Uber self-driving car crashes into another car in Pittsburgh • Hacker News Board

Re: Uber self-driving car crashes into another car in Pittsburgh

#21

Post by dragonwriter » Sun, Mar 18, 2018, 2:10 AM UTC

mtnygard wrote: post #17

I don't want to get into the particulars of this single wreck. But it does make me think that we're going to need some new laws as we adapt to a mixed use on the roads: 1. The self-driving car & its operating company must retain all sensor and video data. No "oops we lost it" when going to court. 2. There has to be some way for the human driver to know what legal entity is operating the car. It's pretty easy to imagi…

#2 and #3 can be resolved, in the worst case, by existing public ownership and insurance registries and making any collision involving a self-driven vehicle without a human representative of the owner who can provide registration & insurance info require police response and identification of that information based on license and/or VIN. (As this potentially increases public expense for that mode of operation, licensing for it may be more expensive.)

Re: Uber self-driving car crashes into another car in Pittsburgh

#22

Post by dragonwriter » Sun, Mar 18, 2018, 2:22 AM UTC

TipVFL wrote: post #13

According to the article this was a 4 lane road, and she was in the furthest lane to the left of the Uber driver. The Uber driver was in furthest right lane, with a left turn signal on, preparing to change lanes. So, she cut across two lanes to crash into oncoming traffic. I'm not sure of the Pittsburgh driving laws, but generally you're supposed to get into your left-most lane before taking a left. I don't think she…

> According to the article this was a 4 lane road, and she was in the furthest lane to the left of the Uber driver.

No, she was turning left from a perpendicular street, from the leftmost lane in her original direction of travel into the rightmost lane in the new direction of travel. Pop

> The Uber driver was in furthest right lane, with a left turn signal on, preparing to change lanes.

The last part is a disputed claim, per the article.

> So, she cut across two lanes to crash into oncoming traffic

I'm not sure how you figure that; she ran into crossing (not oncoming) traffic, and I don't see any way of counting where it works out to cutting across two lanes.

> I'm not sure of the Pittsburgh driving laws, but generally you're supposed to get into your left-most lane before taking a left.

She was making a left turn from the leftmost lane; that's not in dispute.

> I don't think she has a hope in court

I don't either, but that's because making a car making a left into crossing traffic, unless the crossing traffic is violating a control (stop sign, signal, etc.) or speeding, is almost always at fault because of right-of-way

Re: Uber self-driving car crashes into another car in Pittsburgh

#23

Post by fancyfacebook » Sun, Mar 18, 2018, 2:43 AM UTC

TipVFL wrote: post #13

According to the article this was a 4 lane road, and she was in the furthest lane to the left of the Uber driver. The Uber driver was in furthest right lane, with a left turn signal on, preparing to change lanes. So, she cut across two lanes to crash into oncoming traffic. I'm not sure of the Pittsburgh driving laws, but generally you're supposed to get into your left-most lane before taking a left. I don't think she…

Yes the corporations must have high quality records. There is no reason to doubt or question that. Really ever.

All hail the CEO, our lord and savior!

Re: Uber self-driving car crashes into another car in Pittsburgh

#24

Post by fancyfacebook » Sun, Mar 18, 2018, 2:46 AM UTC

DrScump wrote: post #20

Later in the story: "The Cruise car had tried to change lanes, then abruptly aborted the lane change when the space to make the change disappeared" This sounds a lot like a Google crash in Mountain View awhile back.

Yeah I've been around enough self driving cars to know that they behave a little weirdly sometimes, in a way you'd never expect a human to. We can keep throwing humans under the bus on some technicality every time this happens because we're engineers and beep boop everything is black and white. period. But in reality there's a social aspect to driving with a lot of unwritten rules that people do not seem to be worrying about as much as they should.

Re: Uber self-driving car crashes into another car in Pittsburgh

#25

Post by nostrademons » Sun, Mar 18, 2018, 4:34 AM UTC

arcticfox wrote: post #9

c22 wrote: post #3

While it sounds like the human driver was likely at fault in this situation I wonder if she made eye contact with the self-driving car's "safety driver" before the collision. If she assumed he was operating the vehicle and could clearly see her she would have expected him to slow down. This is the cultural birthplace of the Pittsburgh Left , after all.

After reading up on the Pittsburgh Left , that needs to be eliminated from driving culture ASAP. If there are intersections that require it, simply add a protected left.

In most of the regions where the Pittsburgh Left is common (I grew up in Massachusetts, and thought it was just how you drive until I moved out to California), adding a protected left is not feasible. The roads are single-lane, barely the width of a single car, and property rights extend right up to the side of the road. (Similarly, in many cases sidewalks are infeasible because there's always some homeowner along the road who refuses to cede their land.) The properties themselves are usually residential, and there will be hundreds of them alongside the road.

It's very different from the 3-lane boulevards with wide setbacks, protected turn lanes, and commercial zones all owned by the same developer that you'd find in the West or South. The roads in the Northeast U.S. are former cow paths, and they are about as wide as you would expect a horse-drawn wagon to be. (They also don't form any sort of grid system and frequently meet at 5- or 6-way intersections, which is a whole other issue.)

Re: Uber self-driving car crashes into another car in Pittsburgh

#26

Post by TipVFL » Sun, Mar 18, 2018, 7:42 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #22

TipVFL wrote: post #13

According to the article this was a 4 lane road, and she was in the furthest lane to the left of the Uber driver. The Uber driver was in furthest right lane, with a left turn signal on, preparing to change lanes. So, she cut across two lanes to crash into oncoming traffic. I'm not sure of the Pittsburgh driving laws, but generally you're supposed to get into your left-most lane before taking a left. I don't think she…

> According to the article this was a 4 lane road, and she was in the furthest lane to the left of the Uber driver. No, she was turning left from a perpendicular street, from the leftmost lane in her original direction of travel into the rightmost lane in the new direction of travel. Pop > The Uber driver was in furthest right lane, with a left turn signal on, preparing to change lanes. The last part is a disputed cl…

You might be right, I was only going off what I could glean from the article, which may have been misleading.

From the article: "McLemore was on a four-lane road called Liberty Avenue, heading Northeast, while the Uber vehicle was approaching from the opposite direction."

This description, led me to believe, they were on the same road approaching each other from opposite directions. As you can't really be going in opposite directions unless you're on the same road, or a parallel road.

If that's not the case, I guess the direction they're referring to is the direction in which she was turning to go?

Also from the article: "'I was not expecting someone to turn from the far left lane into my lane,' the Uber safety driver said."

Based on my understanding of the cars heading in opposite directions, I assumed he was referring to the lane furthest to his left. And he's claiming he was about to change lanes to the left, which would place him in the furthest right lane and her in the furthest left lane.

I had assumed that she tried to turn left at the intersection, from the wrong lane, and hit the car in the process.