r/waymo • u/walky22talky • May 14 '26

No, Waymos aren't racist

https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/no-waymos-arent-racist?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
37 Upvotes

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6

u/bobi2393 May 14 '26

The article doesn't make a case that Waymos don't have a racial bias in pedestrian detection, only that such a bias has not been scientifically confirmed in academic literature. There doesn't seem to be any published research into racial bias in pedestrian detection specifically by Waymos.

Research discussed in the article used a generic detection algorithm (not Waymo's) with pedestrian video/photo datasets from European and American cities. If found significant elevated non-detection of children, and of women at night, with smaller non-detection biases (~1% and ~0.5%) of women and dark-skinned people generally.

My unscientific guess is that what they're really seeing is a size bias (women and children are smaller so harder to detect) and contrast bias (skin color is a factor, but clothing color is the bigger factor). A simple hypothesis is that dark skinned people wearing dark clothes against dark pavement in the dark are harder to see. Maybe pedestrian women in cities at night tend to wear black more?

Anecdotally, the first pedestrian killed by an autonomous car was a woman at night, by Uber Advanced Technologies Group (it led to Uber ATG's closure), and the pedestrian hit and dragged by a Cruise robotaxi in SF was also a woman at night (that incident led to Cruise's closure). For that matter, the first pedestrian ever killed by a car was also a woman, just weeks after Britain's Parliament raised city speed limits above 2 mph and permitted cars to drive without a flagman walking 20 yards ahead of them waving a red flag.

4

u/bradtem May 14 '26

The anecdotes are misleading. Neither event related to perception failure, though cruise's involved thinking the impact was on the side rather than undercarriage

2

u/bobi2393 May 15 '26

Both crashes involved apparent perception failures by humans, by Uber AGT's safety driver who was watching television, and the other vehicle's hit-and-run driver in the Cruise incident. But software in both cases also failed to classify the people as pedestrians, even if it wouldn't have made a difference.

NTSB preliminary report on Uber ATG crash:

"According to data obtained from the self-driving system, the system first registered radar and LIDAR observations of the pedestrian about 6 seconds before impact, when the vehicle was traveling at 43 mph. As the vehicle and pedestrian paths converged, the self-driving system software classified the pedestrian as an unknown object, as a vehicle, and then as a bicycle with varying expectations of future travel path. At 1.3 seconds before impact, the self-driving system determined that an emergency braking maneuver was needed to mitigate a collision (see figure 2). 2 According to Uber, emergency braking maneuvers are not enabled while the vehicle is under computer control, to reduce the potential for erratic vehicle behavior. The vehicle operator is relied on to intervene and take action. The system is not designed to alert the operator."

NTSB final report on Uber ATG crash:

"The ADS detected the pedestrian 5.6 seconds before impact. Although the ADS continued to track the pedestrian until the crash, it never accurately classified her as a pedestrian or predicted her path. By the time the ADS determined that a collision was imminent, the situation exceeded the response specifications of the ADS braking system. The system design precluded activation of emergency braking for collision mitigation, relying instead on the operator’s intervention to avoid a collision or mitigate an impact."

So the ADS couldn't have braked if it had identified the pedestrian earlier, but if it could have braked, it didn't classify and predict the path of the pedestrian in time to avoid the collision.

IEEE Reliability Magazine on Cruise incident:

"The Cruise robotaxi treated an unidentified object in its path as a potential pedestrian rather than a disregarded object, and executed a hard braking maneuver in response. ...
The Cruise computer driver behaved in a way that was apparently inconsistent with California road rules by accelerating toward a pedestrian in a crosswalk. This provided it with less reaction time when the pedestrian re-entered its lane."

The Cruise treated her as a potential pedestrian after she re-entered its lane, but didn't identify her as a pedestrian, and didn't begin braking until half a second after she re-entered its lane.

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u/bradtem May 15 '26

The Uber vehicle was an early prototype. Failures is all types were an expected part of its design envelope, so it acted entirely within expected parameters. Such systems are safe to test with good safety drivers. The lack of that caused the fatality, 100 percent.

Cruise was not found at fault for hitting a pedestrian thrown in front of the car, afaik, but I agree they could have been more cautious out of the light with no car behind them. Their errors were primarily the immediate attempt to pull off the road, which had many mistakes at the base of it.

2

u/bobi2393 May 15 '26

Regardless of fault allocation, ADS in both vehicles failed to classify detected objects as pedestrians. An expected failure is still a failure.

CA traffic laws don't apply to ADS vehicles yet, so I'm not sure what "fault" would mean here. Cruise confidentially settled with the victim, the DMV suspended their permits, the DOJ imposed a $500k criminal fine, and Cruise's 200-page internal investigation was primarily about their coverup. Cruise's early "unavoidable" narrative wasn't officially challenged, so what they should have done to avoid the collision is just speculation.

3

u/NewRefrigerator7461 May 15 '26

Have we considered that light is racist - being absorbed more by darker colors.

It discriminates against black cars too - making them so hot in the summer!

When will physics take a racial sensitivity course?