Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident • Hacker News Board

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#151

Post by chki » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 12:16 AM UTC

osrec wrote: post #107

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #53

There was almost a second where the woman was clearly visible and yet the car did not attempt to emergency break. I would not expect the vehicle to safely stop, but it could have definitely slowed down and reduce the energy of the collision. This is not criticism against self-driving tech, I would not expect alert human driver to avoid collision either due to limited reaction time. With technology however, we should…

I think it could have stopped safely. Assuming it has quicker reactions than a human, stopping distance should be around 18 meters. I think it just completely missed her. Edit: critical typo

that is a bold statement to make from the video information we got, at least in my opinion. I would estimate the speed to be at least 50 km/h which gives 25 m as a very rough estimate for the stopping distance without reaction time. It's probably better than that but not 8 m.

But I do agree that the car doesn't seem to have stopped at all and missed the victim completely.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#152

Post by eric_b » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 12:16 AM UTC

The Uber car was a Volvo XC90. They are supposed to have some of the best pedestrian avoidance safety features in existence. My understanding is that a stock Volvo would be expected to catch this situation and avoid or stop. Did Uber override these systems? Or does it just not work very well?

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#153

Post by jakeogh » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 12:16 AM UTC

dogweather wrote: post #64

An alert human driver would still have had a bad crash, but might not have killed the pedestrian. In a two-lane road, you cannot simply swerve to the other lane w/out checking. I (and many other?) drivers would have just slammed on the brakes. But at that road's speed limit, I believe the brakes wouldn't have stopped in time, and a collision would still have occurred. The pedestrian+bicycle was a direct obstacle, not…

Checking what? It's dark. You should already know where the cars are around you at the moment. Second, a human eye easily could have seen her, this cam footage is not remotely comparable to the low light sensitivity and motion sensitivity of a human.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#154

Post by hcknwscommenter » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 12:16 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #136

jackpirate wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clear from the video that a human driver actually would've had more trouble since the pedestrian showed up in the field of view right before the collision, yet that's in the visible spectrum. That's not at all clear to me. I don't know too much about cameras, but it looks to me like the camera is making the scene appear much darker than it actually is. In the video, you can see many street lights projecting down…

> The gap between street lights (and hence the person) was in the field of view of the camera the entire time But the gap between street lights is going to be very hard to see into. > I'm confident my eyes are good enough that I would have been able to see this person at night in these lighting conditions. I think you're overconfident. Human low light vision is very good if there is low light everywhere. But it is no…

> But the gap between street lights is going to be very hard to see into.

This wholly contradicts my experience driving at night on a street with street lights. I can't recall a time in my entire life I have had significant difficulty seeing into the gap between street lights. Keep in mind that the gap is not arbitrarily chosen.

Edited to note that I have experienced difficulties in low-vis conditions such as snow storms, sand storms, VERY strong rain storms, etc. None of which apply to this situation.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#155

Post by aianus » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 12:16 AM UTC

brokenmachine wrote: post #119

aianus wrote: post #37

However bad the car was or wasn't at detecting the victim, it's nothing compared to how bad the human victim was at detecting the car (which presumably had its lights on coming down an empty street at night). Imagine if the victim was driving a car...

What's your point? She wasn't driving a car. Imagine if the uber hardware was installed into a petrol tanker. It just just as pointless a discussion. If self driving cars can't be trusted to not smash into any obstacle that appears such as a deer/roadwork/child/runaway shopping cart, then they shouldn't be permitted on the road.

The point is that humans who have poorer sensors and do even stupider things are allowed to drive. So the bar for self-driving is a lot lower than people around here make it sound.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#156

Post by freehunter » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 12:16 AM UTC

dmicah wrote: post #138

Did the vehicle have high beams enabled?

I certainly wouldn't have high beams on here. It's a lit road and it seems to be in the city, so you'd likely be encountering other cars often enough that you'd spend more time turning the high beams on and off than you would controlling the speed and direction of your vehicle.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#157

Post by deft » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 12:17 AM UTC

Uber shills and other defenders of straight up manslaughter by a machine (breaking first rule of robots), I thought it was the woman's fault and tooootaaallly not a failure on Uber's part. Hopefully this puts the final nail in the coffin of a terrible business. Sad someone had to die.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#158

Post by vkou » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 12:17 AM UTC

atonse wrote: post #25

How did LIDAR and IR not catch that? That seems like a pretty serious problem. It's clear from the video that a human driver actually would've had more trouble since the pedestrian showed up in the field of view right before the collision, yet that's in the visible spectrum. When I argue for automated driving (as a casual observer), I tell people about exactly this sort of stuff (a computer can look in 20 places at t…

> It's clear from the video that a human driver actually would've had more trouble since the pedestrian showed up in the field of view right before the collision, yet that's in the visible spectrum.

This was taken by a video camera - which has a much lower range of detectable brightness then the human eye. The pitch-black spots in the video are almost certainly not pitch-black if you were to look at them.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#159

Post by ashelmire » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 12:17 AM UTC

jonathanyc wrote: post #81

ashelmire wrote: post #49

She crossed at a spot that was pitch black. Sneakers come into view maybe 40 feet away. Clearly visible at 20. Is that enough time to stop at that speed? Not sure I would have stopped in time.

You don’t need to stop. Slowing from 40 to 30mph decreases the fatality rate by an order of magnitude. Maybe the car shouldn’t have been going above the speed limit if the conditions were so poor that it couldn’t plausibly see humans walking right in front of it.

Was it going above the speed limit?

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#160

Post by kss238 » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 12:17 AM UTC

alva wrote: post #29

On the one hand, the cyclist became visible in the footage at a very late stage. If that is how the drivers eye saw it they would have very little time to react, however they may have been able to do a sharp swerve. On the other, the operator was clearly distracted regardless of if they would have been able to avoid this.

Sharply swerving at the last minute would probably be more dangerous than simply slamming on the brakes.