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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

#171

Post by to3m »

grzm wrote: post #168
to3m wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, sorry for being unclear. I'm English, so I tend towards the mealy-mouthed. What I'm trying to say is that sushisource is being a cunt for dehumanizing the person that was killed.

Which you follow up with a vulgarity? Come on. Be better than that. If your goal is to improve online discourse, lead by example.

Sorry about that, I thought my lead-in was obvious and you were playing the straight man :(

Still, I stand by what I said.

EDIT: OK, OK, so after snoozing on it for ten minutes, perhaps I can see why it might appear that I'm more right than you are to a lesser extent than is truly the case. Even though there's nothing for me to apologise for, perhaps I should at least have taken the high road.

What can I say? I'm just reluctant to sit by and stay silent when people seem to blaming the victim so enthusiastically.

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

#172

Post by kristjansson »

antoineMoPa wrote: post #143
IncRnd wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't read the words "defensive driving" in any of the articles about this incident.

Yes, and they thought it was a good idea to make cars go at 38mph in a 30mph zone. Edit: The limit seems to be 35mph sorry, thank all of you for pointing that out. (38 is still over the limit, why allow a robot to do that?)

It was a 35 mph zone.

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

#173

Post by mirimir »

cesarb wrote: post #139
sushisource wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's what I wonder. Yes, it has LIDAR etc. But there was this comment yesterday by arbie:[0]

> Sensor Fusion typically merges LiDAR with stereoscopic camera feeds, the latter requiring ambient light.

So might LIDAR data get de-emphasized when there's too little light for the cameras?

0) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16619917

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

#174

Post by drdrey »

antoineMoPa wrote: post #143
IncRnd wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't read the words "defensive driving" in any of the articles about this incident.

Yes, and they thought it was a good idea to make cars go at 38mph in a 30mph zone. Edit: The limit seems to be 35mph sorry, thank all of you for pointing that out. (38 is still over the limit, why allow a robot to do that?)

"The vehicle was doing about 40 miles per hour on a street with a 45 m.p.h. speed limit when it struck Ms. Herzberg, who was walking her bicycle across the street, according to the Tempe police"

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

#175

Post by nemothekid »

vamin wrote: post #66
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.

The woman cannot go from being "not in path" to "in path" instantaneously unless you believe in teleportation. Supposing the woman got about 1 foot into the path of the car before being struck, the car would have had a minimum of 1 ft / seconds to react, assuming total blindness until the woman was "in path" (I can't think of a real world scenario where this assumption would be strictly true). Suppose a speed of 12 f…

I don't see how this is at all accurate without taking to account the speed of that car. If human reaction time is 1/4th of a second, how time does that actually leave for the car move as well - the car can't teleport either.

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

#176

Post by notahacker »

lolc wrote: post #52
notahacker wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I agree fully with your first paragraph and I chuckled at the "trolley problems all the way down" depiction. However I can't imagine a car company accepting the legal liability of allowing their autonomous cars to go over posted speed limits to "match traffic". In a trolley problem you have the option to refuse a decision. By participating in "speed matching" you become one of the trolleys and you have accepted the u…

Oh, I'm pretty sure that self driving software isn't being programmed to systematically disregard speed limits to match traffic, not even by a company with Uber's attitude towards regulations, but it is an example of conditions where rigid adherence to speed limits might increase rather than reduce risk.

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

#177

Post by danso »

to3m wrote: post #171
grzm wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which you follow up with a vulgarity? Come on. Be better than that. If your goal is to improve online discourse, lead by example.

Sorry about that, I thought my lead-in was obvious and you were playing the straight man :( Still, I stand by what I said. EDIT: OK, OK, so after snoozing on it for ten minutes, perhaps I can see why it might appear that I'm more right than you are to a lesser extent than is truly the case. Even though there's nothing for me to apologise for, perhaps I should at least have taken the high road. What can I say? I'm jus…

I don't see how "ped" is necessarily an offensive abbreviation (though it's one that normally isn't used), so I don't think you're justified in believing that the commenter is trying to dehumanize the victim.

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

#178

Post by kristjansson »

tintor wrote: post #115
cbhl wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo discovered sections of Mountain View where "the flow of traffic" was routinely 5-10 mph over the speed limit, and driving at the speed limit was actually more dangerous because it caused human drivers to try and go around the vehicle.

>> it caused human drivers to try and go around Nope, drivers made that decision on their own. They were not forced into it.

Shouldn’t self driving cars be designed to be as safe as possible in the world they’re actually going to drive in, rather than one where everyone else adjusts their behavior?

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

#179

Post by dahdum »

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…

I agree they should be able to get jobs, but not any job. I don't believe those convicted of murder, kidnapping, and other seriously violent crimes should be allowed to drive potentially vulnerable passengers.

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

#180

Post by to3m »

danso wrote: post #177
to3m wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry about that, I thought my lead-in was obvious and you were playing the straight man :( Still, I stand by what I said. EDIT: OK, OK, so after snoozing on it for ten minutes, perhaps I can see why it might appear that I'm more right than you are to a lesser extent than is truly the case. Even though there's nothing for me to apologise for, perhaps I should at least have taken the high road. What can I say? I'm jus…

I don't see how "ped" is necessarily an offensive abbreviation (though it's one that normally isn't used), so I don't think you're justified in believing that the commenter is trying to dehumanize the victim.

If they want to abbreviate "pedestrian", why not "person"? I've never seen anybody use the term "ped" anything other than disparagingly! How should we respond to this attitude? I know what I think, that's for sure: it's crap, and people in charge of operating motorised vehicles should take more care over how they think about people on foot, to ensure that they never behave too carelessly in the heat of the moment.

Anyway: I think I've set out my stall here to the extent necessary. You and anybody else may make of it what you will. Drive with care, and for fuck's sake don't kill anybody.

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