Comment by Mawr

> I suspect that a waymo will out-react a human basically 100% of the time, and apply full braking force within a few 10s of milliseconds and well before a human has even begun to move their leg.

Correct. Human reaction time is at its very best ~250ms. And that's when you're hyper-focused on reacting to a specific stimuli and actively try to respond to it as fast as possible.

During normal driving, a focused driver will react on the order of 1s. However, that's assuming actively paying attention to the road ahead. If you were to say, be checking your mirrors or looking around for any other reason this can easily get into multiple seconds. If you're say, playing on your phone (consider how many drivers do this), forget it.

A machine however is 100% focused 100% of the time and is not subject to our poor reaction times. It can brake in <100ms every time.

On the other hand, a software fault could make it run into an obstacle that'd be obvious to a human at full speed.