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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

#231

Post by in_cahoots »

prawn wrote: post #195
sjg007 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was driving a car and saw the pedestrian ahead of time walking or trying to cross I would have slowed down and changed lanes away fro them or at least moved far right if safe. Same thing when you pass bicycles. Change lanes away if possible or at the very least give more buffer. You can never tell what someone may do so you should anticipate the unexpected.

The human in the car said that the first sign they got of a potential issue was the sound of the collision itself. Unless they were paying no attention, that might indicate that this scenario was likely to be very difficult to avoid?

Humans are terrible at remembering specific events, particularly after something so traumatic as hitting and killing a pedestrian. And given that a woman was killed, driver inattention doesn’t seem at all unlikely.

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

#232

Post by darkerside »

qplex wrote: post #83
Someone wrote: post #27

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” 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…

A couple of personal examples.

1. I've noticed that adaptive cruise control doesn't account for vehicles entering my lane in front me, even with their turn signal on. As a human driver, I see them entering and know to slow down (at least take my foot off the gas), but the system only performs a hard brake AFTER the car has actually moved into my lane. Disclaimer: I don't know if autopilot systems suffer from the same limitation.

2. I was once waiting to make a protected left turn at a busy intersection. There were two protected left turn lanes, and I was in the farther left lane. Light turns green, I take my foot off the brake, and prepare to accelerate. The car on my right, in the other left turn lane, is also barely starting to move forward, when it suddenly rocks to a halt, indicating they applied the brake, hard. Without thinking, I also brake hard. Out of nowhere, a car appears speeding right through where I would have been if I hadn't stopped. Apparently, this car was entering the intersection on the cross street, going right to left. He wanted to beat the red light (he didn't), and also make his left turn, right down my street, in the opposite direction I was headed. I guess he didn't realize there were two left turn lanes. I never saw him. If I hadn't gone with the herd instinct and hit the brakes, I'm sure there would have been a serious impact. I wonder if autopilot would have caught that one, but it probably depends on camera placement.

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

#233

Post by sulam »

to3m wrote: post #207
bfuller wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol seems like your sense of humor is not being well received here

Well it's more sideways, perhaps even caustic, something like that, I'd say, rather than humorous per se. Still... stiff upper lip. Though I can't believe I'm getting downvoted for reminding people not to kill anybody while behind the wheel :-o

You should consider they might be downvoting you for other reasons other than a hard to believe one.

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

#234

Post by Lazare »

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…

> The NYT just published a graphic that purports to show the location of the vehicle and the victim:

It has a vague location for where the victim's body ended up, yes, but I don't interpret that graphic as purporting to show the actual location of the vehicle or victim at the time of the trash.

> This is the first report I've seen that indicates the Uber AV was in the right lane.

I'm not sure I'd go that far. I think the arrow represents the direction of travel, but I would assume they just placed it near the body, and aren't explicitly trying to suggest which lane the car was in. And the notation "somewhere in this area", in my eyes, confirms this.

Further, if they do know which lane it was in, that would be an excellent bit of investigative journalism that no one else has reported, and you'd expect it to be in the story, if not the actual lead. It's not, so...

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

#235

Post by orangecat »

lhorie wrote: post #223
danso wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't accuse me or other commenters of spreading "rumors and speculations", without evidence or logical arguments. I didn't state a bunch of claims, I linked to a NYT published article. If it turns out that the NYT depicted the incorrect lane, then I expect we'll see a correction. But they published this graphic staked on their reputation for accuracy, not on just "rumors". Moreover, it does not contradict wha…

News articles frequently post artistic renditions of far-away star systems but it would obviously be foolish to try draw any scientific conclusions from those graphics. As far as I know, there hasn't been any official acknowledgement that the accident occurred in the right lane (or any specific lane for that matter). In fact, IIRC, there was a mention of the accident happening at around 100 yards from a crosswalk, wh…

Agreed. As I mentioned in an earlier thread, it would make a lot more sense if the pedestrian was crossing from the right side (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16625829). But it's all speculation until we see the video, or at least get more detailed and reliable reports.

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

#236

Post by giarc »

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…

Maybe she stepped back into traffic after crossing? Perhaps the car thought she would be on the sidewalk by the time it arrived at that position but she stepped back or fell back into the lane.

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

#238

Post by sulam »

nemothekid wrote: post #175
vamin wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We know the car was going roughly 40mph, so that puts some constraints on the minimum response time that was available. Unless this woman literally catapulted in front of the car, there were at least 4’ of lateral walking pace worth of 40mph time to react. You do need to make assumptions about how fast she was moving, of course, and as has been noted elsewhere in the thread you have to assume that the driver was in the left lane for this scenario to even be remotely plausible. Even in this sequence, the car should have been able to substantially decelerate but, looking at the pictures, that doesn’t seem to have happened.

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

#239

Post by orangecat »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #226
freehunter wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people blame SUVs when pickup trucks are some of the the highest selling vehicles in America and vans/minivans have existed since forever and are still popular? And they’re both the same size as SUVs?

If you have five children, you're likely buying a car with seven seats. If you regularly transport thousands of pounds of stuff, you're getting a pickup truck. SUVs, on the other hand, often get purchased in lieu of a sedan; pickup trucks and minivans have use-value that often justify their place on the road.

SUVs exist largely because fuel economy standards effectively outlawed station wagons: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/10/how-cafe-killed-com...

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

#240

Post by danso »

IanDrake wrote: post #152
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…

The NYT graphic shows an empty road. Do we know that to be the case? Is it possible the road had other vehicles blocking the view?

The OP article (from bloomberg, not nytimes) says that the woman moved from the median into traffic:

> The Uber had a forward-facing video recorder, which showed the woman was walking a bike at about 10 p.m. and moved into traffic from a dark center median. "It’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode,” Sylvia Moir, the police chief in Tempe, Arizona, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

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