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

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311–320 of 402 posts

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

#311
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A single self driving car probably wouldn't (might do the same thing you did at best).

It'll take actual inter-vehicle communication to extend the sensor-net. Much like humans presently do via proxying though the other car's deviations from anticipated behavior. (EG if the freeway traffic keeps going at proper speed around corners)

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

#312
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assure you that if you jump in front of a moving train you will be killed. How is this different?

cars are not trains, for one. road usage is shared among cars, motorcycles and scooters, trucks, pedestrians, bicycles, mobility scooters, and other things.

Train tracks are also shared at train crossings. Yet if a car went there after the warning lights went on, the car would be to blame.

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

#313

Bloomberg title: >> Uber Victim Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Car First line of the first paragraph in the article (my underlining): >> Police say a video from the Uber self-driving car that struck and killed a woman on Sunday shows her moving in front of it suddenly And the title on this thread: >> Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber Both titles are very misleading. The Bloom…

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

#314
post #61
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…

Not just crossing all those lanes, since the damage is to the right side, she crossed in front of the vehicle . And yet it never braked. That's a failure on every level, from prediction to just sheer radar obstacle detection. You don't hit things right in front of you, mid-class vehicles you can buy today already have sensors to emergency brake when the driver won't but an obstruction is ahead.

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

#315
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The problem is fooling ourselves into being more certain than we can be. " I want to thank you for saying something I have been having trouble putting into words. I'm not sure if it is me or whether something has changed recently with discourse on the internet but I am coming across more and more people speaking as thought they are an Authority of a subject, while simultaneously posting complete incorrect informatio…

I can barely even stand to read threads here anymore, if the topic is something I'm very knowledgeable about. So many intermediate-level folks making way overconfident assertions that are way off base, or completely unaware of the state of the art. And it's virtually guaranteed that if I was foolish enough to spend time replying with corrections, they'd try to waste my whole afternoon arguing with me. I wish some of…

As someone who is doing exactly what you recommend. Most of my questions go answered. It seems people are going perform actions which bring them attention.

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

#316
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…

> 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.

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

#317
Some of the commenters here think they can do a better job reconstructing the incident from newspaper cartoons than actual investigators who are working at the scene. You guys can just as well make up a story in which a murderous Uber robot chased a pedestrian off of the sidewalk and onto the road and then intentionally ran her over.

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

#318

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…

Weird scenarios that can't be predicted are important to consider. Waymo presentations like talking about a situation they ran into where the car needed to stop because it encountered an old woman in a wheelchair with a broom chasing a turkey. As I understand it, most of these companies sensibly say "unknown weird thing in/near road means stop the car." ooo, there's video of the turkey wheelchair broom chase: https:/…

> As I understand it, most of these companies sensibly say "unknown weird thing in/near road means stop the car."

That's not entirely true. A Tesla, for instance, won't stop if it detects a stationary object on the highway, assuming it's a false positives of the algorithm.

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar

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

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... the police just make shit up all the time. And Arizona was very happy to attract Uber with their regulation-free state law. The fact that they came out with a statement instead of saying "we don't comment on ongoing investigations" makes it even more shady.

The first bombing victim in Austin was one of the first suspects of the police in his own bombing.

http://foxsanantonio.com/news/local/first-bombing-victims-fa...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/police-treated-first-austin-bo...

The police in Georgetown about half an hour north of Austin went with his gut in one murder case - "it has to be someone the victim knew" and ignored physical evidence at the scene and the eyewitness testimony of the murder victim's son. Then the prosecutor kept working against the accused for the next 25 years and suppressed evidence. https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/the-innocent-man-part-...

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

#320
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, to me, this is the most relevant part of the posted article: > “It’s possible that Uber’s automated driving system did not detect the pedestrian, did not classify her as a pedestrian, or did not predict her departure from the median,” Smith said in an email. “I don’t know whether these steps occurred too late to prevent or lessen the collision or whether they never occurred at all, but the lack of braking or swe…

The most relevant part is from someone with zero knowledge of what happened?

Yeah, but my comment was made back when there were 2 stories about the Uber accident. This one, and the original one. The Bloomberg story has little more information than what the police chief claimed to the Chronicle, and at that point, the Tempe PD was downplaying the importance of her determination.

But everything the police claimed was in context of witness interview and camera footage. Since this is a self-driving car, we know there is more data and more ways to assess performance besides camera vision.

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