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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

#111

Post by SilasX »

blattimwind wrote: post #106
SilasX wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 int…

Vigilance control. But even these fail with more experienced users, similar to how alarm clocks fail some people (they wake up just enough to get up and turn the alarm off, then continue sleeping).

I was proposing it as a way to validate engagement by the testing teams, not the mass market.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#112

Post by ams6110 »

dahart wrote: post #101
Sangermaine wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the point is those laws aren't enforced the same way in different areas, even when they're the same. Jaywalking is illegal in NYC. Come here and see if anyone, cops included, cares. But other cities seem to care much more about that. It's not as simple as having the same laws, or having them enforced, because the underlying cultural attitudes are different. If you tried to crack down on jaywalking in NYC you'd be…

It doesn’t matter what the cultural attitudes are. All it takes to change it is a significant increase in fines, then people would, statistically speaking, break the law less often. We don’t have to convince the public to accept more enforcement, that’s not how traffic laws are made or enforced. What we have is a system of cultural attitudes that’s bad for us. People are dying all the time because of lax attitudes. W…

Sure. You be the politician who does that in NYC. And good luck on your next election. It's not going to happen.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#113

Post by flyingfences »

Symmetry wrote: post #89
Maybestring wrote: post #72

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. 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,…

That sounds much harder than just stopping if a pedestrian is on a trajectory to enter your lane. I mean, obviously it would be better to deduce their intentions and act according to that but I don't see any reason to say that that's necessary to have useful self driving cars.

A car that defaults to braking without any deduction beyond detection will never make it through an intersection, let alone a whole trip, in some parts of the world.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#114

Post by blattimwind »

SilasX wrote: post #111
blattimwind wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vigilance control. But even these fail with more experienced users, similar to how alarm clocks fail some people (they wake up just enough to get up and turn the alarm off, then continue sleeping).

I was proposing it as a way to validate engagement by the testing teams, not the mass market.

Like I said, these are especially hard to get right for frequent users, presumably your testing teams would log a lot of hours on these - just like train drivers, which have had this exact same problem.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#115

Post by uptown »

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-driving cars won't be programmed to practice. "We're following the rules on this one," she says."

https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/04/03/52...

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#116

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

ksenzee wrote: post #99
bryanlarsen wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very good argument but I don't think it will come to pass, for this reason: http://theoatmeal.com/pl/minor_differences/cutting_off There's something about driving that turns ordinary people into assholes. I've observed it in myself. Bus passengers are much more considerate, and I think that passengers in self-driving vehicles will behave like passengers, not like drivers. So if a pedestrian cuts them off the…

My theory is that people act like jerks behind the wheel, and come across as jerks even when they're not, because drivers have no way to apologize or ask please or do any other polite thing. All they can do is honk the horn, which is like yelling "HEY!!" If there were a communication mechanism for "excuse me, the light is green now" and "oops, so sorry, didn't see you there" driving would be easier and more pleasant.

Dangerous driving can result in damage, injury, or death. That is why people are so volatile behind the wheel. I don’t think there is any system of communication that can prevent or stop road rage. Dampen, maybe, but that’s about it.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#117

Post by mjevans »

volkl48 wrote: post #88
Johnny555 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The law as written and the law in practice, are different matters. NYC would not function with actual adherence to the law. There is never a break in pedestrians long enough for a car to turn in a fully legal fashion at most intersections, which is why human drivers wait for the largest mass of the built-up crowd to go and then inch their way through the stream of those just arriving at the intersection (with pedestr…

Imagine how much safer NYC would be if the cars and pedestrians were isolated. A dedicated car layer with an extra lane on each side (at current level) and a new pedestrian layer built above the cars with physical barriers preventing falling to the level beneath.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#118

Post by imnotadoctor999 »

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…

Thinking about it this way is interesting. It could be an issue with bias or unbalanced training data.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#119

Post by hughw »

aurailious wrote: post #66
GenerocUsername wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think "bahn" translates to "path". Autobahn doesn't connote "car train". (Disclaimer: 1 year of college German)

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#120

Post by [deleted] »

lhorie wrote: post #55
assblaster wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tempe police obtained the video from Uber, Uber could have easily altered it before handing it over. Uber has behaved badly in the past, and they had the motivation and past experience to do what it takes to advance their agenda. Remember, Uber terminated its autonomous driving testing as a result of this preventable tragedy.

> Tempe police obtained the video from Uber If by "from Uber", you mean they popped the SD card from the Uber-owner car's dashcam, sure. > Uber could have easily altered it before handing it over See my comment from the last time someone had suggested the idea of doctored videos: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16644663

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