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Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

reuters.com

111–120 of 1001 posts

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

#111
Not to dismiss the tragedy of this incident, but it should be expected that self-driving cars kill pedestrians -- just at a rate lower than what's expected from human drivers.

Perhaps there's a better metric to look at, but I'd like to see number of deaths caused per miles driven.

If Uber's self-driving cars are killing more pedestrians than a human driver would, we have a huge problem, but I'd be willing to bet they're at least an order of magnitude safer in this respect.

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

#112

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…

> 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 someone walking out into the road. Sounds like Uber's platform may not be up to that standard yet, which makes me wonder why they're on public roads.

That's an invalid conclusion to draw from this accident.

There were 34,439 fatal motor vehicle crashes in the United States in 2016 in which 37,461 deaths occurred. This resulted in 11.6 deaths per 100,000 people and 1.16 deaths per 100 million miles traveled.[1] As far as I know, the instance this article is about is the first death in an autonomous vehicle accident, meaning that all the 2016 accidents were humans driving.

Why is it that you see one death from an autonomous car and conclude that autonomous cars aren't ready to be driving, but you see 37,461 deaths from human drivers and don't conclude that humans aren't ready to be driving?

I admit that there just aren't enough autonomous cars on the road to prove conclusively that autonomous cars are safer than human-operated cars at this point. But there's absolutely no statistical evidence I know of that indicates the opposite.

[1] http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalit...

EDIT: Let's be clear here: I'm not saying autonomous cars are safer than human drivers. I'm saying that one can't simply look at one death caused by an autonomous car and conclude that autonomous cars are less safe.

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

#113
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…

Fully agreed regarding Uber's ethics, but...

> Waymo et al has had none of these issues.

... absence of negative media coverage doesn't prove anything.

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

#114

The reason self-driving car companies have flocked to Arizona is that Arizona chose to pretty much completely deregulate them: They don't even have to report statistics to the state like they do in California. It's unfortunate, but unsurprising, the first pedestrian killed by an experimental self-driving car allowed on public roads was in Arizona.

What will the consequences of this person’s killing be? Will someone lose out on a promotion, or miss their performance bonus?

We need to discuss how the developers self-driving cars will be held accountable for the crimes they commit. There is no reason the person who programs or the person who makes money from a self-driving car should be held less accountable for a crime that if committed directly by a person would almost certainly result in jail time. You can’t replace yourself with a computer program and then choose to take only the benefits and not the responsibilities.

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

#116
What I don't get is that if this is a test car, how come the the driver did not take over the helm immediately. The driver in that car should be in full alert as if driving the vehicle himself and jump in as needed. Test should not mean to let loose an autonomous car.

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

#117

To ensure that all automotive software incorporates lessons learned from such fatalities, it would be beneficial to develop a common data set of (mostly synthetic) data replicating accident and 'near miss' scenarios. As we understand more about the risks associated with autonomous driving, we should expand and enrich this data-set, and to ensure public safety, testing against such a dataset should be part of NHTSA /…

Dr. Mary Cummings has been working on talking to NHTSA about implementing V and V for autopilots/AI in unmanned vehicles for a few years now. She's also been compiling a dataset exactly like what you are talking about.

I think the idea is to build a "Traincar of Reasonability" to test future autonomous vehicles with.

You might want to check out her research https://hal.pratt.duke.edu/research

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

#118
post #32

The 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,...

Not to be insensitive to the death. But, that bike lane design is just horrible. Are human drivers really known for respecting the "do not cross solid white line" rules? 9/10 drivers that realize at the last moment they need to turn right are going to quickly cross over this bike lane probably without much time to check their blind spot. If I was cycling on this path, I'd want to use the sidewalk and be extra cautiou…

There aren't a lot of options when you need to have cars turning on roads with bike lanes. At some point the car lane and the bike lane have to cross paths unless you're going to build a fully grade-separated bike lane.

I suppose you could have a wall that separates the bike lane from the road except for a short area where cars can cross over, so that at least there's only a small space where the bikes & cars can interact, but that introduces a bunch of new problems (cars that can't see bikes behind the wall when they go to cross over, cars that run into the wall, probably even more swerving to get into the lane because your choices are do it RIGHT NOW or you're stuck/hit a wall).

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

#119
post #83

Why is Uber allowed on public roads?

This has little to nothing to do with the specific company (although is a convenient deflection ATM). The very idea that pre-programmed computers can deal with driving is the fundamental problem. In time, people will realize that, but at the moment the "solution" is to "patch" and make more laws to hide the truth: AI has nothing to do with intelligence. Ultimately they will blame humans, humans are the bugs in their…

"Artificial Intelligence has nothing do to with intelligence" welp

I don't even know what to make of that

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

#120
post #94
post #32

The 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,...

That bike lane is just a shoulder with bicycle symbols painted in it and it looks terrifying.

This is both terrifying and normal. The bike lanes in my area are frequently used as turn lanes... by vehicles that don't fit in them - despite being clearly marked as bike lanes.

Human drivers are terrible.

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