Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program • Hacker News Board

Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program

#221

Post by davidgould » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 12:51 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #213

pdkl95 wrote: post #99

> We don't need redundant brakes & steering or a fancy new car; we need better software," wrote engineer Anthony Levandowski Any engineer with this attitude needs to learn the lesson of the Therac-25. The issues in the Ars article are very similar to section 4 "Causal Factors" of the report[1]. > To get to that better software faster we should deploy the first 1000 cars asap. Is that admitting that they do not have t…

> We don't need redundant brakes & steering or a fancy new car; we need better software," wrote engineer Anthony Levandowski He is clearly right about that. Human-driven cars are safety critical and already do fine without redundant brakes and steering. How many crashes are due to brake or steering failure? I'm guessing it's well under 10%. Most human crashes are due to bad driving, and for computers it will be the s…

Human driven cars have redundant brakes. There is one brake assembly for each wheel. The hydraulic system is split into two separate circuits to guard against leaks. Additionally, cars are fitted with an "Emergency brake".

Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program

#222

Post by cmsj » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 12:53 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #201

PinkMilkshake wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agile methodology applied to safety-critical systems engineering, god help us.

"Move fast and break things. Also break people, but if they're homeless or ride bicycles nobody cares"

To quote a friend... "disrupting traditional life expectancy models", or to quote Webshit Weekly... "A/B testing vehicular manslaughter"

Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program

#223

Post by sokoloff » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 1:18 PM UTC

davidgould wrote: post #220

sokoloff wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will have you unexpectedly slowing for road signs, guardrails, and other stationary objects on the side of the road when they are on the inside of a curve (as they will have apparent motion towards your lane) Set "too tightly", it will also have you slowing for every car approaching a stop sign from a side street. Cars that randomly slow out of an excess of caution are also a hazard to other road users. Don't be…

I'm not sure what side you are on here, are you saying that the autonomous cars cannot be careful as the technology to do so is not good enough? or are you saying that they should not be required to be careful?

I'm saying that a rules based system with "slow down arbitrarily whenever the hell you want" is unlikely to meld well with existing traffic and is likely to cause as well as avoid unsafe situations.

I believe that might mean that autonomous vehicles are not yet ready for road testing if that is commonly required by the current state of the art. (I last worked on autonomous vehicles in 1991; ours was entirely rules-based and we tested on public roads in addition to private tracks. Ours was bad enough that the human driver hovered over the red E-shut button and was always paying attention. It was harder work than just driving the damn thing yourself, but we had to test in order to make progress. I'm sure loads has improved since then.)

I also don't think that zero fatalities is a realistic goal nor is it the standard that should unduly inhibit progress. People have been dying in transit on foot, on horseback, on bikes, and in cars. This is a version of the trolley problem. I don't mind and in fact actively prefer a system improvement that allows 100 deaths while saving 500, even if the 100 is entirely disjoint from the counter factual 500.

In this specific case, I believe the autonomous car allowed 1 death that would have also been allowed by a human driver in the same circumstances, so it's a push.

Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program

#224

Post by perfmode » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 1:20 PM UTC

ryandvm wrote: post #101

perfmode wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I challenge you to prove that you are capable of more than recognizing patterns.

Okay, for the sake of argument let's suppose that I was clever enough to come up with the famous Grandfather Paradox of time travel. Certainly no one has observed such an event before - or anything like it. I would posit that it takes more than pattern recognition to build the necessary mental concepts to design, much less understand, such a thought experiment. In fairness, I will concede that pattern recognition is…

Your Halloween example is you recognizing patterns:

- on Halloween there are more children on the road than usual - children are more likely to disobey traffic laws

It’s quite possible that waymo cars are already capable of this.

Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program

#225

Post by carlsborg » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 1:27 PM UTC

cozzyd wrote: post #67

carlsborg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. Uber should have fitted their taxis with data devices.

So that their AI would learn how to block bus stops and bike lanes?

No so they could model accidents better.

Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program

#226

Post by sunir » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

culturestate wrote: post #173

AlexandrB wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be fair, you have to keep in mind that deploying 1000 cars would quickly make self-driving cars safer than humans. This seems unreasonably optimistic. First, this particular crash is an egregious counter-example. The car doesn't even seem to slow down when it first sees the pedestrian's foot. Nor does it try to swerve. This is basic stuff for a human driver, never mind more complex avoidance and risk mitigation…

> First, this particular crash is an egregious counter-example. The car doesn't even seem to slow down when it first sees the pedestrian's foot. Nor does it try to swerve. This is basic stuff for a human driver, never mind more complex avoidance and risk mitigation a human driver can perform. I'm not sure which side of this I fall on just yet, but something strikes me here: you're assuming a human driver with no impa…

You shouldn’t be driving so fast that stopping distance is longer than visibility.

It is irrelevant what average humans do. That is the current rule set for all drivers.

Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program

#227

Post by DanBC » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 2:26 PM UTC

URSpider94 wrote: post #184

DanBC wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s not what a human driver does. A human should be aware that these pedestrians might enter the roadway. The human should perceive those pedestrians as a risk, and be ready to take action. > Should a self-driving car assume that every pedestrian standing at a crosswalk could walk into traffic at any moment, Yes. > and slow down accordingly? This doesn't follow. The car don't need to slow down. It does need to b…

My bigger point, which is getting lost, is that there are rules to traffic (pedestrian, bike and auto) that we are all expected to obey. I do not agree that we can simply assume that a self-driving car assumes all liability for any accident (which is what the parent to my original comment posited). The rules of the road let us operate vehicles at tolerances that make it physically impossible to avoid every kind of co…

> is that there are rules to traffic (pedestrian, bike and auto) that we are all expected to obey

The point of defensive driving is that you can't rely on other people not to be incompetent.

You have a green signal at a traffic light. That does not mean "go", it means "proceed with caution".

Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program

#228

Post by phyller » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 3:24 PM UTC

selestify wrote: post #183

phyller wrote: post #83

"Uber recently placed an order for 24,000 Volvo cars that will be modified for driverless operation. Delivery is scheduled to start next year." Wow. The other driverless car players should be all over this lobbying to shut Uber down. If Uber massively deploys a commercial service with subpar quality in order to "win", and then those cars start getting into accidents, the entire field is going to be delayed by 10 year…

Could Uber be doing this on purpose? They're way behind on self-driving tech, so maybe if they can't have it, no one can.

The more I think about this the more it makes sense in a horrible way. The important thing for Uber is that they are first to market. If they are first to market there are two outcomes: a) they are successful, they make more money with lower fares because they don't need to pay drivers anymore. They basically take over the market that they are already dominating, beating competitors into bankruptcy. The market explodes as it is cheaper to get on demand cars than to own your own. $$$$$ b) they are not successful. They kill a hundred people in a month or two. The self-driving car industry gets shut down, and for the cost of a few hundred million dollars in settlements they keep their current market dominance in the current industry, but have to keep paying drivers. $$

The alternative, they are not first to market, someone else is and immediately replaces Uber with a network of cheaper self-driving cars: a) Uber goes out of business b) They can somehow convince someone to license the tech or sell them the cars at a reasonable price, making them vulnerable and less profitable, with no market advantage.

Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program

#229

Post by mturmon » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 3:53 PM UTC

corny wrote: post #149

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #62

"Uber announced that it had driven 2 million miles by December 2017 and is probably up to around 3 million miles today. If you do the math, that means that Uber's cars have killed people at roughly 25 times the rate of a typical human-driven car in the United States." Wow there goes that "safer than human drivers" argument.

Any comparison between self-driven miles and typical human-driven miles has to take into account all the times a safety driver took over driving to prevent an accident. Those self-driven miles have a huge asterisk.

This is a good point.

Taking it a step farther, I’d expect that road conditions in the Uber tests so far have been more benign than average city driving. Less bad weather, straighter roads, etc.

Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program

#230

Post by mrguyorama » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 6:07 PM UTC

icc97 wrote: post #182

ghfbjdhhv wrote: post #110

This event has me thinking about job of the behind-the-wheel backup driver. They get an easier job than a real driver, at the cost of potentially taking the fall if an accident occurs. I wonder if the pay is better.

It's an equivalent job to a train driver

Train drivers have immense amounts of regulation and systems in place to verify that they are paying attention and actually driving the train:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sifa