Waymo saw a child, slowed down, still hit it
"Safer than a human" seems to be an unsatisfying absolution.
Failing at the one job that mattered most, Waymo’s self-driving car saw a child, made a decision, and followed through.
Waymo said its robotaxi struck the child at 6 miles per hour, after braking “hard” from around 17 miles per hour. The young pedestrian “suddenly entered the roadway from behind a tall SUV, moving directly into our vehicle’s path,” the company said in its blog post. Waymo said its vehicle “immediately detected the individual as soon as they began to emerge from behind the stopped vehicle.”
“Following contact, the pedestrian stood up immediately, walked to the sidewalk, and we called 911. The vehicle remained stopped, moved to the side of the road, and stayed there until law enforcement cleared the vehicle to leave the scene,” Waymo wrote in the post.
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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.” The company did not release a specific analysis of this crash.
“Safer than a human” seems to be an unsatisfying absolution.
"Safer than a human" is the whole point.
I'm bullish on Waymo. I've had enough mediocre rideshare rides and see enough fuckery on the road that I'm in favor of more Waymos replacing fallible human drivers.
However, it faces a reporting problem: if an Uber driver does a mistake, it's that one driver's fault. If a Waymo gets in an accident, it's *the whole Waymo system's fault*. This isn't necessarily incorrect, but wide-scale statistical improvements don't tickle our feel-good centers, and we jump on every fault of a new system even if that system measurably improves the average outcome.
So I don't agree with Jason's framing here.
(there are more interesting things to be wary of from Waymo, such as potential market monopoly)
You can teach a car the rules of the road but you cannot teach a car the unpredictable way humans drive (and walk).