Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

chicagotribune.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 334 posts

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

#241

Post by carlmr »

buvanshak wrote: post #159
carlmr wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if the tech can pass a human driving test, is that ok? Because those are a very low bar in some countries (like the US).

>So if the tech can pass a human driving test, is that ok? That would be dumb, right? There should be separate tests designed for a self driving vehicle and every single one of the SDV should pass the tests consistently before being put on road... Until such laws and tests are devised, the all testing of SDVs on real roads should be suspended..

Yes, that was my point. Driving tests for humans are awful, mostly because we expect humans to only become better with experience. But with a self driving system such an expectation would be misplaced.

You'd need a driving test that has sufficiently many difficult situations, hopefully somewhat randomized (so that the cars aren't just trained for this cycle), and in various weather/environmental/situational conditions (snow, ice, rain, desert, dark/light, partially broken street lighting, oncoming traffic with broken headlights, etc.)

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

#242

Post by icebraining »

shakna wrote: post #217
icebraining wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

They disabled a system we know works, for one that failed. No redundancy. If that is the case, then Uber can absolutely be held accountable for not taking enough safety precautions. These aren't just test cars. Uber and Volvo's deal was around Uber selling 'enhanced' XC90s. Why not design around the product you purchased? > Can you imagine testing a self-driving system when another system is also controlling the car?…

I don't pretend to be an expert, but generally adding multiple layers of control on the same axis adds its own failure points. Having a human that can override the automatic system is not an argument for leaving that enabled - it's an argument against it!

Personally, I think Uber simply shouldn't have tested it on public roads at this point.

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

#243

Post by Lewton »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #198
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 a…

I got the impression that Waymo has a ton of actual, human written, software on top of the ML core, "manually" handling a lot of edge cases.

I doubt Uber has this

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

#244

Post by simion314 »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #212
simion314 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not 1 data pint though, say you shot at a target 100 times and hit only 1 time , is this 1 data point only and I can't make any conclusion? Similar if you drive 1 million km and kill 1 person, if I drive 10 km and kill 1 person is still 1 data point and I can make no conclusion? I think it would have been 1 data point if this was the first km a Uber self driving car has driven.

>> Similar if you drive 1 million km and kill 1 person, if I drive 10 km and kill 1 person is still 1 data point and I can make no conclusion? Yep. Because I still have another 9 m km to go before I've driven as long as you have and there is no way to know whether I'm going to kill another 9 people, or 0 more, until I've actually driven them all.

You are wrong, there is a conclusion we can make, the conclusion is not absolute but fuzzy so maybe fuzzy logic is not your thing.

Also you have a mistake in your comment, I would still have to do 999990 km of driving. If I killed a person in my first 10 km what is the probability that I won't kill anyone in my next 999990?

Your point is that I can't be 100% sure and that is true but we can compute the probability, so the probability that I had bad luck is very small, if the probability of killing 1 person in 1 mil km is 1 or 100% what is the probability of killing this person in my first 10km? ( you are correct is not 0 )

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

#245

Post by ceejayoz »

dmix wrote: post #223
michaelt wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is no one acknowledging that this woman was responsible for taking over the wheel if necessary for any reason. Nobody in the industry really believes safety drivers work, beyond the early point in testing where they're intervening regularly. It is widely known [1, 2, 3] that it's extremely difficult for humans to remain vigilant when monitoring systems for rare events. Airport baggage screening systems perform "t…

Even regardless of her lack of full attention, from the video it seems quite obvious a human driver would have failed to see the woman in time even with full alertness. The only question here, and why Uber is under scrutiny, is why a Lidar system which can "see in the dark" wasn't able to detect her and react in time.

> from the video it seems quite obvious a human driver would have failed to see the woman in time even with full alertness

The video is massively - and I'll wager intentionally - misleading. There's no chance the car was making decisions from a $20 dashcam.

Here's what a better camera (looks like a smartphone camera) sees in the same spot (at about 33 seconds - you can see the signs, lights, and terrain match the Uber video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XOVxSCG8u0

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

#246

Post by shakna »

icebraining wrote: post #242
shakna wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They disabled a system we know works, for one that failed. No redundancy. If that is the case, then Uber can absolutely be held accountable for not taking enough safety precautions. These aren't just test cars. Uber and Volvo's deal was around Uber selling 'enhanced' XC90s. Why not design around the product you purchased? > Can you imagine testing a self-driving system when another system is also controlling the car?…

I don't pretend to be an expert, but generally adding multiple layers of control on the same axis adds its own failure points. Having a human that can override the automatic system is not an argument for leaving that enabled - it's an argument against it! Personally, I think Uber simply shouldn't have tested it on public roads at this point.

> generally adding multiple layers of control on the same axis

They wouldn't be. Subsumption architecture is the usual method to couple these things together, since the 80s.

Individual reactionary modules, that may be 'dumb', like the AutoBreak, that have a hierarchy of response.

Redundancy is essential for safety.

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

#247

Post by icc97 »

mtgx wrote: post #215
jMyles wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Several comments here making comparisons On one hand, you are (reasonably) calling out comments for questionable comparisons, but on the other hand... > What is the acceptable casualty rate of elevators? ...you've made one of your own. I haven't yet formed an opinion on the underlying question (of what kind of risk aversion is appropriate in the face of automation), but I do notice that it evokes questionable compa…

His point was that machines should be held at much higher standards than humans. This is a point I'e been making since the beginning myself. If you want self-driving cars to be accepted, they need to be at least 10x better than the best human drivers . Comments such as "self-driving cars only need to be 50% better than humans on average " are absolute nonsense. Humans will never go for that.

I don't see why they need to be 10x better.

If every car could match the best that humans can do 24x7 that should prevent almost all casualties.

I imagine the best possible driver to be a world-class rally driver who:

1. never drinks

2. never speeds

3. never drives whilst tired

4. drives without emotion/adrenaline (test pilots talk about the importance of having no adrenaline as the best way to perform)

5. Always keeps a 3-4s distance from the car in front

But I believe that when self-driving cars can match humans which is actually the hard part, then they can become 10x better because similar to airline pilots they can be trained on extreme events and so are able to respond much faster in situations that even the best unprepared human could do.

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

#248

Post by pgreenwood »

nmca wrote: post #231
Slartie wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistics works exactly like this. What doesn't work is saying "Okay, we have one death in 3 million miles, that extrapolates to 33 deaths in 100 million miles", because it implies a silent addition of "with nearly 100% certainty", which is the part that's wrong here. But the poster did something different. He took it one level further and attempted to calculate this confidence number for different spans in which th…

The statement "with 95% confidence" is a classic misinterpretation of what a CI is, the assumption of Poisson is dubious but there's no obvious plausible alternative. Overall seems reasonable.

Hello! I'd be interested to hear what you think the correct interpretation of these CIs are in this case. Failing that can you explain what is wrong with saying something like "with xx% confidence we can conclude that the rate is within these bounds" is?

The assumption of using Poisson seems pretty solid to me, given we are talking about x events in some continuum (miles traveled in this case), but always happy to hear any cogent objections.

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

#249

Post by icebraining »

shakna wrote: post #246
icebraining wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't pretend to be an expert, but generally adding multiple layers of control on the same axis adds its own failure points. Having a human that can override the automatic system is not an argument for leaving that enabled - it's an argument against it! Personally, I think Uber simply shouldn't have tested it on public roads at this point.

> generally adding multiple layers of control on the same axis They wouldn't be. Subsumption architecture is the usual method to couple these things together, since the 80s. Individual reactionary modules, that may be 'dumb', like the AutoBreak, that have a hierarchy of response. Redundancy is essential for safety.

OK, let's say the Volvo system gets precedence. How will the Uber system ever learn how to behave when the Volvo system is no longer in place?

If we were talking about a production system, I would agree, but I don't think this is appropriate for the training phase.

Redundancy is only essential if the potential for failure is unacceptable. If you remove that (by not driving in public streets), it isn't.

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

#250

Post by foobarian »

galdosdi wrote: post #78
foobarian wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully Waymo has test drivers that actually pay attention.

Unlike Uber, Waymo has always said they do not believe (based on data and experience) "safety drivers" are a realistic safety measure, because normal human beings do not have the ability to concentrate hard on a task for 8 hours a day that they have absolutely no control/feedback upon. If this is not obvious to you, you have never tried doing such a task. Try it and you will change your mind immediately.

It could be done; they could drive in shorter shifts, and they could have automation like some high end cars that detect eyes off the road or off the wheel. I guess the main issue is that it would be expensive.
Post reply on HN