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Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

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Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#711

Post by sundvor »

walrus01 wrote: post #356
jeffmould wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is pretty much the experience I have with my dash cam, a Yi. In its recorded video, its automatic exposure control make it look like everything outside of the headline cone is pitch black, but it is actually not. I have seen deer and possums by the side of the road, and debris etc, that did not show up when I later checked the video for the same period. There is enough spillover light from modern headlights that…

Yep that exposure control / sensor quality of the dash cam in the video was rubbish. My own Blackvues produce far, far better results than that. Just look at how nothing is illuminated by street lights, this clearly has the effect of making the poor rider appear "out of nowhere". Also agree it appeared driver was on smart phone most of the time, thus not in control of the vehicle, and had thus no business being on the road as these are systems UNDER TEST.

If that's the best Uber can produce then they ought to hang their heads in shame. Unless it was doctored with... as I find it hard to believe they'd put such rubbish quality cameras in their trials.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#712

Post by aecs99 »

noobermin wrote: post #707
aecs99 wrote: post #700

I currently work full-time in the self-driving vehicle industry. I am part of a team that builds perception algorithms for autonomous navigation. I have been working exclusively with LiDAR systems for over 1.5 years. Like a lot of folks here, my first question was: "How did the LiDAR not spot this?". I have been extremely interested in this and kept observing images and videos from Uber to understand what could be th…

Alright, so given your observations, which I don't doubt, here's a question I have: why have a pilot on public roads? If uber's software wasn't robust, why "test in production" when production could kill people?

I have the same questions as well. But my best guess is that they probably have permission to drive at non-highway speeds at late nights/early mornings (which is when this accident occurred, at 10 PM).

My first reaction when I watched that video was that my Subaru with EyeSight+RADAR would have stopped/swerved. Even the news articles state something similar (from this article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2018/03/21/uber-c...)

>The Volvo was travelling at 38 mph, a speed from which it should have been easily able to stop in no more than 60-70 feet. At least it should have been able to steer around Herzberg to the left without hitting her.

As far as why test this, I'm guessing peer pressure(?). Waymo is way ahead in this race and Uber probably doesn't wanna feel left out, maybe?

Once again, all of these are speculations. Let's see what NTSB says in the near future.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#713

Post by ClassyJacket »

jon_richards wrote: post #664
jonathanyc wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Does the Uber car really capture video at 480p and 15fps? Also only releasing the video conveniently ignores the fact that these cars have IR and LIDAR. The pedestrian is hard to see in this video essentially because it is dark and they are wearing dark clothing. Neither of these are at all obstacles to LIDAR and IR, and the video at least shows us that the road is clear of obstructions.

>Does the Uber car really capture video at 480p and 15fps? Probably not, but it isn't like the inputs to the self-driving models really need to be better than that. Lower resolution helps your processing time a lot and there's little point in having an FPS higher than your processing time.

I'm sure at least the collision avoidance part of the system would need to poll at a much higher rate than 15fps. That's up to 67ms latency you're adding. With enough miles that delay could kill people.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#714

Post by horsecaptin »

dfee wrote: post #696

What no one seems to be talking about is that a person was walking their bike across a divided 4 lane road that in many places would be called a highway. This is not a pedestrian friendly crosswalk, and it’s not high noon. You can tell by the tail lights of the car in front (first second of video) that a pedestrian would be able to see a car coming. Which begs the question - why did the human step out in front of the…

You make an interesting point regarding responsibility. Say that person were:

- Mentally deficient.

- A child suddenly running because thats what children do.

- A blind person making a mistake.

There are countries where if a pedestrian is crossing the road anywhere that isn't a designated crossing zone, then they are responsible for their fate.

In Canada and the USA, I believe that pedestrians "always" have right of way and drivers are supposed to be as vigilant as possible.

Of course, some pedestrians take this to heart and suicidally jump onto a road. In the US, this is more prevalent in walkable cities and college towns.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#715

Post by brokenmachine »

dusing wrote: post #428
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’ve driven that location on that road many many times at night and no it is not that dark, it is lit up well like most city streets. The video make the contrast appear greater.

Thanks for your comment. That's what I thought.

I have a dashcam, and I've seen night videos from it.

In fact, the picture from my dashcam seems much better than this low quality mess, but still night videos from it come out much less visible than reality.

I've tried to rewatch some parts of videos later, and I find I was able to see much more detail on the sidewalk and on the periphery than was captured by the dashcam. Everything gets blown out in the night videos by the headlights.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#716

Post by sixothree »

moflome wrote: post #182
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…

Thanks for the link. I'm now fully expecting for regulators to call for airbags on the exterior of all AV's...

The research has been done. We know how to improve outcomes of collisions with pedestrians.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#717

Post by tzs »

cm2187 wrote: post #637
jonathanyc wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pedestrian died, not the SDV developers. Calling this a “teachable moment ... also for pedestrians” is rather disrespectful.

I think the only circumstance where a pedestrian can cross a road without watching for cars is when protected by a traffic light, and even then that's not wise. A pedestrian crossing a road outside of any crosswalk at night and not watching for cars is playing russian roulette. Doesn't mean the driver (or self-driving system) shouldn't have spotted it as well to prevent the accident. But it is clearly a key driver en…

> I think the only circumstance where a pedestrian can cross a road without watching for cars is when protected by a traffic light, and even then that's not wise.

You are definitely correct about even then you should check. And once you check and see it is clear...keep checking as you cross.

An acquaintance of mine from college was killed crossing Colorado Blvd in Pasadena, California late on a Friday afternoon, in a crosswalk at a fully controlled intersection, with the cross traffic having a red light.

Colorado Blvd is a major street, and late on a Friday afternoon would have a fairly high density of cars.

The car that hit him was going something like 80 mph. At the time he started crossing, that car would have been 3 blocks away. Even if it had been the only car on the road, at that distance there would be no way to judge the speed, and any car that far away traveling anywhere near legal speeds would be far enough away to not be a danger to any normal pedestrian crossing.

With the other cars that were on the road on a late Friday, it probably would not even be possible to see the car that hit him when he entered the crosswalk. There would have been several cars stopped at the intersection obstructing his view, plus cars at the intersections further up the road, or in transit between the intersections.

His only chance would have been to keep checking oncoming cars as he crossed, even after all the cars actually at or near his intersection at stopped.

Almost no one does that. Mostly once we see everyone nearby stop we just concentrate on cars that are turning and so might enter the crosswalk even though the light is red (assuming we are in a right turn on red jurisdiction).

Lesson #1: Treat each step as you cross the street as if it is your first step into the street. Do your full "is it safe to cross" scan constantly.

Lesson #2: Cars very far away at the time you start to cross can make it to you before you finish, even if traffic seems heavy enough that there is no way they could go fast enough to reach you. Your scan needs to look out farther than you think it needs to.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#718

Post by lopmotr »

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?

If you redefine the temperature scale so 90F is 0, then that difference between 98 and 92 becomes the difference between 8 and 2, which suddenly looks a lot more significant. So I think your concern is based more on the arbitrary 0 of the F scale.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#719

Post by brokenmachine »

philip1209 wrote: post #309
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…

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.

Then WTF are they doing driving it down that road with intermittent street lights at night then?

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#720

Post by [deleted] »

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…

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