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Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

nytimes.com

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Re: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

#131

Post by saas_co_de »

hunter23 wrote: post #63

This is how I would deal with it if I was a regulator: * Revoke Uber's license to operate - While they might not be found at fault, they have shown gross negligence by having an operator that doesn't observe the road, computer vision that can't sense a pedestrian crossing several lanes even when their LIDAR manufacturer says they could, and an algorithm which encouraged the car to speed 3 mph over the limit when it w…

How about blame the driver behind the wheel who was hired to drive the car and was 100% responsible for everything that happened?

Funny how the pile on is targeted at Uber and the tech, when this is a test vehicle with a human driver who was hired to be responsible to monitor, respond, and override the computer at all times.

The human failed. Blame the computer. Makes sense.

Re: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

#132

Post by drawkbox »

danso wrote: post #116
sethev wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems an odd question. Do have some reason to think it was speeding?

Early reports said the police stated the AV was going 38 in a 35mph zone

It is right in a transition period between 35mph and 45mph. The Mill ave bridge is 35mph and Mill ave is slow (25mph) because it is an urban area and by ASU and Tempe Town Lake with lots of pedestrians.

After the bridge it changes to 45mph so it could be the Uber was also in a 10mph speed up phase in the hundreds of feet from the bridge right where the pedestrian was.

Re: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

#133

Post by Retric »

spaceribs wrote: post #85
hunter23 wrote: post #63

This is how I would deal with it if I was a regulator: * Revoke Uber's license to operate - While they might not be found at fault, they have shown gross negligence by having an operator that doesn't observe the road, computer vision that can't sense a pedestrian crossing several lanes even when their LIDAR manufacturer says they could, and an algorithm which encouraged the car to speed 3 mph over the limit when it w…

This sounds expensive, unnecessary and would result in creating systems that were built to defeat a test, not reality. Most current human drivers wouldn't be able to pass a test with the conditions that resulted in the fatal crash.

That video is hardly representative, you don't need street lights to see people at night. Simple car headlights are plenty to see someone in time to stop at 45 MPH.

The 'driver' was not paying attention and the software failed. An attentive human driver acting alone would have easily stopped.

Re: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

#134

Post by netsharc »

bnj wrote: post #77
hunter23 wrote: post #63

This is how I would deal with it if I was a regulator: * Revoke Uber's license to operate - While they might not be found at fault, they have shown gross negligence by having an operator that doesn't observe the road, computer vision that can't sense a pedestrian crossing several lanes even when their LIDAR manufacturer says they could, and an algorithm which encouraged the car to speed 3 mph over the limit when it w…

Out of curiosity, is anyone aware whether it might serve some use to do tests like this virtually? Drive a car around to gather a mass of raw sensor readings on a busy street, and then feed those readings to test cars as inputs? I guess that description doesn't make much sense, but it would be interesting to develop a virtual testing environment for testing the algorithm package even though that doesn't address hardw…

Google^W Waymo's cars have "driven" millions of virtual miles.

Re: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

#135

Post by wepple »

“It also appeared that the driver’s hands were not hovering above the steering wheel, which is what drivers are instructed to do so they can quickly retake control of the car. ”

Really? Who can sit for even 30 minutes with their arms out in front of them without getting sore?

Re: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

#136

Post by oldgradstudent »

empath75 wrote: post #105
rjvir wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how so many techies initially had the knee-jerk reaction of "well, despite this accident, I bet these Uber autonomous cars are still safer than humans". It seems like all information available to us suggests the polar opposite.

I believe it about google. I don’t trust uber at all. Or Tesla for that matter.

Why do you believe that about Waymo?

We have no information at all about the progress Waymo is making. All we've seen so far are a few videos produced by for PR under highly controlled conditions.

There's basically zero transparency here.

Re: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

#137

Post by xvf22 »

hunter23 wrote: post #63

This is how I would deal with it if I was a regulator: * Revoke Uber's license to operate - While they might not be found at fault, they have shown gross negligence by having an operator that doesn't observe the road, computer vision that can't sense a pedestrian crossing several lanes even when their LIDAR manufacturer says they could, and an algorithm which encouraged the car to speed 3 mph over the limit when it w…

Above all I'm interested why the car apparently did not apply the breaks when a person appeared in the visible light camera.

The NTSB investigation should be interesting.

Re: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

#138

Post by rgbrenner »

baking wrote: post #73
habosa wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could always buy from someone else ... but uber seems to have extreme competitor paranoia when it comes to buying any services. I think they also spent $500M to make their own maps when you could use any of the popular mapping APIs out there.

Whoever is first to market will compete directly against Uber. There is no point in selling autonomous cars to Uber.

Not necessarily. There are a lot of reasons for a car manufacturer not to enter the transportation market:

They have no history of operating in that market. It's a major undertaking to compete across the globe. The other transportation companies will now be their competitor, and will refuse to buy their cars. They may not be successful because of marketing, positioning, etc.

If they refrain from that.. they can sell their cars to Uber, Lyft, et al.. which we already know the manufacturer is good at. They can sell their cars to multiple transportation companies that can offer varying levels of premium features; differentiate themselves with marketing; etc. And they can sell a large number of cars to Uber more immediately, since Uber is already in so many cities. They also won't need to deal with cab regulators in each city, etc.

Manufacturers sell their cars to dealerships who stock their cars on their lot until they sell.. this lets the manufacturer turn over inventory faster. If they built a transportation network, they would need to maintain those assets on their books.

If it were simple, I think we would see more manufacturers operating rent a car services. But we don't.

Re: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

#139

Post by cmac2992 »

netsharc wrote: post #134
bnj wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, is anyone aware whether it might serve some use to do tests like this virtually? Drive a car around to gather a mass of raw sensor readings on a busy street, and then feed those readings to test cars as inputs? I guess that description doesn't make much sense, but it would be interesting to develop a virtual testing environment for testing the algorithm package even though that doesn't address hardw…

Google^W Waymo's cars have "driven" millions of virtual miles.

They've drive 5 million real miles and billions of virtual miles.

Re: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

#140

Post by lsaferite »

drawkbox wrote: post #132
danso wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early reports said the police stated the AV was going 38 in a 35mph zone

It is right in a transition period between 35mph and 45mph. The Mill ave bridge is 35mph and Mill ave is slow (25mph) because it is an urban area and by ASU and Tempe Town Lake with lots of pedestrians. After the bridge it changes to 45mph so it could be the Uber was also in a 10mph speed up phase in the hundreds of feet from the bridge right where the pedestrian was.

The accident was ~590ft after the speed increase.
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