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I suspect that the issue is with cars being so cautious that they just stop as people keep walking, or at best herky jerky move fwd. In NYC, a car like that wouldn't get anywhere as the pedestrians just won't stop. the pedestrians stop when they see that the driver isn't going to stop and they gonna get hit.

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So much of urban pedestrian-driver interactions depend on confirming eye contact and determining intent from body language.

I don't see how an automated car with no driver can deal with the "are they crossing or not?" question that you get every few minutes while driving in a city. Both because body language is a hard problem to get right, and because there's a lot of non-verbal communication that a driverless car doesn't have a way of participating in.

Waymo does pose estimation to help determine pedestrian intent and react accordingly [1].

[1] https://blog.waymo.com/2022/02/utilizing-key-point-and-pose-...

Thanks, that's an interesting read. Not sure that I trust pose estimation algorithms with my life, but still interesting!

Ahaha, yup! Especially around midtown where crossing the road is a symphony between cars and pedestrians.

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