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Comment by xoa | Hacker News Reader

>The Mainichi daily said the bus automatically stopped but the operators pressed the start button as they did not think he would walk out on to the road.”

Yeah, if that's the case then this story is literally the 100% exact opposite of what the headline implies: it was the human drivers who were the weak link and caused an accident just is normally the case. Self-driving systems can be patient and just wait when in doubt, rather then feel any emotional temptation to make assumptions and get a move on.

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Why is it that the human drivers are the weak link. While driving through the city there are numerous times where pedestrians are waiting near cars and if they suddenly acted irrationally and stepped in front of the vehicle there would be a collision. Humans have to navigate that, a self driving system that refuses to attempt to read the intentions of pedestrians would be stalled forever. Not to mention in this story it could be the pedestrians fault and not on the human drivers.

There was a thread on this earlier this (last?) week with a video of a Waymo car hesitating as a person walked near a cross walk.

I mean, yes, headline might be misleading but it's not "100% exact opposite of what the headline implies". The headline ("Visually impaired Paralympian hit by self-driving bus") implies that someone was hit by something, that something was a self-driving bus. All of that is true, and is what happened. What's left out though, is whoose fault it was, it's not part of the headline at all. One might think it was because of the self-driving system instead of a human, but it wasn't.

So yes, misleading/clickbait it was, but not "100% exact opposite".

It should just say "hit by bus" given the self-driving nature of the bus had nothing to do with the incident and in fact would have prevented it.

But that wouldn't be news. It matters because most people will just read the headline and go away thinking self-driving technology is dangerous.

Sort of disagree... It's a misleading title but the fact that it's self-driving is what makes this story interesting. Title should have added 'after human intervention' for more clarity rather than less.

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