Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident • Hacker News Board

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#651

Post by schreiaj » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 4:04 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #496

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…

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…

LIDAR also has limitations on angular resolution just as a function of how the sensor works. It's entirely possible that the size of the person/bike on LIDAR was just too small until it was too late to stop.

Why it didn't even appear to try to stop? You got me, refresh rate on the LIDAR? LIDAR flat out being mounted to high and relying on optical sensors instead for collision avoidance of small targets (like a human head)?

I'm guessing, I'd love to see an NTSB report on this.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#652

Post by rfolstad » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 4:04 AM UTC

Whats the point of a safety driver who's eyes are not on the road? Pretty easy to monitor if the safety driver is paying attention or looking down every second like this safety driver was.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#653

Post by bendauphinee » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 4:05 AM UTC

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…

Pedestrians do always have the right of way, but they bear a bit of responsibility as well to make sure the driver is aware of them, and not just walk out into the road. I have been on both sides of the wheel here, and it can never be assumed that a car knows a person is there.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#654

Post by newnewpdro » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 4:05 AM UTC

Driver wasn't even paying attention to the road.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#655

Post by snambi » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 4:06 AM UTC

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…

It is true. Even a very high resolution camera doesn't capture things that I can see with by eyes.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#656

Post by wilsonjchan » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 4:06 AM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #444

sitkack wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) It does NOT show what the LIDAR sees. 2) They should be using a dark adapted / night vision camera and probably are, the video feed presented is just that, the best one that "presents". 3) They should be using thermal infrared to spot living things 4) They were severely over driving their headlights if what we are seeing is "reality" as seen by the onboard computer. I want to know how much access to the hardware U…

It's Arizona. I just checked. The high today was 92F. Pavement would almost certainly be warmer than that. How's a thermal camera supposed to detect 98F on a background that is proably +/- 5 degrees of that?

Unless you're going downhill, FLIR (forward looking infrared) should not be pointing at asphalt.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#657

Post by baking » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 4:06 AM UTC

cozzyd wrote: post #574

drawkbox wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arizona and Tempe especially have lots of darker roads. The LIDAR/computer vision tuning at night doesn't seem right. Maybe it was adjusting for the changing street light brightness but yes this is one situation and the vehicle had just come from the Mill bridge that has festive lights that are strung along the bridge [1]. This is a situation though where the LIDAR should have clearly been better than it was. Maybe i…

What the heck are those trails doing in the median if it's not a legal crosswalk?

I've been staring at those myself for a couple of hours. My best guess is the crosswalk was moved, but the paths were left. There's a lake nearby and tons of parking under the overpasses, with trails and picnic areas.

Also, the woman was right under a working street lamp. And as was stated in an earlier article the car continued on at 38 mph after the accident. The bike ended up 50 yards down the street.

EDIT: "That spot is east of the second, western-side Mill Avenue bridge that is restricted to southbound traffic, and east of the Marquee Theatre and a parking lot for the Tempe Town Lake. It can be a popular area for pedestrians, especially concertgoers, joggers, and lake visitors. Mid-street crossing is common there, and a walkway in the median between the two one-way roads across the two bridges probably encourages the practice."

"Pedestrians can cross a street without using a crosswalk in many instances without risking a jaywalking ticket, but Arizona law requires pedestrians not using a crosswalk to yield to traffic in the road."

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/cops-uber-self-driving-c...

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#658

Post by cma » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 4:07 AM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #580

jerf wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The driver specially selected and trained for exactly this job, does not look at the road!" Humans gonna human. Our brains are trained by millions of years to not pay attention to things not directly important. It's hard enough sometimes to keep our attention on the road when we're doing the driving and the driving is too easy, like being alone on a highway at night. Expecting humans to passively observe driving whi…

This is why I've always criticized Tesla over its defense of Autopilot accidents, even when most people here were defending them. Then Waymo and Ford came out and confirmed what I and several others here were saying - that humans can't react to "take over the wheel" if something shows up in front of the car. It's either Level 5, or nothing.

You could at least use the other levels for cases where the driver has a heart attack, etc.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#659

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 4:08 AM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#660

Post by hnaccy » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 4:09 AM UTC

archi42 wrote: post #630

A lot of people seem to mention how LiDAR should have seen her coming: Generally speaking, that's true. But it's difficult. In a single frame the system would hopefully detect something on the left of the lane, but wouldn't know what it is (if they use AI it's probably not trained for "person shoving bike packed with plastic bags"). If you have the object detection in place, you still need a trajectory for that objec…

I don't know how you can watch this video and then say that they should "maybe do more testing in controlled environments".

This was a complete failure and Uber's cars should be immediately banned from testing on public roads and there should be investigation into their practices to ensure public safety while testing their vehicles. If they rushed it trying to play catch up with Waymo they should be punished.

Personally I see this as a Therac-25 situation.