USING DISTRIBUTIONS FOR CHARACTERISTICS OF HYPOTHETICAL OCCLUDED OBJECTS FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

Aspects of the disclosure provide for generating distributions for hypothetical or potentially occluded objects. For instance, a location for which to generate one or more distributions may be identified. Observations of road users by perception systems of a plurality of autonomous vehicles may be accessed. Each of these observations may identify a characteristic of one of the road users. A distribution of the characteristic for the location may be determined based on the observations. The distribution may be provided to one or more autonomous vehicles in order to enable the one or more autonomous vehicles to use the distribution to generate a characteristic for a hypothetical occluded road user and to respond to the hypothetical occluded road user.