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Comment Re:it's a ridiculous and unreasonable rule (Score 1) 34

There is another one that sticks out to side and indicates that you should not go forward.

Not where I live. They do have a stop sign that flips out to the side.

I do not recommend passing a stopped bus, even if you do not hit anyone.

I'm wondering what I said that made you think I thought otherwise.

Comment Re:Waymo speeds through my school neighborhood (Score 1) 34

Sure the speed limit is 30, but we have tons of kids in the neighborhood and narrow streets due to parked cars (we are still in the heart of the coty). Everyone else travels at 20. Waymo regularly travels at 30mph. Maybe its lidar is detecting pedestrians and thinks it is safe, but just the other day I watched a kid run out from behind a parked car to catch a ball. No amount of lidar would catch that at the last minute.

Of course itâ(TM)s play fast, fail hard.. so change will not happen until a kid dies. Just hope it is not mine!

Have you pointed this out to Waymo? They're pretty responsive from what I've heard, and this is exactly the kind of thing they'd want to know about and update their model to consider, before a kid gets hit. Not only do they not want to kill kids because Waymo employees are humans, but it would also be horrendous PR that would seriously damage the company.

You can submit feedback through the Waymo app, regardless of whether or not you've used the service. There's probably also a way to report concerns through their web site.

One note: You might be surprised how good the cars are at noticing hidden dangers. I got a ride about ten years ago (when I worked for Google) and I was annoyed when a light turned green but my car just sat there... until about two seconds later when a cyclist came whizzing across the road in front of the car. There was a tall hedge in the way and I don't know how the car "saw" him -- no human driver would, the dude was asking to get squashed -- but it clearly did, and waited. My guess is that although LIDAR and cameras couldn't see through the hedge, RADAR could. Waymo uses LIDAR, RADAR, visual and infrared cameras and ultrasonic sensors so it's quite a bit better at "seeing" than any human could be. None of those can see a kid behind a parked car, though, so maybe they do need to update the model to be more careful in those circumstances.

Comment Re:it's a ridiculous and unreasonable rule (Score 2) 34

School buses even have a pole that sticks out the front of the bus so kids crossing the street have to go several feet in front of the bus so drivers who might be in the other lane can see the kids and they don't just appear in front of the bus.

I'm pretty sure the purpose of the pole is so the kids walk far enough in front of the bus that the bus driver can see them. Buses are tall and kids are short, so if a kid walks right in front of the bus they'll be hidden from the driver by the dashboard. If a bunch of kids disembark and several of them turn left out of the door, the driver would have to keep a very careful count to make sure they've accounted for all of the ones who could have turned left again, right in front of the bus and might be walking close enough to the nose that they're in that front blind spot. The pole makes the kids walk far enough in front of the bus before they turn in front of it that the driver can definitely see them.

It probably does help in the way you describe, but if that were the primary purpose the pole would be on the driver side.

Comment Re:No surprise (Score 1) 54

What we do is irrelevant in the long term because antibiotic-resistant bugs will evolve in other countries which don't care. We might stop antibiotic-resistant bugs evolving here but the new ones will soon arrive on an airliner.

This was always going to be a perpetual arms race and we're no longer competent enough to develop new arms in the race.

Comment Re:Too specific (Score 1) 91

A small percentage of Americans could barely get used to cab over vans

Driving a cab over is not hard. We got a diesel pusher bus where you're way further out in front of the front axle than that, and the only adjustment really is turning a little later. You get reasonably used to it in short order. If you don't have to deal with an 8' vehicle in a 10' wide lane (yeah they're meant to be 12' but then there's bridge crossings and such) then I bet it's not even scary.

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