"According to Waymo's account, the child entered the road from behind a stopped SUV and went straight into the vehicle's path. The Waymo "braked hard," the Mountain View company wrote in a Wednesday blog post, "reducing speed from approximately 17 mph to under 6 mph before contact was made." The company wrote, "to put this in perspective," its research estimates an attentive human driver in the same spot would likely have hit the child at 14 mph, a far more dangerous speed."
"The child was not injured, Santa Monica police spokesperson Lewis Gilmour told SFGATE, while also confirming other elements of Waymo's account. Citing preliminary information, he wrote that the child hadn't been in a crosswalk or near the on-duty crossing guard, and that the child's parent was nearby. The collision took place around 7:40 a.m., drop-off time for Santa Monica's Grant Elementary School."
A child entered the road from behind a stopped SUV and collided with a Waymo autonomous vehicle near Grant Elementary School in Santa Monica during morning drop-off. The vehicle reduced speed from about 17 mph to under 6 mph before contact, substantially lowering impact severity; research estimates an attentive human driver in the same situation would likely have hit the child at about 14 mph. The child was not injured, and police confirmed the child was not in a crosswalk, the on-duty crossing guard was not nearby, and a parent was close by. The vehicle remained on scene, 911 was contacted, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into system behavior and post-impact response.
Read at SFGATE
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