I see the Waymo cars while I walk to lunch (AZ) quite often. One time while walking through the crosswalk a Waymo turning right cut me off as I started into the crosswalk despite my having the walk indicator. This seems to be a very difficult scenario for a self-driving car as there are often people at the corner that are either crossing the other direction or just waiting on the corner. I sent them a note via their feedback link, but never heard back.
Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
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Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#262Have 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.
It's actually a direct quote from his manifesto
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#263[unconstructive but still..] So the day I could be emprisoned because of an error of coding... Like a segfault on an highway... as finally came :D Is the disclamer "no waranty of anykind" shield us from that kind of thing ? ;) (I code on some mainstream C libraries)
If you don't offer warranties, your user will have to review your library so they can offer warranties.
Someone has to sign that stuff as "production worthy or I go to prison".
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#264The 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.
There wouldn’t be many human drivers on the road if they had to pass this test as well.
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#265[unconstructive but still..] So the day I could be emprisoned because of an error of coding... Like a segfault on an highway... as finally came :D Is the disclamer "no waranty of anykind" shield us from that kind of thing ? ;) (I code on some mainstream C libraries)
you already can? our lives depend on all kinds of software every day. In Canada at least you'd need a P.Eng to work on stuff that directly endanger lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
If I'm not mistaken, P.Eng are merely needed the rubber stamping, not to do the grunt work. I doubt they'll go through all the specs, re-run all the simulations, and verify all the parameters.
Also, where is your P.Eng be any useful to justify the learning coefficients of your AI, or to protect about the cosmic ray bit-flip in the hardware your proven correct software is running on ?
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
>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! JFYI, it is most probably apocryphal: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/18558/were-roma... still it's a nice one, I have heard the same about engineers/architects in ancient Babylon and Egypt.
Can't speak for the romans, but his seems legit enough, and predates the romans by quite a bit:
Hammurabi's code:
> If a builder builds a house for a man and does not make its construction firm, and the house which he has built collapses and causes the death of the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to death.
> If it causes the death of the son of the owner of the house, they shall put to death a son of that builder.
https://www.fs.blog/2017/11/hammurabis-code/
Heard about it on Econtalk's recent episode with Nassim Taleb.
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#267Have 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.
The major difference, though, is that most major technologies are not also accompanied by legislation that effectively penalizes the old methods. There's nothing legally penalizing me from using a bow and arrow, or buying hand-woven clothes, etc., whereas walking is effectively criminal in some parts of the US: https://www.cnn.com/2014/07/31/living/florida-mom-arrested-s...
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#268Obviously 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.
Human beings simply cannot switch between "not focussed" and "in charge of a car, taken out of autonomous mode, and actively avoiding collision" fast enough to avoid most accidents, unfortunately. Neither can humans maintain the focus required to be ready to do that when 99.9% of the time they're not required to do anything. Semi-autonomous cars have drawbacks.
I agree with what you are saying, and that it would be very dangerous to sell cars where drivers may be lulled into complacency of thinking they don't need to pay attention to the road, until self driving cars get good enough that human attention really isn't needed.
However, these are test vehicles. The driver's full-time job is to be focused on the road and what the car is doing. They shouldn't have any misconceptions about the need for them to stay focused on the road. Now granted, even then attention will lapse occasionally, just like it does when you are actually driving. But I don't think that being physically in control of the wheel is necessary for maintaining focus at the same level as a good driver. Driver's Ed instructors need this skill. Also some back seat drivers I know are quite good at maintaining strong focus on the road regardless of who is driving :)
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#269FTA: "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…
Actually there was a metric of accident per distance drived. It was often pull out by Tesla before their first fatal accident last year (IA didn’t saw rear of truck because of sun or smthg like that).
This metric was often decried because it had poor statistical significance. It would however be nice to update this metric according to this death.
Maybe now this metric would indicate that IA are more dangerous than human, will be interesting if the perception of this flawed metric will evolve in reaction...
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#270FTA: "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 frict…
The cars telemetry data will undoubtedly point to a unavoidable tragedy if it's just uber analyzing it.