121–130 of 1001 posts
It's a sad reality, but regardless of how many times per day a pedestrian is hit by a human-driven car, such incidents involving self-driving cars will be headline news for years to come.
FTA: "The Uber vehicle was reportedly driving early Monday when a woman walking outside of the crosswalk was struck. ... Tempe Police says the vehicle was in autonomous mode at the time of the crash and a vehicle operator was also behind the wheel." That's a very bad look; the whole point of self-driving cars is that they can react to unexpected circumstances much more quickly than a human operator, such as when some…
I have seen no evidence that any autonomous vehicle currently deployed can react faster than an alert and aware human. The commentariat tends to imagine that they can, and it's certainly plausible that they may eventually be. But I've never seen anyone official claim it, and the cars certainly don't drive as though they can quickly understand and respond to situations.
The argument I've always heard is that an autonomous systems will outperform humans mostly by being more vigilant (not getting distracted, sleepy, etc.) rather than using detectors with superhuman reaction times. Obviously, whether or not this outweighs the frequency of situations where the autonomous system gets confused when a human would not is an empirical question that will change as the tech improves.
FTA: "The Uber vehicle was reportedly driving early Monday when a woman walking outside of the crosswalk was struck. ... Tempe Police says the vehicle was in autonomous mode at the time of the crash and a vehicle operator was also behind the wheel." That's a very bad look; the whole point of self-driving cars is that they can react to unexpected circumstances much more quickly than a human operator, such as when some…
I imagine these vehicles (especially test vehicles) are also recording regular video and therefore getting a clear picture of what happened should be straight forward.
Perhaps there will be unexpected 'issues' meaning that such data will have been lost in this case.
Uber's self-driving program seems to be one of the most unethical, most poorly-run in the entire industry. There were plenty of reports before warning us of the questionable quality of their research: cars changing lanes suddenly, blowing red lights, and now one finally killed someone. Every prior incident should have been treated as a serious matter. Waymo et al has had none of these issues. Time to revoke their lic…
The video mentions she was on a bike and shows a mangled bicycle. Also the line markings on the street indicate there is a bike lane to the left of a right turn lane. Definitely very bad. https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4369934,-111.9429875,3a,75y,...
Not to be insensitive to the death. But, that bike lane design is just horrible. Are human drivers really known for respecting the "do not cross solid white line" rules? 9/10 drivers that realize at the last moment they need to turn right are going to quickly cross over this bike lane probably without much time to check their blind spot. If I was cycling on this path, I'd want to use the sidewalk and be extra cautiou…
However, I do need to mention that when you choose to bike on the sidewalk, you're creating the same type of problem that cars that ignore traffic rules create for bikes. There's a reason why biking on the sidewalk is illegal in most places, and why bike lanes/roads exist.
FTA: "The Uber vehicle was reportedly driving early Monday when a woman walking outside of the crosswalk was struck. ... Tempe Police says the vehicle was in autonomous mode at the time of the crash and a vehicle operator was also behind the wheel." That's a very bad look; the whole point of self-driving cars is that they can react to unexpected circumstances much more quickly than a human operator, such as when some…
> That's a very bad look; the whole point of self-driving cars is that they can react to unexpected circumstances much more quickly than a human operator, such as someone walking out into the road. Sounds like Uber's platform may not be up to that standard yet, which makes me wonder why they're on public roads. That's an invalid conclusion to draw from this accident. There were 34,439 fatal motor vehicle crashes in t…
I'm not sure I see anyone here making that conclusion. I think you're the only one who's brought it up.
For one, I personally sure as fuck do not think humans are ready to be driving.
> That's an invalid conclusion to draw from this accident.
The conclusion was not invalid at all. Other self-driving car companies have driven more miles than Uber has and they have done so safely. Uber has even taken its cars off the road, so even Uber agrees that their self-driving cars are not ready for the roads yet.
It is also important to take into account what Uber is like when it comes to safety and responsibility. They have knowingly hired convicted rapists for drivers, they have ridiculed and mocked and attempted to discredit their paying customers who have been raped by their employees/drivers, they have spied on journalists, they have completely disregarded human safety on numerous accounts. A company with a track record like Uber's probably not should be granted a license to experiment with technology like these self-driving cars on public roads.
They just aren't responsible enough.
Curious how the numbers work out of number of miles [1] to number of deaths of autonomous vs standard vehicles. I know the scale is different but since this is the first death I’m curious if the percents fall in line. [1] is distance the right metric?
Uber's self-driving program seems to be one of the most unethical, most poorly-run in the entire industry. There were plenty of reports before warning us of the questionable quality of their research: cars changing lanes suddenly, blowing red lights, and now one finally killed someone. Every prior incident should have been treated as a serious matter. Waymo et al has had none of these issues. Time to revoke their lic…
Their San Francisco testing program didn't even have a license to test because they didn't want to pay for a permit. https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/27/14698902/uber-self-drivin... Nothing to revoke if they never had a license to begin with!
Local governments have stopped other self-driving companies before with cease-and-desist letters with threats of serious punitive fines. I highly doubt by not buying a $150 license Uber would suddenly have carte-blanche to do what they want, that's not how it works.
If the state gov was really interested in stopping them they easily could have regardless.
The video mentions she was on a bike and shows a mangled bicycle. Also the line markings on the street indicate there is a bike lane to the left of a right turn lane. Definitely very bad. https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4369934,-111.9429875,3a,75y,...
That bike lane is just a shoulder with bicycle symbols painted in it and it looks terrifying.
The second ever [1] fatal car crash involving a self-driving car. This is the first one where a third party is killed. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/01/tesla-dri...
Tesla was not a self driving car, please stop confusing this. This case is in fact the first autonomous test vehicle caused fatality. There were at least several Tesla autopilot related fatalities and injuries, but I would seriously not put those into self driving bag.
"Tesla driver killed while using autopilot"
"The Tesla driver killed in the first known fatal crash involving a self-driving car"
"It's been nearly a year and a half since Joshua Brown became the first person to die in a car driving itself."
"Tesla bears some blame for self-driving crash death, feds say"