The school speed limit there is 15 mph, and that wasn't enough to prevent an accident.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/child-struck-waymo-near-...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/child-struck-waymo-near-...
+/- 2 mph is acceptable speedometer and other error. (15 mph doesn’t mean never exceed under any legal inteprerstion I know.)
It’s reasonable to say Waymo would reduce speed in a 12 versus 15 in a way most humans would not.
We're not though. Drivers are allowed to kill as many people as they like as long as they're apologetic and weren't drinking; at most they pay a small fine.
Also, where I live that's manslaughter, a serious felony that can put you in jail.
Oh also, that video says "kid ran out from a double parked suv". Can you imagine being dumb enough to drive over the speed limit around a double parked SUV in a school zone?
Can you imagine being dumb enough to think that exceeding a one size fits all number on a sign by <10% is the main failing here?
As if 2mph would have fundamentally changed this. Pfft.
A double parked car, in an area with chock full street parking (hence the double park) and "something" that's a magnet for pedestrians, and probably a bunch of pedestrians should be a "severe caution" situation for any driver who "gets it". You shouldn't need a sign to tell you that this is a particular zone and that warrants a particular magic number.
The proper reaction to a given set of indicators that indicate hazards depends on the situation. If this were easy to put in a formula Waymo would have and we wouldn't be discussing this accident because it wouldn't have happened.
In a school zone, when in a situation of low visibility, the car should likely be going significantly below the speed limit.
So, it's not a case of 17mph vs 15mph, but more like 17mph vs 10mph or 5mph.
The car clearly failed to identify that this was a situation it needed to be going slower. The fact that it was going 17 instead of 15 is basically irrelevant here except as fodder for moral posturing. If the car is incapable of identifying those situations no amount of "muh magic number on sign" is going to fix it. You'll just have the same exact accident again in a 20 school zone.
If the car is going slower than the speed limit in this scenario, it is difficult to tell over the internet if that speed was appropriate. If the car is going over the speed limit, it is obviously inappropriate.
Please pass this message on to 99.999% of human drivers who think speed limit is the minimum speed.
According to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46812226 1mph slower might have entirely avoided contact in this particular case.
The fact that it’s hard to turn this into a formula is exactly why robot drivers are bad.
The 15 mph speed limit starts on the block the school is on. The article says the Waymo was within two blocks of the school, so it's possible they were in a 25 mph zone.