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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

#411
post #379

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…

> any car going 35 mph will need a few feet to brake if something jumps directly in front of it. It seems like you're working pretty hard to justify this woman's death. She was apparently walking her bicycle through an intersection. Did she grab her bike and jump directly in front of the car? Maybe, but let's not jump to assumptions. > it seems the algorithm is pretty safe It ran at least six red lights in San Franci…

I agree but one nitpick: merging into the bike lane before a right turn is the correct maneuver.

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

#412
post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police write tickets for being 3mph over the speed limit. Can’t speak for other states but California DMV test does not give any kind of allowance to go over the speed limit. So why is this “ignorance”?

The DMV might not give any allowance but enforcement is no where as harsh in California. The i-5 in Southern California is filled with people cruising at 80 (even the highway patrol!), 15 miles above the limit and no one gets a ticket. The same could be said for the 85 and 101 in the Bay, where the cruising speed is 75-80 during low traffic and almost always in the carpool lanes.

I wasn’t claiming that enforcement was strict or consistent. Just that it is patently absurd to say that 38mph in a 35mph isn’t “speeding”. I don’t care what your personal anecdotal experience is, we’re talking about what a court can penalize you on and what is written in the legal code.

And yes, I go over the speed limit plenty of times myself. I remember in HS how my friend was let go even after being caught at +10mph because he told the officer he was late to our calculus study group. Cops, and all human entities, make tons of allowances and exceptions.

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

#413
post #377

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…

I read your comment and thought that was a ridiculously tight margin of error, even for the Germans. Then I looked up the fine.

€15 for an in-town violation, €10 for out-of-town, no points for less than a 20 km/h variation? That's more of a secret tax than an actual deterrent.

Electric cars can't regulate the speed more smoothly than gas cars while on cruise control. It's about the control algorithms, not the source of power, and the gas systems could be on tighter control ranges if it weren't so inefficient and uncomfortable for the passengers. Adaptive cruise control runs on a PID loop control scheme and overshoot is inherently part of the game.

While on cruise control a car will go slightly faster than the speed setpoint for a few seconds, then slower, then faster, until it settles on exactly the correct speed. Then you go down a hill and it takes a little while to slow down, or you go up a hill and it takes a little while to speed up. Electric cars can use regenerative braking when the car is going down a hill but they're still constrained by the nature of control loops and aggressive braking will just lead to wonky acceleration-braking cycles while hunting for the setpoint.

That's also how humans drive. We just don't do it as well. If you're worried about tickets set your cruise for 3 km/h under the posted speed.

The setpoint is the setpoint. Key element of controls engineering. Secretly subtracting from the setpoint behind the scenes to compensate for your local driving laws would be the car lying to you and just leads to more trouble than it's worth.

Every day people tell me that they want a setpoint to be the temperature that the room never exceeds or the temperature it never falls under or five degrees above the highest temperature the boiler hits. It's like setting your clock ahead by five minutes to avoid being late. You can do it if you want to but it's ridiculous functionality to build into the timepiece.

Further, outside of detection errors like the one in this article, the reaction time of a self-driving car is orders of magnitudes faster than a human. You don't need 5m more braking distance per 5km/h because within milliseconds of the computer noticing the issue the car will hit the brakes. Human reaction time is more like 0.7s to 3s. You still need more time to brake as you go faster but the computer doesn't need as much time as our human laws already give us.

In a case like this where the victim enters the path of the car closer than the car's brakes are capable of stopping, even given instant detection, a human would have just hit the victim at a much faster speed because of the reaction time. That's going to happen sometimes. It's just how it works.

Basically everything you're saying is based on an outdated notion of how cars work and in particular your very German desire to follow the rules exactly. The rules are going to change, dude, and in the meantime you're free to set your cruise at 47 km/h to avoid accidentally triggering a photo-radar trap if you like.

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

#414
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't seem to drive. If you don't follow traffic flow, people will cut off in front of you, tailgate, zigzag, and do other dangerous lane changes/maneuvers much more frequently. And that's when the trigger-happy ones don't yell obscenities at you.

>You don't seem to drive LOL. I'm not sure if you're trolling, rude or just don't pay attention to the cars around you when you're driving, but I'll guess it's a combination of all 3. >If you don't follow traffic flow, people will cut off in front of you, tailgate, zigzag, and do other dangerous lane changes/maneuvers much more frequently. From my 45 years of observing people's driving and driving myself for about 30…

You are ranting about reckless speeding, which I agree 100% with you that it's a stupid thing to do. But the comment you replied to was talking about following traffic flow, which is about minimizing speed differentials between vehicles so as to minimize triggering fits of impatience in drivers around you.

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

#415

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…

An important observation is that the probability of death drops very rapidly with drops in speed. A rough calculation shows that at 38 mph and a near instant reaction (as a robot should) would within ~1 second of applied breaking force, allow going from a ~70% chance of death to ~5%. A very rough calculation: v(t) = -μgt + v_0. To reach 32 kph or 20 mph, t ~= 0.82/μ, guessing a fair μ=0.8 and the chart here https://e…

Except if the speed limit is 35, you need to drive 35. You can't drive 25 just to be more "defensive", that will get you a ticket.

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

#416
post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> In England at least the speed limit is the absolute maximum speed at which you drive.

In theory this may be true but it's absolutely not in practice. It's not uncommon to see people at least 20mph over the limit on motorways. On the M4 that is practically the norm.

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

#417
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without a speed limit, I'd take i-70 from KC to STL at about (160~mph) 250km/h for 95% of it. I'd make day trips just to get white castle at white knuckle speeds.

I don't think that is your average American! At least I hope not ;)

I-70 is a mostly straight highway with a divider, it'd be pretty safe as long as it's not crowded. Autobahn speed limits are certainly doable in many of America's highways.

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

#418
post #379

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…

> any car going 35 mph will need a few feet to brake if something jumps directly in front of it. It seems like you're working pretty hard to justify this woman's death. She was apparently walking her bicycle through an intersection. Did she grab her bike and jump directly in front of the car? Maybe, but let's not jump to assumptions. > it seems the algorithm is pretty safe It ran at least six red lights in San Franci…

[deleted]

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

#419
post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You don't seem to drive LOL. I'm not sure if you're trolling, rude or just don't pay attention to the cars around you when you're driving, but I'll guess it's a combination of all 3. >If you don't follow traffic flow, people will cut off in front of you, tailgate, zigzag, and do other dangerous lane changes/maneuvers much more frequently. From my 45 years of observing people's driving and driving myself for about 30…

You are ranting about reckless speeding, which I agree 100% with you that it's a stupid thing to do. But the comment you replied to was talking about following traffic flow, which is about minimizing speed differentials between vehicles so as to minimize triggering fits of impatience in drivers around you.

My point is that:

[1] It's not my problem if others get irate because I'm at the speed limit.

[2] It's not dangerous to be at the speed limit, it's dangerous to be over it. And you're not likely to hit someone going at the speed limit if you're dangerously speeding, you're likely to hit the median or an oncoming car, and more likely to get killed doing so (much greater speed differential than between the speeder and the person going at the speed limit).

[3] There is only a differential if you are passing, and that is easily managed by waiting for a sufficient gap in traffic.

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