Pedestrians always have the right of way including when breaking the law.
There’s no scenario when a driver has the right to run someone over.
So, the robot basically ignored the first law of robotics which coincidentally is the first law of driving.
This is not true, nor does it make sense. If you are in the middle of the highway going 70 mph and someone is standing on the side of the road wanting to cross you do not have to yield and stop your vehicle. Stopping in the middle of the highway is dangerous since it isn't excepted.
For anyone mad enough to claim right of way toward a pedestrian, in any situation, just think about the shitload of legal hurdles awaiting you down the road. Not worth it by any standard.
“Right of way” and “must yield” does not mean a car is allowed to hit a pedestrian who doesn’t follow the rules of course. The pedestrian is just not following the rules and can be cited for that. But practically speaking, most collisions involving such situations are not faulted against the driver unless some other factor is involved. It’s still a mess for them, however.
you don't know that. She was first hit by a regular car and could have been hidden from the robot's view until after the initial collision.
The way I understand it is: There are two cars waiting to go through an intersection. The Cruise and the Human-Driven car. The light turns green, and the Cruise's pathway through the intersection is clear.
A pedestrian is crossing the intersection in the path of the human-driven car, but not in the path of the Cruise.
Both cars enter the intersection, the human-driven car strikes the pedestrian, who then rolls off the human-driven car into the path of the Cruise, and is run-over the Cruise.
Of course, I haven't seen the accident, but if that's broadly correct, I'm not sure that this is the damning evidence of "driverless cars are unsafe" some people seem to be spinning it up to be.
It is a tragedy, but it seems to be a tragedy caused primarily by a human driver who struck a pedestrian, and a human pedestrian who ignored a traffic signal.
Should the bar for driverless cars be "able to predict when other vehicles will hit a pedestrian and roll that person in their path"?
Would a human-driven vhicle have done any better? If the places were reversed, would the Cruise have struck the pedestrian in the first place?
I think we're all right to be skeptical of machine-driven cars, but I'm not certain that this specific incident is a point against them.
JFC. How about "do not enter an intersection where pedestrians are present?"
So no entering intersections at all in major cities during rush hour?
No, but in the case of pedestrians crossing the street it may be reasonable to expect a driverless car to avoid getting into a situation where that can happen. This will depend on details of traffic laws where it is operating.
What are the clearance rules in California for staying clear of pedestrians crossing the street?
Here in Washington it is that if they are in your half of the street or within one lane of your half you have to wait. For purposes of this rule your half of the street is all lanes moving in your direction.
No Washington driver should be going until either the pedestrian finishes crossing or there is at least one lane between the lanes in the car's direction and the lane the pedestrian is in.
If a human driver here goes early and hits the pedestrian and the pedestrian ends up in an adjacent lane they should still be safe from other cars that did not go early.
> ... shall exercise all due care and shall reduce the speed of the vehicle or take any other action relating to the operation of the vehicle as necessary to safeguard the safety of the pedestrian.
In addition, all of the rules for pedestrians (no jaywalking, don't dash off the curb in front of a car, even in a crosswalk) include a provision that state they do not "relieve a driver of a vehicle from the duty of exercising due care for the safety of any pedestrian within the [roadway or crosswalk]"
This is great in principle but in practice cars will just drive straight at you even when you are crossing on a walk signal.
Coming from a country where the walk signal means only pedestrians can be in the crosswalk this almost got me killed the other night.
I was hoping self driving cars would help things but it seems they drive straight for you too.
> Notwithstanding any official traffic control signal indication to proceed, a driver of a vehicle shall not enter an intersection or marked crosswalk unless there is sufficient space on the other side of the intersection or marked crosswalk to accommodate the vehicle driven without obstructing the through the passage of vehicles from either side
Assuming the pedestrian counts as being on the "other side of the intersection" and prevents there from being sufficient space to "accommodate the vehicle being driven" I think you are correct.
1: They would put up a "do not block intersection" sign anywhere that this became a problem, and then you could get ticketed for disobeying a road sign.
I've been in this situation before. I'm the third car in a line going on a green light at a light, and all of a sudden an unhoused neighbor pops in the intersection crossing, I slam on my brakes because I don't have the "right" to hit him, but damn, that was close.
This! I sometimes watch some of these dashcam accidents, and I can say most of them can be avoided if everyone had some basic human decency, but it always go “I have the right of way I don’t care” attitude, yes you have a green light but obviously you are seeing other car is crossing the road, try to stop/avoid it instead it of ramming it, especially you are still accelerating not already at full speed..
It is clearly intended to convey "right of way", in the sense that the driver was fair and reasonable to expect other traffic - including pedestrians - to be clear of their path through the intersection and thus this pedestrian was technically in the wrong, and likely putting herself in danger by acting recklessly (eg. by jaywalking). It is likely that she left the driver with little to no opportunity to react and avoid the collision.
Of course it doesn't mean that if you see someone contravening traffic laws you get to deliberately plow into them to teach them a lesson...
Please remind me where I said that the driver doesn't need to be looking where they're going... Don't be ridiculous.
We don't have much info yet, it is possible that the driver was reckless or negligent but we don't know that. Given that they fled the scene, it is likely. What we do know is that the driver had right of way, so the pedestrian was almost certainly reckless and negligent.
Every road user has a duty of care. But if a pedestrian wants to unexpectedly throw themselves in front of a moving vehicle, there's little that even the best drivers in the world can do to avoid it.
It is quite common for a collision to occur where at least one driver is not acting at all recklessly, dangerously, or without due care and attention. You are responsible for where your car goes, not for what others illegally, unexpectedly, and unavoidably place in its path.
This was at night, in a city, at an intersection. Can you completely rule out the possibility that this woman, perhaps a little tipsy, ran across the road without checking traffic?
And while the full story has not yet come out, the story is quite detailed for a hit and run, we know the pedestrian was struck and rolled up over the bonnet and over the car roof before their trajectory carried them towards the edge of the car roof upon which they proceeded to roll off the rear side roof of the car and that’s when they hit the road directly in front of the driverless car… this pedestrian got dumped basically from the sky as far as the AI on the driverless car can understand… There’s going to be a lot more evidence recorded by the driverless car likely including video with the offending human driver’s license plate on it at some point… and I expect a detailed account of the accident will be possible due to the investigations being able to correlate the current information and witnesses with whatever data from the driverless cars sensors Cruise chooses to or is forced to (by the NTSB/etc)
In fact, the driver of the car did not have "the right to enter the intersection" if it meant they were going to run a pedestrian over, no matter what color the light was.
How did we get to the point where reflexive empathy for drivers over everyone else has completely trumped basic understanding of both the law and human decency?