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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

#301

Post by nugi »

yesiamyourdad wrote: post #287
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…

The point is that if someone runs in front of your car, physics dictates that you can't stop a 1,000+ pound vehicle on a dime. You can lock the brakes up and stop the axle from moving (ABS braking won't actually allow this usually) and the car will still continue forward for some time. In addition many other avoidance strategies won't work. Sure, you could swerve, but what's in your path then? Machines don't get tire…

You can sure as hell swerve.

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

#302

Post by viraptor »

portofcall wrote: post #254
viraptor wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More like "autonomous cars are better than people at stopping in a flash" rather than "just like people this car didn't stop in a flash". It's a single example. You can't extrapolate to better or worse from it. A self driving system better than people by 2 orders of magnitude will still kill people. But that's neither a comfortable thought, nor something media will get used to over the next decade or so. This speci…

3.2 fatalities per billion km driven by humans. So far 1 fatalities per 4 million miles by automated vehicles, which when you do the conversions... isn’t better. It’s not a lot to work with, but for the people speaking in stats, the actual stats don’t support them. A lot people in this thread seem to be cashing in a human life against future hypothetical gains which have in no way been demonstrated. I sincerely hope…

Not sure it's that clear. Using data from Wikipedia, I got 11 deaths per billion km. The 4 million miles are just from Weymo, not all autonomous cars in total. (6 million+ https://medium.com/self-driving-cars/miles-driven-677bda21b0...) And the confidence level on the 1 event over 6+ million miles is not great either.

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

#303

Post by TomMckenny »

Odd the damage should be on the passenger side if she darted from the center median.

Odd they see the need to add the conjecture that she may have been homeless.

Curious too is that the center divider where she likely was has has a nice walkway on it with a street lamp[2]

I'm suddenly quite curious about what is going on.

Accident site: https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4369934,-111.9429875,3a,75y,... from https://imgur.com/a/QH98H

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4366949,-111.9427747,3a,75y,...

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

#304

Post by steveax »

omegaworks wrote: post #3

>Police believe she may have been homeless. Police: "don't worry, she was an undesirable." Next, let's watch them publicly leak her criminal background.

Yeah, the “may have been homeless“ line really pisses me off. Such a blatant bullcrap attempt to devalue a human life.

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

#305

Post by archi42 »

inverse_pi wrote: post #121
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…

Here's what my hypothesis: when it's physically impossible to stop (which sounds like it was the case, car moving at 38mph and you have a split second), my hypothesis is that the robot would plan to swerve around the obstacle instead of trying to stop. But the car can't turn 90 degrees immediately either so that could also be dynamically infeasible, but maybe it has higher probability to avoid the collision?

You're opening yet another can of worms when you try to evade. Sometimes it's the right/optimal thing to do, sometimes it's worse (e.g. switch to the lane going in the opposite direction because it seems free - until another car your computer eyes could not see comes quickly around a corner and there are four dead instead of one; that's one of the reasons driving instructors tell us, at least in my country, to do a full brake and avoid evasion).

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

#306

Post by KKKKkkkk1 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #96

I didn't notice it mentioned in this piece, but a different article on HN is suggesting she may have been homeless and was crossing where there was no crosswalk. Homeless individuals frequently sleep under bridges, on the sides of off ramps and other infrastructure near highways. They are often walking where no pedestrian should be at all. I would like to see the affordable housing crisis solved. Currently, there are…

It's like a story out of a dystopian sci-fi novel. A society that can make self-driving cars but cannot solve homelessness.

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

#307

Post by [deleted] »

Steeeve wrote: post #82
hnaccy wrote: post #42

>speeding >didn't engage breaks Definitely gives me confidence in self-driving cars, at least she "may have been homeless" so I can sleep easy tonight. Thanks Uber and Tempe!

>speeding >didn't engage breaks >not ubers fault one of these things is not like the other. The basic expectation is that if people are on the edge of a roadway you slow down and pay more attention. What exactly was the person in the drivers seat doing?

[deleted]

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

#308

Post by TeMPOraL »

danmaz74 wrote: post #300
InclinedPlane wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might not be familiar with the concept of defensive driving. Defensive driving means slowing down and paying more attention in areas of low visibility, especially if there are likely pedestrian crossings. It means increasing your following distance. It means increasing the odds that even if something unlikely happens you, the driver, will still be in a better position to react, or you will be less likely…

> This is definitely something that is likely to be difficult to teach to autonomous systems. Why? What you listed seem like conditions that should be easy enough to recognize even with simple algorithms.

Yup. An algorithm should be in much better position to recognize its confidence about what it sees and can happen, and alter the driving speed to reduce the amount of uncertain spots that fall within its stopping range.

That is, unless they use neural network magic black boxes to implement the self-driving part.

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

#309

Post by DoreenMichele »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #306
DoreenMichele wrote: post #96

I didn't notice it mentioned in this piece, but a different article on HN is suggesting she may have been homeless and was crossing where there was no crosswalk. Homeless individuals frequently sleep under bridges, on the sides of off ramps and other infrastructure near highways. They are often walking where no pedestrian should be at all. I would like to see the affordable housing crisis solved. Currently, there are…

It's like a story out of a dystopian sci-fi novel. A society that can make self-driving cars but cannot solve homelessness.

America seems to be poisoned by some poor mental models. People seem to see no real connection between homelessness and the lack of affordable housing. People also tell me there is no money in solving homelessness, which tells me how messed up our mental models are.

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

#310

Post by jakeogh »

hndamien wrote: post #242
jakeogh wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I am constantly scanning for people near the edge of the road and anticipating their movements. I bet most of us have had the experience where someone stepped out unexpectedly but you already took action because you could tell they were not paying attention. Good luck programming that.

I actually think this is a fairly trainable attribute. Given that Tesla does this kind of detection for objects and classification and records many miles of human drivers - it wouldn't be surprising that this may be a learned trait.

It's the corner cases... like Halloween, or body posture, or crossing behind a semi-transparent asymmetric object.
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