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Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

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Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#851

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

So now we all know- Elaine Herzberg did not run out in front of the car, as the police said, she was walking at a normal pace; she was not in the shadows- the camera footage is typically darker than human vision; and the reason why the first thing the driver knew of the crash was the sound of it is because she didn't have her eyes on the road.

And all the cars sensors, its superior perception of its environment and its superhuman reaction times were no use, without a human-level understanding of its environment to go with them. It couldn't tell that there was a person crossing the road in front of it and even if it did it didn't have a concept of what a person is and why it should try to avoid them, or in any case, it just didn't know what to do about it.

So can we now please roll back the off-the-charts hype about self-driving cars being safer than human drivers? It's abundantly clear that this is not yet the truth (not yet. yet). That's just not the state of the art, at this point. We're like the people jumping off towers with crazy "flying" apparatus, in the 18th century, because they were convinced they could fly that way.

Or maybe we should just stop pretending that what we really care about is safety and let's we just want to have cool tech toys to play with, no matter the consequences.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#852

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

Gatsky wrote: post #746
cameldrv wrote: post #389

Pathetic and sad performance by the vehicle and "safety" driver. The woman does not "appear out of nowhere", she was in the roadway for some time. The woman was not wearing all black, had red hair, and her shoes were reflective. Even if we are to believe that their camera is this crappy, they still have the lidar, and it appears brakes were not applied. Even 500ms of braking * 0.8g = 9mph. That might have saved her l…

What I don't understand is why the pedestrian didn't see or hear the car. She seems totally oblivious. Surely she would have seen the headlights. It is possible she had some sensory impairment, either visual or auditory.

She was probably thinking the driver had seen her and expected the car to slow down, as you do when crossing a road and see a car in the distance.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#853

Post by vicpara »

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…

The lady was walking the bike at the edge of a light cone. The inner cam was actually filming in IR. Uber cars have IR cameras, LIDAR and an also multiple radar sensors.

My guess is that the algorithms have never met a person crossing the street with a bicycle during night time so they just ignored it or considered it to be a glitch.

You can have to approaches regarding labeling driving situations. Either you label with positive tags the situations where the car needs to react. Or you label with positive tags the normal situations when the car does nothing.

Depending on the two approaches you can have a car that kills pedestrians that appear in weird circumstances. I also bet a pedestrian that ducks in the middle of a lane would 100% be killed by a car. Or two people having sex while standing in the middle of a lane.

The other situation you have cars avoiding invisible obstacles that may appear due to some aberrations from sensors (which are far from perfect).

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#854

Post by samdoidge »

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…

The pedestrian is a lot more obvious to the eye than I suspected, and it's actually quite shocking. They are correct to stop all road tests until they have investigated why they are missing this.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#855

Post by rcxdude »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #851

So now we all know- Elaine Herzberg did not run out in front of the car, as the police said, she was walking at a normal pace; she was not in the shadows- the camera footage is typically darker than human vision; and the reason why the first thing the driver knew of the crash was the sound of it is because she didn't have her eyes on the road. And all the cars sensors, its superior perception of its environment and i…

You seem to be jumping to conclusions as much as anyone else here.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#856

Post by rkangel »

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?

Disclaimer: I am playing Devils Advocate and I don't necessarily subscribe to the following argument, but:

Surely it's a question of balancing against the long term benefit from widely adopted autonomous driving?

If self driving cars in their current state are at least close to as safe as human drivers, then you could argue that a short term small increase in casualty rate to help development rate is a reasonable cost. The earlier that proper autonomous driving is widely adopted, the better for overall safety.

More realistically, if we think that current autonomous driving prototypes are approximately as safe as the average human, then it's definitely worthwhile - same casualty rate as current drivers (i.e. no cost), with the promise of a much reduced rate in the future.

Surely "zero accidents" isn't the threshold here (although it should be the goal)? Surely "improvement on current level of safety" is the threshold?

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#857

Post by rkangel »

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…

I am glad to hear the NTSB is investigating this and not just the local police (who would lack the technical resources to make a useful judgement). Have there been any statements at all from them so far?

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#858

Post by naskwo »

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…

Mercedes has used thermal imaging commercially for years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d03SuJ0TVcY

I would be very surprised if there is no thermal imaging in autonomous vehicles.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#860

Post by gkya »

danso wrote: post #14

Wow, I had thought it impossible for the Uber AV to be in the right lane, and for the victim to be crossing left-to-right, for the police to claim that the victim couldn't be seen until it was too late. But I didn't expect the road to be so dark, given what we saw in the accident photos (which might have been over-exposed?) and Google Maps, which showed a lot of street/sidewalk lighting. In the moment that we can ful…

This is a shit show now. A new technology is being tested, and the tester is a convicted armed robber, and was not even looking at the road during the test drive. I think every single person in Uber that has anything to do with this testing program is guilty of homicide, including the driver. This could've been at least non-fatal.
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