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Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

reuters.com

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

#281

Post by wehadfun »

jonathanyc wrote: post #114
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #70

The reason self-driving car companies have flocked to Arizona is that Arizona chose to pretty much completely deregulate them: They don't even have to report statistics to the state like they do in California. It's unfortunate, but unsurprising, the first pedestrian killed by an experimental self-driving car allowed on public roads was in Arizona.

What will the consequences of this person’s killing be? Will someone lose out on a promotion, or miss their performance bonus? We need to discuss how the developers self-driving cars will be held accountable for the crimes they commit. There is no reason the person who programs or the person who makes money from a self-driving car should be held less accountable for a crime that if committed directly by a person woul…

The developers have no control over the sensors, tires, weight of car, testing budget, human backup operator, or a million other things that went into this happening. Hell developers probably told who ever they could to not release this. Management at Uber and who ever approved this thing should be held accountable.

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

#282

Post by pboutros »

exelius wrote: post #273
jdietrich wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 someone walks out into the road. Some of these accidents are unpreventable by the (autonomous) driver. If a pedestrian suddenly rushes out into the street or a cyclist swerves into your path, the deciding factor is often simply the coefficient of frict…

I’m kind of in the Elon Musk camp here where you gotta break some eggs to make an omelette? Human-driven cars kill a lot of pedestrians today, but we can actually do something to improve the human-recognition algorithms in a self-driving car. As long as self driving cars represent an improvement over human drivers, I’m ok with them having a non-zero accident date while we work out the kinks.

FYI, that's traditionally known as the Stalin camp.

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

#283

Post by cjsawyer »

oconnore wrote: post #271
jdietrich wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 someone walks out into the road. Some of these accidents are unpreventable by the (autonomous) driver. If a pedestrian suddenly rushes out into the street or a cyclist swerves into your path, the deciding factor is often simply the coefficient of frict…

If you have good judgement, it's quite easy to prevent a fatality. I.e. I go slower in places where I know pedestrians might jump out.

Lower the chances of, not prevent.

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

#284

Post by joefourier »

jakeogh wrote: post #83
johnstew wrote: post #59

Why is Uber allowed on public roads?

This has little to nothing to do with the specific company (although is a convenient deflection ATM). The very idea that pre-programmed computers can deal with driving is the fundamental problem. In time, people will realize that, but at the moment the "solution" is to "patch" and make more laws to hide the truth: AI has nothing to do with intelligence. Ultimately they will blame humans, humans are the bugs in their…

As far as I know all self-driving car programs use some form of machine learning, so they aren't exactly "pre-programmed" in the sense of good old-fashioned AI based on strict, pre-determined rules.

What exactly do you mean by "deal with driving"? Drive without a single accident, ever? That's obviously impossible in practice. Drive better than humans, who in 2016 killed 37,461 people in the US alone? I don't see how that would be impossible - human drivers have a limited field of view, slow response times (average time to break is ~2.3 seconds), and are frequently distracted, sleepy, drunk, etc.

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

#285

Post by Ajedi32 »

So this is it then? First fatal accident involving a fully self-driving car which might have actually been the car's fault?

Well, it was obviously going to happen sooner or later. It'll be interesting to see what the fallout is. Up until now regulators have been, surprisingly, taking a pretty relaxed approach to regulation of self-driving cars. Hopefully this one accident doesn't impede development on other autonomous car programs too much.

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

#287

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

pishpash wrote: post #246
Johnny555 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self driving cars are still subject to the laws of physics... unless you're going to dictate that self-driving cars never go above 15mph, I wouldn't advocate jumping in front of even a "perfect" self-driving car. Braking distance (without including any decision time) for a 15mph car is 11 ft, for a 30mph is 45 ft. Self driving cars won't change these limits. (well, they may be a little better than humans at maximizin…

Then we should at least learn their capabilities by throwing jumping dummies at them. Call it the new dummy testing. It's the least we can do. Did Travis bro do this when he set the plan in motion?

We don't throw jumping dummies in front of human students before we let them drive; why should machines be different?

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

#288

Post by Johnny555 »

bobthepanda wrote: post #274
Johnny555 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self driving cars are still subject to the laws of physics... unless you're going to dictate that self-driving cars never go above 15mph, I wouldn't advocate jumping in front of even a "perfect" self-driving car. Braking distance (without including any decision time) for a 15mph car is 11 ft, for a 30mph is 45 ft. Self driving cars won't change these limits. (well, they may be a little better than humans at maximizin…

Indeed. This is why many cities are reducing speed limits. In fact, self-driving cars may actually improve the situation if cars actually start complying with speed limits en masse.

Good point -- there's a 4% chance of fatality when struck by a 15mph car versus 20% at 30mph.

There's a 30mph city street near me where cars routinely go 45mph -- the fatality rate jumps up to 60% at that speed. So just having cars follow the speed limit would go a long way toward reducing fatalities.

https://www.propublica.org/article/unsafe-at-many-speeds

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

#289

Post by mhb »

bobthepanda wrote: post #274
Johnny555 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self driving cars are still subject to the laws of physics... unless you're going to dictate that self-driving cars never go above 15mph, I wouldn't advocate jumping in front of even a "perfect" self-driving car. Braking distance (without including any decision time) for a 15mph car is 11 ft, for a 30mph is 45 ft. Self driving cars won't change these limits. (well, they may be a little better than humans at maximizin…

Indeed. This is why many cities are reducing speed limits. In fact, self-driving cars may actually improve the situation if cars actually start complying with speed limits en masse.

Indeed what? It's obvious that slower cars will kill fewer people. That's meaningless without saying what the cost of driving slower is.

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

#290

Post by TheGRS »

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.

IIRC the people who programmed the first auto pilot for a major airliner were required to be on board the first test flight, so I have to think their testing methodology was pretty meticulous.
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