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Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

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Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#141

Post by hueving »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #127
owenversteeg wrote: post #9

Saying nothing about Google/Waymo, it appears they're allowed to continue? Their self-driving technology seems far more advanced, I think it would be unfair to punish all the players for the bad actions of a few. In particular, Uber seems to have been operating self-driving cars recklessly and in an attempt to "move fast and break things". When those things are people's lives, that's unacceptable. I'm all for interes…

Arizona did something reckless and stupid. Unfortunately, somebody other than the decision maker paid the price. Arizona stupidly allowed Uber to operate after California kicked Uber out and after seeing the videos of Uber cars running red lights in SF. For what? For a few temporary (the plan is to be fully autonomous quickly) low paying test driver jobs? The engineers making the big salaries stayed in California (or…

>For what?

To advance technology and make AZ attractive to other R&D. Not everything has to be tied to a direct economic boom.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#142

Post by suresk »

zer00eyz wrote: post #95
suresk wrote: post #32

For all of the theoretical moral questions that have been brought up around self driving cars (the proverbial lever that lets you kill one person instead of a handful, for example), it's interesting/inevitable that this one came up first. I'm sure lots of people will argue that self-driving cars will, in the long run, save a lot of lives, and therefore we can justify some loss of life in the process. They are probabl…

I'm going to take your post apart because I enjoyed it very much... > For all of the theoretical moral questions that have been brought up around self driving cars (the proverbial lever that lets you kill one person instead of a handful, for example), it's interesting/inevitable that this one came up first. Your talking about the "trolley problem" and it is a ethical question as opposed to moral. This is literally a…

> Your talking about the "trolley problem" and it is a ethical question as opposed to moral. This is literally a fuckup

Right, thanks for the correction. The ethical question I was getting at is "What is the tradeoff of making sure self-driving cars are 100% safe and predictable before we allow them on the road at all, versus the time delay that will cause in which tens of thousands of people will die via human drivers?"

My thoughts behind this post came from reading comments elsewhere stating that the Arizona government was ultimately costing more lives by suspending Uber's program than it was saving. I disagree with that assertion, although it seems like my post came across in not quite the way I intended it.

My knee-jerk reaction to those comments (supporting Uber) is to liken it to advocating for ignoring deaths in Phase 1 of a clinical trial because there is hope that the drug will save more lives - but even then the comparison isn't apt, because people in clinical trials at least consent to some notion of the risk involved.

To me, it is a really difficult, uncomfortable question. And it isn't so much targeted at this particular case - where, as you say, it was more of a fuckup by a company known for not really being careful - but rather at more marginal cases, and there will be plenty of those. Driving is a lot more complicated than people give credit for, especially in areas where you are sharing the road with cyclists and pedestrians, and the ML approaches to self-driving are probabilistic in nature and will be wrong sometimes.

You can look at this crash and say "Simple safety measures available today would have prevented, or at least mitigated, this collision", and you'd be right, but that won't always be the case. When you say "the life of one victim is too many", it feels impossible to disagree with you, but it does also mean that we are likely decades away from having self-driving cars, during which millions will die from cars (worldwide). If you accept the premise that self-driving cars will be substantially safer than human drivers at some point, what is the right thing to do?

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#143

Post by galdosdi »

z3t4 wrote: post #122
owenversteeg wrote: post #9

Saying nothing about Google/Waymo, it appears they're allowed to continue? Their self-driving technology seems far more advanced, I think it would be unfair to punish all the players for the bad actions of a few. In particular, Uber seems to have been operating self-driving cars recklessly and in an attempt to "move fast and break things". When those things are people's lives, that's unacceptable. I'm all for interes…

"always be hustling" is/was the Uber motto. " move fast and break things" is/was Facebook.

True, but the concept still applies here. Uber has gained a well deserved reputation for being careless as long as what they are being careless with belongs to other people.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#144

Post by lern_too_spel »

hueving wrote: post #141
lern_too_spel wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arizona did something reckless and stupid. Unfortunately, somebody other than the decision maker paid the price. Arizona stupidly allowed Uber to operate after California kicked Uber out and after seeing the videos of Uber cars running red lights in SF. For what? For a few temporary (the plan is to be fully autonomous quickly) low paying test driver jobs? The engineers making the big salaries stayed in California (or…

>For what? To advance technology and make AZ attractive to other R&D. Not everything has to be tied to a direct economic boom.

California remains the center of autonomous car research and industry with carefully thought out regulation designed with public input. Laissez-faire regulation and rolling out the red carpet for bad actors in Arizona didn't change that. It just led to the predictable result.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#145

Post by mbreese »

stagbeetle wrote: post #84
adjkant wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not very convincing though - genuine neutral party here without a fully formed opinion and I see no reason that's absurd. If self-driving cars (or brand X of them) are killing people at higher rates per mile, that's not good. I don't see how the statistic is an absurd comparison.

Here is the issue with the OG: 1). He has no sources. [0] 2). Sample size for Uber deaths is 1 3). Miles driven is also sampled at 1 2+3). With only one pair, it is a rate, not "rates" of death by Uber. There has been 1 death by Uber. As opposed to the many deaths motor vehicles accidents have caused 4). Per mile is an arbitrary metric, and in this case, false equivalency due to n=1. One Uber car killed one person. A…

Okay... let’s try this way.

Assume we know a) the total number of miles driven in a year by sober humans and b) the number of traffic fatalities by sober humans over a year. (The year part isn’t actually important for this, it could be for all time as far as this is concerned — what is important is the miles). Your observations are the number of miles. Time doesn’t play into this, but you could do the same calculation by hours driven or number of trips, if you have that data. Hours driven and mileage driven are going to be pretty well related, so let’s just use that.

Let’s say this rate is 1 fatality every 100 million miles.

Your question is now: given that we’ve observed one fatality in 3 million miles driven for Uber — is the rate for Uber worse than the rate for humans? (Null hypothesis is that the rates are the same). Another way of saying this is - given the rate of one fatality per 100m miles, what is the likelihood that we’d see one fatality in 3m miles?

If you want to estimate the number of fatalities that will happen over the next X million miles driven, you’d use the Poisson distribution, because this is a rare event over a long time span (or mile-span in this case). Plug in the rate, the number of miles, and you can get a pvalue for each fatality count: none, 1 fatality, 2 fatalities, etc...).

Given this rate (1/100m), you can also calculate the likelihood that there would be 1 fatality in 3 million miles. Turns out, it’s not that likely — suggesting that the fatality rate for Uber is higher than humans [0]. It doesn’t say what the rate is exactly, just that it is likely to be higher. Now it’s possible that the Uber rate is the same as humans, just not all that likely.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16684764

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#146

Post by empressplay »

sandos wrote: post #134
caf wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original comment says " you have to give way to a car that is approaching or entering the roundabout on your right ", whereas the rule is that you have to give way to all cars already on the roundabout, without regard to whether they approached from your right or left. If they got into the roundabout before you got there, you have to give way.

This sounds really weird, Sweden also has roundabouts but I do not have to yield to anyone on the roundabout, only the ones that I will interfere with? Whether someone enters after or before me is really of no consequence. I am basically not allowed to enter if I will obstructing someones path of travel, with the additional caveat that both lanes of a multi-lane roundabout has to be free, since anyone in the roundabo…

In Australia you can not change lanes in a roundabout.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#147

Post by galdosdi »

owenversteeg wrote: post #9

Saying nothing about Google/Waymo, it appears they're allowed to continue? Their self-driving technology seems far more advanced, I think it would be unfair to punish all the players for the bad actions of a few. In particular, Uber seems to have been operating self-driving cars recklessly and in an attempt to "move fast and break things". When those things are people's lives, that's unacceptable. I'm all for interes…

Actually, it may be an instance of a "tragedy of the commons" but I think the most strategically optimal move for a state when there are 49 others is to ban it and let "sucker" states do the testing, and then immediately legalize it as soon as it shows promise.

Just like how I never upgrade to a new software version right away, letting the other "suckers" test it in production for me, creating value for me at their expense with no repercussions whatsoever, since the delay is very small.

Another strategically effective move might be to charge corporations an appropriate fee to capture back the value of the data they are collecting by experimenting on public roads. Given how valuable driverless technology could be, the fees could be large.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#148

Post by hueving »

sandos wrote: post #134
caf wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original comment says " you have to give way to a car that is approaching or entering the roundabout on your right ", whereas the rule is that you have to give way to all cars already on the roundabout, without regard to whether they approached from your right or left. If they got into the roundabout before you got there, you have to give way.

This sounds really weird, Sweden also has roundabouts but I do not have to yield to anyone on the roundabout, only the ones that I will interfere with? Whether someone enters after or before me is really of no consequence. I am basically not allowed to enter if I will obstructing someones path of travel, with the additional caveat that both lanes of a multi-lane roundabout has to be free, since anyone in the roundabo…

>I am basically not allowed to enter if I will obstructing someones path of travel,

Yes, you just described how yielding works everywhere. You enter unless you will block someone. There is nowhere in the world that you yield to someone who isn't going to hit you, that's just called a stop sign.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#149

Post by galdosdi »

hueving wrote: post #141
lern_too_spel wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arizona did something reckless and stupid. Unfortunately, somebody other than the decision maker paid the price. Arizona stupidly allowed Uber to operate after California kicked Uber out and after seeing the videos of Uber cars running red lights in SF. For what? For a few temporary (the plan is to be fully autonomous quickly) low paying test driver jobs? The engineers making the big salaries stayed in California (or…

>For what? To advance technology and make AZ attractive to other R&D. Not everything has to be tied to a direct economic boom.

Advancing technology overall is nice, but does not benefit Arizona any more than if they let some other sucker state do the experimenting.

Not everything has to be tied to a direct effect, but if you think this, maybe you could explain at least one mechanism by which you think Arizona could actually indirectly get some benefit?

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#150

Post by [deleted] »

galdosdi wrote: post #147
owenversteeg wrote: post #9

Saying nothing about Google/Waymo, it appears they're allowed to continue? Their self-driving technology seems far more advanced, I think it would be unfair to punish all the players for the bad actions of a few. In particular, Uber seems to have been operating self-driving cars recklessly and in an attempt to "move fast and break things". When those things are people's lives, that's unacceptable. I'm all for interes…

Actually, it may be an instance of a "tragedy of the commons" but I think the most strategically optimal move for a state when there are 49 others is to ban it and let "sucker" states do the testing, and then immediately legalize it as soon as it shows promise. Just like how I never upgrade to a new software version right away, letting the other "suckers" test it in production for me, creating value for me at their e…

[deleted]
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