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

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

#741

Post by WhompingWindows » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 9:44 PM UTC

qwerty456127 wrote: post #725

Just out of curiosity, how many people have been killed by human-driven cars on the same day in Arizona?

My guess is 2 or 3 deaths that day. Okay, according to the 2016 Arizona Crash Facts Summary [0], there were 952 fatalities on the road that year, including 193 pedestrian fatalities and 31 pedalcyclist fatalities.

So, on any given day in 2016, there were 2.6 fatalities, with less than 1 in the pedestrian/pedalcyclist groups.

[0]: https://www.azdot.gov/docs/default-source/mvd-services/2016-...

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

#742

Post by username223 » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 9:44 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #701

coldtea wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> This is what the self-driving cars industry insists on, but has nowhere near been proven Because machines have orders of magnitude fewer failure modes than humans, but with greater efficiency. It's why so much human labour has been automated. There's little reason to think driving will be any different. You can insist all you like that the existing evidence is under "ideal conditions", but a) that's how humans pass…

> It's why so much human labour has been automated. There's little reason to think driving will be any different.

Repetitive, blunt, manual labor now, and probably much basic legal/administrative/medical work in the near future. But we still pay migrant workers to harvest fruit, and I don't imagine a robot jockey winning a horse race anytime soon.

Driving a car under non-ideal conditions is incredibly complex, and relies upon human communication. For example: eye contact between a driver and pedestrian; one driver waving at another to go ahead; anticipating the behavior of an old lady in an Oldsmobile. Oh, the robots will be better drivers eventually, but it will be awhile. We humans currently manage about one death per hundred million miles; Uber made it all of two million. I expect we'll have level 5 self-driving cars about the same time we pass the Turing test.

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

#743

Post by LifeLiverTransp » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 9:44 PM UTC

s2g wrote: post #651

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.

The start tossing executives in jail. It’s the only real solution to corporations misbehaving.

Cooperations will just start paying compensation for executive jail time - and replace executives at a accelerated rate.

The only working regulation is one that is a existential threat to the company. Which means- huge financial punnishments.

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

#744

Post by Maxious » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

icc97 wrote: post #713

One aspect that comes from this is that now car crashes can be treated more like aircraft crashes. Each self-driving car now has a black box in it with a ton of telemetary. So it's not just "don't drink and drive", knowing that they'll probably reoffend soon anyway. Every crash and especially fatality can be thoroughly investigated and should be prevented from ever happening again. Hopefully there's enough data in th…

NTSB are investigating this incident including electronic recorders https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY18FH010.aspx and they have another investigation from 2017 still to report https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY18FH001.aspx

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

#745

Post by CardenB » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 9:47 PM UTC

nwellinghoff wrote: post #732

I love how everyone is throwing fuel on the fire here with no actual details as to what happened in the accident. It could simply be she ran out into oncoming traffic and got hit. Hard to say a human driver could have performed any better. The devil is in the details.

Agreed. We need a lot of time to digest this. At least anything before the NTSB investigation is jumping to conclusions.

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

#746

Post by overgard » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 9:48 PM UTC

jonthepirate wrote: post #415

Former 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…

To be fair though, it's not exactly like we're where we need to be at on the safety side from a human standpoint. I'd take my chances with a robo-car over a 16 year old texting any day.

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

#747

Post by artursapek » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 9:55 PM UTC

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.

This reminds me of a story I heard in college... an owner of a company that builds table saws demonstrated his saw's safety feature - a killswitch that pulls the blade down into the machine as soon as it detects flesh - by putting his hand on it while it was spinning.

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

#748

Post by dchichkov » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 9:55 PM UTC

And yet (disclaimer - reflects only my personal view, might not correspond to the current state of affairs at Uber, it is possible that Uber cars are still safer than human drivers, but still - one who forgets the history tend to repeat it):

https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2016/12/15/the-tr...

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

#749

Post by phyzome » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 9:55 PM UTC

abalone wrote: post #495

danso wrote: post #394

The Washington Post has an updated story with the victim's name: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2018/03/1... > Police said the vehicle was northbound on Curry Road when a woman, identified as 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg, crossing from the west side of street, was struck. She died at a hospital, the department said. No mention of her being a bicyclist. My gut instinct is to accept that the victim w…

I'd think so too, but there is literally a crumpled bicycle in the photo of the scene. Also the Uber has a dent on the right side, which faces east. It's possible she was walking her bicycle across the street, but that still looks pretty bad for Uber. That street is a straight shot with clear visibility.

And if she was walking a bicycle, it was extremely unlikely that she "darted out". It takes some skill to do that.

(Still need more info, though.)

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

#750

Post by AsyncAwait » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 9:57 PM UTC

As someone who cannot drive because of a disability, I am putting real hope into self-driving cars becoming a thing during my lifetime. Uber may've just set that back a decade.