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Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

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Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#191

Post by tallanvor »

LogicalBorg wrote: post #180
ducktoller wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a person at the wheel. That person wasn't paying full attention to the road. From the video of the crash, it looks like the woman at the wheel was looking at their phone. Why is no one acknowledging that this woman was responsible for taking over the wheel if necessary for any reason. When I have cruise control on, I take my feet off of the pedals and rest them on the floor. But if, say, a homeless person w…

I think it's incorrect to say that the woman was looking at her phone. She was looking down and to the right of the steering wheel, which is where Uber places a monitoring tablet (an iPad) in their self-driving vehicles (where the radio is). Here's an article that shows the sort of thing she would be looking at, an animation of road conditions: http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-driverless-car-interior-... If you ac…

The tablet in that article is in the back seat, not up front, and the photos they show of the driver area doesn't suggest any screens that would require the driver to be looking down like the person was doing in the video.

I know that when I was taught to drive we were told to continually scan ahead of us, our side mirrors, and the rear view mirror and basically only take our eyes off the road to check our speed. --This is definitely NOT what the individual in the driver's seat was doing.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#192

Post by rimliu »

kayoone wrote: post #106
peterept wrote: post #100

I don't know much about the logic used in self-driving cars - but I do wonder how they will handle roundabouts. We have a lot of them here (Australia) and you have to give way to a car that is approaching or entering the roundabout on your right - which often is opposite you. How will a self-driving car cope with detecting a vehicle behind the concrete barrier of a roundabout?

In Europe we have a lot of roundabouts that work the opposite way, priority is given to anyone inside/exiting the roundabout, which would seem easier to handle for automated systems.

Also in Europe it depends what road signs are at the roundabout. They have no special status in my country and can be looked as a "T" intersections connected to a circle. In most cases there is a yield sign for the cars approaching the roundabout so the cars already on it have right of the way, but it is not the case for all roundabouts. Also, some roundabout allow exit from the two rightmost lanes, others just from one—it also depends on signage.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#193

Post by michaelt »

galdosdi wrote: post #149
hueving wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For what? To advance technology and make AZ attractive to other R&D. Not everything has to be tied to a direct economic boom.

Advancing technology overall is nice, but does not benefit Arizona any more than if they let some other sucker state do the experimenting. Not everything has to be tied to a direct effect, but if you think this, maybe you could explain at least one mechanism by which you think Arizona could actually indirectly get some benefit?

  maybe you could explain at least one mechanism
1. Arizona does things that are "business friendly" and "good for high-tech R&D" regardless of job creation.

2. It becomes widely known that Arizona is business friendly, and good for high-tech R&D.

3. This reputation attracts companies that will create jobs.

(I'm not claiming I think this will work - just that it's plausible a politician might think it could work.)

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#194

Post by rimliu »

icebraining wrote: post #190
shakna wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The investigation isn't complete, but Uber did disable the car's own safety features [0]. Both Volvo and Intel tested their software against the low-grade video that was released, and it was able to detect the impending accident and reduce the impact to where the pedestrian would likely have survived. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-26/uber-disa...

Uber did disable the car's own safety features Well, of course they did. Can you imagine testing a self-driving system when another system is also controlling the car? What happens when they send contradictory commands? Race conditions are bad enough outside of actual cars!

The should ditch the human out of the care too. What happens if it gives contradictory command? More seriously, as it was already pointed out elsewhere: Human > car safety features > AI. So it is pretty clear what to do when the car wants to engage emergency braking.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#195

Post by Piskvorrr »

mjmahone17 wrote: post #67
sokoloff wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't live there, but this article suggests that there is signage for "no pedestrians" at the location where she was struck: https://www.curbed.com/transportation/2018/3/20/17142090/ube... This twitter stream suggests the same with more details: https://twitter.com/EricPaulDennis/status/975889922413551616... It appears to me that they did not cross at a corner, and the corners "nearby" in the references above all h…

Ah I missed the part where there was a sign saying “no pedestrians”. In that case I’d agree it’s not 0 responsibility on the walker, but I don’t think I’d assign the woman full responsibility, either. If the driver attempted to slow down and still hit her, the driver (in this case the car) probably wouldn’t really be at fault. But a collision at 40 in a 35 zone is really bad for a driver.

The road where the accident took place is @ 45 MPH; the "35 MPH" figure came from confusing it with the road in opposite direction (they are separate there).

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#196

Post by arkades »

ducktoller wrote: post #163
owenversteeg wrote: post #9

Saying nothing about Google/Waymo, it appears they're allowed to continue? Their self-driving technology seems far more advanced, I think it would be unfair to punish all the players for the bad actions of a few. In particular, Uber seems to have been operating self-driving cars recklessly and in an attempt to "move fast and break things". When those things are people's lives, that's unacceptable. I'm all for interes…

There was a person at the wheel. That person wasn't paying full attention to the road. From the video of the crash, it looks like the woman at the wheel was looking at their phone. Why is no one acknowledging that this woman was responsible for taking over the wheel if necessary for any reason. When I have cruise control on, I take my feet off of the pedals and rest them on the floor. But if, say, a homeless person w…

>There was a person at the wheel. That person wasn't paying full attention to the road. From the video of the crash, it looks like the woman at the wheel was looking at their phone. >Why is no one acknowledging that this woman was responsible for taking over the wheel if necessary for any reason.

The woman was part of their safety program, but ultimate responsibility for the effectiveness and failures of said program lies with them. For instance,

Other driver assist programs (eg, Cadillac) have eye tracking and hand sensors in the wheel. If your eyes leave the road or hands leave the wheel escalating alarms are initiated until driver assist is deactivated. This is a technology that takes into account normal human behavior. Uber did not do this.

Uber previously used two person teams, to minimize tedium and lapses in awareness that emerge when a single person as the job of staring out an uneventful window for hour(s) at a time. This is a policy that takes into account normal human behavior. They did not do this.

Either or both of these could have prevented this death. Both of these decisions occur at a level above the proximal driver-pedestrian interaction.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#197

Post by jmalicki »

ducktoller wrote: post #168
salvar wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the significance of the person being homeless?

It's a descriptor, the same way "man" or "woman" is a descriptor. Descriptors help you picture a situation more clearly.

Nothing about whether or not the person involved happened to have a permanent place of residence is a relevant descriptor to the situation at hand.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#198

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

owenversteeg wrote: post #9

Saying nothing about Google/Waymo, it appears they're allowed to continue? Their self-driving technology seems far more advanced, I think it would be unfair to punish all the players for the bad actions of a few. In particular, Uber seems to have been operating self-driving cars recklessly and in an attempt to "move fast and break things". When those things are people's lives, that's unacceptable. I'm all for interes…

>> Their self-driving technology seems far more advanced, I think it would be unfair to punish all the players for the bad actions of a few.

It's very unlikely that Uber and Waymo have radically different technology. The two companies probably differe only in business and testing practices- i.e. the environments and the conditions in which they are willing to test their cars.

Waymo simply seems to be more conscious about safety and therefore use its systems well within the safety limits of the technology. But, both companies have access to the state of the art (in the form of highly paid specialists) and you can't really expect one to be too far ahead of the other in terms of capabilities.

Edit: I'm guessing all this by comparison with results generally in machine learning and machine vision. With the exception of a big leap forward with CNNs in 2014, most improvements you ever see in the literature are in the order of a couple of percentile points at most so most systems differe by a very small margin. The same should go for industry entities using this technology in self-driving cars.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#199

Post by z3t4 »

galdosdi wrote: post #143
z3t4 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"always be hustling" is/was the Uber motto. " move fast and break things" is/was Facebook.

True, but the concept still applies here. Uber has gained a well deserved reputation for being careless as long as what they are being careless with belongs to other people.

Related talk by Bryan Cantrill (Principles of Technology Leadership) Watch the whole video, it's good!

https://youtu.be/9QMGAtxUlAc?t=43m46s

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#200

Post by oldgradstudent »

sokoloff wrote: post #47
buvanshak wrote: post #5

Good riddance. But I think this is not enough to send a strong message to all those who want to put half baked tech out there in hopes of "disrupting" something.. Also, I really hope all self driving testing is suspended until there is sufficient legal and testing ground work before these things are allowed on roads...

It might surprise you that we were testing (selectively) autonomous cars on the autobahn in Germany in 1991 as part of the Prometheus project. Our tech was nowhere near as good as what's available now and so we compensated by having attentive drivers hovering over the E-stop button. I don't think that stopping testing over a single crash is warranted. Maybe suspend it for a short time while you look into it, but if w…

Drug trials are done on volunteers with informed consent.

Testing on public roads is like kidnapping random people and forcing them to take the drug.

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