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Comment on Death of beloved neighborhood cat sparks outrage against robotaxis in San Francisco

MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

“While our vehicle was stopped to pick up passengers, a nearby cat darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away”

I mean, it sucks, but it could’ve happened with a human driver as well… and likely has happened.

I have rode in a Waymo and it shows you all the things it detects on a screen… which includes humans and small animals. It’s not a perfect machine, but it probably is a better driver than a lot of people already and it’s learning every day.

I suppose this incident could get Waymo to put cameras/sensors beneath the car… something that regular car makers won’t think about.

But yeah, it should’ve detected the cat beforehand and waited for it to leave before driving off. Then again, the human passengers didn’t see it either.

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supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

Then again, the human passengers didn’t see it either.

The human passengers weren’t responsible for driving the vehicle, their lack of awareness is a feature of getting a taxi ride?

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- MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I meant that the Waymo didn’t see it, neither did the passengers, so the cat could’ve been difficult to detect.
  
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  - supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Not an excuse.
    
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    BassTurd@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    A small animal not being visible to a human or robotic driver is absolutely a viable excuse. It’s sad that the cat died, but it’s first an foremost the fault of the owners for letting their cat out.
    
    I don’t like the tech bro world and I’m not a fan of driverless vehicles, but this didn’t happen because it was driverless and the outcome would be the same if their were a person behind the wheel.
    
    You can definitely argue against cars being on the road in general, but I was on a bike ride with a buddy the other day, and he hit a squirrel that ran between us and then under his bike. Sometimes bad things happen especially when dealing with animals, and blaming a computer blindly is dumb AF.
    
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    MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
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Th3D3k0y@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I mean, it sucks for the cat and the neighborhood, I’m glad that where I live there are a few very friendly outdoor cats and I’ve always seen people nail the brakes to avoid them the few times they cross the road.

I also understand that autonomous cars kind of need more work, but real drivers also really suck at driving. I wonder if the ire here is more at “who do we blame if no driver”

Also also, I wonder if electric cars are going to cause a lot more issues for outdoor animals who to some extend get trained to listen for a Hrududu which the electric motors don’t make.

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ruuster13@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Under- car sensors is a great idea and the kind of innovation required for this tech to reach universal adoption. Waymo is already safer than human drivers IMO but let’s keep going until it’s significantly safer with verifiable data and capabilities humans cannot have. And we have to address its connection to big tech for “safety under fascism” purposes.

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mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Yeah this is the kind of thing where you really need statistics. This sticks out because it’s a prominent example of something new, an autonomous vehicle, doing something notable - killing an animal for the first time (or at least one of the very first well-publicized times on record).

For people’s reaction to this to be that this is because it’s an autonomous vehicle is the same sort of cognitive bias that causes things like, " The first person to get a math problem wrong in class was a girl so it seems like girls are bad at math". When of course it could be that the probability of boys and girls getting problems wrong is equal, and that the girl was simply the first one to get a unlucky roll on the dice of the universe. It could even be that boys are more likely to get problems wrong, and the girl was especially unlucky. It could in fact be that girls are more likely to get problems wrong, too, but this single instance doesn’t give us enough evidence for that. It could be that boys actually have gotten more problems wrong, but we only hear about the girl getting the problem wrong due to sociological biases, or vice versa. Etc.

I get that we shouldn’t trust corporations, and it’s not fun to defend a corporation, but it is important to defend rational thinking. And the rational way to approach this is to employ statistical methods to judge whether a vehicle being autonomous truly makes it a bigger risk to animals in the road or not. Any other line of reasoning is not right for this kind of problem.

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- Ascense@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Not exactly the first time, given the incident a few years ago where a dog ran into the street and was struck by a Waymo. It got some publicity at the time but was forgotten relatively quickly, presumably since it was quite clear there wasn’t much any driver could have done in that situation. I expect this case will go over similarly, although maybe it will generate a bit more discussion since there are at least some imaginable ways this could have been prevented.
  
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