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Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

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Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#171

Post by patrickdavey »

paulific wrote: post #152
panic wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! Every communication you try to make in a car can be interpreted as aggressiveness, which escalates anger on both sides. You need a way to de-escalate.

Yes, in Japan there is a custom of briefly tooting the horn to say thank you (for example when someone lets you in in front of them) and they still have problems when people have different ideas of what constitutes "too long".

Hah! I come from Ireland where the custom is also a brief flash of the emergency indicators to say "thanks". I then moved to New Zealand where they toot the horn to say thanks. I was most confused when I got tooted (rude in Ireland) for letting someone pass easily. I was like * buddy ;) then I realized what was going on, well, eventually anyway :)

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#172

Post by cimmanom »

lhorie wrote: post #103
TillE wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually the rest of that statement which shocks me a bit: > In the meantime, we have initiated a top-to-bottom safety review of our self-driving vehicles program, So they actually think they can continue to work on self-driving vehicles after this, and not scrap the program entirely. That's...not what I expected. No municipality in the country should allow Uber to test on their streets after they killed someone…

> No municipality in the country should allow Uber to test on their streets after they killed someone This is pitchfork mentality. Many industries have to deal with unintentional deaths. Car manufacturers sometimes have to deal with deaths resulting from hardware failure. Food companies sometimes have to deal with recalls due to food poisoning deaths. If the response to a death is to ban all further production work,…

Or a cynic could interpret that as "we've hired a crony of the people who will be judging us so he can lobby them to let us off easy".

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#173

Post by sparky_z »

hnrodey wrote: post #135
uptown wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NPR had a story about how self-driving cars in Pittsburgh wouldn't be adhering to the "Pittsburgh-left": "Even harder for autonomous cars to master are local quirks; things like "the Pittsburgh left." That's a custom unique to the city that allows the first driver trying to make a left turn to do so before oncoming cars pass through an intersection. It's one thing that Emily Duff Bartel says Uber's fleet of self-driv…

I'm from near Pittsburgh and I'd hardly call this a custom. It's just what you do when you're in a hurry and have pole-position in the turning lane...

Not sure what you mean. "Just what you do" when you're from a specific area is pretty much the textbook definition of a "custom".

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#175

Post by favorited »

hazardmat wrote: post #150
favorited wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn't that speed limits need to change, it's that it is incumbent upon the driver to slow down if environmental conditions prevent them from traveling safely at the speed limit.

What is that supposed to mean? You can't have 100% safety at any speed. If it really is incumbent upon the driver to always drive at night in such a way that no collision can occur at all, then why not change the speed limit? My whole point is that it's not the driver's responsibility to account for every possible scenario. It can't be.

It's not about accounting "for every possible scenario."

Arizona has a Basic Speed Law, which says "A person must drive at a speed that is reasonable and prudent under the existing conditions."

If the speed limit is 55 MPH, but conditions (rain, darkness, etc.) would prevent you from being able to safely stop in time to avoid a collision, then you are not allowed to drive at 55 MPH until conditions change.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#176

Post by chcknsammich »

megablast wrote: post #164
forgotmypw wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This custom is prevalent in places other than Pittsburgh. It can also get you a citation if a cop sees it.

As it should, what a ridiculous thing to do.

Says the person who has never seen the ridiculous thing that is single lane road deadlock.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#177

Post by jschwartzi »

s_m_t wrote: post #59
infogulch wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really speaks to other cues that we use while driving that are more complex that just the location and velocity of objects/people. In this case: attention and gaze. I sometimes do the "walk up to the lane and wait" thing, but I always look up and make eye contact with the driver to communicate that I know they exist and I'm not walking out in front of them. And when I'm driving and someone is walking up to my la…

I think body language might be more important, and seems to me should be harder to detect. Eye's are pretty easy to detect because of the contrast between the whites and iris, and, of course they reflect light. Detecting the difference between a hustle, a saunter, and a day dream might be a tad more difficult.

Gaze is actually more important when you're trying to figure out whether someone sees you. If I don't see your eyes, I would assume that you don't see me at all.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#178

Post by atomical »

Spare_account wrote: post #139
tlb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The video was from a cheap dashcam, not any of the sensors the car uses. The LIDAR would have seen it clearly. So would your eyes, which have wider dynamic range than any but the best cameras.

I recall noticing that the human driver of the car was not looking forwards immediately prior to the accident, which presumably makes him/her ultimately responsible for the accident?

If the breaks don't work because of an engineering defect who is responsible? In this case it's the LIDAR that failed.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#180

Post by setr »

uptown wrote: post #115
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…

NPR had a story about how self-driving cars in Pittsburgh wouldn't be adhering to the "Pittsburgh-left": "Even harder for autonomous cars to master are local quirks; things like "the Pittsburgh left." That's a custom unique to the city that allows the first driver trying to make a left turn to do so before oncoming cars pass through an intersection. It's one thing that Emily Duff Bartel says Uber's fleet of self-driv…

I've seen this often in southern california and chicago, the only two cities I've driven heavily; and despite having no interaction with Pittsburgh, I do it myself all the time...

I can't imagine how this is a Pittsburgh quirk; its the obvious thing to do when the option is available

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