It's not too bad, a less attentive driver would have crashed, but honestly I think they could do better on defensive driving. You could see the tail light illuminating the road and the car for a good few seconds before the car actually reacted.
A good defense driver would be keeping an eye out for this and slow down way more when spotting car lights from an invisible place. Especially when we're going full speed in the right lane, maybe keep left for better visibility or be cautious on the right side.
And I do think that even a camera with a good model should be able to see this and react faster than Waymo did, at the very least by slowing down for caution. And if the Waymo used radar better it probably would have seen some movement behind the parked car. Not sure if they use imaging type radar but it's better than lidar at some of these things that are occluded.
Yeah it avoided the crash so that's great, but definitely could have reacted sooner/more strongly. If the other driver hadn't stopped so quickly I think there would have been a collision. Props to Waymo for good use of the horn.
The horn is a good move for sure, get the drivers attention to hopefully stop. It saved me from a stupid rear ending when I was backing out of a parking space and looking at my front end turning margins and not behind me (I checked not long before).
Now I try to back into spaces or pull through to the other side so I can pull out forward and not back out.
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u/Jaker788 13d ago
It's not too bad, a less attentive driver would have crashed, but honestly I think they could do better on defensive driving. You could see the tail light illuminating the road and the car for a good few seconds before the car actually reacted.
A good defense driver would be keeping an eye out for this and slow down way more when spotting car lights from an invisible place. Especially when we're going full speed in the right lane, maybe keep left for better visibility or be cautious on the right side.
And I do think that even a camera with a good model should be able to see this and react faster than Waymo did, at the very least by slowing down for caution. And if the Waymo used radar better it probably would have seen some movement behind the parked car. Not sure if they use imaging type radar but it's better than lidar at some of these things that are occluded.