Live data from Hacker News

Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

twitter.com

161–170 of 1001 posts

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#162
The issue I am having with this is that you can easily see that something broke the sight line between car and lights on slight left. Mind that - the video is not only of pretty low resolution but also it is not giving out proper "blackness" of black. A human observing the road would be able to catch that and as a precaution take the foot off a gas and put it on a brake pedal. Those small changes make the difference.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#163
post #31

If there is something that isn't going to help the public perception of autonomous cars at all, it's releasing a compressed to shit capture of another video showing a single camera angle from dozens. I would say it's a deliberate attempt to manipulate if I didn't also strongly believe ignorance on part of the police department has lead them to believe that autonomous cars could even exit a parking lot without data fr…

Uber is more than welcome to release their video(s) themselves if this one represents an inaccurate view.

Given there are no obstructions in the road, LIDAR (or even the decent cameras from the sensor array on top) would obviously show her on a clear collision path many seconds before impact.

So I guess this is the ultimate litmus test if the culture at Uber has changed. They let this video stand and I don't personally think they should be allowed to drive another metre autonomously on public roads.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#164
Although it seems from the dashcam footage that the scene is dark and the bike/pedestrian comes out of nowhere, humans are able to handle extreme low-light situations and I don't doubt that this pedestrian would have been visible to an attentive driver.

If autonomous cars cannot handle low-light conditions given the current state of hardware, either from visible, ir, or lidar, then they need to run in the daytime only.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#165
post #41
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 isn't at all clear from the video. Video cameras of this quality vastly underperform human vision in low-light conditions.

I don't think modern digital sensors actually under perform human vision, or it's at least not obvious. They have made huge improvements in the last decade.

Also, When a digital camera records an image, a gamma curve is applied to it before display, which makes up for a bias against the darker portions which the digital equipment does not inherently have.

Considering the streetlights, I cannot imagine any excuse. This video will sadly give them the benefit of public doubt but anyone familiar with lighting digital video will be unconvinced that the video feed was the culprit.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#166

The first question that comes to my mind watching this, is, why didn't the _pedestrian_ see the _car_? It looks as though she didn't even look up until the car was only a few feet away from here. I'm not just trying to "blame the victim". The car "should" have responded sooner. But see-and-avoid works both ways. If you're choosing to cross a road in the dark, you, too, have a responsibility to understand the drivers'…

The pedestrian died, not the SDV developers. Calling this a “teachable moment ... also for pedestrians” is rather disrespectful.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#167

The first question that comes to my mind watching this, is, why didn't the _pedestrian_ see the _car_? It looks as though she didn't even look up until the car was only a few feet away from here. I'm not just trying to "blame the victim". The car "should" have responded sooner. But see-and-avoid works both ways. If you're choosing to cross a road in the dark, you, too, have a responsibility to understand the drivers'…

Saying "I'm not trying to do X" doesn't absolve you from doing exactly that. Nice try though. Not trying to be rude ;)

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#168
post #74

Direct link: https://twitter.com/TempePolice/status/976585098542833664 The interior view tells you everything you need to know about why anything except perfection in self driving cars will lead to more accidents. The driver specially selected and trained for exactly this job, does not look at the road! If someone specially trained for that won't do it, the general public certainly will not. Also, in the video you ca…

> I have better night vision than this camera, I feel as a human I would have seen the bike.

I'm not so sure. Under conditions where there is low light everywhere, so the eye has time to adapt, human low light vision is very good. But under the conditions shown in the video, where there are street lights present and the pedestrian comes out from a gap between the street lights, your eye won't be dark adapted and you won't have much of a chance of seeing the pedestrian in the shadows.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#169
post #84
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...

Are these cars electric? They can be pretty quiet, even at high speeds.

This one wasn't. Also you don't cross a main road with your back turned towards the traffic.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#170
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 st…

Also in those stormy conditions you slow down enough where the stopping power should roughly equal your visibility.
Post reply on HN