Hereby I'd like to name this as "Jack-in-the-box" test case for self driving cars. No self-driving car should be allowed on road unless it can detect and avoid collision with person literally popping up out of ground at 20ft of distance while driving at 40mph in total darkness.
Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident
801–810 of 1001 posts
Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident
#802Wow, that self driving car is total crap if it can't pick up that obstacle. Doesn't get much more obvious than that. Slowly walking from the left lane into your lane on a fairly straight road. I bet it was more visible to the human eye than on that video as well. You'd have to see someone crossing the road like that. Of course the pedestrian wasn't doing the smartest thing but I believe a human driver would have at l…
> Wow, that self driving car is total crap if it can't pick up that obstacle. Not to nit-pick too much but 'that obstacle' is a person. A person that died because engineering hubris. I think we should be careful in our language in this situation, as it may get away from us. She was not 'an obstacle' or a 'thing to avoid' or 'hobo', she was a living person.
> A person that died because engineering hubris.
While the system should have reacted better, I'd definitely say she died because she crossed the road in a very unsafe manner. I wouldn't attempt to make that crossing without a reflective vest, front and tail light, and even then I'd still be very anxious.
Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident
#803How 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…
Regarding how the LIDAR did not catch that, there are 4 possibilities I can think of:
1. A software bug failed to recognize the obstacles, or misclassified them, or it fell below some probability threshold.
2. LIDAR didn’t work at the time, and the car did not shutdown.
3. The victim‘s clothing absorbs the LIDAR‘s wavelength pretty much completely, such that it appeared as a „black hole“ and was ignored by the algorithm since this occurs commonly. Unlikely though since the bike itself would surely have registered?
4. It’s hard to see on the video, but is the car going up a slope? In that case, if the LIDAR didn‘t look up far enough, it could have failed to see the victim for optical reasons.
Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident
#804Earlier 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…
Yep. I live half a mile away and just drove the same path tonight around 10pm, it's nothing like the video. There are spots that are darker than others, but they don't look nearly as dark. Nowhere on the street looks pitch black, there's ambient light everywhere. For anyone who's interested, try taking your phone with the camera app open into a dark room and comparing what you see to what's on the screen. Which shows…
Out of interest-- can you take a pic while the lighting outside is similar (assuming weather hasn't changed dramatically?) and maybe adjust exposure to what your eyes see? Or take a camera phone pic for comparison?
Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident
#805Seems like Uber is using pretty bad radars, software and drivers.
Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident
#806How do we know that this footage hasn't been artificially darkened by Uber before they gave it to police?
Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident
#807The description given before the video was released painted a picture in my mind that the woman was on the median and "suddenly" entered the roadway in front of the vehicle. I pictured someone darting across the road directly in front of the car, with no way to stop in time. This video shows a completely different scenario. The woman started on the median, but the vehicle was in the #2 lane. She wasn't visible to the…
This is the real important question. Why didn't the sensor package detect this? Humans not paying attention can never be solved, but hopefully we can get to the bottom of this failure and then fix it systemically. Unfortunately given how shady Uber are, we will never be able to trust their technical analysis in the event one is ever released.
I have the very strong suspicion that the driver has turned autonomous drive mode off, perhaps to be able to watch tv or something. She seems extremely distracted by the dashboard and there is no way that sensors could not alert her of that presence. Also, apparently the car was driving at 38mph in an area where the speed limit was 35mph. Would the autonomous mode allow that?
Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident
#808How do we know that this footage hasn't been artificially darkened by Uber before they gave it to police?
It essentially is. Even with that crappy autoexposure, she would probably be visible if the resolution and framerate wasn't terrible, and the compression hadn't taken out whatever detail remained.
Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident
#809Seems like Uber is using pretty bad radars, software and drivers.
And management.
Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident
#810Earlier 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…
> and even then that's not wise.
The girl who ran a red light three feet in front of me while looking at her phone would agree with you -- that is, if she even realized she had done it. (I was in the crosswalk and I stopped when it became apparent that she wouldn't)