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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

#291

Post by bowlich »

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…

I heard Phoenix took quite a big hits in the tech sector in 2008.

I live out in the boonies in Arizona, I would say at least if I go off of for recruiter spam, there's been an uptick in engineering positions related to the self driving car companies.

Whether those positions are actually real I don't know, never actually replied to them.

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

#292

Post by ducktoller »

michaelt wrote: post #186
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…

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 "t…

"It is widely known that it's extremely difficult for humans to remain vigilant when monitoring systems for rare events."

It may be difficult to remain vigilant, but it's not difficult to stay off of your phone while you're at the wheel.

There are signs all over the road and commercials on tv telling people that texting and driving kills. Being on your phone while you're driving is illegal for that reason.

Having a self-driving car on the road with a car operator is legal. There are many companies with self-driving cars on the road that have higher intervention rates than Uber.

We'll never know whether that woman would've been saved if the car operator wasn't on their phone. We do know that what the car operator did was illegal.

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

#293

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

tedsanders wrote: post #26
setra wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fatal accident at 50x the rate of a sober human driver with a study size where N = 1.

It's a reasonable gut feeling to not generalize from n=1, but the numerical evidence - with either a Bayesian or frequentist approach - is actually quite strong and statistically significant. Math here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16655081

That's not right. You're setting your expectation for N = 100m miles, then updating it for N = 3 million miles?

That's like saying: "I rolled this red d20 twenty times before I rolled a 1, whereas I rolled a 1 the first time on this blue d20, so the red d20 is obviously better and I'm rolling all my saves on it".

Or, I don't know- "I rolled three 1s on this d20 in twenty rolls so it's obviously not a fair d20".

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

#294

Post by simion314 »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #290
simion314 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are wrong, there is a conclusion we can make, the conclusion is not absolute but fuzzy so maybe fuzzy logic is not your thing. Also you have a mistake in your comment, I would still have to do 999990 km of driving. If I killed a person in my first 10 km what is the probability that I won't kill anyone in my next 999990? Your point is that I can't be 100% sure and that is true but we can compute the probability, s…

I misread the numbers in the original post. But what you say in your comment- well, that's not how it works. To assess the risk posed by a driver, you wouldn't follow them around, constantly logging the miles they drive, counting the deaths they cause and continuously updating the probability they will kill someone, at least not in the real world (in a simulation, maybe). Instead, what you'd do is wait for enough peo…

Do you have any math do back up that what I said is wrong? I can try to explain my point better but I see you are ignoring the math so maybe I should not waste my time.(we can reduce the problem to balls in a jar and make things easy)

But think about this, if I killed a person in my first 10 km of driving, what is the chance that will kill 0 after the next 999990, would you bet that I will kill 0 or 1 , more then 10?

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

#295

Post by stormthebeach »

ameister14 wrote: post #288
stormthebeach wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it peculiar that you would quote the police department saying the crash was "unavoidable" when I'm unable to find such distinct phrasing used in any news articles. The most damning phrasing is: "it’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode (autonomous or human-driven) based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway".

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2018/03/20/...

So I've read the article and watched the videos - I haven't seen any actual quotes where any spokesperson had said it was unavoidable outside of the headline and first paraphrased sentence. I only mentioned this initially because it seems like a sensationalized headline of a statement.

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

#296

Post by ceejayoz »

stormthebeach wrote: post #282
ceejayoz wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> from the video it seems quite obvious a human driver would have failed to see the woman in time even with full alertness The video is massively - and I'll wager intentionally - misleading. There's no chance the car was making decisions from a $20 dashcam. Here's what a better camera (looks like a smartphone camera) sees in the same spot (at about 33 seconds - you can see the signs, lights, and terrain match the Ube…

I've driven this area plenty of times, and something that is misleading about the YT video is that there are around two dozen cars driving around lighting that area up. I agree that the dashcam video makes it look very dark, but this video is on the other end of the spectrum and does not represent how dark that stretch gets when there isn't another car. The moment another car passes the driver to the left is where th…

The YouTube video has plenty of sections in less well-lit areas. For example: https://imgur.com/a/9L53u

No cars, a light only one one side, and you can still see much further than the Uber video makes it seem. If the Uber car's sensors can't get a better idea of its surroundings than a smartphone video, Uber's management should be liable for criminally negligent homicide for letting them out on the streets.

Plus, the Uber car itself has headlights.

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

#297

Post by Steeeve »

sokoloff wrote: post #236
Steeeve wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In California, that's a legal crosswalk and the pedestrian gets right of way. In Arizona, it is not. I'm not sure a pedestrian even gets the right of way in a marked cross walk at all times in Arizona. Different state, different culture, different laws. We had local PD actually pull a very similar sting operation that had people complaining recently. They had a police officer with a baby stroller cross at an unmarked…

Genuine question: what are the conditions to make a particular piece of pavement a legal crosswalk in California?

From the driver's handbook:

> Most crosswalks are located at corners, but they can also be located in the middle of the block.

> Pedestrians have the right-of- way in marked or unmarked crosswalks.

> Crosswalks are often marked with white lines. Yellow crosswalk lines may be painted at school crossings. Most often, crosswalks in residential areas are not marked.

Interesting that the legal definition points out right angle intersections specifically. I wonder if that can be overridden by local rules.

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

#298

Post by sokoloff »

Steeeve wrote: post #297
sokoloff wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: what are the conditions to make a particular piece of pavement a legal crosswalk in California?

From the driver's handbook: > Most crosswalks are located at corners, but they can also be located in the middle of the block. > Pedestrians have the right-of- way in marked or unmarked crosswalks. > Crosswalks are often marked with white lines. Yellow crosswalk lines may be painted at school crossings. Most often, crosswalks in residential areas are not marked. Interesting that the legal definition points out right…

So, that's not legally an unmarked crosswalk under California rules, then? (Streets are not meeting at approximately right angles and the local authorities have posted 'no pedestrians'.)

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

#299

Post by lern_too_spel »

test6554 wrote: post #264
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…

The decision to allow self-driving cars in Arizona is going to save far more lives than it will take. I firmly believe it was a massively good decision. but time will tell.

You've misunderstood my statement. California allows self-driving cars and has licensed 50 companies to test them in the state. California didn't allow Uber to operate on public roads because Uber didn't agree to the required oversight. Arizona allowed Uber to operate without reasonable oversight even after seeing videos of Uber autonomous cars running red lights. The result is that it took more lives than it saved, and that outcome was obvious to anybody paying attention.

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

#300

Post by ceejayoz »

Aspyre wrote: post #286
takeda wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From what has been released so far, this feels like a case where a human would have had a high likelihood of doing the same thing and would not have been at-fault in the collision. But self-driving cars have more sensors and, in theory, more capabilities to prevent something like this, and we absolutely should expect them to do better. The footage was artificially darkened, or it was extremely crappy dash cam or bo…

How would the footage be tampered when it was taken by the police directly from the dashcam itself at the scene? Also, there was no moon on that night and all of the video comparisons that have been put out are low-light cameras. They are not very realistic. Also, noone seems to think it's a possibility that the agencies responsible for the lighting in this area to have made improvements immediately after the inicide…

> all of the video comparisons that have been put out are low-light cameras

If a self-driving car can't see 50 feet at night, maybe they should buy some low-light cameras?

> Also, noone seems to think it's a possibility that the agencies responsible for the lighting in this area to have made improvements immediately after the inicident before the public speculation started.

None of this matters. (I also find it pretty unlikely - the lights shown in Uber's video look plenty close together already to safely light the road. Even on an unlit road, the car's own headlights should've revealed the pedestrian far sooner.)

A self-driving car should be able to see (via the car's headlights, infrared, LIDAR, etc.) a safe distance ahead of the car at all times. The car should detect the unsafe condition and refuse to continue - not mow down pedestrians.

If it can't cope with a moonless, unlit road, it should not be on that road.

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