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

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

#381

Post by chopin »

URSpider94 wrote: post #318
CamperBob2 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? The range between 1-10 MPH over the speed limit is statistically the safest. (Yes, I know, good luck finding a citation for a study I read 20 years ago...) It's hard to argue against the notion that you're safest when you keep up with prevailing traffic. That means that self-driving cars shouldn't be programmed to go slower. Speed limits are usually too low. Often they have nothing to do with engineering or…

Man, sorry for the downvotes. This link -> http://www.lsp.org/pdf/troopc85thSpeed.pdf doesn't include any references, unfortunately, but the statements are that: -- 55% of drivers regularly exceed the speed limit, meaning that the speed limit represents the 45th percentile speed -- driving between the 50th and 90th percentile speeds is the safest Taken together, driving at the speed limit is significantly unsafe.

As far as I understand your comment, driving at the speed limit is unsafe because everybody is speeding. Sounds like a self-fulfilling thing. Maybe it would be even safer if the majority would obey the speed limit?

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

#382

Post by freyir »

danso wrote: post #299
InclinedPlane wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we know which way the car was going? The speed limit is 35 in that section going southbound. https://goo.gl/maps/GNfKZzePD9t

The Uber was going northbound.

Google Street View says 45 MPH, but they might have change it in the past seven months.

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4350531,-111.941492,3a,75y,3...

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

#383

Post by Tepix »

lmm wrote: post #359
ShorsHammer wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why autonomous vehicles are so big. Virtually all travel is one person, ideally it would be a tiny 4 wheel electric with the sole passenger highly reclined. The hangover from internal combustion is real.

What does autonomy have to do with it? Most regular cars would be better off as single-person vehicles; there are a few small-scale efforts in this direction (the Smart car, the G-Whiz electric car, I think BMW has an enclosed-canopy motorbike) but they largely haven't caught on.

BMW built the C1 from 2000-2002. They showed an electric version, the C1-E as a concept in 2009.

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

#384

Post by chopin »

amelius wrote: post #352
brokenmachine wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick braking is the one thing you would have thought they could get right for sure, and they didn't manage even that on this occasion.

Quick braking can also be dangerous. Perhaps even LiDAR has to deal with false positives every now and then.

Then it shouldn't be deployed. I had several occasions where I overlooked somebody (luckily without consequences) but never one where I falsely registered someone or something to warrant to brake.

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

#385

Post by lagadu »

noobermin wrote: post #169
vadimberman wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember early reports about self-driving experiments saying that some of the issues where because the cars were driving at the speed limit, which is usually not the case in the US with the human drivers. Maybe they decided to change it.

If they just track human driver habits then we're no more safer! What's the point left about self-driving cars then? Free up drivers of even more responsibility when they kill people?

> What's the point left about self-driving cars then?

The point of a self-driving car is unburdening the user from the task of driving it, allowing them to engage in other activities if they chose to do so.

That it has the potential of being safer is a nice perk but definitely not the primary goal. Right now the challenge is whether we can make them as safe on average as human drivers do, that way we can avoid effectively sacrificing people for the convenience such a system would provide.

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

#386

Post by dingo_bat »

IncRnd wrote: post #116
userbinator wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly was the person in the drivers seat doing? Nothing, because the car was clearly supposed to be driving itself.

The car didn't have a driver's license. The driver did, regardless of the amount of assistance provided by the car. What is troubling is that the breaks were never applied.

It's not that simple, I believe. Many governments have issues special registrations to self-driving cars, which waive off the requirement of an active driver to some extent. In that sense, the car actually has a "license" while the person sitting in the "driver's" seat is more of an attendant.

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

#387

Post by cthalupa »

Tepix wrote: post #377
cthalupa wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be very surprised if your cruise control kept within 3mph of the set speed at all times in all conditions. My car certainly doesn't, and it's a 2017 model with a sophisticated adaptive cruise control. I'll ignore ACC for a moment and talk about the modern implementation of regular cruise control, however. You'll have your target speed stored in a control unit, which cares about 3 to 4 things: your set speed,…

That's a lot of text for explaining why a car might go to 3mph too fast. There is a big difference between a cruise control and an autonomous car. In Germany you can get a ticket for going more than 3km/h (1.875 mph) too fast. It's not acceptable for a self driving car to go so fast that you can get a ticket. If that means going up to 6mph too slow, I guess that's the way it is. Also, going 5km/h means you will need…

It's an explanation of how cruise control works.

It sounds like cruise control is dangerous to use in Germany, based on your description. My 2012 VW GLI certainly did not stay within 3km/h of the set speed when utilizing cruise control.

>If that means going up to 6mph too slow, I guess that's the way it is.

If you want to be in a situation that is more dangerous than going 3mph over the limit, sure. If everyone was going 6mph under the limit this would be fine, but staying closer to the speed of traffic around you is less likely to cause accidents than going significantly slower. (Which, surely, if 3mph is significant, than 6mph is even more so)

>With electric cars, regulating the speed smoothly will be even easier.

I agree here. That just means solving the speed determination issue, which is not simple. GPS is the best method we have now, but is very problematic if there is no signal, or a degraded signal.

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

#388

Post by dingo_bat »

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.

Long term benefit of self driving car is that I don't have to worry about the tedium of driving. I doubt uber (and most people) gives a shit about improving driving standards.

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

#389

Post by lagadu »

tzs wrote: post #156
goshx wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the police determine that a vehicle "made no attempt to stop" today, without video and sensor data?

Where the skid marks start (if there are skid marks at all), probably. Witness reports might help, too.

A modern car that makes skidmarks under heavy breaking is a car with a broken brake and safety system. Modern ABS brakes actuate fast enough that they don't leave skidmarks under maximum braking.

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

#390

Post by DanBC »

cthalupa wrote: post #344
r_klancer wrote: post #225

My takeaway from the comments in this thread: self-driving Ubers don't drive defensively, almost surely can't "read" pedestrian behavior, and even with lidar may never have seen Elaine Herzberg. Oh, and they speed. This sounds like straight out of the "hell" scenario for driverless cars: "we cannot accept responsibility for what happens to pedestrians and cyclists foolish enough to stray out of their designated safe…

>Oh, and they speed. 3mph variance is perfectly normal even on modern cruise control. And even on most modern cards, what you see on the speedometer is often off by ~1 mph at low speeds, and even more at higher speeds. (This is the reason you will often see people talk about 'GPS verified' speeds when it comes to talking about the top speed they have achieved in a car). Federal law in the US only requires they be acc…

> Keeping to exactly the speed limit also just isn't how anyone drives.

People should not "keep to the speed limit". In England at least the speed limit is the absolute maximum speed at which you drive. You should be driving slower than the speed limit at all times, with no exceptions. Anything else is almost always incompetent driving.

I find it hard to understand why drivers think the laws don't apply to them. Sure, it's annoying when cyclists ignore road laws, but cyclists are far less likely to kill other people.

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