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Comment by Dlanv

15 hours ago

With above-average human reflexes, the kid would have been hit at 14mph instead of 6mph.

About 5x more kinetic energy.

Yeah, if a human made the same mistakes as the Waymo driving too fast near the school, then they would have hurt the kid much worse than the Waymo did.

So if we're going to have cars drive irresponsibly fast near schools, it's better that they be piloted by robots.

But there may be a better solution...

But would a human be driving at 17 in a school zone during drop off hours? Id argue a human may be slower exactly because of this scenario

  • > would a human be driving at 17 in a school zone during drop off hours?

    In my experience in California, always and yes.

    • Maybe we should not only replace the unsafe humans with robots, but also have the robots drive in a safe manner near schools rather than replicating the unsafe human behavior?

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  • Depends on the school zone. The tech school near me is in a 50 zone and they don't even turn on the "20 when flashing" signs because if you're gonna walk there, you're gonna come in via residential side streets in the back and the school itself is way back off the road. The other school near me is downtown and you wouldn't be able to go 17 even if you wanted to.

Kinetic energy is a bad metric. Acceleration is what splats people.

Jumping out of a plane wearing a parachute vs jumping off a building without one.

But acceleration is hard to calculate without knowing time or distance (assuming it's even linear) and you don't get that exponent over velocity yielding you a big number that's great for heartstring grabbing and appealing to emotion hence why nobody ever uses it.