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Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

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Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#451

Post by gowld »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #96

I didn't notice it mentioned in this piece, but a different article on HN is suggesting she may have been homeless and was crossing where there was no crosswalk. Homeless individuals frequently sleep under bridges, on the sides of off ramps and other infrastructure near highways. They are often walking where no pedestrian should be at all. I would like to see the affordable housing crisis solved. Currently, there are…

Even worse, she was crossing at a crosswalk, but the city/state DOT "cancelled" the crosswalk. but left a paved walkway leading up to the "not"-crosswlak

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#452

Post by dexterdog »

cmurf wrote: post #147
dexterdog wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we please stop calling 38 in a 35 speeding? In many places that speed would be inpeding traffic.

Request denied. The sign says speed limit. What about a plain language sign are you not groking? Legally it is speeding, and it's an opinion to call it impeding traffic. And as a result of speeding, there's certainly civil liability attached because the car would not have been where it was, when it was, had it been driving at or below the speed limit.

Well the funny part is that it turns out it wasn't speeding. The limit was 45 and it was doing 38. If it had been speeding it wouldn't have been where it was when the person was jaywalking.

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#453

Post by portofcall »

treis wrote: post #230
portofcall wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/19/17140936/uber-self-drivin... The brakes didn’t even start to engage. Just how fast do you think this woman moved exactly?

There's miles of difference between the brakes not engaging and not showing significant signs of slowing down. It's enormously unlikely that the Uber car failed this badly. The most plausible scenario is that the car did brake but just didn't leave skid marks. The car not recognizing a human in its path would be a shocking failure.

Just an update, the Uber car did fail that badly, and it was a shocking failure.

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#454

Post by 1812Overture »

galdosdi wrote: post #446
1812Overture wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually more dangerous as it forces other cars to change lanes to get around you.

WTF? Spoken like an inveterate speeder... it's at best equally dangerous, the effect you are speaking of happens for both higher and lower speeds. At low speeds, other cars pass you. At high speeds, you pass other cars. Either way, every pass is an opportunity for failure, and the probability is higher the higher the relative speed. However, the road, barriers, trees, etc, is always going at 0 mph, so not just the re…

https://www.quora.com/Do-slow-drivers-cause-more-accidents-t...

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#455

Post by galdosdi »

1812Overture wrote: post #454
galdosdi wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WTF? Spoken like an inveterate speeder... it's at best equally dangerous, the effect you are speaking of happens for both higher and lower speeds. At low speeds, other cars pass you. At high speeds, you pass other cars. Either way, every pass is an opportunity for failure, and the probability is higher the higher the relative speed. However, the road, barriers, trees, etc, is always going at 0 mph, so not just the re…

https://www.quora.com/Do-slow-drivers-cause-more-accidents-t...

What's your point exactly? The Quora poster's argument is just a rehash of the OP and also can be restated symmetricly for over speeding as for underspeeding and thus adds nothing here.

It also fails to address my point about kinetic energy, which is proportional to the square of speed!

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#456

Post by oliwarner »

TomMckenny wrote: post #432
oliwarner wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You appear to be suggesting that multiple levels of police watched the videos, GPS tracking, lidar scene, all recorded by the on-board systems and have deliberately suppressed what really happened. I can believe an Uber employee being paid to cover this up but whatever your views of the police, I don't believe they would suppress something that could so obviously be a major public health issue. And it's common in pol…

I believe there a multiple layers involved: a bizarre decisions about median divider design that attracts jay walking. a governor with a stake in this subject. an inexplicable disinterest in even minimal government oversight of the tests. a company with a history of bad behavior. a possibly reckless race to get a new technology market where trade secrets outweigh sharing safety results. Clearly the data was not close…

I'm in the weird situation where I have to say that it looks like you might have been right, but for the wrong reasons.

My point was that it would have been stupid to attempt to cover anything up. This was never going to go like a normal car accident. Every layer of local law and order would have seen it, the governor would have seen it, Uber employees (people, not an amorphous evil blob) and then the public would have eventually seen it. Hiding anything would have been a PR disaster, perhaps with criminal after-effects, and there were too many people —whose own safety depends on this— for a cover-up to work.

So it's even more ridiculous now that I've seen the video that shows an event that an able human would have spotted, braked and swerved that this Uber did not. Just using light, this should have been a near miss. But these vehicles supposedly have multiple sorts of radar-type equipment, don't they? They should have seen this well ahead of what a human could.

But yes, now there also needs to be a very serious investigation into the events that lead to the statement saying it was the pedestrians fault, or unavoidable.

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#457

Post by petercooper »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #416
DanBC wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Keeping to exactly the speed limit also just isn't how anyone drives. People should not "keep to the speed limit". In England at least the speed limit is the absolute maximum speed at which you drive. You should be driving slower than the speed limit at all times, with no exceptions. Anything else is almost always incompetent driving. I find it hard to understand why drivers think the laws don't apply to them. Sure…

> In England at least the speed limit is the absolute maximum speed at which you drive. In theory this may be true but it's absolutely not in practice. It's not uncommon to see people at least 20mph over the limit on motorways. On the M4 that is practically the norm.

Try sticking to the speed limit through long 40 or 50mph roadwork sections. I've done it for a laugh before. You end up getting overtaken non-stop including by trucks which, to me, feels far more dangerous than just fitting in with the prevailing speed.

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#458

Post by w0utert »

galdosdi wrote: post #448
w0utert wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, so far the statistics we have about the safety of AI cars are mostly meaningless to say anything useful about how they would scale if applied universally. Another thing that bothers me is how often the argument 'human drivers are terrible, far worse than computers for situations A, B, C, etc' is used to suggest that AI systems will improve road safety. I will be the first to admit that many people are terrible d…

Yeah, I have always felt that a lot of these easy reasons for crashes (texting, drinking alcohol, speeding) are, while statistically linked with crashes of course, also emphasized due to psychology -- we all want to feel like there's something straightforward we can do to avoid serious wrecks. If it's moralistic, even better, that means morally good people don't wreck and wrecks happen when people do morally bad thin…

That's also an interesting perspective, it's not just about accidents caused by irresponsible behavior, but also about a difference in how people mentally engage the task of driving.

To me, these kinds of observations only solidify the idea that AI that is 'better than the average driver' does not necessarily mean 'less road fatalities', and that to improve driving safety, it would be more effective to start by taking the most common factors in accidents out of the equation first.

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#459

Post by galdosdi »

w0utert wrote: post #458
galdosdi wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I have always felt that a lot of these easy reasons for crashes (texting, drinking alcohol, speeding) are, while statistically linked with crashes of course, also emphasized due to psychology -- we all want to feel like there's something straightforward we can do to avoid serious wrecks. If it's moralistic, even better, that means morally good people don't wreck and wrecks happen when people do morally bad thin…

That's also an interesting perspective, it's not just about accidents caused by irresponsible behavior, but also about a difference in how people mentally engage the task of driving. To me, these kinds of observations only solidify the idea that AI that is 'better than the average driver' does not necessarily mean 'less road fatalities', and that to improve driving safety, it would be more effective to start by takin…

Yeah, in a nutshell, there is a huuuuge gap between two kinds of human drivers.

1) people who, like, you know, just drive, man, and like, as long as everyone else does the right thing, then like, i guess things will uh, like, work out dude

2) defensive drivers.

Obviously, self driving cars need to be more like #2 if they plan to actually be as safe as an average human, and have a shot at actually beating humans on this... I suspect Waymo gets this and Uber, well, is uh, ''moving fast and breaking things''

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