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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

#271

Post by asteli »

noobermin wrote: post #202
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #39

If we're not holding autonomous drivers to a higher standard than human drivers, I'm not convinced on the long term benefit of this technology.

This is a very important point. I made this point above. Someone already mentioned the car was speeding 3 mph above the speed limit and defending it because...you do it? If our we allow autonomous cars to be as reckless and dangerous as human drivers (which is already dangerous enough to make it one of the top killers in this country) then what is the point of AV's anyway?

Driving no faster than the speed limit under any circumstances causes safety issues. You get a continuous stream of cars cutting in front, some of them irate about having to accommodate the SDV's law-abiding nature. I'm relatively sure you can replicate this effect easily in most American metropolitan regions.

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

#272

Post by asteli »

freehunter wrote: post #155
danso wrote: post #52

> 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, th…

It may not be programmed to speed per se, but if you’ve ever had cruise control turned on you’ll know it doesn’t keep you exactly at 55mpg. It might be 54 with the throttle applied to speed up, or it might be 57 which doesn’t trigger the brakes yet but is coasting to a slower speed. Imagine the car in front of you cycling rapidly between the gas and brake pedal to keep the speed exactly at 55mph. One, that’s complete…

All SDVs that I know of operate some kind of longitudinal controller that has access to throttle and brakes at a minimum. That and steering wheel angle (or torque, depending) are the two essential control primitives. All the motion planning stuff happens on top of this.

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

#273

Post by manfredo »

noobermin wrote: post #262
manfredo wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Responsibility isn't being absolved, it's being shifted to the one that actually operates the vehicle - probably either the car vendor (who either manufactured or licensed the self-driving car software), or the fleet operator depending on what kind of sales and operations model self-driving cars adopt. When human escalator operators were replaced with automatic escalators, was there are problem with shifting responsi…

So I think you have a great analogy, and I generally like your perspective. The problem is that I think this accident clearly demonstrates that the suggestion that AV's would be safer than human drivers is now suspect. A post elsewhere compared the deaths per mile for human drivers to that of this pilots' and it's worse by orders of magnitude.[0] That's my point. I 100% agree, if self-driving cars did make things bet…

Worse by an order of magnitude is only the case if you exclusively measure fatalities - and as you point out there is exactly one data point and not enough miles logged to produce any meaningful conclusion. The data on non-fatal accidents for Waymo indicates that self-driving cars are an order of magnitude less likely to be at fault for an accident that human drivers: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-safe-are-self-drivi...

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

#274

Post by rootusrootus »

naveen99 wrote: post #124
omarforgotpwd wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course a self driving car should be able to speed. My understanding is that speed limits are set by measuring the speed people are driving on the road and then determining a speed at which roughly 15% of the drivers are exceeding that limit. There is an expectation that people will speed, but by setting the speed limit a little bit lower almost all traffic will fall under safe bounds. Driving 38 in a 35 zone is co…

What speed would you drive if there was no speed limit ?

Prevailing traffic plus 10-15 mph. Or 135-ish with good conditions and no other cars. My days of real speed runs are behind me, and 135 is fast enough to keep things interesting and make good time without getting too crazy.

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

#275

Post by asteli »

__david__ wrote: post #235
protomyth wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t that be mitigated by the GPS and the map? It would seem that an automated car using maps as an important input would no its exact position and therefore speed.

GPS can be remarkably bad in urban environments. You can't really trust it for second-to-second speed or positioning. It's only really good for long term/high level planning. For speed, the wheel sensors are going to be way more reliable and consistent.

The typical approach is to fuse GPS, inertial, and wheelspeed sensors to track a vehicle's motion in space. They all have their shortcomings, and all compensate for each other.

GPS is, as you said, wildly inaccurate, disconcertingly often. Wheelspeed is great when you're moving, but at low speed it tends not to have the granularity you want. Inertial sensors are pretty amazing nowadays, but they still drift.

To illustrate, if your wheels aren't moving, then you can ignore the IMU telling you that you're sinking into the ground at 5mm/s. Watching the monitor of a mapping vehicle as it depicts the car returning to mother Earth is pretty hysterical though. Until you have to fix it.

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

#276

Post by timgilbert »

laretluval wrote: post #34
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.

I think he is saying that she probably would have died even if a human were driving.

Sure, but presumably that's because a human wouldn't be able to see the pedestrian in the dark; you would expect LIDAR to be able to detect them and so the autonomous car should have had the same chances to spot this person in the daytime or the nighttime.

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

#277

Post by adrr »

stefan_ wrote: post #63
rory096 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>before anyone has even downloaded the recordings The second paragraph of the article states "video footage taken from cameras equipped to the autonomous Volvo SUV potentially shift the blame to the victim herself."

It's video footage from cameras at night! Of course on the footage the victim comes from the shadows because cameras become notoriously useless at night when you still want to hit reasonable framerates (and you do). That's why that thing has a very expensive LIDAR on top.

Modern dashcams have very good low light capability. Here's a cruise self driving video at night.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSRPmng1cmA

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

#278

Post by rootusrootus »

helthanatos wrote: post #193
in_cahoots wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think that’s true at all (though I only have my own experience to go off of). I tend to use the speed limit as a point of reference, and then drive a little above it. Prior experience has told me that going the speed limit plus some percentage ‘feels’ safe. If there were no speed limit I’d actually have to pay more attention to the road and surrounding environment to determine what a safe speed is. Right now…

I would like the speed limit on my interstates and highways to go up to 70(they're all straight. 55 is just the only speed limit around here). Driving at 65-70 feels safe in normal conditions. Driving above 70 feels a bit too fast. Speed limits should be more variable depending upon car size and braking power though. I hate having to fear that I might be pulled over for going a bit above the speed limit when there ar…

I find this is extremely dependent on car. I've had cars that felt like you were about to die at 55 mph, and I've had cars that you couldn't tell you were going fast until you were really moving. For laughs, as my wife and I were driving home one afternoon earlier this year on a completely empty stretch of I-5 south of Portland, I casually accelerated up to about 110 and left it there for maybe a minute, then eased back down to normal speed as we came up into traffic. She never even looked up, didn't notice. But then again, we were in my brand new Camaro SS and I'm not positive it even got over 2000 RPM for that exercise, so I guess that's not a surprise.

So I guess I'm saying I agree. Speed limits are pretty arbitrary, there are a lot of things drivers do every day that are far more dangerous than merely speeding. Closure rate, unsafe passes, tailgating, cutting people off, etc.

/don't get me started about how people drive around you if you're towing a travel trailer, what the heck is it with people?

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

#279

Post by invisible »

hnaccy wrote: post #245
isaachier wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might be confusing "defensively" with perfectly. There are situations even defensive driving cannot prevent. For example, any car going 35 mph will need a few feet to brake if something jumps directly in front of it. Defensive driving just accounts for one's surroundings and likely outcomes. Seeing as the cars have been on the road in Arizona for a while, and this is the first we are hearing about a pedes…

>Seeing as the cars have been on the road in Arizona for a while, and this is the first we are hearing about a pedestrian collision, it seems the algorithm is pretty safe. One fatality in 4 million miles is safe? Humans are 20 times better than that.

I wonder what the margin of error is on that one in 4 million rate since the sample size is one.

Also of note:

> Arizona has experienced a surge of pedestrian fatalities recently, with more than 10 in a single week of March in Phoenix alone. The state has the highest rate of pedestrian fatalities in the United States.

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

#280

Post by franciscop »

in_cahoots wrote: post #158
franciscop wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What speed would you drive? Would you take close corners at 120km/h? People (on average) drive at the speed their actually very well tuned survival instinct tells them to.

I don’t think that’s true at all (though I only have my own experience to go off of). I tend to use the speed limit as a point of reference, and then drive a little above it. Prior experience has told me that going the speed limit plus some percentage ‘feels’ safe. If there were no speed limit I’d actually have to pay more attention to the road and surrounding environment to determine what a safe speed is. Right now…

Ah but that is a whole different issue, the problem is that for the last few decades residential areas have been designed more and more like high-speed areas, and that had a larger impact on driver speed than the actual posted sign. I cannot seem to find the original articles but here are a couple of related ones:

- https://www.citylab.com/design/2015/11/some-20-mph-streets-a...

- http://plannersweb.com/2013/09/wide-neighborhood-street-part...

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