Waymo van got hit

[Tam]

Chandler, AZ, Friday, 5/4/2018, clear sky, good daylight, clear traffic: Autonomous Waymo Van was hit by a Honda sedan coming from the opposite direction.

The Honda was swerving to avoid hitting a dark car at the intersection but it then climbed over the median and hit the Waymo.

Only minor injuries.

If you were driving manually, what's your chance of being able to perform some kind of maneuvers to avoid being hit by the Honda? Such as instant accelerating or slowing down?

What's the chance of avoiding being hit like this in future for Waymo? Could its LIDAR pick up the Honda's speed and trajectory and could the software be written to deal with this kind of scenario soon?

 

[Tiger]

Didn't see that coming. If you were lucky and attentive, you could have done some maneuvers:

 

[JeffK]

If you were driving manually, what's your chance of being able to perform some kind of maneuvers to avoid being hit by the Honda?

Driving manually I wouldn't have been able to avoid this... It was unpredictable that the car would come toward the vehicle. I thought for sure it was going to hit the dark vehicle.

If driving manually I would have gotten out of the car and beat the driver of the vehicle senseless for running the red light at high speed in the first place.