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Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

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Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#241

Post by sjg007 »

extralego wrote: post #165
ahelwer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Thi…

I take a photo with my iPhone in night conditions and the image I see on the screen comes out way darker than I saw with my eyes. That has to be corrected for, no?

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#242

Post by smogcutter »

darkerside wrote: post #79
HankB99 wrote: post #27

This seems like a simple case. I would have expected the driver assist in my 2017 Subaru to have reacted to something in the road. I'm surprised that the much more sophisticated self driving system did not.

I wonder if this was affected by the fact that the pedestrian was in another lane up until the very last second. Perhaps the car detected the pedestrian but failed to consider it an obstacle since it wasn't in its direct path. It could be unexpectedly difficult to account for pedestrian crossing speed if it caused automated cars to stop when a car in the next lane happened to "wobble" towards the automated car's lane…

I dunno, if it decided to ignore the pedestrian because she was in the other lane that's extremely troubling. The pedestrian was moving laterally across the road. If the car has detected that, it should infer that she might become an obstacle very shortly.

Driving is all about predicting the future. Think of every time you've been able to tell that someone is going to change lanes even though their blinker is off, or slowed down when a ball bounces into the street because you know there's going to be a kid following it. If the car isn't capable of that, it's not ready for public streets.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#243

Post by niftich »

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…

FWIW the spot where the crash happened is in fact badly lit. I know this anecdotally from having been at the location for events -- it's right next to a concert venue -- but it can also be seen on other dashcam videos.

In this video [1] driving northbound, same as the vehicle in the crash, the car first goes under AZ-202, emerges under a streetlight, goes through a darker spot, then another streetlight (as you see the rocky outcrop), and then a very dark spot: and suddenly, you see a right-turn lane that wasn't there before. The latter dark spot is where the crash happened.

Another video by the same author, driving southbound [2], provides another useful reference. And these videos are three years old, yet the illumination of the roadway has not improved. Cameras exaggerate the contrast a bit, but not unreasonably so. The streetlights in question essentially aim directly downwards, illuminating the roadway immediately underneath, but much less of the surrounding air than other designs. This is responsible for the dark gaps, albeit it does significantly reduce light pollution.

[1] https://youtu.be/zEaTdYJExq8?t=8m50s [2] https://youtu.be/yfR7krN7z00?t=23m26s

EDIT:

Found more. The car in this video is going southbound, camera facing backwards [3]. This view faces the same way as the Uber did, but of course this video is moving away from the scene, and offset by a few dozen meters to the west. The drastic change in roadway illumination can still be seen.

In a fourth video [4], the car is going northbound, like the Uber, in the proper lanes, but the camera is pointing obliquely front-right. The illumination seems better, but you can still see the intensity of the shadows, including environmental shadows and the car's own shadow, as it moves between the lights.

[3] https://youtu.be/0Dum8Fj71JU?t=13s [4] https://youtu.be/6qHcuW_LCIU?t=16m45s

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#244

Post by baking »

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

A driver (I refuse to say "human") would have also swerved.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#245

Post by pdonis »

eanzenberg wrote: post #200
pdonis wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> humans are able to handle extreme low-light situations But this wasn't an extreme low light situation. It was a situation with street lights alternating with extreme low light regions. Under those conditions the human eye will not be dark adapted and your low light vision won't be very good.

Ive driven at night and the video is not representative of what I see. With your car's headlights and the road lights, there are no blind spots on the road. If there is not enough street illumination and my headlights cannot reach far enough ahead I turn the high beams on and travel cautiously.

> With your car's headlights and the road lights, there are no blind spots on the road.

I agree that is the optimum, but I don't think all roads are optimal in this respect.

> If there is not enough street illumination and my headlights cannot reach far enough ahead I turn the high beams on and travel cautiously.

From what I can see in the video, this is what a reasonably cautious human driver would have been doing on the street shown, since it does not appear to have sufficient light to avoid blind spots. It does not appear that the Uber car had its high beams on. But, as has been noted in other comments in this thread, the car had other means besides visible light (LIDAR and IR) for seeing the pedestrian, so it should have been able to do better than a human driver at avoiding the collision.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#247

Post by [deleted] »

eanzenberg wrote: post #200
pdonis wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> humans are able to handle extreme low-light situations But this wasn't an extreme low light situation. It was a situation with street lights alternating with extreme low light regions. Under those conditions the human eye will not be dark adapted and your low light vision won't be very good.

Ive driven at night and the video is not representative of what I see. With your car's headlights and the road lights, there are no blind spots on the road. If there is not enough street illumination and my headlights cannot reach far enough ahead I turn the high beams on and travel cautiously.

[deleted]

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#249

Post by gsam »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #67

It certainly looks like a human driver would have braked enough to make this a minor injury accident. It's amazing that the additional sensors of the Uber car were not enough to avoid the accident entirely.

I wouldn't say minor, but a reasonably attentive driver would have probably slammed the brakes, even if it was too late.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#250

Post by brokenmachine »

nimbius wrote: post #99

oof. As a motorcycle rider Looking at the video is hard. Im always vigilant but sadly, I'd probably have plowed right through the woman. The street lights seem to do absolutely nothing. People are unpredictable...however this kind of crossing feels familiar. In Los Angeles we have transients that are known to wander through 5 lanes of empty street at 5 AM with impunity. Ive been hard-stopped by wagon trails of shoppi…

And yet you didn't make that mistake when you were in a very similar situation.

I don't think I would have hit that lady pushing the bike. If I saw her slowly meandering into the left lane like that, I would have slowed down. The car just plowed ahead at full speed. In fact, it plowed ahead, at night, at 3mph over the speed limit.

I've seen my own dashcam videos that look very similar to that, and in reality things are much more visible than what the dashcam shows.

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