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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

#131

Post by danso »

lhorie wrote: post #98
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…

> Elaine Herzberg was struck while walking her bike across the street somewhere in this area How do I know this graphic isn't entirely speculative?

I think that's a fair question, and that includes the text that says "Body seen in this area". I had tweeted at the author about it but hadn't gotten a reply (note: this may be because they don't see/reply to tweets from nobodies like me).

The distances, as depicted, are a little strange. If Uber AV hit the victim at 40mph, you would expect her body to be seen farther away from where it says "Body seen in this area".

It is incontestable that the Uber hit her on its right-front side. Here's a clear picture recently tweeted by NTSB: https://twitter.com/NTSB_Newsroom/status/976215176323194880

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

#132

Post by awakeasleep »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #121

There's at least two other trends that are, IMO, more to blame. SUVs in general for one, and the proliferation of particular mixed-use road antipattern. SUVs is an easy one. When an SUV hits a bicyclist, motorcyclist, or pedestrian, the unfortunate person tends to go through rather than the over they'd be subjected to by a sedan. Motorcycle accident stats bear this out - the overall accident rate has gone down as peo…

I'm a dreamer, but I'm dreaming self driving cars or even just sensors on normal cars are able to record the data and make this kind of thing indisputable.

Then maybe we'll have corporate pressure aligned with social pressure to change the laws and move traffic patterns beyond what random luck has 'evolved' to safe and sensible defaults.

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

#133

Post by danso »

lukeschlather wrote: post #77
danso wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

It was a 3-lane highway. It wouldn't really make sense to break if the system detected a immobile object in a different lane. The problem is more that the system failed to detect the woman moving between lanes.

But the system has the ability to detect whether an object is moving in parallel (i.e. within its own lane) vs. across lanes, right? That would seem to be fundamentally necessary in everyday conditions, e.g. day traffic in which cars are switching/merging lanes.

If the problem is that the system didn't detect the woman moving between lanes, then that seemingly contradicts the police statement that the victim moved quickly enough to surprise the AV and its driver.

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

#134

Post by makomk »

branchan wrote: post #50
dzdt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Ultimately, we have to design systems for the humans that actually exist, not some hypothetical superhuman. If it's not safe for actual humans to use then it's not safe full stop. It's not like this is some new issue; it's one of the main reasons why experts have been pessimistic about the prospects of self-driving cars and why existing car companies have been reluctant to deploy heavy automation in the field.

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

#135

Post by lsaferite »

mschuster91 wrote: post #101
gnicholas wrote: post #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 lik…

> I didn't realize that people with criminal records like this could become Uber drivers. In a civilized society people should be able to get jobs when they get out of prison. It's called "time served" for a reason. Everything other is just paving the path to recidivism - when people can't make a living because no one will hire ex-cons, they don't have any other way of literally staying alive than living as hobos or…

My understanding is that in Europe a criminal record is hidden from all but LEOs after 7 years as well.

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

#136

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#137

Post by dmoy »

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…

> Remember that the victim was crossing from left to right

I don't remember reading this, where was that reported? (Most of the blurbs I read were pretty scarce on the details...)

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

#138

Post by taneq »

danso wrote: post #104
Taniwha wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it could be that they never saw someone pushing a bike across a road in tests before, maybe it confused that with someone riding on the road at a different angle

But why is accurate classification needed, when the overriding decision is about how the car should react now that an unidentified, moving object is moving directly into the car's path? Even if someone were riding at an angle, it's still in a direction that may intersect with the car's path.

Exactly, it shouldn't matter what the thing is, if it's in front of my car and bigger than a plastic shopping bag I don't want to hit it.

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

#139

Post by cesarb »

sushisource wrote: post #126
sdrothrock wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yet the police were so quick to say that camera footage indicates that Uber was likely not at fault. I was surprised at that -- it doesn't seem to me that the police would have the technical knowledge of Uber's hardware and algorithms to categorically state that, let alone so quickly.

Well, if you saw that video and it really did show a So whether or not the police understand self-driving systems is not relevant to the fundamental physics problem. The key question is how long was the ped visible.

"The pedestrian becoming visible" would be to the video cameras. If the vehicle has other sensors (LIDAR, RADAR, etc), how sooner/later would the pedestrian be visible to these sensors? Would it be possible to judge that by looking solely at the dashcam? Would the sensors ignore the pedestrian as a false positive in these circumstances?

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

#140

Post by stefan_ »

sushisource wrote: post #126
sdrothrock wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yet the police were so quick to say that camera footage indicates that Uber was likely not at fault. I was surprised at that -- it doesn't seem to me that the police would have the technical knowledge of Uber's hardware and algorithms to categorically state that, let alone so quickly.

Well, if you saw that video and it really did show a So whether or not the police understand self-driving systems is not relevant to the fundamental physics problem. The key question is how long was the ped visible.

By the time that pedestrian has even traversed a single lane, the LIDAR on top has generated gigabytes of point cloud data showing her moving, assuming constant velocity of both car and ped, on a straightforward collision path.

I don't see how from a single forward-looking camera you want to deduce this crash was "physically impossible". That isn't even half of what we expect from human drivers. We expect them to swivel their head.

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