While this is tragic, undeniably so, it’s worth knowing that a head on collision in Malibu two days ago killed a 50 year old man when a 20 year old crossed over the double yellow line. It was obvious seeing the car that the young person was racing and driving dangerously. It barely made the news. I only know it happened because I drove past the wreck.

Tragic about the cat - and Waymo must improve - but we cannot lose sight of the greater good.

No, We should be fighting tooth and nail against these companies. They're not here to save us from ourselves. They're using public streets to Alpha (beta if you want to be generous) test autonomous lethal weapons, and then profit off of it when it works.

I can't find anything saying waymo has a thermal camera. They aren't expensive- certainly not compared to the LIDAR- and provide extremely discriminated input on "am I about to kill something?" They're not perfect as foul weather and fog are likely to blind thermal- but they shouldn't be driving in suboptimal conditions until they have a track record of safety in optimal ones.

If that person had been a roboticist, they would have known what to do: stand in front of the car. It would have saved the cat's life. And most non-roboticists will immediately recognize this as a solution, too: these cars obviously detect humans right in front of them very well and will not move in that case. By the way, the same would have worked better for most human drivers as well. Even if you yelled at a human driver that there was a cat under the car, it would not be a reliable solution because they may not hear or understand you. But they, too, would almost certainly not run you over if you stood in front of the car.

To be clear, I don't blame the witness for not doing this in the moment. And she probably has figured this out by now, too. I'm mostly pointing out that, as more and more people learn about robot taxis, more people will known how to help in such a situation, which is clearly what she wanted to do.

Waymos are capable of seeing cats - I was in one looking at the route view the other day, and it highlighted a cat that was a decent distance away sitting in a front yard as it passed it. Then it went through a roundabout seemingly just to show it could do it.

(It then proceeded to drop me off in a weird back corner spot in Santana Row by a loading dock. Can't have everything.)

I assume once you're close enough or actually under it there's a blind spot. It doesn't seem very good at evading potholes either.