I cannot understand how this could be the womans fault? Is it because of the rules of jaywalking in USA? Where I am from it is always considered the drivers fault, even if a pedestrian literally throws themselves in front of the car. Simply because the car can kill a pedestrian and not the other way around. The way I see it the uber vehicle should have slowed down to a speed at which it would have been able to react to these kind of abrupt motions. This should be cracked down hard on, not making it illegal for self driving car but the fine should be high. I dont like the thought of a self deiving car company becoming «too big to fail» and getting excused for killing pedestrians that dont understand how self driving cars work.
Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
391–400 of 402 posts
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#392The NYT just published a graphic that purports to show the location of the vehicle and the victim: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/20/us/self-drivi... This is the first report I've seen that indicates the Uber AV was in the right lane. Remember that the victim was crossing from left to right, and that all of the visible damage on the AV is on the right-side bumper. It's very hard to imagine a scenario in…
It's not hard to imagine at all. Did you watch the embedded video? The pedestrian is almost invisible. On my first viewing I didn't see her at all. On repeat viewing, and with foreknowledge, I could just make out her sneaker by reflected light, and her torso in silhouette. She has no reflective gear on her body or her bicycle, and the street lighting is nonexistent where she chose to cross (between street lights, and not on a marked crosswalk or corner). I'm pretty sure I would have hit this woman under these conditions, as horrifying as that is.
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#393The NYT just published a graphic that purports to show the location of the vehicle and the victim: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/20/us/self-drivi... This is the first report I've seen that indicates the Uber AV was in the right lane. Remember that the victim was crossing from left to right, and that all of the visible damage on the AV is on the right-side bumper. It's very hard to imagine a scenario in…
It's not hard to imagine at all. Did you watch the embedded video? The pedestrian is almost invisible. On my first viewing I didn't see her at all. On repeat viewing, and with foreknowledge, I could just make out her sneaker by reflected light, and her torso in silhouette. She has no reflective gear on her body or her bicycle, and the street lighting is nonexistent where she chose to cross ( between street lights, an…
There's no blame for the car driving above the speed limit even though the driver is unable to see the risks ahead?
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#394As a side note, I find - as always - this part disturbing : >The driver, Rafael Vasquez, 44, served time in prison for armed robbery and other charges in the early 2000s, according to Arizona prison and Maricopa County Superior Court records. He served time in prison for armed robbery more than 15 years ago, what kind of relevance would have this? Presumably he has a valid driving license issued by the State, and was…
I imagine they're trying to imply that someone who was convicted of a serious crime could still be an unreliable, irresponsible, or untrustworthy person. It's another question whether it's fair to assume that. I don't think it is, though personally I think it's reasonable to take the information into account as long as you restrain yourself from jumping to any conclusions.
>I imagine they're trying to imply that someone who was convicted of a serious crime could still be an unreliable, irresponsible, or untrustworthy person.
Sure, the whole point being that it is meaningless and IMHO disturbing to imply that.
Not that I am familiar with bank robbers, and of course have no idea on the specific crime for which the driver was earlier condemned, but I believe that bank robbers need to be actually rather punctual, have planning capabilities and usually be exceptionally good drivers, at least this is what Hollywood usually shows us.
>I don't think it is, though personally I think it's reasonable to take the information into account as long as you restrain yourself from jumping to any conclusions.
I wonder how you take that into account without making any conclusion or however influence your opinion, this kind of info is IMHO either relevant or not (gratuitious).
It is a car accident, where the automatic means failed and the driver supposed to take commands in case of failure of the automated system didn't or couldn't, the criminal past of the guy has no relevance, it is more likely that the whole thing happened too fast, or that he was distracted, and unless and until it is established that the accident was caused voluntarily or by "voluntary inaction".
What if the driver was differently "marked" by society?
Like - say - known to belong to the Communist Party or to the Neo Nazi's?
Or if he was mentioned as being (choose one) gay, transgender, black, latino, illegally immigrated?
What kind of added info is that in the context of a car accident?
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apart from regional differences, there are a host of other, similar matters. Cruising through your city's bar district at 3am? I'm sure you'll drive more defensively and be prepared for erratic behaviour on the part of others. However, one thing that I haven't seen discussed anywhere, but that strikes me as a hard problem: by having a non-human driver, you're literally taking out the human element of communication. E…
Eye contact is another thing that doesn't apply in some Asian countries where by default everyone has dark tinted windows making it virtually impossible to see inside other vehicles.
> some Asian countries where by default everyone has dark tinted windows making it virtually impossible to see inside other vehicles.
Hmm. Perhaps. Personally, I've never noticed this.
Anyway, the concrete example doesn't matter.
I guess you know what I was trying to say: implicit communication between humans. Even without eye contact, there will be a host of minuscule actions (or inactions) that we use to convey intent. There will always be humans on roads, e.g. as pedestrians. Vehicles will be forced to interact with them, and this communication barrier makes it very difficult.
Don't think of highways, think of supermarket parking lots.
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having lived in both places, commuting in northern New England this time of year often means that you're not driving on a surface a Silicon Valleyite would consider a "road"
It's a relatively flat and level surface. An AWD car is just fine. Yes, SV lives in it's own bubble in many ways but you don't need an SUV to commute on paved roads. I too live in New England. Also, MA isn't northern New England.
AWD cars are great, I own a Subaru that does fine about 90% of the time.
There are still days that it stays at home and the trucks and SUVs come out because the snow depth is above the bumper.
Who said I live in MA?
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a relatively flat and level surface. An AWD car is just fine. Yes, SV lives in it's own bubble in many ways but you don't need an SUV to commute on paved roads. I too live in New England. Also, MA isn't northern New England.
AWD cars are great, I own a Subaru that does fine about 90% of the time. There are still days that it stays at home and the trucks and SUVs come out because the snow depth is above the bumper. Who said I live in MA?
>Who said I live in MA?
Statistics/stereotyping said so. If I guess that every New Englander on HN is from MA and lives east of 495 I'll be right far more often than if I pick some other place in New England.
>There are still days that it stays at home and the trucks and SUVs come out because the snow depth is above the bumper.
I've lived in all three of the northern New England states and currently live in MA because money is more important than happiness right now.
I was kind of looking forward to telling someone from MA that you don't need more than AWD car amounts of ground clearance on roads that never get more than 5" of snow between plows. Even in northern New England it's very rare for there to accumulate more than 6" of snow on public roads except maybe a few days a year and even then only in the most rural areas.
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree fully with your first paragraph and I chuckled at the "trolley problems all the way down" depiction. However I can't imagine a car company accepting the legal liability of allowing their autonomous cars to go over posted speed limits to "match traffic". In a trolley problem you have the option to refuse a decision. By participating in "speed matching" you become one of the trolleys and you have accepted the u…
Oh, I'm pretty sure that self driving software isn't being programmed to systematically disregard speed limits to match traffic, not even by a company with Uber's attitude towards regulations, but it is an example of conditions where rigid adherence to speed limits might increase rather than reduce risk.
Hmm, turns out Google cars are programmed to go over speed limits in certain situations. Quote from a Reuters article:
Google’s driverless car is programmed to stay within the speed limit, mostly. Research shows that sticking to the speed limit when other cars are going much faster actually can be dangerous, Dolgov says, so its autonomous car can go up to 10 mph (16 kph) above the speed limit when traffic conditions warrant.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-google-driverless/look-no-...
I wonder how they decide over what warrants speeding.
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
The instructor, though, wasn't the one driving. Being engaged in a particular role relative to a situation can (I believe) alter one's capacity to perceive and respond to it. This isn't to say that for definite the instructor would have had the insight described in the parent post, but it is to say that you can't rule this out just based on the information that as a passenger they didn't have the insight.
> This isn't to say that for definite the instructor would have had the insight described in the parent post, but it is to say that you can't rule this out just based on the information that as a passenger they didn't have the insight. That's a senseless digression though. Again, the criterion to use when deciding whether autonomous vehicles are safe is whether autonomous vehicles are measurably as safe as human driv…
> That's a senseless digression though.
In terms of your agenda, it might make no sense. It just irks me when I see simplistic assumptions about human information processing that don't take the "situatedness" of the processor into account.
I have no views, and did not attempt to comment, on machine information processing in this instance. I just wanted to point out that you can't simply go from the instructor's actually missing the inference as a passenger to the conclusion that they would have missed it as a driver. Thats it :)
Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are we resorting to reconstructing a scene when Uber's Robot caught the whole thing on camera and LIDAR? The police statement seems quite premature, especially when the NTSB is running an investigation into the accident.
+1; Time will tell what happened as there should be enough data onboard. These systems are essentially in training mode and new scenarios will need to be accounted for. I am curious as to why the driver didn't react. I wonder if the system keeps track of the driver as well as I would imagine it has to be mind numbing to sit behind a wheel for hours on end and not do anything... So in this situation, how attentive and…
There's video from inside too: https://t.co/2dVP72TziQ