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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

#181

Post by obeattie »

seren wrote: post #169
ducktoller wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a person at the wheel. That person wasn't paying full attention to the road. From the video of the crash, it looks like the woman at the wheel was looking at their phone. Why is no one acknowledging that this woman was responsible for taking over the wheel if necessary for any reason. When I have cruise control on, I take my feet off of the pedals and rest them on the floor. But if, say, a homeless person w…

They are also responsible for the test setup, the behavior and training of their employees. If all their drivers, which ultimately are the latest safety when everything fails, are routinely not following the process that is an issue. Maybe you need to have 2 drivers, maybe you need to randomly monitor the behavior of the driver remotely, but you have to demonstrate some active measures your took, to demonstrate the s…

Waymo mentions this in their safety report, which I think is interesting, and relevant:

> Advanced driver-assist technologies were one of the first technologies our teams explored. In 2012 we developed and tested a Level 3 system that would drive autonomously on the freeway in a single lane but would still require a driver to take over at a moment’s notice. During our internal testing, however, we found that human drivers over-trusted the technology and were not monitoring the roadway carefully enough to be able to safely take control when needed.

> As driver-assist features become more advanced, drivers are often asked to transition from passenger to driver in a matter of seconds, often in challenging or complex situations with little context of the scene ahead. The more tasks the vehicle is responsible for, the more complicated and vulnerable this moment of transition becomes.

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

#182

Post by random314 »

agildehaus wrote: post #126
coinjobber wrote: post #3

Amen. Uber's fatal accident rate is now 50x that of sober human driver's. At their current rate of driving, they can't have a _lower_ rate until 2028! Inexcusable failure of their technology to prevent a human death in the most basic collision avoidance scenario.

Before the accident they were infinitely better than a sober human driver. Understand statistics before employing them please. We don't have enough data and a single data point doesn't change that.

> Understand statistics before employing them please

Do you understand statistics?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16685929

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

#183

Post by crispyporkbites »

ducktoller wrote: post #163
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…

There was a person at the wheel. That person wasn't paying full attention to the road. From the video of the crash, it looks like the woman at the wheel was looking at their phone. Why is no one acknowledging that this woman was responsible for taking over the wheel if necessary for any reason. When I have cruise control on, I take my feet off of the pedals and rest them on the floor. But if, say, a homeless person w…

> From the video of the crash, it looks like the woman at the wheel was looking at their phone.

How do you know that? They could have been monitoring the car in another way.

Also, it’s pretty obvious that if a car is fully automated, the driver isn’t going to pay attention. If that was you, or any other human the situation would have been the same.

The car screwed up, it should have seen the pedestrian. The safety mechanism of having a driver behind the wheel didn’t work either, and we all know it doesn’t work.

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

#184

Post by mschuetz »

caf wrote: post #108
peterept wrote: post #100

I don't know much about the logic used in self-driving cars - but I do wonder how they will handle roundabouts. We have a lot of them here (Australia) and you have to give way to a car that is approaching or entering the roundabout on your right - which often is opposite you. How will a self-driving car cope with detecting a vehicle behind the concrete barrier of a roundabout?

No, the roundabout rule is that a vehicle entering a roundabout must give way to any vehicle already on the roundabout, or a tram that is entering or approaching the roundabout. See the Australian Road Rules, Part 9: https://www.pcc.gov.au/uniform/Australian-Road-Rules-19March... If you are approaching the roundabout and someone enters it from your left before you get there, you have to give way to them .

Things like that may vary from country to country, though. In Austria, roundabouts do not have a special rule and therefore a car approaching the roundabout theoretically has the right of way. But pretty much any roundabout has a yield sign, I've never encountered one without a yield sign at the entrance. Doesn't mean that there can't be a roundabout that does not have one.

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

#185

Post by Piskvorrr »

joejerryronnie wrote: post #85
galdosdi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike Uber, Waymo has always said they do not believe (based on data and experience) "safety drivers" are a realistic safety measure, because normal human beings do not have the ability to concentrate hard on a task for 8 hours a day that they have absolutely no control/feedback upon. If this is not obvious to you, you have never tried doing such a task. Try it and you will change your mind immediately.

I believe the safety drivers are primarily responsible for getting the autonomous cars to resume driving again after they've stopped for some unknown reason, not to react in a fraction of a second to divert a disaster.

That's the stated goal, I believe. I also believe that the actual task is "scapegoat." I sure hope the people taking this job offer are at least aware of this.

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

#186

Post by michaelt »

ducktoller wrote: post #163
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…

There was a person at the wheel. That person wasn't paying full attention to the road. From the video of the crash, it looks like the woman at the wheel was looking at their phone. Why is no one acknowledging that this woman was responsible for taking over the wheel if necessary for any reason. When I have cruise control on, I take my feet off of the pedals and rest them on the floor. But if, say, a homeless person w…

  Why is no one acknowledging that this woman was
  responsible for taking over the wheel if necessary
  for any reason.
Nobody in the industry really believes safety drivers work, beyond the early point in testing where they're intervening regularly.

It is widely known [1, 2, 3] that it's extremely difficult for humans to remain vigilant when monitoring systems for rare events. Airport baggage screening systems perform "threat image projection" where they show the operator knives and guns from time to time, just to break up the monotony and reward attentiveness.

Beyond early testing, safety drivers are there to make the public/politicians feel safer, for situations where a slow response is better than none at all, and for more cynical companies, so you can use them as scapegoats in situations like this one.

[1] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ece2/465ed2258585ebb8055fd7... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5633607/ [3] http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/001872081350155...

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

#187

Post by Tepix »

Zanni wrote: post #179
komali2 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually trust the waymo cars more than regular ones now when I'm on my bicycle or motorcycle. Granted they are absurdly "cautious drivers" and can be mildly annoying to be stuck behind in a car.

This strikes me as a risk factor that no one is really discussing. We talk about the dangers of Level 3/4 autonomy, where the driver is still responsible for the car, but autopilot is doing most of the work, leading to a bored/disengaged driver who's not ready to react when it's actually necessary. We don't hear as much pedestrians taking it for granted that a car will stop for them, right of way or no, because of th…

What's your suggestion then? Making the front window reflective so pedestrians have no way of knowing whether or not there is a driver?

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

#188

Post by blensor »

collingreene wrote: post #94
knuththetruth wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What bad actions? Uber disabled the safety systems included with the car that was involved in the incident. They relied solely on their own, half-baked tech when these systems could have saved the life of person who was killed: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-26/uber-disa...

I remain interested in why the lidar didn't work in this case and I hope more details emerge so we can learn what happened. But it seems logical that Uber would disable the onboard built-in volvo crash detection feature, it would be adding another variable for a car that is intended to test one thing at a time. Its hard to see this solely as the "uber is being reckless" narrative instead of "maybe this is just how al…

Why do you think the LIDAR did not work? The LIDAR might have worked just fine but what the system taking the output of the sensor did with the data is the question.

If you want to know what we would expect the LIDAR to have seen in such a situation we did a simple simulation of such a scene here [1]

If the LIDAR was defective the system processing the sensor output should detect that there is no data coming in and the problem should change the cars behavior accordingly not just drive on as if nothing is wrong.

[1] http://www.blensor.org/lidar_accident.html

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

#189

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

konschubert wrote: post #118
komali2 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually trust the waymo cars more than regular ones now when I'm on my bicycle or motorcycle. Granted they are absurdly "cautious drivers" and can be mildly annoying to be stuck behind in a car.

This is the thing that makes me most excited about autonomous vehicles.

Amen. One day they they'll write "Strangely, they killed per year with cars and did not even bat an eye."

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

#190

Post by icebraining »

shakna wrote: post #92
kosei wrote: post #82

> “Improving public safety has always been the emphasis of Arizona’s approach to autonomous vehicle testing, and my expectation is that public safety is also the top priority for all who operate this technology in the state of Arizona,” Mr. Ducey said in his letter. “The incident that took place on March 18 is an unquestionable failure to comply with this expectation.” This after the police claimed no fault.[1] Not q…

The investigation isn't complete, but Uber did disable the car's own safety features [0]. Both Volvo and Intel tested their software against the low-grade video that was released, and it was able to detect the impending accident and reduce the impact to where the pedestrian would likely have survived. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-26/uber-disa...

Uber did disable the car's own safety features

Well, of course they did. Can you imagine testing a self-driving system when another system is also controlling the car? What happens when they send contradictory commands? Race conditions are bad enough outside of actual cars!

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