Just curious: Do tech companies “pay” the state so they can try out their latest and greatest? Or do they look for states with the least amount of restrictions?
Isn't this just lobbying?
Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
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Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#662This is what's going to happen. If you've ever seen a machine learning algorithm in action, this isn't surprising at all. Basically, they'll behave as expected some well known percentage of the time. But when they don't, the result will not be just a slight deviation from the normal algorithm, but a very unexpected one. So we will have overall a much smaller number of deaths caused by self driving cars, but ones that…
>So we will have overall a much smaller number of deaths caused by self driving cars
Why? This is what the self-driving cars industry insists on, but has nowhere near been proven (only BS stats, under ideal conditions, no rain, no snow, selected roads, etc -- and those as reported by the companies itself).
I can very well imagine a greater than average human driving AI. But I can also imagine being able to write it anytime soon not being a law of nature.
It might take decades or centuries to get out of some local maxima.
General AI research had also promised the moon once again in the 60s and 70s, and it all died with little to show of in the 80s. It was always "a few years down the line".
I'm not so certain that we're gonna get this good car AI anytime soon.
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#663I 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…
This is a non trivial situation for human drivers, too, when I am on a bicycle or driving a car I have to wait and look at the pedestrian until I am sure of their intention. That seems like a very difficult problem in that a lot of times people are on their phone or watching a child or dog, I often have to slow to a standstill and speak to people to ask them what they are planning on doing.
Indeed. Right on red is unsafe for pedestrians. I guess at least the requirement to stop before turning helps ensure the speed of impact has minimal consequences.
As a driver, there are certain heuristics, e.g. did my traffic light just go red, or is the pedestrian signal/traffic light in the same direction about to go green.
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#664This is what's going to happen. If you've ever seen a machine learning algorithm in action, this isn't surprising at all. Basically, they'll behave as expected some well known percentage of the time. But when they don't, the result will not be just a slight deviation from the normal algorithm, but a very unexpected one. So we will have overall a much smaller number of deaths caused by self driving cars, but ones that…
Totally agree on your premise that we can rationalize humans killing humans - but we cannot do so with machines killing humans. If self-driving cars really are safer in the long-run for drivers and pedestrians - maybe what people need is a better grasp on probability and statistics? And self-driving car companies need to show and publicize the data that backs this claim up to win the trust of the population.
> maybe what people need is a better grasp on probability and statistics
Definitely, though my interpretation of your statement is "self driving cars have only killed a couple people ever but human cars have killed hundreds of thousands". If that's correct, that's not going to win anyone over nor is it necessarily correct.
While the state of AZ definitely has some responsibility for allowing testing of the cars on their roads, Uber needs (imo) to be able to prove the bug that caused the accident was so much of an edge case that they couldn't easily have been able to foresee it.
Are they even testing this shit on private tracks as much as possible before releasing anything on public roads? How much are they ensuring a human driver is paying attention?
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#665Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the one hand I'd say give it to the NTSB, because historically they are really good at this sort of thing. On the other hand, I'd wonder if increasing NTSB scope this much would drastically decrease the average quality of NTSB's work. Scaling ain't easy.
Yeah, pilot here. NTSB is the right organization to handle this. The investigators over there do an amazing job of determining root cause from forensic evidence. I assume that will be the process here.
NTSB is there to handle civilian transportation accident investigations. Most automotive accidents are not very "surprising", which leaves them mostly dealing with non-personal transportation accidents. We are about to have a rapid increase in surprising, non-personal transportation accidents, so I seriously hope they are afforded the resources to deal with the influx as AVs come online.
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#666Former Lyft eng here. From my vantage point, as an industry, we're nowhere near where we should be on the safety side. The tech companies are developing driving tech privately instead of openly. Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads? The public is at serious risk of getting run over by hacked and buggy guidance / decision system. Even when a human operator has his hands hoverin…
> Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads?
Because at some point, it's literally not possible to test something that's ultimately intended for use on public roads anywhere but public roads. Or, to put it in terms that would be more familiar to developers, "you can test all you want in QA, but prod is the ultimate test of whether your code really works".
As mentioned downthread, the problem here is that Arizona basically gave companies full leeway, without having to demonstrate that they had done sufficient tests internally before putting the cards on public roads. Apparently they're not even required to report data on accidents to the state, which is absurd.
I wouldn't be surprised if Uber were ultimately found to be cutting corners, but Arizona is also responsible for rushing to allow self-driving cars on their roads without doing their own due diligence first.
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#667The 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.
This isn't a good argument because it implies if these AVs have successfully not killed their CEOs during a closed (i.e. controlled) test, that they are safe on public roads. But it seems like the majority of AV accidents so far involve unpredictable and uncontrolled conditions.
IOW, setting this up as some kind of quality standard gives unjustified cover ("Hey, our own CEO risked his life to prove the car was safe!") if AVs fail on the open road, because the requirements of open and closed tests are so different.
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#668Both the computer and the driver failed to avoid the pedestrian. It's possible that the backup driver wasn't paying attention and the technology for autonomous vehicles is not ready. It's also possible that the situation was challenging for both the computer and human and that both failed.
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#669Former Lyft eng here. From my vantage point, as an industry, we're nowhere near where we should be on the safety side. The tech companies are developing driving tech privately instead of openly. Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads? The public is at serious risk of getting run over by hacked and buggy guidance / decision system. Even when a human operator has his hands hoverin…
Perhaps companies need to test their safety devices first. I.e., first prove that their LiDAR correctly identifies pedestrians, cyclists, etc. From there, build test-vehicles with redundancy, e.g. with multiple LiDAR devices. Then prove that the vehicles actually stop in case of emergency. And only then actually hit the road. Of course, the US department of transportation should have set up proper certification for a…
if we wait for the gov to set up a certification for this, we'll delay the whole industry 10 years.
Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street
#670Former Lyft eng here. From my vantage point, as an industry, we're nowhere near where we should be on the safety side. The tech companies are developing driving tech privately instead of openly. Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads? The public is at serious risk of getting run over by hacked and buggy guidance / decision system. Even when a human operator has his hands hoverin…
> Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads?
My thoughts exactly. It is wrong. We have a chance to do this properly, openly and together, but instead our governments are letting private companies put our lives in danger.