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Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

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Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#221
post #175

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…

Since in the video, we aren't seeing the original scene, but rather, the camera's interpretation of that scene, I think it would be hard to judge except to base it on what your average streetlight brightness is. Like a camera, your eye also has only so much dynamic range. So if those street lights are bright enough, or your interior lights are too bright, you might have nearly zero visibility in those shadows. But it…

"Even two cheap digital cameras one tuned to see the darker range and the other brighter"

Sounds a lot like rods and cones in our eyes, huh?

There's another difference with eyeballs that would almost certainly have helped here - the low light sensitive peripheral vision that the rods provide is also attuned to movement, we're more sensitive to movement in peripheral vision as well as being better able to see in low light.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#222
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…

> Keep in mind that the gap is not arbitrarily chosen.

It's not supposed to be, no. But the gaps are not always optimal. The spacing of the street lights in the video (to the extent I can tell) seems to be quite wide, wider than I would think is optimal.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#223
post #83

That is utterly terrible. The car should have reacted to the pedestrian comfortably. I think something in the change in lighting confused the sensors (the road appears to go from having street lights to not having them at the point of contact).

I would have thought that it should be irrelevant if the street lights are there or not with LIDAR.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#224
So the pedestrian crossed the road directly in front of a car while wearing black at night? Incredibly foolish.

This is probably good for self-driving cars as a whole. We'll be able to learn from this incident without having to suffer the negative PR of killing somebody who wouldn't be dead otherwise.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's an argument intended only to shift blame and distract. The car was going 38 in a 35 which is well within the legal margin of error on a speedometer[1]. For all we know, the speedometer read exactly 35. There's enough blame to go around between the driver who was obviously texting and the woman illegally jaywalking, you don't need to invent a false controversy. [1] https://www.caranddriver.com/features/speedome…

Nice try, but these cars have GPS. Trying to evenly pin the blame for the pedestrian’s death on her is insane. Talk about trying to “shift blame and distract.”

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#226
What happens when the human grabs the wheel? Is it possible the car could/would have stopped, or reduced the danger to the pedestrian, but the human actually overrode any emergency corrective measure the car would have taken? Did the human prevent the car from working as intended?

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#227
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is literally the reason for high-beams. If the road is not illuminated enough you turn those on and drive as fast as you are comfortable being able to fully stop if a deer jumps out of left field (or in this case, a pedestrian is walking across the road).

And I have literally never had to use high beams on a road with street lights. In my opinion, the camera footage vastly under-indicates the amount of visibility available to the human eye between the lighted areas.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#228

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.

How exactly is it disrespectful to use this as a teaching aid for other pedestrians about the danger of crossing a road at night?

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#229
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…

Indeed! To LIDAR, she was basically standing in the lane, with a bulky bicycle. To visible light, including the driver, who was apparently half asleep or watching the dashboard, she was in shadow until just before the collision. So yes, LIDAR should have caught this. Easily. So something was clearly misconfigured. And even if the driver had been carefully watching the road, he probably wouldn't have seen her in time.…

> who was apparently half asleep or watching the dashboard

It is possible that a screen provided a clearer (somehow enhanced) view of the road, so I'm reserving judgment for now.

Of course using that screen could be a grave error if the screen relied on sensors that missed the victim. But if it appeared to be better than looking out of the windshield then that points to a process problem and not necessarily a safety driver inattention one.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#230
Please, mind that the camera does not have the same dynamic range a healthy person has. There are also other subtle signals that humans can use that computers will still have problems using. I have personally avoided few collisions with pedestrians just on the fact that they occluded some far away light or on very subtle flicker of some part of their clothing.

I don't see how car relying solely on vision (it does not seem to react to the pedestrian as if it was "seeing in the dark") can replace human with the current level of technology.

If this is true and the car was not able to use LIDAR/Radar/IR camera etc. to augment its visible spectrum then I don't think it should have been allowed for this car to be driven fully autonomously.

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