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Comment by DannyBee | Hacker News Reader

I'm actually curious who had the right of way in this one. It sounds like the bus just plowed through them while accelerating the whole way.

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I'm pretty sure it's the bus. Generally a already moving vehicle with a green light on straight road has right of way. The correct action for the autonomous vehicle (or a human driver) would be to wait for all traffic in the lane to clear (for example, after the previous light turns red and there is a lull in the traffic), then make it's way around the sandbags.

Here's my artists rending. The vertical lane is just the right hand lane, and is "wide", but still one lane. The bus is traveling "up" and the Google AV tries to manenouver around the sandbags blocking it's way. Thinking that it can get around in time, the AV starts moving to the left and crashes into the bus.

I guess the "one lane" aspect is the confounding variable, but since the autonomous vehicle was stopped, then it takes on the aspect of any other stopped vehicle on the side of the road (ie giving up it's right of way). Just like if you have a road where cars are allowed to park on the side of the road, those cars cannot enter traffic unless it is safe to do so.

Edit: Actually, I have no idea. Did a quick read of California's right of way laws, and couldn't find anything that jumped out that would cover this situation.

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  |[B]   |
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If it was a single lane, then technically the bus was attempting to pass a moving vehicle in the same lane as itself, which puts it at fault.

I'm actually really curious about this now. It's a "wide" lane, with room for 2 sets of cars. The AV itself went into the right hand part of the lane while other cars were still in the lane. Presumably the lane is wide for making right turns, otherwise basically ever car there is making an illegal right turn (and law enforcement probably would have already noticed that by now).

So either the AV broke the law first (by doubling up in a lane), or the bus had the right of way. I'm with the other commenter, why isn't it just an actual turn lane?

Also, if the bus is at fault here, then this would be an amazing place to commit insurance fraud. Just sit in the right hand part of the lane, wait for traffic to pass by, then drive back into the left hand portion of the lane right as a BMW/Mercedes/Ferrari/etc drives by.

I wonder about this too. If you are new to CA, at first it seems crazy how aggressive people are about splitting the right hand lane to turn right... who would have the right of way if the bus was already stopped at a light, but the AV split the lane to turn right and passed the stopped bus? I like the idea of splitting the right lane to make right turns, but IMO, if you've done so, you no longer have the right of way for traffic in that lane.

The AV can proceed "when safe" to approach the intersection and then, "when safe", make its turn, but the bus owns the lane otherwise.

But the AV wasn't moving the whole time. Once it stopped for the sandbags, it was effectively a parked car.

It sounds like this happened too close to the intersection for parking to be legal. If I see a car stopped on the right side of the road at an intersection signalling a r right turn, I don't assume it's parking, I assume that it's stopped for a pedestrian in the crosswalk.

I agree with you analysis. If the AV was stopped completely, then it should wait until there is an opening before resuming motion, just as a parked vehicle would do.

But, if the AV was not stopped, I think the bus is now at fault for attempting to pass a moving vehicle within its own lane, which is illegal (I hope).

I don't think there's any rule of the road saying you lose or gain right-of-way depending on whether your car stops. If you park the car, yes, or if you are stopped long enough that a reasonable person would think you were parked. But just coming to stop does nothing.

In this case, I think it all boils down to vague ideas about right-of-ways when drivers casually divide lanes.

Looking at a map of the area, it's an extra-wide lane, as described in the report. Why would CA build it that way, instead of a full turn lane? I assume since it's technically a single lane, the fault actually lies with the bus, since it was attempting to pass within the lane?

https://www.google.com/maps/place/El+Camino+Real+%26+Castro+...

For clarity, the storm drain mentioned in the report is underlined in red in this screenshot: https://imgur.com/K1Yf36n

The extra width is for parking. See this streetview image; the storm drain is at the end of the block (where a person is standing behind a pole in a red jacket). https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3859607,-122.084495,3a,75y,1...

The extra width is for parking.

Thanks for that. It's so obvious from that view, but harder to understand from the bird's eye view.

So from the bus driver's perspective, the AV was a parked car on the side of the road. From the AV's perspective, it likely should have treated the situation as if it was going from a parked position to merging into traffic.

That storm drain is way too close to the intersection to be a legal parking area according to the rules of the cities I'm familiar with. It's close enough that I would typically assume a stopped car signalling a right turn is waiting for pedestrians to clear out of the crosswalks. I wouldn't expect a car in the AV's place to swerve left, but I would definitely be looking at it as active traffic, not a parked car.

It sounds like the car attempted a lane change, but cancelled when it detected the bus. The bus didn't want to wait for it to return to its lane, so it just scraped the side of the car. If the car was further in the lane, it would have been rear-ended, but the report just says side scraped.

Note that neither the AV nor the bus ever left the lane. This all happened in a single 'wide' lane, wide enough for both vehicles to be in it at the same time.

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