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Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

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Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#951

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…

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…

Somebody recorded this stretch and posted it [1]. The police-released video looks much darker in comparison:

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XOVxSCG8u0

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#953

The 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…

I was under exactly the same impression. From the description a few days ago, I had imagined someone on the right hand side of the road stepping out from between two parked cars.

From the video this morning I was wondering how it was possible the vehicle lidar and radar didn't pick this up. This is exactly the sort of thing I would hope these additional sensors could pick up easily.

Also from the released video, it was clear to me the "human driver" of the car was not paying attention. Looks like they are looking at their phone at lap level 90% of the time, unless there was something like a "camera/lidar" view in the dash they were looking at.

Having a human in these self driving cars is useless. There is so little for the human to do that it is hard to keep them from checking out. And once they do, they might as well not be there. Seems like "Safety Theater" to me, make the public and the Uber riders feel like there is still a human in the loop, when there really isn't.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#954
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anything except perfection in self driving cars will lead to more accidents. Only if perfection is defined as "statistically better than humans". I do agree that these "assistive" technologies have the potential to do more harm than good, but the bar is actually far lower than "perfection".

I wonder what the "deaths per vehicle miles" stats for autonomous vs human-piloted cars look like right now? Humans kill, what, 30,000 other humans a year or so in The US? But there's a _lot_ of vehicle miles driven. My guess is this one incident has likely pushed the autonomous car death rate per vehicle mile way beyond the current human piloted death rate per vehicle mile... (Having said that, there's not much doub…

If one incident can reverse your conclusion then the sample size isn't large enough to draw that conclusion.

With only one death, the only conclusions you could reasonably reach from statistics are either "we don't know yet" or "we've gone so many miles with only one death that we know it's safe enough." There's no reasonable way to argue from the stats that we know it's not safe.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#955
Side note related to this incident:

When did the "futurology" crowd become so militant? I've seen multiple people on multiple forums blaming the victim here, with some even going as far as to say that they "deserved to get hit". Other rather disgusting comments have been along the lines of "you have to break a few eggs to make an omlette".

Since so many of these people are outwardly saying that they're comfortable with people dying to "train the AI" (their words), I wonder if any of them would volunteer themselves or someone they care about to play the role of "broken egg"?

Others have been blaming low light conditions, which is ridiculous for so many reasons I wouldn't even know where to start.

The general feeling I get, is that they simultaneously acknowledge that this technology is still developing, but refuse to admit that it isn't already perfect. If they had their way, and blame for incidents was always shifted somewhere else, autonomous cars would never improve.

Not a good look, and we're in for a very messy dystopian future if the lowest common denominator is already willing to blindly trust what they believe to be "AI".

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#956

The 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…

I was under exactly the same impression. From the description a few days ago, I had imagined someone on the right hand side of the road stepping out from between two parked cars. From the video this morning I was wondering how it was possible the vehicle lidar and radar didn't pick this up. This is exactly the sort of thing I would hope these additional sensors could pick up easily. Also from the released video, it w…

Yes, particularly the 'theatre' part. Its expensive and useless.

More useful would be to have a central location with humans monitoring dozens of cars, like a sort of air-traffic control situation. Better chance of keeping their attention with enough going on. They'd be there in case of difficulties, know when a car 'went off the rails' or notify authorities in case of an accident.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#957

In my mind this accident is on Uber no matter how you interpret the video. Scenario 1: Lets say the pedestrian was visible to the naked eye and sensors. The model and safety operator still didn't "see" her and act in time. Who to blame? Uber. Scenario 2: The lighting and environment was in a condition where neither the model nor the safety operator could see the road more than 10 feet in front of the car, yet neither…

Why on uber? It should be on the driver. That driver kept looking down almost the whole time. He is not employed to watch movies or something else. If he needs to watch some data then maybe 2 of them should be there.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#958
post #849
post #818

Someone on Reddit posted a comparison of the same spot at night but with a good camera: https://m.imgur.com/a/PM7uu from a video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XOVxSCG8u0 That paints the whole accident in a very different light from the video from Twitter. Would any human not notice someone crossing in the good camera screenshot?

Yep, also this HDR image of the scene at night: https://imgur.com/gallery/XQrAB Really hope the cops didn't just look at the low-dynamic range dashcam video and decide it's case-closed here. I would not want one of these Uber cars on the streets with me.

I drove by last night around 10pm and this is in line with what I noticed. It is not anywhere near as dark as the original video shows.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#960
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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