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Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

reuters.com

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Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#71

Post by brd »

ashleyn wrote: post #6

Uber'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…

Agreed. I've been in the cars in Pittsburg and the operators laughed about how poorly it performed on certain roads. Slanted telephone polls caused the vehicle to literally slalom down the road.

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#72

Post by ambivalents »

avoutthere wrote: post #29

It's a sad reality, but regardless of how many times per day a pedestrian is hit by a human-driven car, such incidents involving self-driving cars will be headline news for years to come.

Having a hard time sympathizing here. It's one thing to fear air travel based on the very few but very publicized plane incidents (considering all the data we have on the safety of air travel). It's another thing to hold these self-driving car companies accountable, considering a) the lack of data and history of such programs, and b) their touted benefit as a safer alternative to human-driven cars.

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#73

Post by asah »

avoutthere wrote: post #29

It's a sad reality, but regardless of how many times per day a pedestrian is hit by a human-driven car, such incidents involving self-driving cars will be headline news for years to come.

As they should: humans fail independently, but autonomous cars can fail systemically, including hacking. Bicycles are known to be tricky for autonomous cars.

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#74

Post by bitL »

ashleyn wrote: post #6

Uber'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…

We should wait for the results of investigation first. It could easily happen the killed person did some bonehead move that resulted in unavoidable crash. I was once told how a friend of mine fatally hit an older man that decided to cross the highway quickly, giving him no chance to react and a life-long trauma.

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#75

Post by jandrese »

CocaKoala wrote: post #13
zawerf wrote: post #4

Is this the first death ever? (Do we count Tesla's autopilot as self-driving?)

Hm, there have been other crashes where the 'driver' in the car died (I recall one where a car in autonomous mode rear-ended a truck, something about how the sensor was blinded by the setting sun? And it had alerted the driver to take control several times before the crash) but this is the first incident I can recall where a pedestrian was struck and killed by an autonomous vehicle.

IIRC in that case the driver T-boned a truck crossing the road, because the side of the truck was so shiny that it read as the horizon to the car's sensors.

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#76

Post by dragonwriter »

m3kw9 wrote: post #38
leggomylibro wrote: post #9

FTA: "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?

> may as well declare the AI guilty now right?

AI (short of AGI) is never guilty; it's creators and operators, OTOH...

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#77

Post by aetherson »

leggomylibro wrote: post #9

FTA: "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…

I have seen no evidence that any autonomous vehicle currently deployed can react faster than an alert and aware human. The commentariat tends to imagine that they can, and it's certainly plausible that they may eventually be. But I've never seen anyone official claim it, and the cars certainly don't drive as though they can quickly understand and respond to situations.

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#78

Post by SubiculumCode »

ProAm wrote: post #37
ashleyn wrote: post #6

Uber'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.

We do not yet know whether another autonomous vehicle or human for would have done better in this situation. THAT SAID, asshole company fields asshole autonomous driver. Did we expect differently? Uber cuts every corner.

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#80

Post by mattlondon »

xexers wrote: post #7
bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #2

On purpose to protect something "more valuable," or on accident?

Forgive me, I don't understand what you mean. Please elaborate.

I suspect they mean the trolley car problem: "you are either going to crash into a group of school kids, or into a group of nuns. Who do you kill?"

I.e. did the uber car kill this 1 pedestrian, because it avoided killing 2 other people? Did the uber car opt for the "least killing" in this siutation?

I think this whole trolley car question - while a nice philosophical question - is silly though. I dont think humans would do any better in an emergency situation. In that split second when you suddenly find yourself in the "oh sh-" situation, do you have time to a) make a deliberate, reasoned & fully-informed decision, and then b) control the vehicle effectively to follow through on that decision? I doubt it. If you had a second or two to think it through and then deliberately make a choice and steer towards that crowd of nuns, you'd probably be able to entirely avoid the accident anyway.

More likely is you'd probably do what I am sure most people do which is gasp, stamp on the brakes, shut their eyes and hope for the best ... assuming you even had time to realise there was about to be a crash before it happened. Some people might swerve, but I suspect they do that instinctively to avoid something in their way, not as a decision to hit something else.

I just dont think self-driving cars will get themselves into situations where they have to chose who to kill in the first place. And even if they did get into those situations, I really, really doubt it would be due their actions, and I'd certainly trust it to avoid the crash in the first place a whole lot more than the average human driver in the same scenario.

Some could argue "Ah but yes computers are so fast that they CAN make that informed decision about who to kill in milliseconds! So they have to make a choice! The question stands!". I'd argue back that in those milliseconds before the crash was inevitable, they'd act to prevent the accident before a human would even know what the hell was going on anyway. After that it just starts getting into a game of who can conjure up the most ludicrous hypothetical situation that rarely - if ever - happens in real life.

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