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Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

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Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#331

Post by stevenwoo »

ubernostrum wrote: post #282
nkurz wrote: post #115

1) I'd hope and assume that an autonomous vehicle would have better sensors than a single mounted video camera. It does have other sensors that it uses, right? Were they all operational? What do they show? Combined, do they have dynamic response comparable to the human eye? 2) The road seems really dark. Are the headlights intentionally dimmed here? At night, on a empty road with no opposing traffic, shouldn't the he…

I'm a broken record here, but: Seriously. Go spend some time in /r/roadcam on reddit to get yourself accustomed to what a typical dashboard camera video looks like. People here are drawing all sorts of conclusions based on seeing an unfamiliar type of video, and that's a really bad thing. The two biggest things to get used to are: 1. Dashcams do a terrible job in dark or low-light scenes. The car's headlights, and th…

Thanks for the clarifications - dashcams sound exactly like the first few generations of GoPro cameras (haven't tried any of the last few so can't generalize) - almost useless in low light conditions, great in sunlight or in front of a high powered light source.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#332

Post by mehrdadn »

jeffmould wrote: post #135
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…

I have to agree. Just like a normal camera has issues in low-light, it is clear that this camera is diminishing exactly how light the road ahead was. While I can't say confidently that I would have been able to stop to prevent hitting them, watching the video in full screen does lead me to believe that I would have seen them and been able to apply the brakes at least enough to reduce the impact. Also, watching the vi…

> apply the brakes

Or swerve out of the way.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#333

Post by cmac2992 »

freehunter wrote: post #42
jonknee wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no such thing as a too reflective vest for bicyclists And to not jaywalk a bike across a street in the dark!

Since I've seen this be a very controversial statement here in the past, I'd just like to point out to everyone that American drivers on four lane roads are not expecting pedestrians to be in the middle of the road and not at a crosswalk. That is not a normal thing to happen in America, and no one expects it to happen. It is a very rare situation. --edit: okay guys... no where did anyone argue that you shouldn't be w…

People crossing streets mid block is such a common in pheonix that last week Arizona announced a plan spend $250k on educating the community on this very problem. Pheonix is one of the most dangerous cities for pedestrians and bikers. Pheonix is built for cars not people, a ton of roads are fast 4 Lanes in residential areas.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#334

Post by kbwt »

dfxm12 wrote: post #39
SpikeDad wrote: post #23

I think this brings up an interesting philosophy for autonomous driving technology - is it feasible if it's "only as good as human driving"? I mean I've seen comments that a human might not have seen the pedestrian. Is that a "defense" of driving AI? That's it's about as good as human driving? Seems to me the public won't accept driverless cars unless there is significant evidence that it's much better than human dri…

I think experience is the best teacher. In a perfect world, Uber will look at the data, determine why this happened. The AI will learn and it won't happen again. That is compared to countless new human drivers entering the road every year. That's not a defense, or an excuse, but an explanation or reality. I know we don't live in a perfect world, but regardless, we can't change what happened here, so it's best to lear…

> The AI will learn

https://xkcd.com/1838/

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#335

Post by osrec »

nickez wrote: post #174
osrec wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

8m ?! That sounds completely unreasonable to me. The first google hit says it is more like 33m.. http://www.brakingdistances.com/38Mph

Apologies, meant to type 18 meters. That's just for the braking - not including reaction time.

But the point is, she was well within the field of detection at that range.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#336

Post by jayess »

duiker101 wrote: post #102

Shouldn't the card have been driving with its brights on? I mean... she was already crossing so she didn't come out of a corner or something and I have a feeling that with brights on she could have been seen. Also, there doesn't seem to be other cars in the opposite direction or anything for which the car shouldn't have had its brights on.

No, this is an urban area just north of downtown Tempe:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/N+Mill+Ave+%26+E+Curry+Rd,...

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#337

Post by 51Cards »

dmix wrote: post #324
51Cards wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly it. I see people mentioning seeing the victim at the last second but these vehicles are supposed to be better. They scan in non visible spectrums with LIDAR. Lack of safety vest, lack of headlights, none of it is supposed to matter... or at least it shouldn't completely compromise the vehicle's systems. Camera's may not work as well but an obstacle directly in the path should still be detected. Especi…

I watched the video a bunch of times and I'm not 100% sure how the vehicle could have reacted at the upper maximum of time where she would have been visible to LIDAR, and maybe for Radar, to make a significant difference. At least given the two options where it could have slowed maybe 10km/hr at most (from the 40mph aka 64km/hr speed limit) but that's still an if and I'm not sure it would have ensure the survivabilit…

If the vehicle can't detect objects in the non visible spectrum (even just IR) at least as far away as a human can in the visible spectrum then that is a showstopper right there for the technology. Additionally if it can't then it shouldn't be traveling at a speed where it can't react in time.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#338

Post by mortdeus »

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…

right, so the camera's night vision mode that detects objects in the dark would have been completely blinded by the street lights while passing under the streetlamp. Take night vision goggles and look at a light. It blinds the whole field of vision.

The only thing that I think was the cars fault was that the car is programmed to drive when the driver is driving around distracted. There is no point to a human driver sitting behind the wheel of an autonomous vehicle if they aren't paying attention.

People need to understand that self driving mode isn't a freedom from the responsibility of driving safely. Rather its a tool to help ensure that driving statistically becomes safer as more self driving vehicles find their ways onto the road.

Hopefully someday all cars will be self driving and dangerous hazards/traffic reduced to the point that they are virtually none existent rather than being towards the top of the list of "preventable death" and "things humans don't want to waste most of their time during the day doing".

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#339

Post by mehrdadn »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #273
fudged71 wrote: post #251

I do wonder if perhaps Uber made the video darker before releasing. Or used a camera that is not the main sensing camera. Because I would hope the cars are smart enough to increase ISO to get more detail at night time.

I wouldn't be one bit surprised. The antics of this company are well known. This incident has my wondering: of all the companies working on this, why is Uber trusted to be testing this technology?

> I wouldn't be one bit surprised. The antics of this company are well known.

I would be surprised under the new CEO.

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