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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

#81

Post by School-Cotton »

retsibsi wrote: post #73
GhostVII wrote: post #9

Earlier 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.

Serious question: how are speed limits enforced (or not) in the USA? From what I read on the internet, it seems like they are 90% unenforced, 10% arbitrarily enforced by cops who choose who they want to pull over from the masses who are routinely speeding. If they are mostly unenforced, how does the system work? Does everyone implicitly add 20% to the posted limit, or do they just go whatever speed feels right to the…

> If they are mostly unenforced, how does the system work? Does everyone implicitly add 20% to the posted limit, or do they just go whatever speed feels right to them given the road and the conditions?

Usually people go limit + 10mph on major freeways, and "whatever feels safe" in city driving.

Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

#82

Post by hndamien »

branchan wrote: post #16
dzdt wrote: post #6

Yes, 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…

If the woman suddenly walked in front of the car at the last minute, I don't see how the situation could have been avoided, no matter how fast a computer is able to process the information from the sensors. There was also a driver behind the wheel, so it would suggest that humans are just as clueless.

The fact that in most cases the human has to do nothing means that it is unlikely that the human is anywhere close to being as vigilante as an actual human driver. The fact that the human is clueless isn't surprising at all. In fact this is the real danger with systems like Tesla's autopilot. You still ned to be vigilante, but you are so bored that it is hard to be.

The safety humans here might as well be hood ornaments.

Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

#83

Post by qplex »

Someone wrote: post #27
branchan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the woman suddenly walked in front of the car at the last minute, I don't see how the situation could have been avoided, no matter how fast a computer is able to process the information from the sensors. There was also a driver behind the wheel, so it would suggest that humans are just as clueless.

”If the woman suddenly walked in front of the car at the last minute, I don't see how the situation could have been avoided” Likely, but not necessarily. Depending (hugely!) on what actually happened, it might be that the car should have started slowing down before the woman changed course. As an extreme example, if you’re driving at 50 mph and come up behind a kid cycling at the side of the road with a foot separati…

There definitely exists a sort of pre-cognitive human quality to traffic.

Sometimes you just slow down on a subconscious hunch without any information on that particular situation. Or you might be very conscious not to slow down if you're driving a motorcycle in Asia in heavy traffic trying to make a turn with a huge truck barreling behind you.

There are massive differences in road cultures between countries, and it takes a while to adjust to local habits. Somebody who doesn't know these invisible rules is a very accident prone driver even if they can drive safely in another country.

Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

#84

Post by hndamien »

dragonwriter wrote: post #80
bitcurious wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An accident might have been unavoidable, but fatality is the big question. The risk of pedestrian fatality jumps by ~4x between 30mph and 40mph.[0] So the question is - did the car start breaking as soon as possible? As an aside, that statistic is why I never speed in pedestrian zones. https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_...

> did the car start breaking as soon as possible? “braking”; “breaking” is something else, and not a desirable response.

"breaking" implies it was "working" in the first place.

Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

#86

Post by derefr »

ksk wrote: post #75

Self-driving cars are still a fantasy. I don't want the AI to be comparable to an average driver (who collectively get into 6 million accidents) . I want the AI to meet/exceed the skills of the best driver. There is no way anyone would trust an "average" driver to pickup their kids, more than themselves.

> There is no way anyone would trust an "average" driver to pickup their kids, more than themselves.

I mean, most parents will—at some point—trust their teenage children to pick up their younger siblings. And teenagers are decidedly below-average drivers.

Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

#87

Post by ubernostrum »

branchan wrote: post #16
dzdt wrote: post #6

Yes, 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…

If the woman suddenly walked in front of the car at the last minute, I don't see how the situation could have been avoided, no matter how fast a computer is able to process the information from the sensors. There was also a driver behind the wheel, so it would suggest that humans are just as clueless.

If the woman suddenly walked in front of the car at the last minute, I don't see how the situation could have been avoided

From /r/roadcam yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYvKPMaz9rI

Human driver avoided hitting the pedestrian. There are lots of videos of human drivers successfully not hitting people who "suddenly" pop out "at the last minute". Self-driving cars should be able to match that. If they can't, they don't belong on public roads yet.

Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

#88

Post by danso »

mirimir wrote: post #79
danso wrote: post #44

The 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…

Right, so now she's crossing three lanes. So that's about 9 meters. At 1-3 meters per second for her, and 17 meters/second for the Uber SUV, it should have seen her 3-9 seconds (50-150 meters) before impact. That's a pretty clear fail. I wonder what the Uber's field of view is. At what distance should it have detected stuff about 9 meters off track? But she did likely walk out from landscaping. So perhaps she initial…

> That's a pretty clear fail.

And yet the police were so quick to say that camera footage indicates that Uber was likely not at fault. It was so quick that it makes me inclined to think it's pretty obvious. However, after the SF Chronicle published its exclusive interview with the Tempe's chief of police, the Tempe Police PR person had to issue a statement that, "Tempe Police Department does not determine fault in vehicular collisions."

I'm not one to believe in conspiracies or to automatically suspect shadowy influence, so I want to believe that the the camera footage seems to argue that this was an unavoidable accident. But the evidence released so far argues against that, regardless of whether the victim's crossing was illegal or not. And why are the police making a judgment on this so soon in the first place, especially when the decision will be made by county law officials, and ostensibly after referring to Uber's full suite of sensor data?

https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/20/uber-fault-pedestrian-fa...

Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

#89

Post by derefr »

subie wrote: post #21
sudeepj wrote: post #17

I cannot imagine the detailed logging the engineers might have to do in such a system. When I code I wonder sometimes if I am logging unnecessary events at info level. This led to one more question. Do driverless cars have (or will have) a black box like that of aeroplane?

> Do driverless cars have (or will have) a black box like that of aeroplane? I believe most modern cars already have this.

Yes; in fact, cars have had this technology since before there was flash memory or GPS or (good) accelerometers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_data_recorder s were originally designed to record the instantaneous mechanical state of the car (e.g. whether seatbelts were buckled, to what degree the accelerator was depressed, etc.) during a crash, for insurance purposes.

Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

#90

Post by daodedickinson »

If this car hit a woman coming from so far on the other side of the street, how are they going to deal with suicides? A coworker was driving home once when a man jumped out in front of her van and she barely stopped in time. He started whomping on her driver's side window screaming "Why didn't you hit me?!?!" again and again. She quickly got away and tried to come up with an explanation for her kids and called 911.
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