Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

261–270 of 402 posts

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

#261
post #88
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ve…

It's all speculation until we get a release of the actual video footage from the car. This is ridiculous. The NTSB/police need to release the actual footage to dispel speculation. We have actual evidence of exactly what happened and yet no one outside of the investigators and Uber can see it.

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

#262
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally every discussion of note involves reading more into the original article, so yes, I guess you have me there, I am speculating. I didn't realize that was against the rules of HN discussion to bring in evidence external to the OP and state our premises? Is it speculation to point out that the police and OP misidentified the gender and name of the driver (it's Rafaela Vasquez, not Rafael)? Or that newer articl…

"If you want to speculate that the Uber driver and police are covering up negligence, that's fine" - the conclusion of the comment you're replying to. My beef is with 'Please don't accuse me or other commenters of spreading "rumors and speculations", without evidence or logical arguments.' The problem is fooling ourselves into being more certain than we can be. While this is common human behavior, especially in emoti…

This is a hard conversation to balance. You were right to state OP added more to the scenario than is known. But people tend to react defensively (which turns into offense often) when they’re personally called on as you did there.

The nonviolent thing to do, I am honk, is to simply describe what is actually known and point out how the accounts differ.

For what it’s worth, none of us were there and it sounds like definitive information is lacking. My hope is for this to be valuable used to ensure safer driving for everyone (autonomous or not).

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

#263
post #53

At the risk of sounding macabre, the engineers will be pouring over thousands of lines of logs and if Uber self driving cars ever do survive to make it onto the roads again, the circumstance of woman's death and the after analysis will mean it will never ever happen again. I expect that during the coming years we will analyse car crashes with the same scrutiny as airplane crashes with the hope to solve every single e…

what you have described is an impossibility. what makes you think uber or waymo or anyone can suddenly make a perfect self-driving system?

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

#264
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.

to my knowledge, no company is even close to even an average driver.

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

#265
When I was getting my learners permit I was practicing on a curvy mountain road. I saw a person with a camera phone on the "drop off" side of the road, taking a picture of from what my angle would've been a boring cliff face. But I knew that a camera phone photographer was probably actually photographing a human, who would likely be on the other side of the blind corner. So I slowed down, despite my instructor chastising me for doing so. When we came around and there was a person in the road she asked, "How did you know?" If a self driving vehicle can't make predictions about "irrational" pedestrian behaviour like this and slow down it shouldn't be on the road.

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

#266
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ve…

It's all speculation until we get a release of the actual video footage from the car. This is ridiculous. The NTSB/police need to release the actual footage to dispel speculation. We have actual evidence of exactly what happened and yet no one outside of the investigators and Uber can see it.

NTSB investigation has begun and it make take a few weeks:

https://twitter.com/NTSB_Newsroom/status/976215176323194880

I do think discussion is warranted because the Tempe Police have gone out of their way to share details and preliminary judgments about the case. Some of these details have been inaccurate, both for and against Uber's favor. But Tempe police officials are already going out of their way to downplay what their chief claimed:

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/federal-agencies-investi...

> Glover downplayed Moir's statements, saying some were taken "out of context" by the Chronicle. The chief disagrees with the Chronicle's headline, "Tempe police chief says early probe shows no fault by Uber," Glover said.

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

#267
post #165
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pedestrian

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.

I agree with you. Vulgarity is justified despite what this place has to say about it.

This is something I also noticed about these articles. Some of them not even mention the name of the person, and most of them go into details about self driving cars and stuff. Also most people here..Of course people die everyday. But when you are talking about a specific incident, please don't treat the person involved as if they were just an inanimate object...

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

#268
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…

Even the reaction is within 0.1s for the machine, you cannot brake and stop immediately. This is physics, and a mechanical problems.

Please remove the software mindset when looking into this.

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

#269

I haven't seen anyone post this yet but I highly suspect the fact that she was pushing a bicycle impacted the machine learning driven AIs ability to determine she was a pedestrian. This reminds me of the kangaroos messing up the AV programs being tested in Australia. A human paying attention may have been wary of a person pushing a bike in the shadows but for all we know the algorithm thought that she was a bush or s…

I don't see how this is relevant. The car should avoid hitting ANYTHING. It shouldn't have to recognise what the object is if it's in the path of the car.

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

#270

When I was getting my learners permit I was practicing on a curvy mountain road. I saw a person with a camera phone on the "drop off" side of the road, taking a picture of from what my angle would've been a boring cliff face. But I knew that a camera phone photographer was probably actually photographing a human, who would likely be on the other side of the blind corner. So I slowed down, despite my instructor chasti…

Should your driving instructor also not be on the road?
Post reply on HN