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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

#141

Post by checkyoursudo »

jnbiche wrote: post #61
odammit wrote: post #41

Curious how the numbers work out of number of miles [1] to number of deaths of autonomous vs standard vehicles. I know the scale is different but since this is the first death I’m curious if the percents fall in line. [1] is distance the right metric?

Perhaps time as opposed to distance? After all, we drive much fewer miles in a city, but there are much greater opportunities for accidents, particularly pedestrian accidents.

Maybe deaths per speed per time (or distance, since speed over time is the same as distance at speed). More deaths at higher speeds and fewer at lower would seem more likely. Purely using time or distance may skew the interpretation, if there are more deaths at some speed ranges than others.

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

#142

Post by SllX »

bkohlmann wrote: post #25
nodesocket wrote: post #8

Striking 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…

Doesn't mitigate the tragedy or implications for autonomy, but per the article, the pedestrian was outside the crosswalk.

Does it really need to be said that an autonomous vehicle still needs to manage to not kill people regardless of their position relative to any nearby crosswalks?

Today you can cross in the middle of the street and take a calculated risk that the people approaching down the street will stop or slow down enough to not kill you. If they go ahead and kill you anyway, they'll still be prosecuted because their attention should be on the road, and the most basic assumption behind their driver's license is that this person is competent enough and fit enough to drive what amounts to a deadly weapon without killing the people around them. When you violate that assumption, the fault is probably on you. Obviously there are exceptions, such as when somebody intentionally jumps in front of your vehicle, but crossing outside of the crosswalk to get across the street is not even close to the same level as trying to commit suicide and fault will be found accordingly.

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

#143

Post by grecy »

To play Devil's advocate, there were over 100 people killed in the US TODAY from non-autonomous vehicles [1].

Obviously we'd need to know the number of miles driven in each category to get a meaningful comparison, but let's all keep in mind a USA where only one person per day is killed on the roads would be a two order of magnitude improvement over today.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

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

#144

Post by dabeeeenster »

_m8fo wrote: post #5

Obviously more information is needed, but I thought the entire point of having a driver behind the wheel is to manually intervene to prevent this very situation? I'm very curious to see how they'll investigate this and who will be determined to be at fault (person behind the wheel or Uber). It will likely set a precedent.

It could have been the fault of the pedestrian. I'm not saying it is, just saying there is a third possibility.

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

#145

Post by mjevans »

conductr wrote: post #87
timmaah wrote: 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…

I'm much more a fan of the design that places a buffer (either sidewalk or shrubs) between the CARS and any other type of vehicles. Sidewalks are tolerable as they are often raised above street grade and a vehicle usually has to be actively controlled to overtake such a raised divider.

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

#146

Post by gaius »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #65

The people leading the development should demonstrate that they can stop for pedestrians by personally jumping out in front of them on a closed test road. If they're not able to demonstrate this, they shouldn't be putting them on public roads.

The ancient Romans would have the civil engineer stand under the bridge they'd just built while a Legion marched over it. That's why Roman structures are still around today!

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

#147

Post by jdmichal »

kerkeslager wrote: post #112
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…

> 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 t…

He's arguing from foundations. The hypothesis is that autonomous drivers should perform better at task X than the null hypothesis (aka human drivers). So any instances where autonomous drivers do not seem to perform better are all potential counter-arguments to that hypothesis.

The fact that human drivers aren't particularly good isn't really relevant, beyond setting a correspondingly low bar within the null hypothesis.

This all ties to regulation allowing these vehicles to drive on public roads, because that regulation was permitted due to the above hypothesis and hopeful expectations that it would be true.

Obviously, I haven't seen the entirety of the data set to know fatalities per car-mile. Which would be the relevant statistic here. I also didn't see such a number in your post, which I'm assuming means you are probably not aware either. But simply providing the numbers for the null hypothesis doesn't do anything.

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

#148

Post by cliffordkeeney »

jonathanyc wrote: post #114
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #70

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 woul…

This is crazy. The developers likely have no say in where and when the cars go out on public roads. That's obviously a decision for someone higher up in the company.

The executives should be held accountable, not the developers.

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

#149

Post by mdev »

I wonder how software updates and are validated and tested before going to production in autonomous cars. This is scary - imagine being a developer responsible for a similar malfunction. I'm not suggesting that was the case here - just think this might need as much validation as medical equipment (hoping that it won't stifle innovation).
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