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Cyclist hit by driverless Waymo car in San Francisco, police say (www.sfgate.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

28 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Here we go. Autonomous vehicles are now mowing down cyclists.

I hope that Waymo's insurance is good!

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[+] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (3 children)

As soon as the car detected the cyclist it hit the brakes and the cyclist had minor injuries.

Had you read (and understood) the article, you would have seen that police have no details about what caused the crash, so you're basing your assessment entirely on what the company said happened.

They have a certain level of damage-control to contend with, so no doubt they won't be admitting negligence.

I think the cyclist only walked away with minor injuries because of the low speed of the accident (the car was allegedly coming off a stop sign) and vehicle type. But I also think it should have it seen or anticipated the cyclist and stopped sooner, especially at such low speeds.

Unless, of course, the claim is that the cyclist hit the car, and not the other way around.

I guess we'll know when Waymo hands over the ride footage. Hopefully, they comply and not withhold it like their competitor did.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Last year, or the year before, there was a murder in Iceland and it made national news. Why? Because there are virtually no murders in that country - it is an exception to the rule.

Mile-for-mile, self-driving cars fare significantly better than humans: who are actually the ones "mowing down people." Especially the drunk ones. It's exactly the same situation as Iceland with the murders, if you had national news each time a human caused a casualty there would be hardly enough time to tell the news.

The "mowing down" hyperbole is doing your cause no justice. I certainly agree that it's too early to go completely driverless (especially when your trustworthy humans go hands/eyes-free in cars that explicitly disallow it) - but humans have never had the qualifications to deal with something that drives 10x the speed than they can sprint.

If you want to pull self-driving cars off the road then, great! I think we can all agree with that. Let's pull all human drivers off the road first - not only do the statistics support that we're incompet, biology does too.

[+] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

You need to be better. The article says there was a passenger in the car, I’m sure they can and will testify as to exactly what happened.

Do you think that the passenger would have been paying attention to what's in front of the car? I don't think so, but I would rather go by the cameras on the car - they don't lie.

Again. This wasn’t a mowing down of anyone and it was a situation that even human drivers wouldn’t have been able to avoid.

I think they would have. At least human drivers that aren't driving like self-driving cars 😜

You need to take a breath and stop letting your hatred of vehicles larger than a bicycle color your take on things. It’s not healthy and it will lead to stress based health issues down the road.

Fair point, and I appreciate your concern.

My daughter's friend was killed by a driver in a pick-up truck less than a year ago while she was riding an e-scooter. It was 100% avoidable, and the driver was only charged with failure to yield.

No charges for actually killing her. So when I see that cars are still hurting or killing people, it boils my blood because I know that the driver (self-driving or not) will never be held accountable.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

To be fair, the article is trash. There's details in other publications, like Reuters:

"Waymo said its vehicle was at a complete stop at a four-way intersection when a large truck crossed the intersection in its direction. At its turn to proceed, the Waymo car moved forward.

However, the cyclist, who was obscured by the truck which the cyclist was following, took a left turn into the Waymo vehicle's path. When the cyclist was fully visible, the Waymo's vehicle braked heavily, but wasn't able to avoid the collision, the company said."

Drafting through an intersection is not very safe (I really should stop doing it myself) because of this exact visibility problem. Heck, it seems our cyclist friend cut left because they couldn't see the waymo car either.

Watch out when crossing busy intersections, folk! Cars are bulky and opaque. Yield when encountering busy intersections.