Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck • Hacker News Board

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#61

Post by chris11 » Mon, May 07, 2018, 7:02 PM UTC

freditup wrote: post #18

I'm curious what degree of "cultural context" is built into automated cars - I feel that there has to be a lot of locale-specific techniques for driving. For example, in NYC, there's nothing at all uncommon about a pedestrian beginning to cross the street in front of you and approaching the area of your lane where you will shortly be. Pedestrians typically then stop about a foot away from your lane, let you drive pas…

I think that cultural context definitely influences driving safely. And that's going to be a very hard problem for companies to solve. But I think it's solvable, and part of the solution may be to change how people interact with streets. The introduction of the car caused a lot of problems in cities. People didn't know how to safely drive them, pedestrians didn't know how to deal with drivers, regulation was poor to non-existent, and city infrastructure couldn't handle large numbers of cars. But those problems eventually got fixed.https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan-histor...

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#62

Post by wilburTheDog » Mon, May 07, 2018, 7:03 PM UTC

If I understand it right, this is the biggest blind spot of all the automated driving systems. The software just ignores stationary objects because the sensors don't have the resolution to determine whether they are in front of the car or on the side of the road. And if it didn't ignore stationary objects the car would come to a halt at every garbage can, mailbox, and bush along the road. Until they can work lidar into the system this will not be preventable. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the vast majority of accidents that were the fault of the self-driving car happened because it hit something stationary in the road (or off to the side of the road, in one case I recall).

Since I've learned about this blind spot in these system I no longer trust them. I think everyone with a self-driving car should understand this. But maybe it's not in the interest of the manufacturer to explain it, or people would demand they fix the problem, which they cannot do just yet.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#63

Post by chris11 » Mon, May 07, 2018, 7:04 PM UTC

frankharv wrote: post #60

rockostrich wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is already happening in the trucking industry. Self-driving trucks are being developed to be able to drive 99% of the trip that's on highways and then human drivers take over for the local 1%. To make it easier, transfer hubs are being built near cities off major highways to make everything easier and non-disruptive. The same thing could be done with cars without the need for the transfer hubs and it basically i…

I can't beleive they would do a trail run with an automous truck weighing 80,000lbs barreling down the freeway. This revolution should have started with mundane tasks, such as city street sweepers and perhaps garbage trucks. Vehicles that move slow on a predefined path in the night. Then advance to faster moving objects like taxis. Just like the DARPA Grand Challenge that started this mess. Many of those vehicles wer…

> This revolution should have started with mundane tasks, such as city street sweepers and perhaps garbage trucks.

Honestly I would think that automating a slow moving vehicle in the city would be a much harder engineering challenge. City driving can be a lot messier than driving on the freeway.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#64

Post by vinay427 » Mon, May 07, 2018, 7:04 PM UTC

splouk wrote: post #38

joncrane wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And welcome to why self-driving cars will always be 3 years away. It's also possible that human/pedestrian behavior will adapt to the consistent behavior of driverless cars.

Or jaywalking will become more strictly enforced with policing or physical barriers. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/4/2/automated-vehic...

We do it for many pedestrian crossings across railroad tracks, so it's not unprecedented, but obviously on a different scale.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#65

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 07, 2018, 7:04 PM UTC

carlosdp wrote: post #27

leggomylibro wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as Uber's system logged which automatic brake was triggered - or simply failed to log that its own braking system stepped in - it could have saved a life without impacting the data gathered. They didn't put a tarp over the windshield; why get rid of other proven safety features?

You don't generally want multiple autonomous control systems in a single vehicle competing with each other for control. There are scenarios where the less-sophisticated collision avoidance radar could do the unsafe thing where the self-driving system has a more holistic plan. Basically, there's no reason the self-driving tech shouldn't have been way more effective than the collision avoidance radar other than Uber ro…

[deleted]

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#66

Post by aurailious » Mon, May 07, 2018, 7:05 PM UTC

GenerocUsername wrote: post #22

freditup wrote: post #18

I'm curious what degree of "cultural context" is built into automated cars - I feel that there has to be a lot of locale-specific techniques for driving. For example, in NYC, there's nothing at all uncommon about a pedestrian beginning to cross the street in front of you and approaching the area of your lane where you will shortly be. Pedestrians typically then stop about a foot away from your lane, let you drive pas…

And welcome to why self-driving cars will always be 3 years away. I think we should be targeting self driving for long-haul freeway scenarios where the rules are relatively simple and predictable. Trying to control for the infinite number of scenarios in cities is a nightmare which will ultimately bog down the development of any company which makes that its goal.

Essentially make the freeways "car trains" as the autobahn implies. Eventually over time you add automation to other kinds of roads.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#67

Post by Animats » Mon, May 07, 2018, 7:10 PM UTC

I'm looking forward to seeing the full NTSB report.

This hints that Uber's mindset is focused on "obstacles", not "flat road". The first job of automated driving is to drive only on flat surfaces. Doesn't matter why it's not flat. Then you worry about where to go. That's how the off-road DARPA Grand Challenge vehicles had to work. "Flat road" is a pure geometry thing. Not much AI needed.

On road, non-flat road is rare, and you don't have to worry much about going off cliffs, rocks in the road, and such. So it's tempting to focus on "obstacles" to be tallied and classified. Tesla definitely has an "obstacle" focus, and a limited class of obstacles considered. Waymo profiles the ground. Looks like Uber had the "obstacle" focus.

If you have a "flat road" detection system, things the obstacle detector doesn't understand get stopped for or bypassed. So the vehicle isn't vulnerable to this flaw. There's a higher false alarm rate, though. And a non false alarm problem. A piece of trash on the road is likely to result in a slowdown and careful avoidance, not a bump as the car rolls over it. Still, better to take the safe approach unless you're on a freeway and the cars ahead of you just got past the obstacle successfully.

The Udacity self driving car "nanodegree" trains people to build obstacle detectors and classifiers. That may be a problem.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#68

Post by Johnny555 » Mon, May 07, 2018, 7:11 PM UTC

freditup wrote: post #18

I'm curious what degree of "cultural context" is built into automated cars - I feel that there has to be a lot of locale-specific techniques for driving. For example, in NYC, there's nothing at all uncommon about a pedestrian beginning to cross the street in front of you and approaching the area of your lane where you will shortly be. Pedestrians typically then stop about a foot away from your lane, let you drive pas…

I think legally, the car has to stop for an approaching pedestrian if it's physically able to stop, so if the pedestrian doesn't "stop about a foot away from your lane" as expected, you don't run into him.

Though I don't know the NYC traffic code. In California, I believe 21950 paragraph C applies... the pedestrian that stops just before walking into the path of the car might be violating paragraph B since the driver may reasonably expect the pedestrian to continue walking.

(b) This section does not relieve a pedestrian from the duty of using due care for his or her safety. No pedestrian may suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a vehicle that is so close as to constitute an immediate hazard. No pedestrian may unnecessarily stop or delay traffic while in a marked or unmarked crosswalk.

(c) The driver of a vehicle approaching a pedestrian within any marked or unmarked crosswalk shall exercise all due care and shall reduce the speed of the vehicle or take any other action relating to the operation of the vehicle as necessary to safeguard the safety of the pedestrian.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#69

Post by SilasX » Mon, May 07, 2018, 7:12 PM UTC

blattimwind wrote: post #58

SilasX wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's some room for improvement though. Instead of "just one human in there", they could put them out in teams of two, and have periodic "awareness checks" that you have to respond to by pressing a driving-irrelevant button.

Dead-man switches do not work.

Don't work for what purpose, according to whom? Are you sure that applies here?

What I suggested there isn't really a deadman's switch ("stop if no one is around to do task x"), but something to periodically, randomly check the driver's attentiveness, and can raise a red flag if they take too long to respond.

A deadman's switch is different and enforces "do X if person Y stops doing this thing at this predictable interval" -- not what I was proposing.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#70

Post by hcknwscommenter » Mon, May 07, 2018, 7:13 PM UTC

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #54

assblaster wrote: post #7

The question I want to know is: Did Uber doctor the camera video to make the road seem darker than it actually was? If you recall, there was initially a doubt that Uber was at fault because the streets appeared extremely dark, but I think they were buying time to delay the outage at incompetent Uber. The police initially didn't fault Uber based on this video.

The cameras used in applications like these are not like your typical 24-bit RGB cameras in phones or webcams that need gain adjustment: their sensors support a very high range of brightness values (like "high dynamic range") - but the video released to the public and the media would be MPEG/H.26x/etc which do not support HDR - or at least most video players wouldn't. The police probably lacked the expertise to know…

The video was not from a "high dynamic range" sensor, regardless of whether the car actually had one installed. I believe it did have such a "high dynamic range" sensor, which shows the blatant disregard for the truth that Uber is showing here by releasing such misleading video.