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

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#311

Post by rickycook » Tue, May 08, 2018, 5:39 AM UTC

Zenbit_UX wrote: post #161

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…

Your examples are absurd. Would you program a car to assume that all New Yorkers won't Jay walk? How about all people in Tempe will rush into the streets? Cultural context definetly matters, but for none of the reasons you've mentioned. Writing specific use cases is insane for more reasons than I should have to point out to you. What if someone from tempe is on vacation in NY, should they be in danger because they fo…

it’s really a question of probabilities more than anything. chances that a pedestrian walking into the middle of the road will continue and walk in front of the car differ depending on if you’re in NY or Tempe

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#312

Post by lhorie » Tue, May 08, 2018, 5:39 AM UTC

romwell wrote: post #300

lhorie wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it would be very much in Uber's interest to have a super dark video Why? As soon as the video came out, the first thing people (correctly) pointed out was that the dynamic range of the dashcam was crap. Besides, everyone knows that self-driving cars are essentially giant self-telemetry collection machines, so one would have to be either extremely short-sighted or incredibly stupid to think they would be able to get…

>It's much more plausible that the dashcam dynamic range was in fact crap and that the police officers at the scene were smart enough to figure out to just pop off the SD card off the dashcam. ..and Uber's lawyers figured that most people have no idea what "dynamic range" is and will eat up "it was dark" as a legitimate excuse for this manslaughter. There likely was no need to manipulate that video. It was still quit…

> Most people don't really know better.

Well, if this thread is any indication, people seem to always be confusing the roles and actions of lawyers, PR and the police to fit some bizarre conspiracy theory. The fact is that the dashcam video was released by police, and Uber admitted to being at fault with this latest statement. I honestly don't get why you're talking about lawyers now.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#313

Post by oldgradstudent » Tue, May 08, 2018, 5:48 AM UTC

lhorie wrote: post #294

oldgradstudent wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may have abused the 'revolving door' term a bit, but I think you are missing the point of hiring former regulators. You are not hiring them for their bio, achievements or abilities. You are hiring them to signal existing and future regulators that being nice to you can be highly profitable.

You keep saying Uber hired him, but where did you read that? The statement in the article said "we have brought on former NTSB Chair Christopher Hart to advise us". Given how high profile Hart is, and given the focus of his career, I understood that to mean that he agreed to review safety practices and make safety policy recommendations, a topic in which he's an expert on. Unlike wording like "joining to lead a safet…

I don't see any other way to interpret their statement:

> Uber, which suspended testing of autonomous vehicles after the accident, on Monday said it was looking at its self-driving program and said it retained Christopher Hart, a former chairman of the NTSB, to advise it on safety.

> “We have initiated a top-to-bottom safety review of our self-driving vehicles program, and we have brought on former NTSB Chair Christopher Hart to advise us on our overall safety culture,” Uber said. “Our review is looking at everything from the safety of our system to our training processes for vehicle operators, and we hope to have more to say soon.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-selfdriving/uber-hir...

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#314

Post by lhorie » Tue, May 08, 2018, 5:50 AM UTC

telchar wrote: post #292

lhorie wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC someone had said that there are physical limitations to what one can actually do (namely, having to physically unplug the connector for one safety system in order to be able to add your own at all)

Sure, if you want to move fast and disrupt yada yada. They shouldn't be putting hack-job self-driving cars on public roads. Either do some engineering so that they keep the backup system in place or keep it on a test track. This is Chernobyl-like irresponsibility.

Are you an engineer or at least familiar with vehicle engineering? Do you know for a fact that Waymo/others don't disable built-in safety mechanisms in similar fashion? If not, perhaps it may be best to not pass armchair judgment...

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#315

Post by Rapzid » Tue, May 08, 2018, 6:03 AM UTC

telchar wrote: post #296

ajross wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still the biker's "fault" in some sense. That same video would have 100% exonerated a human driver. There's no way that was a safe crossing. The fact that there was a clear automation fault also doesn't change the fact that traffic safety is everyone's job, including but not exclusively the computers.

You mean the video that showed the safety driver staring at a cell phone for 6 full seconds right up until nearly the moment of impact? Maybe that would have exonerated the driver, but only to prove how perverse our driving laws are. But in my state the driver would have been convicted.

Do we know what she was looking at? I haven't read anything conclusive of that.

What would the driver have been convicted of? Would you be willing to get second opinions from prosecutors in your state as to whether or not they would have persued a conviction of that crime?

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#316

Post by davidgould » Tue, May 08, 2018, 6:07 AM UTC

hazardmat wrote: post #229

jacquesm wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First of all, in this scenario, the woman would have at least shared some of the blame. Possibly. But a distracted driver is definitely at fault, no matter what. Driving is a full time occupation. > Second of all, what are the odds that a human who just killed a woman would admit even to themselves that they were the one to blame in such an accident? Pretty good. Most people are honest, even in a bad situation. > P…

>> Possibly. But a distracted driver is definitely at fault, no matter what. Both parties are at fault, I'm not denying that. That's not the point. >> Pretty good. Most people are honest, even in a bad situation. What gives you that idea? People are dishonest all the time, especially to themselves. It's a basic coping strategy. >> Well, you probably have your reasons for writing this under a novelty account. Yes, it'…

> That's cute and all, it's just not how human psychology works. There are endless examples of this, from the pettiest thieves to the biggest mass murderers.

This argument fails on both moral and statistical grounds: most people are not petty thieves or mass murderers nor should we accept that "getting away with it" is an acceptable basis for human behavior.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#317

Post by sharonzhou » Tue, May 08, 2018, 6:09 AM UTC

fjsolwmv wrote: post #212

blahedo wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not unique to Pittsburgh (also prevalent in Rhode Island, among other places), but more importantly, letting the first car turn left first is useful to keeping traffic flowing on narrow roads—which, in the areas that use this tactic, rely on it. So, not following local customs is a good way to snarl traffic (since the oncoming traffic will be waiting for the car to take its turn).

Obviously if the law is wrong it should be changed. Then the question becomes, can a car be programmed to follow the more complex law.

I think it's less about complexity and more about precision. A simple law can be extremely difficult to encode if it lacks specification.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#318

Post by lhorie » Tue, May 08, 2018, 6:09 AM UTC

oldgradstudent wrote: post #313

lhorie wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep saying Uber hired him, but where did you read that? The statement in the article said "we have brought on former NTSB Chair Christopher Hart to advise us". Given how high profile Hart is, and given the focus of his career, I understood that to mean that he agreed to review safety practices and make safety policy recommendations, a topic in which he's an expert on. Unlike wording like "joining to lead a safet…

I don't see any other way to interpret their statement: > Uber, which suspended testing of autonomous vehicles after the accident, on Monday said it was looking at its self-driving program and said it retained Christopher Hart, a former chairman of the NTSB, to advise it on safety. > “We have initiated a top-to-bottom safety review of our self-driving vehicles program, and we have brought on former NTSB Chair Christo…

> said it retained Christopher Hart

Ah I see, you're talking about "hiring" as in paying a retainer fee. I thought you were saying he was hired as a full time employee, my apologies.

Assuming Reuters' wording is accurate, that actually seems fairly reasonable and in line with how I understood it.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#319

Post by Noumenon72 » Tue, May 08, 2018, 6:31 AM UTC

systoll wrote: post #278

blahedo wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not unique to Pittsburgh (also prevalent in Rhode Island, among other places), but more importantly, letting the first car turn left first is useful to keeping traffic flowing on narrow roads—which, in the areas that use this tactic, rely on it. So, not following local customs is a good way to snarl traffic (since the oncoming traffic will be waiting for the car to take its turn).

Not that I'd recommend doing it in an area not used to it... but that sounds like a riskier alternative to a hook turn. With hook turns, If you want to turn right, you start in the leftmost lane. When your light goes green, you 'hook' around to put yourself in front of the cars to your [initial] left. From there, the road you want to enter is straight ahead. This way, no-one cuts across lanes where traffic has a gree…

This makes no sense to me even after assuming you are from a country that drives on the left and reading the Wikipedia page.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#320

Post by isostatic » Tue, May 08, 2018, 6:45 AM UTC

Maybestring wrote: post #72

Symmetry wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're overselling the extent of the difficulty here. People from out of state usually manage to get through New York, pedestrians and all, without getting into an accident. A car won't get through a block as quickly as it could if it merely obeys the laws makes sure it doesn't run into anybody. I'm sure this will cause great joy among people crossing the street and consternation among other drivers but the p…

>I think you're overselling the extent of the difficulty here. People from out of state usually manage to get through New York, pedestrians and all, without getting into an accident. At this point, "it's easy for a person to do it" is probably better evidence that it's a hard problem in AI. In this case, I believe it's an inverse learning problem. We observe other agents acting in an environment, deduce their policy,…

> We observe other agents acting in an environment, deduce their policy, then implement that policy ourselves.

This is essential, especially internationally. If you're an American you think it's perfect normal to be allowed to turn right even when the traffic light is red. You don't get told not to do that when you hire a car in Italy. Now an automatic car can be programmed with different rules depending on which country it's in, but even in the same country, you wouldn't enter a box junction when the exit isn't clear, at least in most places. Turn up in rush hour London and you find there's no way to actually get through the junction unless you do that, because others fill the junction so when your light is on green, the exit isn't clear.

I remember pulling upto a red light late an night. Empty road, but the red light only goes green when it detects a car. It didn't. What would a fully automatic car do in that case?