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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

#241

Post by pishpash »

Twisell wrote: post #223
jdietrich wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 frict…

Yet this tragic accident will now set a precedent and finally start to scratch the delicate unspoken question: Who is responsible now?

Obviously Uber in this case, but as mentioned in response to a separate article, AI's must be like pets or children and have a liable guardian.

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

#242

Post by markatkinson »

justboxing wrote: post #108

Have to quote Prof. Teddy here. Context: How new technology is introduced on public streets and we have no choice or say on whether we want it or not, even if it endangers us and gets us killed. > When motor vehicles were introduced they appeared to increase man’s freedom. They took no freedom away from the walking man, no one had to have an automobile if he didn’t want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automo…

Just finished the new Unabomber series on Netflix. This is similar to his manifesto which I ended up sympathising with towards the end.

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

#243

Post by abakker »

dwaltrip wrote: post #214
justboxing wrote: post #108

Have to quote Prof. Teddy here. Context: How new technology is introduced on public streets and we have no choice or say on whether we want it or not, even if it endangers us and gets us killed. > When motor vehicles were introduced they appeared to increase man’s freedom. They took no freedom away from the walking man, no one had to have an automobile if he didn’t want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automo…

This is a great point. Note, though, this is not new. It's been been happening since the invention of the first tool. Stone weaponry, agriculture, and so forth, all became largely non-optional after their introduction.

Obligatory Mitchell and Webb skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EGAtLGDU7M

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

#244

Post by bonesss »

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.

How do we recognize whether an object in front of a car is just a plastic bag in the wind or a baby?

o At speed we're pretty ok with cars hitting things people drop on the road, examples of cars hitting wagons and babies are already plentiful

o Visual recognition & rapidly updated multi-mode sensor data, backed by hard-core neural networks and multi-'brained' ML solutions, have every reason to be way better at this job than we are given sufficient time... those models will be working with aggregate crash data of every accident real and simulated experienced by their systems and highly accurate mathematical models custom made to chose the least-poor solution to dilemmas human drivers fail routinely

o AIs have multiple vectors of possible improvement over human drivers in stressed situations. Assuming they will bluntly stop ignores how vital relative motion is to safe traffic, not to mention the car-to-car communication options available given a significant number of automated cars on the road -- arguably human drivers can never be as smooth as a fleet of automated cars, and "slamming the brakes" is how people handle uncertainty already

Presently the tech is immature, but the potential for automated transport systems lies well beyond the realms of human capabilities.

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

#246

Post by pishpash »

Johnny555 wrote: post #240
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.

Self driving cars are still subject to the laws of physics... unless you're going to dictate that self-driving cars never go above 15mph, I wouldn't advocate jumping in front of even a "perfect" self-driving car. Braking distance (without including any decision time) for a 15mph car is 11 ft, for a 30mph is 45 ft. Self driving cars won't change these limits. (well, they may be a little better than humans at maximizin…

Then we should at least learn their capabilities by throwing jumping dummies at them. Call it the new dummy testing. It's the least we can do. Did Travis bro do this when he set the plan in motion?

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

#247

Post by Someone1234 »

pishpash wrote: post #213
w_t_payne wrote: post #51

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 /…

How about not testing it on the unpaid public in incremental patches like this age of software "engineering" has decided it was a good idea to do?

You ultimately have to at some stage, since any test track is a biased test by its nature.

It is more an issue of how sophisticated these vehicles should be before they're let loose on public roads. At some stage they have to be allowed onto public roads or they'd literally never make it into production.

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

#248

Post by weinzierl »

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.

My opinion is that we will come to a point where self-driving cars are demonstrably, but only marginally, safer road users than humans.

From an ethical standpoint the interesting phase will only start then. It‘s one thing to bring a small fleet of high tech (e.g. having LIDAR) vehicles to the road. It‘s another to bring that technology to a saturated mass market which is primarily cost driven. Yes, I assume self-driving cars will eventually compete with human driven ones.

Will we, as a society, accept some increase in traffic fatalities in return for considerable savings that self-driving cars will bring?

Will you or me as an individual accept a slightly higher risk in exchange for tangible time savings?

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

#250

Post by hjnilsson »

rjvir wrote: post #221
w_t_payne wrote: post #51

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 /…

Why would Uber agree to such regulations? They were unwilling to legally obtain a self-driving license in California because they did not want to report "disengagements" (situations in which a human driver has to intervene). Uber would just set their self-driving cars free and eat whatever fine/punishment comes with it.

> Why would Uber agree to such regulations?

This is a strange question to ask. The regulation is not there to benefit Uber, it is to benefit public good. Very few companies would follow regulation if it was a choice. The setup of such regulation would be for it to be criminal to not comply. And if Uber could not operate in California (or the USA) if they did not comply, it would in their interest to provide the requested information.

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