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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

#291

Post by throwaway1982x »

felippee wrote: post #101
iooi wrote: post #14

The second ever [1] fatal car crash involving a self-driving car. This is the first one where a third party is killed. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/01/tesla-dri...

Tesla was not a self driving car, please stop confusing this. This case is in fact the first autonomous test vehicle caused fatality. There were at least several Tesla autopilot related fatalities and injuries, but I would seriously not put those into self driving bag.

What counts as autonomous seems often to be inflated when considering positive statistics such as miles driven, and minimised when considering negative statistics such as fatalities.

At least, there needs to be agreed consistency before we can claim anything statistical.

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

#292

Post by abalone »

This may not have been an unexpected circumstance. The "pedestrian outside of the crosswalk" report is likely wrong. There is visual evidence that strongly supports that this was a case of the Uber hitting a bicyclist while merging into the right turn lane.

Here's a picture of the crumpled bicycle (note dent on the front right of the car): https://twitter.com/daiwaka/status/975767445859287042

The sign it is lying next to lets us locate the exact point of the collision on Google street view: https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4370667,-111.9430321,3a,75y,...

It's right where the vehicle lane crosses the bike lane approaching the intersection. Very unlikely a pedestrian was walking a bike there. Much more likely the Uber hit the bicycle while merging.

EDIT: I take back "very unlikely" a pedestrian was crossing there. There is in fact a very weird "X" pathway in the median that pedestrians are not supposed to be in. I didn't see that until I looked at the satellite view.[1] So possibly she emerged from there and was walking her bike across the street. That still looks pretty bad for Uber though, since that street is a straight shot with clear visibility and the dent's on the right side of the car. Meaning it would have swerved left to avoid a late-detected obstacle rather than swerve right away from her entering the roadway. She also would have literally had to walk straight into oncoming traffic. I still think bicyclist is the most likely scenario and it's odd the PD doesn't mention the crumpled bicycle.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4365931,-111.9425027,198m/da... (street view shows a "no pedestrians" sign)

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

#293

Post by mtgx »

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…

I've been saying this from the beginning: it's not enough for self-driving cars to be "better than the average driver". They need to be at least 10x better than the best drivers.

I find it crazy that so many people think it is. First off, by definition like 49% of the drivers are technically better than the "average driver".

Second, just like with "human-like translation" from machines, errors made by machines tend to be very different than errors made by humans. Perhaps self-driving cars can never cause a "drunken accident", but they could cause accidents that would almost never happen with most drivers.

Third, and perhaps the most important to hear by fans of this "better than average driver" idea, is that self-driving cars are not going to take off if they "only" kill almost as many people as humans do. If you want self-driving cars to be successful then you should be demanding from the carmakers to make these systems flawless.

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

#294

Post by foolfoolz »

jdietrich wrote: post #185
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…

> 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…

you seem to be giving uber a big benefit of the doubt. these autonomous cars generally go slow. tempe has flat roads with great line of sight and clear weather. coefficient of friction? highly doubt it. the sensors should be looking more than just straight a head

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

#295

Post by Ajedi32 »

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…

We don't really have any statistics on autonomous car deaths yet. One fatality is only one data point; that's not _nearly_ enough information to come to any solid conclusion on the overall safety of the technology. (Not to mention the fact that a failure of any one particular implementation of self-driving car tech doesn't necessarily mean the other implementations are similarly unsafe.)

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

#296

Post by gpm »

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…

We absolutely should extrapolate something from those statistics.

Let's assume that the chance of killing in any two intervals of of the same number of miles traveled is the same. Let's say that the threshold for self driving cars being "good enough" is the same death rate as human drivers.

If we assume Uber is good enough, then they should kill people at a rate of at most 1.25/100,000,000. The waiting time until they first kill someone should fit an exponential distribution. The probability that a death would occur in the first t miles is 1 - e^(-lambda t) where lambda is the rate of killing people, is 1.25/100,000,000. I.e. 1 - e^( -(1.25 / 100,000,000) x 4), which is 5 x 10^-8.

If Uber has only a 5 x 10^-8 probability of driving "safely enough" they should lose their license at the very least.

Edit: Oops, 4 != 4,000,000. It should be 1 - e^( -(1.25 / 100,000,000) x 4,000,000) which is about 0.049...

Still, I think we can ask for better than a 5% chance of being the same as a human driver.

(also replaced stars with 'x' because HN was making things italic)

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

#297

Post by jessaustin »

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.

This is the reason robocar firms will fight to keep all their data private. If it were public, researchers could show and personal injury attorneys could argue persuasively that there are some speeds that would never cause fatal collisions. Since those speeds will be slower than most passengers wish to travel, this mode of travel will be more vulnerable to lawsuits.

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

#298

Post by mtgx »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #160

Self driving cars are one of the things where we absolutely cannot afford to do "move fast and break things". If there was any whiff of shortcutting, poeple need to go to jail and Uber should be bankrupted by penalties and lawsuits.

The last time I heard this, the first thing that came to my mind was "I sure hope Facebook isn't going into self-driving cars."

And then I learned Facebook is going into self-driving cars.

Sigh.

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

#299

Post by apeace »

smallgovt wrote: post #111

Not to dismiss the tragedy of this incident, but it should be expected that self-driving cars kill pedestrians -- just at a rate lower than what's expected from human drivers. Perhaps there's a better metric to look at, but I'd like to see number of deaths caused per miles driven. If Uber's self-driving cars are killing more pedestrians than a human driver would, we have a huge problem, but I'd be willing to bet they…

You would lose that bet. As another comment pointed out[1]:

> The NHTSA reports a fatality rate of 1.25 deaths per 100 million miles[2], twenty five times the [4 million miles] Uber has driven.

So they should have driven around 75 million more miles before getting their first fatality, in order to remain even with humans. Not to mention they've been driving on the clearest/sunniest roads in only a few cities.

Of course a sample size of one is not enough data, but I'd say we should err on the side of "we have a huge problem".

There should have been so many safety precautions in place that nobody should have died from this yet.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16620736

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

#300

Post by coryfklein »

soperj wrote: post #270
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…

The cars telemetry data will undoubtedly point to a unavoidable tragedy if it's just uber analyzing it.

Makes me wonder the likelihood of the public ever seeing that telemetry if it appears incriminating to Uber.
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