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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

#861

Post by cloakandswagger »

muxator wrote: post #858

Sorry, but what's the point of this? > Elcock said he believed Herzberg may have been homeless. I do not think that Herzberg possibly being homeless adds any meaningful information. On the contrary, I feel this may subtly support unconscious prejudices.

Spend some time in any major city and you'll see homeless people doing all sorts of reckless things around cars. Just last week I saw a homeless man jaywalk into oncoming 40+ MPH traffic without so much as looking or stopping.

In this sense, it is a possibly relevant detail of the story.

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

#862

Post by icc97 »

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…

I'm hijacking my own post, but this is a very relevant MIT lecture on 'Technology, Policy and Vehicle Safety in the Age of AI' [0].

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDprUza7yT4

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

#863

Post by danso »

muxator wrote: post #858

Sorry, but what's the point of this? > Elcock said he believed Herzberg may have been homeless. I do not think that Herzberg possibly being homeless adds any meaningful information. On the contrary, I feel this may subtly support unconscious prejudices.

He said this in response to a reporter who asked if she was homeless: https://www.facebook.com/cnn/videos/10158139292591509/

Can't speak for the reporter who asked that, but I can take a guess about why it was asked. The victim's death and identity has been known for half the day. Her being homeless might possibly figure into next-day stories about why we haven't heard much from grieving family members. But yes, you're right, it is a detail that will figure into people's prejudices.

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

#864

Post by mr_toad »

redm wrote: post #831

It's terrible when anyone is killed in an automobile accident. The irony is in the promise of autonomous vehicles to prevent this very thing. I've heard the general report, and I find it interesting that a supervisor was at the wheel, and they, as well as the car, failed to prevent the pedestrian from getting hit. I read they were not in a crosswalk and I'm sure the specific details of the accident matter greatly. It…

It doesn’t matter how good the driver is, AI or human, if you unexpectedly walk right out in front of a car moving at 40mph it’s not going to be able to stop.

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

#865

Post by lopmotr »

There's no indication that this is the fault of the car or its human driver. Unfortunately, the media won't notice that. She stepped out in front of the car and since she was struck immediately, it sounds like the car had no time to stop or swerve, let alone time for the human driver to react in any way.

EDITed to remove offensive word.

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

#866

Post by mipmap04 »

jarjoura wrote: post #821

It's fascinating that so many brilliant people in this thread can talk so casually about any single loss of life for the tech built by the very same people in this thread. I would be devastated if I learned my code ended even one person's life. You're in a bubble if you think a world hyper connected to social media that's in the same world scared that autonomy is about to kill millions of jobs in one jab and would NO…

My career is in software, but when I peer out of my cave at those in more traditional engineering backgrounds, I realize they have so many more checkpoints and structures for guaranteeing performance / operability under load. For 99% of us in software, if our software fails, nothing really happens of consequence other than downtime - no one dies. In this case, the software written can have mortal consequences. Maybe there's a need for increased scrutiny on software development - especially as IoT gains more popularity and people are relying more and more on the software that supports or replaces human involvement in critical and/or potentially high risk activities.

Raises the question though: will stakeholders be willing to pay the upfront financial costs to obtain the level of quality and assurance that other engineering disciplines provide? We'll see.

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

#867

Post by dang »

lopmotr wrote: post #865

There's no indication that this is the fault of the car or its human driver. Unfortunately, the media won't notice that. She stepped out in front of the car and since she was struck immediately, it sounds like the car had no time to stop or swerve, let alone time for the human driver to react in any way. EDITed to remove offensive word.

> rabble

Please follow the site guidelines when commenting here. Adding flamebait into a flammable topic sparks explosions, making this place worse for everyone.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#868

Post by rptv »

larkeith wrote: post #829
jarjoura wrote: post #821

It's fascinating that so many brilliant people in this thread can talk so casually about any single loss of life for the tech built by the very same people in this thread. I would be devastated if I learned my code ended even one person's life. You're in a bubble if you think a world hyper connected to social media that's in the same world scared that autonomy is about to kill millions of jobs in one jab and would NO…

> Public opinion on human driving is doing just fine with human drivers right now There were over 40,000 motor vehicle deaths in 2016 in the US [1] - more than a hundred daily. While loss of human life is always a tragedy, individual fatalities are absolutely worth it if we can begin to reduce that count sooner than by proceeding with excessive caution. It would be morally unacceptable to delay development merely to…

Is it worth it if we exchange 3 drunk drivers' lives for 1 bystander's? Can we really just use a single measure here?

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

#869

Post by lopmotr »

FlyingSideKick wrote: post #837

Let’s take the extreme example where a bug in a self driving semi truck leads to it mowing down 50 people on a busy sidewalk. How are the victims to get justice? In almost all incidents besides a human truck driver having a major health incident, that driver would go to jail but it seems that there will be little repercussions beyond fines for autonomous driving companies. I think once a mass fatality occurs people w…

The way I see it, by using the road, you're sort of giving up the right to revenge justice. It's a game of Russian roulette. People make mistakes and kill others or themselves no matter how careful they try to be. It's like asking where's the justice if you die from a heart attack or cancer? Those aren't crimes, they're bad luck.
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