conditions, but the laws and the court room suggest otherwise.

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  • franktankbank 2 days ago

    There is probably a multimodal distribution of behaviors for people in these situations. Any robotaxi ought to behave in the more cautious mode no? I drive at near idle speeds in these situations.

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Jean-Papoulos 2 days ago

>driving 17mph (27kph for metric types) in this context is reckless and not something human would typically do

Unfortunately, a vast overestimation of human danger recognition. Or empathy, unsure

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  • boogieknite 2 days ago

    anecdotally a couple of kids were hit by cars every year at my very small school of 300 people. pedestrians and drivers both acting recklessly

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davorak 2 days ago

Driving is based so much off of feel so my numbers may be off, but in the scenario you are talking about 5mph seems reasonable, 10mph already seems like to much.

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  • mjevans 2 days ago

    The want to be E but really armchair engineer in me for this context says there's far too little Engineering safety of the situation.

    That school should not be on a busy roadway at all, it should also not have a child dropoff area anywhere near one but instead, ideally, a slow loop where the parents do drop off children, and then proceed forward in a safe direction away from the school in a flow.

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    • well_ackshually 2 days ago

      It's funny because now you're sounding like you're blaming the school/the city for the situation.

      Things are what they are. Driving situations are never perfect and that's why we adapt. The Waymo was speeding in a school zone. Did a dangerously fast overtake of a double parked car. It's engineering safety failure over engineering safety failure from Waymo's part, on nobody else.

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      • cwillu 2 days ago

        > The Waymo was speeding in a school zone

        Source? The article doesn't list a speed limit, but highways.dot.gov suggests to me that the speed limit would be 25mph in the school zone, in which case the waymo was going significantly under the speed limit.

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        • mleo 2 days ago

          It is 15mph at this school with kids present. So percentage wise kind of high, but in absolute terms not much.

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pxeger1 20 hours ago

> 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

This is not called double parking. Double parking is something different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_parking

I don't know about you but here in the UK, close parallel parking is normal and expected, and I was taught to avoid trying to cross in the gap between two parked cars, and to be extra careful if I was going to. In this scenario some blame might lie with the driver for going too fast, but I would certainly also blame the child (or their parent) for stepping far into the road without looking.

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cwillu 2 days ago

30kph is the posted speed limit in school zones here, precisely because it's an appropriately slow speed for the context.

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peddling-brink 2 days ago

While I completely agree with your premise, the software can be improved. It can be programmed to drop down to 5 miles an hour or less depending on street size, pedestrian proximity, school zone, etc.

If only the same could be said for the other parents in the school zone. I’ve seen people roar by in similar scenarios at 30+ miles an hour.

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IshKebab 2 days ago

> not something a human would typically do

lol I'm guessing you don't have kids. This is hilarious.

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  • Grisu_FTP 2 days ago

    The full text says: "because driving 17mph (27kph for metric types) in this context is reckless and not something human would typically do"

    While i dont have kids, i guess you dont either. Because usually kids dont drive cars, atleast i didnt when i was in elementary school.

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