Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street • Hacker News Board

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#251

Post by ingsoc79 » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 5:50 PM UTC

leggomylibro wrote: post #9

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…

The main problem with self-driving cars is that they can't "read" humans' body language. A human driver can see pedestrians and cyclists (and other cars) and have a rough idea of what they're likely to do in the next few seconds, i.e. the pedestrian leaning out on the crosswalk curb is likely to step into the road soon. Even a reaction time of milliseconds can't make up for the (currently exclusive) human ability to read other humans and prepare accordingly.

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#252

Post by LifeLiverTransp » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 5:50 PM UTC

rjvir wrote: post #221

w_t_payne wrote: post #51

To ensure that all automotive software incorporates lessons learned from such fatalities, it would be beneficial to develop a common data set of (mostly synthetic) data replicating accident and 'near miss' scenarios. As we understand more about the risks associated with autonomous driving, we should expand and enrich this data-set, and to ensure public safety, testing against such a dataset should be part of NHTSA /…

Why would Uber agree to such regulations? They were unwilling to legally obtain a self-driving license in California because they did not want to report "disengagements" (situations in which a human driver has to intervene). Uber would just set their self-driving cars free and eat whatever fine/punishment comes with it.

Very cynical but - if your self-driving is way behind of your competitors- wouldnt it help to have your lousy car in a accident - so that your competitors get hit with over-regulation and you thus kill a market- on which you cant compete?

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#253

Post by bobthepanda » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 5:50 PM UTC

RyanZAG wrote: post #201

justboxing wrote: post #108

Have to quote Prof. Teddy here. Context: How new technology is introduced on public streets and we have no choice or say on whether we want it or not, even if it endangers us and gets us killed. > When motor vehicles were introduced they appeared to increase man’s freedom. They took no freedom away from the walking man, no one had to have an automobile if he didn’t want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automo…

Great points and extremely important. But at the same time, I don't personally want to go back to an age before automobiles became commonplace. They're too useful to me. Is that selfish? Sure. But our lives are all shaped by our wants, not by our needs.

I don't think that anyone is asking for a return to nature, but America has shown that adopting the automobile as the primary mode of transportation and adapting all of society wholesale for it has serious side effects. Rather than promote it as (essentially) the only option, automobiles should be a tool in a toolkit of transportation methods.

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#254

Post by harrumph » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

RyanZAG wrote: post #201

justboxing wrote: post #108

Have to quote Prof. Teddy here. Context: How new technology is introduced on public streets and we have no choice or say on whether we want it or not, even if it endangers us and gets us killed. > When motor vehicles were introduced they appeared to increase man’s freedom. They took no freedom away from the walking man, no one had to have an automobile if he didn’t want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automo…

Great points and extremely important. But at the same time, I don't personally want to go back to an age before automobiles became commonplace. They're too useful to me. Is that selfish? Sure. But our lives are all shaped by our wants, not by our needs.

>But at the same time, I don't personally want to go back to an age before automobiles became commonplace.

Neither would I, but I think the cautionary value in the discussion of the resulting inadvertent restriction of pedestrian freedom is not to visualize an auto-free world as an alternative but instead to visualize a new set of customs of urban development that aggressively protect pedestrian freedom. In the real estate world, the walkability movement is concerned with this and should achieve greater influence.

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#255

Post by pm24601 » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

olympus wrote: post #232

leggomylibro wrote: post #9

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…

Could a human have reacted fast enough to stop for someone jumping out in front of them? If the person jumped out so fast that nobody could have possibly reacted in time, then it's not a stain on the technology- even with an instantaneous application of brakes, a car still takes a while to come to a stop. If the human jumped out ten seconds earlier and was waving her hands for help, then it's an issue. "the whole poi…

The bicyclist did not "suddenly" jump out in front. The Uber car did not sense the bicyclist.

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#256

Post by frgtpsswrdlame » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 5:52 PM UTC

odammit wrote: post #41

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?

Distance is the metric used so far but also isn't appropriate for comparing self-driving cars to human driven cars. The human driven bucket contains all miles driven, highway cruise control, light snow, heavy rain, tricky merges, etc. The self-driving metric is only the easiest possible miles. Overtime those miles will expand and harder scenarios will be incorporated but to really know if self-driving cars are safer we need apples to apples comparisons which is going to require matching humans vs robots on miles driven and a categorization of those miles, maybe a count of tricky unexpected scenarios as well.

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#257

Post by sdfget434 » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 5:52 PM UTC

That car has to have a dashcam -- what's the current caselaw with regards to the 5th amendment?

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#258

Post by Maybestring » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 5:52 PM UTC

kamakazizuru wrote: post #17

nodesocket wrote: post #8

Striking a pedestrian in a crosswalk is horrible and terrible news. The reality though is how many pedestrians are hit by manual driver's vs automous drivers? On a percentage basis I gotta believe autonomous cars are orders of magnitude safer. Self driving cars aren't going to be perfect. How many people lost their lives in early factories to machines during the industral revolution? Imagine if they had pulled the pl…

yes, but with a human driver you have someone to take responsibility / punish for, what do you do with an alogrithm to provide justice?

>What do you do with an alogrithm to provide justice?

Assuming Arizona hasn't produced law specifically for fatalities in their public road self driving test program... The algorithms are just one detail of the total system design, and the design of the system isn't really the issue. People don't get killed by designs or code.

The verification of it's safety, and the decision to deploy that system on uncontrolled public streets will be the issue. People made these decisions, not an algorithm.

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#259

Post by pishpash » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 5:52 PM UTC

weinzierl wrote: post #248

pcthrowaway wrote: post #65

The people leading the development should demonstrate that they can stop for pedestrians by personally jumping out in front of them on a closed test road. If they're not able to demonstrate this, they shouldn't be putting them on public roads.

My opinion is that we will come to a point where self-driving cars are demonstrably, but only marginally, safer road users than humans. From an ethical standpoint the interesting phase will only start then. It‘s one thing to bring a small fleet of high tech (e.g. having LIDAR) vehicles to the road. It‘s another to bring that technology to a saturated mass market which is primarily cost driven. Yes, I assume self-driv…

We do all the time, and the answer to your question is, yes if marketed ingeniously. Humans are stupid.

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#260

Post by rjvir » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 5:53 PM UTC

objclxt wrote: post #202

Jagat wrote: post #168

Can we please not overreact and send the whole self-driving research down the drain? What does the statistics say? How many miles have the self-driving cars driven, and how many deaths were they responsible for? How does it compare to a human driver? When a million humans drive a car for a mile, and 1 of them results in a death, it's easy to pinpoint the blame on a "random drunk/distracted driver". How'bout start thi…

> What does the statistics say? How many miles have the self-driving cars driven, and how many deaths were they responsible for? How does it compare to a human driver? As of December 2017 Uber had driven 2 million autonomous miles[1]. Let's be generous and double that, so 4 million. The NHTSA reports a fatality rate (including pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers) of 1.25 deaths per 100 million miles[2], twenty five ti…

Scaling those numbers paints a poor picture for Uber. Assuming 3 million total miles autonomously driven thus far from Uber's program:

- Uber autonomous: 33.3 deaths per 100 million miles

- Waymo: 0 deaths per 100 million miles

- National average: 1.25 deaths per 100 million miles

Of course, the Uber and Waymo numbers are from a small sample size.

But there's also the bayesian prior that Uber has been grossly negligent and reckless in other aspects of their business, in addition to reports that their self-driving cars have had tons of other blatant issues like running red lights.

It seems reasonably possible that an Uber self-driving car is about as safe as a drunk driver. DUIs send people to jail - what's the punishment for Uber?