Could people start wearing small transmitters that nearby autonomous vehicles can read?
A technology/IoT solution to a problem that should never exist in the first place, brilliant!
Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
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Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#42Yes, the report you'd hope to be hearing from Uber is along the lines of "0.2 seconds after the pedestrian entered the travel lane the automated system identified her as a hazard and initiated an avoidance maneuver. Despite braking and beginning to swerve away, the car impacted the pedestrian 1.2 seconds later." Thats the promise the automated vehicle people are selling. But in this case it seems the car was clueless…
I'm really skeptical about swerving as an evasive maneuver. It's complicated to get that right. But yes, if it didn't at least slam the brakes then something went badly wrong. Maybe you can't prevent an accident, but you can at least reduce momentum and demonstrate that your system was working correctly.
You can (and should!) brake and swerve at the same time. Unless you are driving an oldtimer, the car is capable of doing that.
In my driving lessons I got told to swerve for humans. Pedestrians and cyclists are the least protected participants in traffic. If you swerve and hit another car, the resulting crash will cause a lot of damage, but injuries to humans will likely be much less severe, if they even happen.
Animals, especially small ones are a different matter. Using the same argument, it is better to risk hitting the animal than risking sverving into other traffic.
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand this line of reasoning at all, but it's getting repeated a lot on HN. Is the AI expected to hit cyclists, but not pedestrians? Shouldn't it consider any moving object to be a hazard?
It may not have had good enough information to tell that she was a cyclist at all, and instead interpreted her to be something static/non-human altogether (in parent's example, a bush). Of course, without seeing the data its sensors gathered, and what that data registered as, it's all speculation. The problem is with misidentification, not bad priorities.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of classification problem involved. But wouldn't the AV by default treat a solid object on the road as a hazard to brake for? There's no possible way to specifically train for every variation of thing that could be encountered on a city street (imagine Halloween, for starters).
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#44The NYT just published a graphic that purports to show the location of the vehicle and the victim: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/20/us/self-drivi...
This is the first report I've seen that indicates the Uber AV was in the right lane. Remember that the victim was crossing from left to right, and that all of the visible damage on the AV is on the right-side bumper. It's very hard to imagine a scenario in which a 49-year-old woman walking her bike manages to cross 3 lanes of traffic so quickly that the Uber AV, moving at 40 mph, had no time to react, in a location with good street lighting and with clear weather. I would think most humans would be able to at least hit the brakes, if not completely avoid a collision.
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
That actually really sucks to hear, I was hoping that SDVs would adhere and never break the speed limit. 3 MPH at the forces we're talking about can actually make a difference in life or death.
Sure. 3 MPH would have made a difference. So would 3 MPH less after that, and 3MPH more... heck, if it had been going 2 MPH total she'd probably be fine! In the aftermath of a front collision it would always have been safer if the car had been going slightly slower, regardless of the speed limit. The strangest part of watching this story unfold has been discovering that some people have faith that speed limits are an…
According to the UK DOT the estimated pedestrian accident survival rate is 55% at 30mph and just 5% at 40mph (due to kinetic energy rather than reaction times) so 3mph in this range is not exactly an insignificant difference. The strangest thing about watching this story is that people who are apparently ignorant of this still feel sufficiently certain of the relative unimportance of speed differences in this range to sneer at other people for commenting on it.
Of course, as others have pointed out, human tendency to ignore speed limits and react badly to vehicles driving slower than ambient traffic speed creates another potential hazard to trade increased accident fatality rates off against when deciding if and when self driving vehicles can speed. It's trolley problems all the way down.
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#46Great that all these articles are coming out defending Uber. Even if (it wasn't) her own fault, these make it sound like "well I mean she was stupid and therefore deserved it".
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#47The NYT just published a graphic that purports to show the location of the vehicle and the victim: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/20/us/self-drivi... This is the first report I've seen that indicates the Uber AV was in the right lane. Remember that the victim was crossing from left to right, and that all of the visible damage on the AV is on the right-side bumper. It's very hard to imagine a scenario in…
If this was indeed the overall scenario, there are few factors I could think of that would excuse a human driver here:
1. Another car was in the lane left of the fatal car, blocking its view of the pedestrian. 2. The pedestrian fell back after reaching the curb.
But it looks like both the artificial and the human driver were asleep.
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was going 3mph over the speed limit, a perfectly reasonable speed that is still probably lower than almost everyone else on the road.
There was no one else on the road (or, reports haven't mentioned other traffic being a factor).
That doesn't change the fact that posted speed limits are almost always slower than is reasonable. 38 mph is a reasonable speed on all but the windiest of roads.
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#49> The driver, Rafael Vasquez, 44, served time in prison for armed robbery and other charges in the early 2000s, according to Arizona prison and Maricopa County Superior Court records. Uber declined to comment on Vasquez’s criminal record.
I didn't realize that people with criminal records like this could become Uber drivers. That is, these types of crimes are relevant to working as an Uber driver—more than things like tax fraud or failure to pay child support.
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why didn't the human hit the brake? I don't understand how this is even news to be honest. There was a human in the driving seat and he failed to stop just like the computer.
Probably the human wasn't paying close attention. That is the problem with level 3-4 automated vehicles: a human who is not in primary control of the vehicle has trouble paying attention and is unable to take over control quickly if it is needed.
Wait, are you now blaming level 3-4 automated vehicles for the inattention of the human?