Earlier quoted context omitted.
The woman who was hit ran across the road. It's easy to be safe: don't do that.
Am I supposed to get in a car to cross the street?
You could hail an Uber.
Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
341–350 of 402 posts
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#342Could people start wearing small transmitters that nearby autonomous vehicles can read?
I imagine phones will serve that role eventually. GPS chip accuracy is improving constantly and could be accurate to within a foot in some phones in the next year [1]. Google Maps / Waze already do something similar with predicting traffic times based on phone data (and other sources). GPS accuracy currently may make an individual's location slightly harder, but path prediction may help. (And, of course there are pri…
So if you're homeless and can't afford a phone or if you forgot yours at home or if you got pickpocketed... you can expect to get hit by a self driving car?
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think we can really know whether or not this incident was a suicide.
The fact the woman was pushing a bike with tons of plastic bags late a night makes me think it wasn't. It sounds to me like a homeless person jaywalking in a dangerous fashion.
Yes, that's the obvious explanation.
But I spent 5.7 years homeless and was often suicidal, in part because I was homeless and things seemed hopeless, in part because I have a history of being suicidal. I had no knife, no gun, no poison. My suicidal ideation typically involved ideas like hurling myself into some nearby body of water or "playing in traffic." I was often camped near a highway and just walking out into traffic on the highway was often the most immediately available means to try to die.
I was homeless with two adult relatives who were not ever suicidal themselves. Their support is part of why I never acted on such impulses. Most homeless people are on the street alone, which means there is no one to talk to if they are suicidal and no one to try to prevent a spontaneous impulse of "I have had enough and would like to just check out of life since the entire fucking world hates me and there is no means to solve my problems."
This is part of why I say we can't really know. Homeless people often jaywalk very dangerously and it is entirely possible that one reason they do so is because they figure ending up dead would be one path out of their awful situation and bonus points for it looking like a tragic accident since suicide is stigmatizing.
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#344The 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…
edit: I agree with other commenters that the NYT's labeling is a little too vague. My assumption is that the NYT wouldn't arbitrarily show the Uber vehicle in the far-right lane unless there was some factual basis. If it turns out the NYT did make an arbitrary choice, and Uber AV was actually in the left lane, then NYT needs to be called out to make a correction. Frustratingly, so many stories make no mention of the…
Err, what? I don't follow at all. Don't roads have curbs on both sides?
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#345When 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…
A proper (e.g. non-Uber) self driving car would never take a blind corner at a speed that doesn't allow it to come to a complete stop before it reaches its vision range.
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 have use value as well: driving in difficult conditions.
Which only means they have additional value off road, not on the road. The entire premise of having a road is to avoid difficult driving conditions.
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 have use value as well: driving in difficult conditions.
Very few people actually use SUVs for this and many modern ones aren't even that good at anything beyond a rainy day.
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#348Earlier 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…
If you are an expert/outlier for a given topic, wouldn't you generally expect (in an open forum) that the majority of people speaking/opining on the topic will sound dumb/basic relative to what you know?
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Wouldn't the pedestrian have to walk through said car then? 2. Quite plausible, especially trying to heft what looks like a pretty heavy loaded bike onto a curb.
Maybe that car had stopped for the pedestrian. We're not going to actually know what happened until the video is released.
Random note: drivers, when you are on a two-plus lane road, do not randomly stop (when their is no designated yield) to let pedestrians cross/other drivers turn. Cars in the other lanes may (probably, even) not stop, causing an accident.
It probably is completely unrelated to this event, but it’s an anti-pattern by well-meaning drivers.
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
If you are an expert/outlier for a given topic, wouldn't you generally expect (in an open forum) that the majority of people speaking/opining on the topic will sound dumb/basic relative to what you know?
(I'm not the person you're replying to)
It's not their level of knowledge, it's them having a high level of conviction when they have no grounds to have such a high level of conviction.