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Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

fortune.com

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Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#51

Post by aetherson »

rdiddly wrote: post #37

Just to continue my line of unpopular opinions about this: whoever chooses to put a car on the road instead of traveling in a way that hurts others less (walking, transit, bike), is responsible at least in part for any damage, injury or death, just by being there. How many people die by wandering out in front of somebody else walking along? Nobody even has to call a cop, much less determine whose fault it was, becaus…

Do you also believe that long haul trains are inherently immoral, given that they are more likely to cause bystander injuries/death than airplanes?

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#52

Post by danso »

> According to the Chronicle, the preliminary investigation found the Uber car was driving at 38 mph in a 35 mph zone and did not attempt to brake. Herzberg is said to have abruptly walked from a center median into a lane with traffic. Police believe she may have been homeless.

I know this isn't the most pertinent issue here, but I'm surprised the self-driving AI is allowed to speed, though with further research, this seems to be the case with Google/Waymo software too:

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28851996

Though in that BBC article (which is from 2014), the stated scenario is when the self-driving car is surrounded by traffic exceeding the speed limit. It doesn't sound like this was the case for the Uber vehicle.

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#53

Post by Trundle »

fthssht wrote: post #46
halflings wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If somebody jumped in front of the car at the last second, it would be physically impossible to break in time. I assume what people mean by "stopping in a flash" is closer to taking the right actions faster (e.g 40ms vs 800ms) when there's still a chance of changing the outcome.

800ms is pretty slow for a sober human I think https://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/statistics

Isn't that linking to the results of people playing a game where they're paying attention and looking for something to react to?

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#54

Post by shkkmo »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #36

So here's one thing about this incident where humans do have a system for this already. People are very good at reading body language. It's possible to gather someone's likely intentions (wrt moving) in a near instant. A defensive driver will see body language that could dart out into the street and slow down, just in case, and give more attention to the person. We are really good at this. I know you can say it was d…

The chief of police says: "“It’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode [autonomous or human-driven] based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway,”"

I'm curious what you know that he doesn't.

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#55

Post by tathougies »

friedman23 wrote: post #21
benwilber0 wrote: post #14

> According to the Chronicle, the preliminary investigation found the Uber car was driving at 38 mph in a 35 mph zone and did not attempt to brake. Herzberg is said to have abruptly walked from a center median into a lane with traffic. The autonomous vehicle was speeding and made no attempt to decelerate given the sudden presence of an obstruction in its path? I would expect some kind of reaction from the car within…

3mph above the speed limit

But you see, this is a computerized car. Whereas for a human, there is gauge observation error, there’s really no excuse for a machine, especially a machine who has our lives in its hands

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#56

Post by dexterdog »

portofcall wrote: post #24
blakesterz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder what that LIDAR thinks about the shadows. I honestly don't follow these systems very close, but I thought that was one of the big selling points, LIDAR can see into tough situations and things like "the shadows" and help avoid situations where people would fail.

And yet the speeding vehicle didn’t even attempt to stop. https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/19/17140936/uber-self-drivin...

Can we please stop calling 38 in a 35 speeding? In many places that speed would be inpeding traffic.

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#57

Post by mindslight »

jdoliner wrote: post #29
alexandercrohde wrote: post #18

I don't want to hear any officer's opinion on this until the video and radar is publicly released. It's unclear on what evidence the officer bases this account of events.

Second paragraph: > Chief of Police Sylvia Moir told the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday that video footage taken from cameras equipped to the autonomous Volvo SUV potentially shift the blame to the victim herself, 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg, rather than the vehicle. How is that unclear?

To answer your question, it is apparently deliberately unclear. "Potentially" is one hell of a weasel word.

We're at the point where the public no longer trusts its institutions to make impartial judgments - we all know the overriding societal bias towards cars, the tendency to blame the deceased, the political incentives of wanting Uber's continued support, etc. And if this initial analysis is indeed the correct one, then it's especially in everyone's interest for such doubt to be eliminated.

There are video(s). They should be publicly posted swiftly, before it can be edited down to show the most plausible narrative. Anything less feeds the ongoing breakdown in trust.

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#58

Post by cloakandswagger »

akamaka wrote: post #45

I don’t think that the opinion of the police is at all relevant here, since they have no tools for investigating how self-driving cars react in accidents. The sensors and reaction time of a self-driving car are entirely different from a human, so it’s possible that a crash for which a human is not at fault could be averted by properly programmed self-driving car software.

You don't think the opinion of the police is relevant in a homicide? The opinion of people who have investigated hundreds if not thousands of similar accidents?

Who meets your criteria for expertise on saying whether the car could have stopped or not? Uber?

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#59

Post by ACow_Adonis »

blakesterz wrote: post #13

> “The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them,” Moir said. “His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision.” I don't know if that is supposed to make anyone feel better about this, if anything it makes it seem worse. I thought one of the big benefits of these systems was they were supposed to be better at exactly these kinds of situations? More like "autonomous cars a…

What is the driver supposed to say in this scenario?

"Actually officer, I saw her coming from miles away, but I thought to myself: let's just see what happens..."

Of course a "driver" in such a vehicle is going to report the victim came out of nowhere, otherwise they're basically committing homicide or implicating themselves in not paying attention and the car in not sensing them...it literally adds nothing to the evidence base...

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