Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 5:34 PM UTC

toofy wrote: post #46

bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #2

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

Yeah, it will be interesting to see if this was an intentional (algorithmic) response or a failure of sensors somewhere. I go back and forth with thinking the algorithms in things like self-driving cars should be public. Anything which must make a choice such as smash into bus or smash into bicycle — the public should be aware of the choices the company chooses to implement. Obviously this example is simplistic but i…

I'm pretty sure everyone involved and observing also vacillate between those two mindsets. Regardless, events like this will likely hamper progress.

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

#182

Post by sevensor » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

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…

This is how cars came to be on the road in the first place. Despite the fact that they were erratic and deadly, and spewed noxious gas everywhere, the manufacturers and automobiling clubs succeeded in convincing everybody that roads were for cars. Uber may well be the worst actor in the self-driving industry, but the industry as a whole is going to need to invent new crimes akin to jaywalking. This will allow it to shift blame to those killed by autonomous vehicles, just as jaywalking implies pedestrians are to blame for being hit by manned vehicles.

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

#183

Post by paxys » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

smallgovt wrote: post #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…

It's not that simple. Who is going to take responsibility for such incidents? The company that owns the car? The person behind the wheel (if any)? Or the engineer that designed the algorithm?

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

#184

Post by dawnerd » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

jonlucc wrote: post #68

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 agree completely. One thing that is important to me is that the whole self-driving field will learn from every mistake. In other words, every self-driving car should only make the same mistake once, whereas with humans, each human has to learn only from their own mistakes.

Airlines are the same way. Every time there’s been a crash they’ve learned something and changed procedures to prevent it again. It’s made flying pretty safe, unless you’re an animal flying on United...

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

#185

Post by jdietrich » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

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 when someone walks out into the road.

Some of these accidents are unpreventable by the (autonomous) driver. If a pedestrian suddenly rushes out into the street or a cyclist swerves into your path, the deciding factor is often simply the coefficient of friction between your tyres and the road.

The autonomous vehicle and the human attendant might have made a glaring error, or they might have done everything correctly and still failed to prevent a fatality. It's far too early to say. It's undoubtedly a dent to the public image of autonomous vehicles, but hopefully the car's telemetry data will reveal whether this was a case of error, negligence or unavoidable tragedy.

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

#186

Post by darawk » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

joering2 wrote: post #164

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.

Said that few times: how does any AI recognize whether object in front of me is just a white plastic bag rolling in the street, or a baby that rolled out of crib. AI cannot know and will never know. And we cannot have cars drive smoth in traffic if every self driven car will stop before hitting an empty plastic bag.

What? AI can know in the exact same way you can know. What are you talking about?

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

#187

Post by danso » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

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…

As of late 2017, Waymo/Google reported having driven a total of 4 million miles on roads. Given that Waymo is one of the biggest players, it's hard to see how all of autonomous cars have driven 100 million miles at this point.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/27/waymo-racks-up-4-million-s...

Nevermind that the initial rollouts almost always involve locales in which driving conditions are relatively safe (e.g. nice weather and infrastructure). Nevermind that the vast majority of autonomous testing so far has involved the presence of a human driver, and that there have been hundreds of disengagements:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/31/16956902/california-dmv-s...

Humans may be terrible at driving, but the stats are far from being in favor of autonomous vehicles. Which is to be expected given the early stage of the tech.

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

#188

Post by nafizh » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

smallgovt wrote: post #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…

There is no data available at the moment to draw conclusions that self-driving cars bring less fatalities, and rightly so, because they have not been tested on a beta stage. You are only guessing and hoping.

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

#189

Post by VikingCoder » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

"Uber has paused self-driving operations in Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto, which is a standard move, the company says."

...there's a "standard move" when one of their cars kills someone?

I don't think that really came across the way they wanted it to.

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

#190

Post by munk-a » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

joering2 wrote: post #164

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.

Said that few times: how does any AI recognize whether object in front of me is just a white plastic bag rolling in the street, or a baby that rolled out of crib. AI cannot know and will never know. And we cannot have cars drive smoth in traffic if every self driven car will stop before hitting an empty plastic bag.

I'm surprisingly okay with self-driving cars stopping for plastic bags in the near term.

Self driving tech is up against the marketing arm of the auto-industry, they've got to be better than perfect to avoid public backlash. If they're a bit slower but far safer then I think they'll do well.