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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

#211

Post by pmyteh »

amelius wrote: post #172
ducktoller wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fully autonomous car is different, too. The person at the wheel when that woman was killed was responsible for stepping on the brakes if necessary. And when I have cruise control on, I'm also responsible for stepping on the brakes if necessary.

Yeah, but with cruise control, at least having your hands on the wheel forces you to pay attention. Really, I think Uber should have used tech to make sure the driver is alert. And test whether the driver can stay alert in a simulator. It's too easy to blame the driver.

It's even worse than that, sadly. The tech is called 'driver vigilance devices' and are common on the railways. Although they're better than nothing, it turns out that real drivers end up operating the device automatically, even if they're not alert. It may simply not be possible to engineer your way around.

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

#212

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

simion314 wrote: post #205
agildehaus wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is not 1 data pint though, say you shot at a target 100 times and hit only 1 time , is this 1 data point only and I can't make any conclusion? Similar if you drive 1 million km and kill 1 person, if I drive 10 km and kill 1 person is still 1 data point and I can make no conclusion? I think it would have been 1 data point if this was the first km a Uber self driving car has driven.

>> Similar if you drive 1 million km and kill 1 person, if I drive 10 km and kill 1 person is still 1 data point and I can make no conclusion?

Yep. Because I still have another 9 m km to go before I've driven as long as you have and there is no way to know whether I'm going to kill another 9 people, or 0 more, until I've actually driven them all.

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

#213

Post by mtgx »

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.

Well, do these comments sound like "hustling" to you or more like "move fast and kill things"?

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17144090/uber-car-acciden...

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

#214

Post by LogicalBorg »

tallanvor wrote: post #191
LogicalBorg wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's incorrect to say that the woman was looking at her phone. She was looking down and to the right of the steering wheel, which is where Uber places a monitoring tablet (an iPad) in their self-driving vehicles (where the radio is). Here's an article that shows the sort of thing she would be looking at, an animation of road conditions: http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-driverless-car-interior-... If you ac…

The tablet in that article is in the back seat, not up front, and the photos they show of the driver area doesn't suggest any screens that would require the driver to be looking down like the person was doing in the video. I know that when I was taught to drive we were told to continually scan ahead of us, our side mirrors, and the rear view mirror and basically only take our eyes off the road to check our speed. --T…

There are tablets in the front and back (https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Front-_-...).

You were taught to drive manually, not in an Uber self-driving car.

If you can find a video of an Uber driving who is driving as they were instructed to do, they would look exactly like her.

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

#215

Post by mtgx »

jMyles wrote: post #160
johngalt wrote: post #81

Several comments here making comparisons to human drivers. As if autonomous cars are ok so long as they are at or below parity with humans. This is statistically true but a complete misunderstanding of human nature. Human risk tolerance varies drastically depending on control/participation. What is the acceptable casualty rate of elevators?

> Several comments here making comparisons On one hand, you are (reasonably) calling out comments for questionable comparisons, but on the other hand... > What is the acceptable casualty rate of elevators? ...you've made one of your own. I haven't yet formed an opinion on the underlying question (of what kind of risk aversion is appropriate in the face of automation), but I do notice that it evokes questionable compa…

His point was that machines should be held at much higher standards than humans.

This is a point I'e been making since the beginning myself. If you want self-driving cars to be accepted, they need to be at least 10x better than the best human drivers. Comments such as "self-driving cars only need to be 50% better than humans on average" are absolute nonsense. Humans will never go for that.

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

#216

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

dahart wrote: post #83
sokoloff wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might surprise you that we were testing (selectively) autonomous cars on the autobahn in Germany in 1991 as part of the Prometheus project. Our tech was nowhere near as good as what's available now and so we compensated by having attentive drivers hovering over the E-stop button. I don't think that stopping testing over a single crash is warranted. Maybe suspend it for a short time while you look into it, but if w…

> if we stopped medicine every time a patient died in a trial, society would be worse off. What on earth do you mean? Clinical trials are stopped all the time when people have adverse reactions & die. And people who die in clinical medical trials are volunteers , consciously aware of their participation, and having signed a waiver. In the U.S., medications may not be sold or administered to the public before being ap…

Also- a clinical trial (usually) can't get out on the streets and run someone over if it doesn't work as expected.

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

#217

Post by shakna »

icebraining wrote: post #190
shakna wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

They disabled a system we know works, for one that failed. No redundancy. If that is the case, then Uber can absolutely be held accountable for not taking enough safety precautions.

These aren't just test cars. Uber and Volvo's deal was around Uber selling 'enhanced' XC90s. Why not design around the product you purchased?

> Can you imagine testing a self-driving system when another system is also controlling the car?

You mean external forces such as a driver? Which is expected and required at this point?

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

#218

Post by bryanlarsen »

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…

Even if the driver and the woman crossing the street were both to blame, it doesn't mean that Uber was any less to blame. Accidents in critical situations are typically multi-system failures, and every failure needs to be addressed.

There are four entities who could have and should have relatively straightforwardly avoided this death.

1. The woman shouldn't have crossed the street there and then.

2. The safety driver shouldn't have been looking at her phone (if that's indeed what she was doing).

3. Uber's automation should have caused the vehicle to brake much sooner.

4. That street should have been designed much safer. The design of a lit crosswalk on the median encourages people to cross there, so much stronger discouragement is required. Furthermore, a 35mph limit in an area with pedestrians is going to regularly cause pedestrian fatalities. That's a trade-off most people seem willing to make, but if you make that trade-off you have to own it. If the speed limit was 20mph that woman would be alive today.

As far as I can see it, all 4 entities are 100% responsible for the death of the pedestrian.

None of those 4 entities passed the "reasonable person" test with their actions, therefore all 4 are fully responsible.

Sure you can argue all you want on whether one entity's misbehaviour is more egregious than the others. It doesn't matter; all 4 engaged in behaviour that regularly kills people at a rate much higher than acceptable.

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

#219

Post by phyller »

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…

This is not about legal or illegal. If the Uber program is unable to detect a large object like that in the middle of the road using lasers, they shouldn't be driving on public roads at lethal speeds. That's all there is to it. If autonomous cars mean that whenever a little kid runs out into the street after a ball and they aren't on a crosswalk, they get run down, or the cars smash full speed into any obstructions in the road, then I don't think they are ready for public testing, though I strongly suspect this is an Uber specific problem.

And not only are they apparently incapable of handling the most basic emergency you can think of, but they are trying to spin it like it's not their fault instead of immediately identifying what went wrong. This makes it appear that not only are they incapable but untrustworthy too. These are dangerous machines going down public roads, they have at least as much responsility as the rest of us to not hit people with their cars. And I don't get to hit people with my car just because they are Jay walking, it's night, and I'm not paying attention. Half the people in NYC would be dead already. The autonomous car can't see what is ahead well enough to avoid a potential collision? Just like a human driver, it should slow down. Otherwise these things should still be getting refined on a private course.

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

#220

Post by fastball »

mtgx wrote: post #215
jMyles wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Several comments here making comparisons On one hand, you are (reasonably) calling out comments for questionable comparisons, but on the other hand... > What is the acceptable casualty rate of elevators? ...you've made one of your own. I haven't yet formed an opinion on the underlying question (of what kind of risk aversion is appropriate in the face of automation), but I do notice that it evokes questionable compa…

His point was that machines should be held at much higher standards than humans. This is a point I'e been making since the beginning myself. If you want self-driving cars to be accepted, they need to be at least 10x better than the best human drivers . Comments such as "self-driving cars only need to be 50% better than humans on average " are absolute nonsense. Humans will never go for that.

I don't think the risk of death from walking up the stairs is very high... so I'm assuming elevators are about equivalent, because people have definitely died in elevators.
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