Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 1001 posts

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#361

Post by perennate »

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #312

I remain curious about the set of detection mechanisms in place - if this video is the only one, I’d say Uber is culpable (of course it’s not the only one), and if it’s not the only detection mechanism, then where’s the data from the others? Another note: I haven’t heard criticism about the driver’s inattention...

I think the inattention is just expected now. If you have to do absolutely nothing 99.99% of the time, then it just doesn't seem possible to constantly focus on the road. At least if you are driving down an empty highway you still have to hold the wheel and press the accelerator. For this reason, I think level 0 systems ("may momentarily intervene but has no sustained vehicle control") hold much more promise for the near future (next decade or two), and I wish there was more focus on getting these systems widely deployed.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#362

Post by ct520 »

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…

Uh I think it’s a girl

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#363

Post by david-gpu »

bobbles wrote: post #43
alva wrote: post #29

On the one hand, the cyclist became visible in the footage at a very late stage. If that is how the drivers eye saw it they would have very little time to react, however they may have been able to do a sharp swerve. On the other, the operator was clearly distracted regardless of if they would have been able to avoid this.

You're getting downvoted but the guy was obviously reading his phone the entire time...

We don't know if he was looking at a display showing the road from the perspective of lidar, etc.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#364

Post by sjg007 »

ineedasername wrote: post #327

Okay, so Tempe police aren't going to be able to get & grok the raw data on how the AI was handling things. So how does that shake out in an investigation? It seems like they'll have to rely very heavily on the good faith of Uber (hah!) to honestly interpret & communicate the truth of that side of the story. Releasing the video so soon without the equally important (probably more so) AI side is almost deliberately mi…

Would it matter from the legal point of view? The police have evidence of speed and unsafe driving for the condition and driver inattention. I guess it depends on what the legislature legislated in AZ for these cars/situations. The AI should get scrutiny but I am not sure if that is a police matter or an DA matter.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#365

Post by user5994461 »

ars wrote: post #235
ajross wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we know the vehicle didn't brake? There's no audio to tell us anything, and a car takes "almost a second" to rock forward on its suspension when reacting to brake input too. FWIW, I think I might see the nose bobbing a bit just before the collision, but honestly can't tell. I certainly don't think you can say "did not attempt to brake" based on the evidence at hand, basically.

> Do we know the vehicle didn't brake? Because the nose of the car doesn't go down. Especially in an emergency braking situation the nose of the car will go significantly down, and you would see that in the video.

The video is cut before the impact. I don't think we can judge of what will happen in the last second that is missing.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#366

Post by sgc »

dschuler wrote: post #260

I've noticed that pedestrians in the US tend not to look at cars coming their way when they cross intersections - I'm not sure if it's an attitude of "you're supposed to stop for me" and and they're willing to bet on that happening every time, or if they're really unaware of the danger of a few tons of steel coming at them. This always struck me as very strange as someone from Europe - they teach kids in elementary s…

I'll bite!

According to https://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/sites/roadsafety/..., there are 6000-6500 pedestrian deaths per year in the EU (the data is only in graph form). EDIT: here is the raw data: https://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/sites/roadsafety/...

As someone who has spent a fair amount of time in both places, I can say that the US pedestrian feels more entitled due to an almost universal pedestrian legal right of way outside of controlled intersections (stop lights). It's a foolhardy attitude, and completely antithetical to the way people are taught (which is: look right, then left, then right again before stepping off the curb). But Italians often do the same because they wouldn't ever cross the street otherwise, and there will be a small group of risk takers adding to the statistics in every country.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#367

Post by drcode »

stefan_ wrote: 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…

Personally, I'm amazed that we get to see any video at all from this accident... Given that we live in an age where video is king, and given Uber's reputation for going to extreme lengths to get their way, I think we should be thankful to the Tempe Police for getting this important document to the public so quickly.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#368

Post by stevenwoo »

BartBoch wrote: post #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.

That's a great point, and something we use in driving even in daytime, sometimes you are driving on a curvy mountain road and see something move through the leaf cover and know to take precautionary steps - to slow down and extra care on being in the lane. I don't know much about it but wildly speculate some of this might fall into general AI, though.
Post reply on HN