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

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

#501

Post by rocqua » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 7:12 PM UTC

hjnilsson wrote: post #250

rjvir wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 reque…

Uber has shown very often that they are willing to break the law. It seems within their modus-operandus to just ignore these rules.

Essentially, Uber engages in regulatory arbitrage but taking into account the cost-benefits of breaking the law. I.e. if it breaks the law but is profitable for them, they seem to do it.

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

#502

Post by cle » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 7:12 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #481

> You can't really get away from this without putting these cars on rails. We should just really build rails. Self driving cars are dumping billions of dollars onto a problem better solved by rails. Several cities already have self driving trains including London, Singapore and Kuala Lumpar, and they transport millions of people every day without incident: http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-sol.…

Rail isn't something you can solve solely with tech, though. It requires building new infrastructure, which requires enormous political cooperation, which is an intractable problem in our current political climate. Self-driving cars do require some political cooperation, but it's much less because it purportedly doesn't require new infrastructure.

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

#503

Post by gowld » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 7:13 PM UTC

ingsoc79 wrote: post #251

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…

The main problem with self-driving cars is that they can't "read" humans' body language. A human driver can see pedestrians and cyclists (and other cars) and have a rough idea of what they're likely to do in the next few seconds, i.e. the pedestrian leaning out on the crosswalk curb is likely to step into the road soon. Even a reaction time of milliseconds can't make up for the (currently exclusive) human ability to…

Humans also can't read humans' body language. A pedestrian waiting at a corner isn't waiting for the weather to change. They are waiting for passing cars to stop, as required by law. But passing cars speed by instead of stopping, unless the pedestrian does a lunge into the street -- preferable a bluff lunge, since most drivers still won't stop, preferring to race the pedestrian to the middle of the lane.

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

#504

Post by scoggs » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 7:13 PM UTC

radley wrote: post #422

abalone wrote: post #292

This may not have been an unexpected circumstance. The "pedestrian outside of the crosswalk" report is likely wrong. There is visual evidence that strongly supports that this was a case of the Uber hitting a bicyclist while merging into the right turn lane. Here's a picture of the crumpled bicycle (note dent on the front right of the car): https://twitter.com/daiwaka/status/975767445859287042 The sign it is lying nex…

He posted a tweet later, it wasn't a cyclist: https://twitter.com/daiwaka/status/975771533745336320

Wait, so that picture / video of the bicycle on the ground at what looked like the scene had nothing to do with the accident at all? It seemed really focused on from my POV. I'd find it rather strange if the bicycle had nothing to do with it although this is just reporting, it's not like it's the official police report or anything.

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

#505

Post by blauditore » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 7:14 PM UTC

Wow, this is sad.

I always imagine I would feel uncomfortable when developing software in certain areas such as this, or e.g. for space rockets containing humans. Errors have a much higher impact than when only developing web applications where the worst case scenario is a tempoarily unreachable website, or maybe some data loss.

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

#506

Post by justin66 » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 7:14 PM UTC

bmm6o wrote: post #97

itamarst wrote: post #16

The video says bicyclist and shows a bent bicycle. So pedestrian or bicyclist?

I've heard that police reports often refer to all non-drivers as "pedestrians", even if they were riding a bike (which I learned after a neighbor was killed while riding a bike). I don't know if this is legalese or police jargon, but either way you would hope a journalist who covers these things could translate.

When I lived in California the press reported pedestrian and bicyclist deaths under the same "pedestrian" moniker.

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

#507

Post by zzzcpan » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 7:15 PM UTC

apeace wrote: post #366

I'm really shocked at the trend in comments here. Yes, we get it. Fatalities will happen sometimes, they are unavoidable sometimes, and what matters in the long run is if we can achieve a significant overall reduction in fatalities. But my god, a person was just killed by a computer. Can't we have some compassion and humility? Let's, as a community, set the standard for how we will react to these events. Let's make s…

> But my god, a person was just killed by a computer. Can't we have some compassion and humility?

You have to recognize that your culture and your moral standards are not universal and you are in no position to force them on everyone else. It is also foolish to expect everyone across the globe to react in a certain way to certain things.

On the other hand, death topics is the side of HN that is heavily biased towards what mods feel about it and their culture. They even ban accounts and give out warnings if you happen to disagree with them and react differently. So there is not much sense to even discuss this.

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

#508

Post by portofcall » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 7:15 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #496

apeace wrote: post #366

I'm really shocked at the trend in comments here. Yes, we get it. Fatalities will happen sometimes, they are unavoidable sometimes, and what matters in the long run is if we can achieve a significant overall reduction in fatalities. But my god, a person was just killed by a computer. Can't we have some compassion and humility? Let's, as a community, set the standard for how we will react to these events. Let's make s…

Lately, I'm quite disappointed with the tech community's approach to the society. Lot's of people are talking as if human beings are a resource which exploitation should be secured for the businesses and technical curiosities. No, people, humans are what matters and it just happens that there are business opportunities and scientific curiosities. No, it not O.K. to kill few people to speed up the development of self-…

It’s not just you, it’s a lot of the country that’s rapidly going from concerned to pissed. If they read more threads like this, they’d probably already be coming for us with torches and bad intentions. They’re worried that tech is full of disconnected, vaguely autistic (and they don’t know what that means beyond iRobot), too-smart-for-their-own-good people who care more about making money than poeple. In my experience that’s incredibly unfair, but it only takes a small percentage of loud and callous voices to make us all look bad.

We need to start cleaning our own house, or it’s going to be cleaned for us by people with agendas and little understanding of what they’re cleaning!

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

#509

Post by usrusr » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 7:15 PM UTC

intopieces wrote: post #462

apeace wrote: post #366

I'm really shocked at the trend in comments here. Yes, we get it. Fatalities will happen sometimes, they are unavoidable sometimes, and what matters in the long run is if we can achieve a significant overall reduction in fatalities. But my god, a person was just killed by a computer. Can't we have some compassion and humility? Let's, as a community, set the standard for how we will react to these events. Let's make s…

A person was not killed by a computer. There was a person behind the wheel responsible for taking control of the car in a situation like this. If this is a computer killing someone, then every instance of a person being killed while cruise control was engaged also counts.

Yeah, someone put that poor person there despite all warnings that humans would perform terribly as standby drivers once the AI becomes good enough to not require interventions all the time.

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

#510

Post by danso » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 7:15 PM UTC

apeace wrote: post #366

I'm really shocked at the trend in comments here. Yes, we get it. Fatalities will happen sometimes, they are unavoidable sometimes, and what matters in the long run is if we can achieve a significant overall reduction in fatalities. But my god, a person was just killed by a computer. Can't we have some compassion and humility? Let's, as a community, set the standard for how we will react to these events. Let's make s…

re: your edit. I agree with the sentiment, but I didn't quite get your comment because before you posted it, the most upvoted comment/discussion on this story was about Uber failing to meet safety standards [0]. People have been posting about "the greater good" but seems far from a consensus.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16620042