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

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

#781

Post by emodendroket » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 10:21 PM UTC

IgorPartola wrote: post #390

This 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, but ones that do happen will be completely unexpected and scary and shitty. You can't really get away from this without putting these cars on rails.

One of the big questions I have about autonomous driving is if it's really a better solution to the problems it's meant to solve than more public transportation.

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

#782

Post by megy » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 10:21 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 was a cyclist. So they should be on bikes.

Just like they take the repair mechanics on the first test flight after a major repair of a big airplane.

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

#783

Post by xbeta » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 10:23 PM UTC

Statistically speaking, I am curious to know the data on these areas: - number of miles driven per fatal accident on self-driving - number of miles driven per fatal accident on a human driver.

It is important to know whether our machine is now doing worse/better than our counter-part and this means a lot for our self-driving initiatives.

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

#784

Post by telchar » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 10:23 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…

With Uber's reputation, I wouldn't be surprised if they try to write an app to falsify black box telemetry in the event of a crash to put the liability on the victim. Maybe they'll call it "grey box" or "black mirror".

Does the NTSB have regulation on how black boxes are allowed to function?

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

#785

Post by icc97 » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 10:24 PM UTC

daenz wrote: post #778

fudged71 wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although it's comforting that this exact situation shouldn't happen again in an Uber autonomous car... there is no mechanism to share that learning with the other car companies. There seriously fucking needs to be a consortium for exactly this purpose: sharing system failures. Also my problem with this is that a human death is functionally treated as finding edge cases that are missing a unit test, and progressing th…

>There seriously fucking needs to be a consortium for exactly this purpose: sharing system failures. This implies they're using the same systems and underlying models. If one model hit a pedestrian because of a weakness in training data plus a sub-optimal model hyperparameter, and therefore was classified a pedestrian in that specific pose as some trash on the street, how do you share that conclusion with other compa…

I guess it depends on the data available, but I don't think the hyperparameters are what's needed. You just need to see what the car sensed and how it responded. Then the other car companies can try to replicate the similar circumstances and see what their models would do.

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

#786

Post by ClassyJacket » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 10:24 PM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #293

olympus wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could a human have reacted fast enough to stop for someone jumping out in front of them? If the person jumped out so fast that nobody could have possibly reacted in time, then it's not a stain on the technology- even with an instantaneous application of brakes, a car still takes a while to come to a stop. If the human jumped out ten seconds earlier and was waving her hands for help, then it's an issue. "the whole poi…

I've been saying this from the beginning: it's not enough for self-driving cars to be "better than the average driver". They need to be at least 10x better than the best drivers. I find it crazy that so many people think it is. First off, by definition like 49% of the drivers are technically better than the "average driver". Second, just like with "human-like translation" from machines, errors made by machines tend t…

Even if, worldwide, self driving cars only caused there to be 1 less death per year, why on Earth would you not want that? What's the advantage to you in having more people die while waiting for self driving cars to be perfect?

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

#787

Post by ClassyJacket » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 10:26 PM UTC

vamin wrote: post #585

maxyme wrote: post #389

If you're familiar with that part of ASU campus you honestly could have seen this coming. There are a few different self driving cars in Tempe (Waymo, Uber, GM...) and Uber drives by far the most aggressive. They drive on a pedestrian heavy road and drive faster than most of traffic. They accelerate rapidly when a light changes and can brake hard. There are always tons of pedestrians in the area and it isn't uncommon…

I wonder if it's because Uber algorithms are trained using Uber driver data (taxi drivers tend to be very aggressive drivers).

I don't find that at all, I feel like they're happy to take their time and make more money.

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

#788

Post by oh_sigh » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 10:27 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…

It is simple: Tech companies are allowed to test their systems on public roads because the communities/states have given them permission to do so(with restrictions like roads allowable, max/min speed allowable, safety driver present behind wheel, etc).

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

#789

Post by jusonchan » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 10:27 PM UTC

pvelagal wrote: post #616

IgorPartola wrote: post #390

This 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…

May be for now, autonomous driving should be limited to freeways and roads that dont have pedestrian crossings/pavements.

This is a great point. Solve it one step at a time.

But the problem is Uber's business plan is to replace drivers with autonomous vehicles ferrying passengers. i.e. take the driver cost out of the equation. Same goes for Waymo and others trying to enter/play in this game. It's always about monetization which kills/slows innovation.

Just highway-mode is not going to make a lot of money except in the trucking business and I bet they will succeed soon enough and reduce transportation costs. But passenger vehicles, not so much. May help in reducing fatigue related accidents but not a money making business for a multi-billion dollar company.

That being said, really sad for the victim in this incident.

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

#790

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 10:27 PM UTC

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…

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