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?
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.
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).
Around a school understanding the environment is way much more than understanding just the speed limits and lane boundaries.
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.
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.
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.
Unfortunately, a vast overestimation of human danger recognition. Or empathy, unsure
lol I'm guessing you don't have kids. This is hilarious.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.