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Comment by alva | Hacker News Reader

On the one hand, the cyclist became visible in the footage at a very late stage. If that is how the drivers eye saw it they would have very little time to react, however they may have been able to do a sharp swerve.

On the other, the operator was clearly distracted regardless of if they would have been able to avoid this.

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You're getting downvoted but the guy was obviously reading his phone the entire time...

We don't know if he was looking at a display showing the road from the perspective of lidar, etc.

So? It's their job to be the human lookout in the car, not watching a TV screen.

If they didn't want drivers looking at those displays, why would they put them there? Either looking at those displays is part of the job, or the display should automatically turn off. I'm guessing it's the former.

"however they may have been able to do a sharp swerve."

As someone that enjoys racing cars and other types of high performance driving I feel like I can pretty confidently say this isn't even remotely a realistic statement.

You're grossly overestimating human response times. Even if we're ignoring response time and imagining the driver instantly turning the steering wheel, large SUVs like the XC90 simply can't generate the lateral acceleration required to move the vehicle clear of the pedestrian in the time and space shown in that video.

I accept this is almost certainly the case.

But as many people have pointed out, what the camera captured is not what the human eye would have seen. The eye has much better dynamic range; an alert driver would have had more time than what we can see on the video.

Sharply swerving at the last minute would probably be more dangerous than simply slamming on the brakes.

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