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Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

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Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#581

Post by vesrah »

markc wrote: post #465

Watch the footage carefully and you'll see that the car actually tracks to the right immediately before impact. When centered there's about 20" between the sides of the car and the lane markers. (120" lane - 80" car) / 2. At the moment of impact, the victim appears to be between 3' and 4' from the right lane marker. To avoid the fatality, the car would have only had to track left 2' from center. So my question is - w…

Could have been getting into the right hand turn lane to head down Mill Ave that blends in right there.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#582

Post by cmurf »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #343

Something that's worth pointing out as well is what happens to low-light contrast sensitivity as we age. I believe there's something like a 50% loss in night vision between the ages of 20 and 50. Having watched the video, I seriously doubt I'd have seen the pedestrian in time to stop for her. I don't know that I would even feel that sorry for her, frankly -- there is only so much we can (and should) do to protect dru…

> I don't know that I would even feel that sorry for her, >there is only so much we can (and should) do to protect...

This strikes me as a good example of willful blindness and could subject a person to a charge of criminally negligent homicide. And I even see that possibility in this video, that the driver was maladapted for night conditions due to a display in the car that maybe wasn't supposed to be there.

Imagine a condition with this car not recognizing and then hitting an animal (elk, moose, horse, cow) such that the animal goes right through the windshield and kills everyone inside the car. This is a real problem worth solving, regardless of whether you personally care about humans outside the car.

Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#583

Post by in_cahoots »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #51

This is definitely not a case of someone jumping out in the road, as was previously reported. Sure, jaywalking at night is a bad idea, but this is exactly the type of thing an automated driving system should catch and avoid

I thought whole initial response from the police was weird. They went out of their way to basically say she jumped out in front of the car, and that the accident was unavoidable. They even told us that the women was homeless, which I viewed as a subtle way to hint that maybe she wasn’t in her right mind.

It just felt like they were saying everything possible to absolve Uber, in a way that’s very different from how most crashes are treated.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#584

Post by baking »

This was the original story: "After the Uber collision, the car continued traveling at 38 miles per hour, according to the Tempe police chief"

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/for-self-...

In other words, the car _never_ detected the pedistrian and never slowed down on its own. This has nothing to do with _when_ it saw her. It clearly didn't, yet both camera and LIDAR should have been able to.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#585

Post by [deleted] »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #539
ScottBurson wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope that the driver isn't the sole focus of punishment As sad as this accident was, I don't see how the driver or Uber is legally at fault. Pedestrians crossing outside of a crosswalk are supposed to yield to traffic. The victim in this video is stunningly oblivious to the fact that she's on a roadway. Obviously we want self-driving tech to be good enough to avoid such an accident, particularly since a human pro…

> Pedestrians crossing outside of a crosswalk are supposed to yield to traffic. Pedestrians always have the right-of-way. They might get a ticket for jaywalking in some cities, but it's never permissible to hit someone with your car, regardless of whether they're in a crosswalk. Vehicular manslaughter is no minor infraction, and Uber can expect a civil suit from the victim's family even if there are no criminal charg…

[deleted]

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#586

Post by bendavis381 »

formerengovert wrote: post #504
lhorie wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do wonder if perhaps Uber made the video darker before releasing This video was released by the police department. Are you suggesting someone from Uber drove down to the scene at 10pm, somehow managed to grab the SD card from the dashcam with all the police there, ran back to their car, uploaded it to their laptop, fired up Premiere, edited the brightness, downloaded the modified video back into the SD, ran back…

A couple years ago we had the ability to remotely access and modify the recorded video on this platform. Dunno about now.

What was the reason to build that feature?

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#587

Post by blt »

siliconwrath wrote: post #502
erobbins wrote: post #220

A straight road, in dry conditions, obstructed by an entire person and a bicycle with REFLECTORS on it, and the car doesn't see her? I think whoever wrote this code should be in prison, quite honestly, along with their entire management chain. I suspect many people will feel the same way. This is a really really bad look for automated vehicles in general. It also backs up my contention that anything less than full 10…

It certainly does look bad for self driving vehicles, and I definitely feel terrible that a life was lost from this. However, how does one develop a self driving vehicle that’s 100% automated without the ability to test in real driving conditions? Despite this accident, self-driving vehicles have a fairly safe driving record for the number of miles and time they have been active. Details on California accident rates…

Build quite large test facility with diverse artificial scenes. Pay people to walk/bike/drive around. Use external motion capture, GPS, stationary radars, etc. with additional offboard computation to act as a watchdog and step in when the onboard systems fail. Would be expensive, but the companies pursuing autonomous driving can afford it.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#589

Post by grafporno »

jcims wrote: post #578
Animats wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did LIDAR and IR (?) not catch that? That seems like a pretty serious problem. Something is badly wrong there. That should have been detected by LIDAR, radar, and vision. Yes, they need a wide dynamic range camera for night driving, but such things exist.[1][2] They're available as low-end dashcams; it's not expensive military night vision technology. Radar should pick up a bicycle at that range. The old Eaton VO…

I wonder if the driver grabbing the wheel disabled the response from the car.

Fun thought experiment:

1. Release video to police (with obvious shots of driver/passenger/whatever not paying attention to the road)

2. Investigation reveals accident was caused by driver/passenger/whatever reaction

3. ????

4. Profit (PR win/rescue)

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#590

Post by ajross »

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.

You can't increase ISO without washing out the areas in the street lights. One of the difficulties not being discussed here is that this is a terribly lit road, with large dark voids between the street lights. And the biker was crossing in the void.
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