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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

#231

Post by hazardmat »

anonymouz wrote: post #183
hazardmat wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Um, do you have a driver's license? Nobody said anything about 100% safety in some provable way. But certainly it is very much the driver's responsibility to pick a safe speed. Driver's Ed (at least in most? EU countries) teaches that the posted speed limit is just that, the maximum legally allowed speed. As a driver you -- and nobody else -- are responsible for picking a safe speed depending on the environmental con…

What is that supposed to mean? What's prudent and what is safe?

The reality is that driving at night isn't safe at all and that people often can't avoid collision from an obstacle suddenly appearing at night.

Maybe if they drove at 15MPH at all times, it would be possible in 99% of cases, but in practice we don't expect that.

Hence, we have collisions. Not because the drivers are always guilty of recklessness, but because driving at night has a risk to it. That's the point.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#232

Post by munk-a »

marnett wrote: post #78
splouk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

if this happens i will surely protest self-driving cars. cities should be built for pedestrians, not cars.

They already aren't built for pedestrians in most of the world. I'd be happy just removing the chance that I get killed by a car because the driver wasn't feeling good that day.

That said... I think passengers in self-driving cars will learn to be more patient and we can allow self-driving cars to yield to pedestrians more often.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#233

Post by stillsut »

The exact circumstances of the struck pedestrian likely violated many [possibly curde] bayesian priors for what to consider a positive collision threat: A rogue pedestrian at an unflagged portion of road, at an odd time of night, on a road that doesn't usually have pedestrians, with a bike moving perpendicular across the road (instead of parallel along it). Each one of these had been learned to be a high false positive to true negative ratio.

The product of these rarely encountered events (even independently) allowed a higher level algorithm to "score" the approaching unverified object through bayesian inference, below the level of a reasonable expectation of human collision.

In a way, this system should never be expected to become overly reckless or feckless as compared with even top human drivers in the long run: close calls of this nature should be input to the system (perhaps deliberately through staged QA?) and added to the model of collision threat identification.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#234

Post by dmix »

stillsut wrote: post #233

The exact circumstances of the struck pedestrian likely violated many [possibly curde] bayesian priors for what to consider a positive collision threat: A rogue pedestrian at an unflagged portion of road, at an odd time of night, on a road that doesn't usually have pedestrians, with a bike moving perpendicular across the road (instead of parallel along it). Each one of these had been learned to be a high false positi…

That is the classic self-driving tradeoffs question, no?

I believe rather than absolutes, the solution is her is properly identifying a serious crash causing injury was missed. Regardless if it was ID'd as human, it was still someone pushing a shopping cart full of bags across a highway intersection that could have been detected. Even if it wasn't human, and totally dangerous and improper crossing at night time on a busy highway, it should have stopped even for the drivers own safety.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#235

Post by justicezyx »

stillsut wrote: post #233

The exact circumstances of the struck pedestrian likely violated many [possibly curde] bayesian priors for what to consider a positive collision threat: A rogue pedestrian at an unflagged portion of road, at an odd time of night, on a road that doesn't usually have pedestrians, with a bike moving perpendicular across the road (instead of parallel along it). Each one of these had been learned to be a high false positi…

I am rather confused:

Should the car always respond by slow down as the mandatary response when there is object in front?

Are you implying that the algorithm would conclude that because it's unlikely that there is an object in that circumstance, it is ok to disapprove its own observation that there is some thing in front of the car? That sounds utterly nonsensical.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#236

Post by oldgradstudent »

lhorie wrote: post #188
cimmanom wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Said cynic sounds pitchforky. Even HIPAA tries to work with non-compliant companies to get them compliant before resorting to dishing out their notoriously expensive fines. At the end of the day, the NTSB isn't in the game of shutting down companies. NTSB would much rather see that self-driving vehicle development is happening safely since the matter of the fact is that it _is_ happening, despite all of its imperfect…

Hiring a former NTSB chair while there's an active NTSB investigations sounds a lot like a revolving door to me.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#237

Post by WillPostForFood »

vkou wrote: post #210
matte_black wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this the same as pulling straight into the middle of the intersection with live traffic swirling around you on both sides then making the left after the lights have reddened and traffic has cleared?

No, what you're describing sounds a hell of a lot safer. (It's also how people make left turns in Vancouver. The fact that it's illegal in Seattle infuriates me to no end.) The Pittsburgh left sounds like a recipe to get T-boned by an inattentive driver. Pulling into the intersection, and making a left turn when it is safe is a much better alternative.

It is legal to pull into the intersection on green or yellow, and wait until it is clear (often when the light turns red) to turn left in Seattle. It is the correct/legal way to make a left turn. Otherwise you are just going to sit there blocking traffic for multiple cycles during busy times.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#238

Post by ubernostrum »

stillsut wrote: post #233

The exact circumstances of the struck pedestrian likely violated many [possibly curde] bayesian priors for what to consider a positive collision threat: A rogue pedestrian at an unflagged portion of road, at an odd time of night, on a road that doesn't usually have pedestrians, with a bike moving perpendicular across the road (instead of parallel along it). Each one of these had been learned to be a high false positi…

In many of the cities where Uber would like to deploy self-driving cars, a "rogue pedestrian" crossing where there is no marked crosswalk would be at least a multiple-times-per-day event. Any system trained to treat that as an ultra-rare anomaly would be a killing machine if unleashed in such a city.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#239

Post by ubernostrum »

seattle_spring wrote: post #221
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…

Pretty sure that's just an asshole thing, not a "local quirk." It's like saying not using your turn signal is a funny quirk of BMW drivers, or going 55 in a 70 in the left lane in a Prius.

This type of left turn is less an "asshole thing" and more a "drivers compensating for poor design" thing.

Typically, the "Pittsburgh left" is used in places where there should be a protected left turn as part of the signal cycle, but there isn't, and at times of high traffic flow it's the only way for any traffic to complete the turn (since waiting for oncoming traffic to clear on a green essentially means waiting until the multi-hour-long period of high traffic is over).

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#240

Post by lttlrck »

patrickdavey wrote: post #171
paulific wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Ha. In Boston I used to get frustrated at oncoming drivers flashing their lights at me. What was I doing wrong? Are my headlights misaligned? Is something falling off? Do I know you? Eventually I worked it out: they were warning me of a police cruiser ahead.

In a state known for Massholes it’s surprisingly unjerkish.

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