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Comment by KKKKkkkk1 | Hacker News Reader

If DNNs are unreliable, why is it ok to use them to discriminate a car from a pedestrian? The planning that you do in order to avoid hitting a car is very different from what you need in order to avoid a pedestrian. If you erroneously treat a pedestrian as a car, you are very likely to cause a tragedy.

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As a non-driver, I'm curious, how different is the planning? Isn't it just a matter of size?

If it's a pedestrian, you will do whatever is necessary to avoid it. You will break suddenly or you will even do a very heavy turn. In other words, you will probably put your own life in danger, and for a good reason.

If it's a car, you will NOT do whatever is necessary to avoid it (I'm speaking about low speed crashes here). You will prefer a "soft" crash that doing certain super dangerous maneuvers. Like, you will brake and "accept" a soft crash instead of doing a ultra heavy turn to the sidewalk.

Crashing two cars together, at a low speed, will bring you some bent metal, a pile of paperwork, and expenses - "brake as hard as reasonable, don't worry too much about collision avoidance." Crashing a car into a pedestrian, even at low speed, will get you manslaughter charges - "avoid collision at all costs." Is that different enough?

in addition to the comments about having a much stronger bias against hitting a pedestrian than a car, the pedestrian or car currently presenting an obstacle may make evasive actions (or other movements) of their own, which will be quite different...

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