The video says bicyclist and shows a bent bicycle. So pedestrian or bicyclist?
Perhaps they were walking their bicycle across the street.
Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
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Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#32The video mentions she was on a bike and shows a mangled bicycle. Also the line markings on the street indicate there is a bike lane to the left of a right turn lane. Definitely very bad.
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4369934,-111.9429875,3a,75y,...
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#33It seems like a bunch of what-ifs that normally come up with self-driving cars are about to get answered and precedents are about to be set.
I assume this case will also be one of the most well-recorded cases of a fatal car accident in history as well, given the amount of sensors and equiment on-board a self-driving car, along with eye witness testimony from the operator on board.
Can't tell if Uber has just been incredibly unlucky as of late or if just enough of their employee-base is incompetent as to prevent them from just having a quiet year with no large failures.
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#34On purpose to protect something "more valuable," or on accident?
There's an old saying around gun owners: "There's no such thing as a firearms accident. Only negligence." I think the same thing applies to autonomous things.
I feel that this sentiment could be applied to almost anything and isn't really meaningful. Almost every accident ever could be attributed to negligence somewhere.
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#35Striking a pedestrian in a crosswalk is horrible and terrible news. The reality though is how many pedestrians are hit by manual driver's vs automous drivers? On a percentage basis I gotta believe autonomous cars are orders of magnitude safer. Self driving cars aren't going to be perfect. How many people lost their lives in early factories to machines during the industral revolution? Imagine if they had pulled the pl…
It appears the woman was not using the crosswalk, but really that doesn't make much difference in the reaction to the report. Uber's self driving tech seems a bit under-baked at the moment.
I always take the "outside the crosswalk" reports with a grain of salt. Hereabouts, if the pedestrian lands outside the crosswalk, they're assumed to have been crossing outside of it, even if later eyewitness reports and video footage show they were in the crosswalk and the car knocked them out of it.
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#36On purpose to protect something "more valuable," or on accident?
Forgive me, I don't understand what you mean. Please elaborate.
One of the most oft-discussed questions around self-driving cars is what should happen if your car can choose between two options: 1) An action that will have a better chance of protecting the people inside the car, 2) An action that will protect people outside of the car, with a whole bunch of variations.
For example - What if someone steps out into the road and you can either hit them, or run into a wall? The former makes it far more likely the occupants of the car will be safe, the latter saves the life of a pedestrian at the expense of possible injury to people in the car.
It is kind of an interesting question, because people can't generally react quickly and rationally enough in a situation like that for it to matter, but in theory, a computer can. But it also dominates the discussion in a way that likely far overstates how frequently this will actually be a decision a computer has to make.
I think that is what the person you're replying to is asking. Given that this occurred at night and on (very likely) uncrowded streets, I feel like its far more likely the car (and backup driver) just somehow missed the pedestrian.
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#37Uber's self-driving program seems to be one of the most unethical, most poorly-run in the entire industry. There were plenty of reports before warning us of the questionable quality of their research: cars changing lanes suddenly, blowing red lights, and now one finally killed someone. Every prior incident should have been treated as a serious matter. Waymo et al has had none of these issues. Time to revoke their lic…
Par for the course in regards to Uber.
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#38FTA: "The Uber vehicle was reportedly driving early Monday when a woman walking outside of the crosswalk was struck. ... Tempe Police says the vehicle was in autonomous mode at the time of the crash and a vehicle operator was also behind the wheel." That's a very bad look; the whole point of self-driving cars is that they can react to unexpected circumstances much more quickly than a human operator, such as when some…
They will have video for sure if since they are testing, then we will see. Your statement about reaction time is assuming so many things, may as well declare the AI guilty now right?
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#39Uber's self-driving program seems to be one of the most unethical, most poorly-run in the entire industry. There were plenty of reports before warning us of the questionable quality of their research: cars changing lanes suddenly, blowing red lights, and now one finally killed someone. Every prior incident should have been treated as a serious matter. Waymo et al has had none of these issues. Time to revoke their lic…
Yup - I've personally witnessed one of these almost zoom through a red light at an intersection and was appalled. I'm honestly not surprised...in their effort to race to the bottom Uber's autonomous vehicle program has been extremely aggressive - to the point of total disregard for safety. Their business model may be built on pipe dreams of autonomous travel (without drivers to pay), and hopefully this shutters that. In fact, the whole company should probably be shut down IMO - but I digress.
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#40Striking a pedestrian in a crosswalk is horrible and terrible news. The reality though is how many pedestrians are hit by manual driver's vs automous drivers? On a percentage basis I gotta believe autonomous cars are orders of magnitude safer. Self driving cars aren't going to be perfect. How many people lost their lives in early factories to machines during the industral revolution? Imagine if they had pulled the pl…
I don’t know the number of hours their system has been driving but I highly doubt it is enough to draw comparisons to the average Arizona driver who hits 0 pedestrians. I also don’t think this works like this in the court of public opinion anyways.
This system can never make a mistake of this magnitude and be publically accepted.