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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

#521

Post by dragonwriter »

untog wrote: post #311

This opens up an interesting question going forward. We can't rely on Uber themselves to analyse the telemetry data and come to a conclusion, they're biased. So really, we need self driving car companies to turn over accident telemetry data to the police. But the police are ill equipped to process that data. We need law enforcement to be able to keep pace with advances in technology and let's face it, they're not goi…

Law enforcement already conducts traffic accident investigations where the involved drivers are biased parties of inconsistent honesty and imperfect memory that can and do both accidentally and intentionally misrepresent the facts.

I don't think self-driving cars and their sensor data, even if they rely on the operator to explain what the car “remembers”, fundamentally shift the landscape.

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

#523

Post by mozumder »

TN412 wrote: post #511
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.…

>We Should really just build rails The beauty of cars vs rails is that cars can go more than just a set in stone angle or path defined by a rail. Cars can go in and out of parking lots and dirt roads. Rails would be more automated, yes, but not as versatile.

Wherever there is a road, there can be rail.

Autonomous cars aren't a viable tech until the roads are reengineered with rails built in. It's just way too big of a technical problem to solve with computers alone.

Right now the death rate of autonomous cars is far higher than human drivers and it is never going to catch up given that it hasn't advanced technologically recently.

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

#524

Post by jdietrich »

alyx wrote: post #393
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…

I find what might help those that quote statistics is to self-reflect and ask the question, how would you react if your father/mother/sister/son/daughter/etc was the victim? Would you care that statistically self-driving cars have killed less people than human drivers?

All deaths are a tragedy to someone. A statistic is an aggregate account of untold suffering and misery. To be truly compassionate, we must learn to see the humanity in statistics. We must recognise that our emotional reaction to the death of a loved one and our indifference to the death of a stranger is not a sign of compassion, but egoism. As enlightened citizens, it is our duty to use all our ingenuity and effort to reduce the sum total of suffering.

This death is a tragedy. There were 37,461 such tragedies in 2016. Every single one of them matters equally. It is only by studying and analysing them in aggregate that we can prevent future tragedies. Seat belts, air bags, crumple zones, anti-lock brakes, median dividers and rumble strips are tremendous acts of compassion. Statisticians, scientists and engineers have made an incalculable contribution to human welfare.

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

#525

Post by rsync »

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 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."

Although the actual logistics of your proposal might be challenging (child comments point out that some speeds/distances might be impossible to solve) your instinct is a correct one: the people designing and deploying these solutions need to have skin in the game.

I don't think truly autonomous cars are possible to deploy safely with our current level of technology but if I did ... I would want to see their family and their children driving in, and walking around, these cars before we consider wide adoption.

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

#526

Post by ryandrake »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #451
untog wrote: post #311

This opens up an interesting question going forward. We can't rely on Uber themselves to analyse the telemetry data and come to a conclusion, they're biased. So really, we need self driving car companies to turn over accident telemetry data to the police. But the police are ill equipped to process that data. We need law enforcement to be able to keep pace with advances in technology and let's face it, they're not goi…

How about we wait for the problem to present it and actually cause harm before we throw law enforcement, government regulation, a regulatory body, etc at it?

A pedestrian struck and killed doesn’t count as “harm”?

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

#527

Post by cwbrixey »

The problem is likely a failed ABS Brakes and on all cars. When the brake is applied and then it fails, there is less than 5 seconds to a crash and likely fatality. No time to react. Experiencing the brake failure on two cars, I have tried to get the attention of NHTSA for a decade. NHTSA has a lock on faulty research to blame an innocent driver for all accidents instead of finding the correct root cause of the crash. My estimate is 50% to 70% of all fatal crashes is caused by a defective ABS Brake.. Finally with no driver to blame, NHTSA will have to solve the correct fail mode for these crashes. The Congressional Sudden Acceleration investigation found nothing to make the roads safer and Toyotas have SA crashes today and the certified accident investigator only logs items to blame the innocent driver. Unless the braking technology is totally changed in self driving cars, I expect daily crashes with no one to blame. I have sent Elon Musk letters that the Tesla has ABS Brake issues causing crashes, but their engineers join in blaming the driver and do not fix the problem Accident investigators are clueless Lawyers and DAs are clueless News Reporters are clueless NHTSA is clueless NTSB is clueless Carnage on the roads goes on unabated and we convict an innocent driver.

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

#528

Post by rags2riches »

TN412 wrote: post #511
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.…

>We Should really just build rails The beauty of cars vs rails is that cars can go more than just a set in stone angle or path defined by a rail. Cars can go in and out of parking lots and dirt roads. Rails would be more automated, yes, but not as versatile.

Why not rails for the long distance high speed travel and then low speeds off the rails for that final distance?

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

#529

Post by test6554 »

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.…

Due to geofencing, we are building a sort of rails. We're creating cars that are only useful in a limited, well-mapped area.

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

#530

Post by downandout »

The title here should be amended to “...hits, kills jaywalking pedestrian...”. Let’s get the facts straight. This person was walking outside the crosswalk. The fact that a computer was behind the wheel is irrelevant. A human broke a law designed to prevent this exact scenario, and the result was both predictable and tragic. It’s terrible, but ultimately the person’s fault.
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