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Comment by lnanek2 | Hacker News Reader

I'd love for it to be true, but it's tough to believe that's real. There's one point where a pedestrian is standing in the snow on the road just to the side of where the car would pass: https://youtu.be/Bx08yRsR9ow?t=35s

Wouldn't any pedestrian detection decide the person in the road has priority and stop and let them cross? It isn't capable of reading a person's intention to stand there vs. cross or not.

The title claims it supports interactions with pedestrians, and the video does seem to show it pausing in the middle of a turn once for a pedestrian in the road, but that could be easily faked by having the driver still using manual breaks.

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I thought 1:50 was a lot more concerning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx08yRsR9ow&feature=youtu.be...

That pedestrian is already in the street and they momentarily stutter then pass the pedestrian with very little room.

That and the way the steering seems super sensitive to various snow remainders on the side of the street. It's almost as if it's controlling for its position relative to the snow instead of picking a mostly straight trajectory.

In much of Europe, and I would assume Russia as well, that's a pretty typical scenario. I suspect the car is set up to handle the situation much like a native driver.

> like a native driver.

Considering the amount of traffic-related deaths in Russia... They'd better handle it like non-native driver.

>That and the way the steering seems super sensitive to various snow remainders on the side of the street.

Yes, I also noticed it, it seems like there are continuous micro (and not so micro) corrections on the steering wheel, with such behaviour the passenger (besides the driver that has some more chances, being attentive to the road, to not get it) is likely subject to get car-sickness.

In some places, people often walk on the road and it's expected that the drivers will just drive next to them.

If self-driving cars are to use the current infrastructure and drive as a regular car on regular roads then better be able to handle this.

From what I can tell it looks like the pedestrian’s vector is heading away from the car (right to left) for a few frames before he pauses. Couldn’t a level 5 model infer intentionality in a direction based on the way the pedestrian was walking?

That is the kind of premature optimization humans make that ends up with crashes. It's automated, there is no fatigue, there is no irrational feeling of losing time or being rushed or pressured by drivers behind over what would be a few seconds safely stopped and of no consequence to the overall travel time.

It also looks to me like it's braking very late at times. That's not the sort of caution that one would expect from a prototype.

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