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Harry Campbell's avatar

Yikes, this does have Cruise written all over it. Hard to say what happened without the video and I still do not understand why Zoox won't share footage with the public from incidents like this. But if Zoox then issued a voluntary software recall, that would imply that Zoox did somehting wrong - ie not stopping after they hit the e-scooter rider.

Sharing video would build real trust and transparency - otherwise I think it's fair to assume the worst.

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Sue Vaughan's avatar

A large coalition of us are organizing to oppose the operation of Waymos on several long blocks of Market Street in San Francisco. That stretch was made mostly car free a few years ago.

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Sue Vaughan's avatar

Last year I read an article about AVs in which you were quoted saying something like: “We don't know whether or not Waymo will have an incident like the one with Cruise and the pedestrian, and neither does Waymo.” Can you verify this? Thank you. https://48hills.org/2023/08/the-environmental-case-against-robotaxis/

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Phil Koopman's avatar

Sue, that statement doesn't sound quite right. What I would have said then is "We don't know whether or not Waymo will have a lower fatality rate than human drivers, and neither does Waymo." Details for why I say that here (mostly in the part at the end, that quotes Waymo researchers as saying they do not have enough data to know how fatalities will turn out." But that is a general statement, not specific to this mishap scenario.

As to that specific mishap scenario, I certainly hope that Waymo added that to their simulation suite. But I have no way of knowing one way or another.

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Sue Vaughan's avatar

Thank you.

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