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Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

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Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#301

Post by CodeWriter23 »

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 pretty clear to me (from the second half of the video) the driver was looking down at her phone and glancing up at the road periodically. IMO if she had been focusing on the road, she would have at least started braking before hitting the pedestrian. Or perhaps actually stopped before that happened.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#302

Post by domevent »

gok wrote: post #188
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…

In pitch darkness, IR cameras can only see more than a visual light camera if you somehow had IR headlights that were more powerful than the visual headlights (they probably don't; that would blind other AVs just like high beams blind other drivers). It doesn't grant you the ability to see in the dark with infinite range. Lidar can sense shapes with more range, but at the cost of dramatically worse resolution and lat…

Either way, the LIDAR must have seen her, and would have been emitting it’s own laser light.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#303

Post by hcknwscommenter »

gnicholas wrote: post #130
titanix2 wrote: post #38

Two obvious things from the footages: the pedestrian is invisible until the last moment, and the "driver" is focused on something else, probably a smartphone. Given of how little time there was between the hitted woman became visible and the impact, a driver action may not have been able to avoid it, but what will be interesting is how his responsability will be engaged or not. Anyway one advantage of automous car is…

Agree that the driver was clearly not paying attention. I was surprised that the headlights did not illuminate further down the road. That is, drivers are cautioned not to “out-drive your headlights” — meaning that you shouldn’t drive so fast that by the time you see something, you don’t have time to react. Maybe a human driver couldn’t have avoided the accident given the speed the self-driving car was traveling, but…

>I was surprised that the headlights did not illuminate further down the road.

You are surprised because your intuition and experience tells you that it is very easy to see much further down the road when traveling on a road with street lights and non-high-beam headlights on. The footage is highly misleading regarding how far a human eye would be able to see.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#304

Post by bigiain »

vkou wrote: post #158
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.

" ... since the pedestrian showed up in the field of view right before the collision"

Either the woman had just said the words "Beam me down Scotty" and materialised there like the video feed footage implied - or she'd been in view for quite some time - at least enough time for a person pushing a bicycle to cross en entire lane. If Uber's tech is only capable of detecting her as she "showed up in the field of view right before the collision" - their tech is not fit for purpose and should he held 100% at fault here. (Not that doing that will help her family or friends, but it might help stop Uber and their competitiors from doing it again...)

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#305

Post by imh »

pdonis wrote: post #168
ars wrote: 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…

It's not a function of seeing it the dark, it's that human eyeballs have really good dynamic range, which is exactly why they'd beat cameras in those conditions.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#306

Post by ineedasername »

jmharvey wrote: post #172

As presented, this looks like a pretty classic "overdriving your headlights" situation. Even though they're made of retroreflective material, only two lane divider dashes at a time can be seen in the video, indicating something like 50 feet of visibility. Stopping from 38 mph takes 70+ feet from the time the brakes are applied (and human reaction time adds quite a bit more). Things (people, animals, stopped cars, roa…

If it were a human driver, human eye, etc., then maybe this would be the case. But Lidar isn't limited in this way, and reaction time shouldn't have been an issue.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#307

Post by fudged71 »

ysleepy wrote: post #73

Why is the resolution so low? Why is the FPS so low? Why don't we see the IR/LIDAR footage? Was the brightness adjusted after the fact to look favourably? Why didn't the vehicle issue a full stop once the woman was clearly visible? I feel PR handled.

100% fishy

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#308

Post by quilombodigital »

I dont know exactly how autonomous cars works, but is it possible there was a warning (beep) before the system tries to stop the car, She got confused, hits the accelerator, disabling the system, and hits the pedestrian by accident? How autonomous cars decide when there is an obvious obstacle and the driver hits the accelerator?

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#309

Post by philip1209 »

jackpirate wrote: post #78
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. 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…

Is it possible that driving under intermittent street lights messes with the aperture or image recognition? It would be like flashing a strobe light at the camera.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#310

Post by danso »

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…

> Yet this crash proves that all the equipment in the world didn't catch a very obvious obstruction.

It's a bit too early to make that conclusion. For all we know, the equipment was malfunctioning. Which I guess technically leads to your point, but we'll have to wait for the investigation to actually know what failed vs. what met expectations (I worry that expectations and tolerances, as set by the car companies, will be revealed to not be as comfortable as we might assume).

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