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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

#311

Post by untog »

This opens up an interesting question going forward. We can't rely on Uber themselves to analyse the telemetry data and come to a conclusion, they're biased. So really, we need self driving car companies to turn over accident telemetry data to the police. But the police are ill equipped to process that data.

We need law enforcement to be able to keep pace with advances in technology and let's face it, they're not going to have the money to employ data analysts with the required skills. Do we need a national body for this? Is there any hope of a Republican government spending the required money to do so? (no)

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

#312

Post by burfog »

ingsoc79 wrote: post #251
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…

They also fail to "write" human body language. Nobody else can predict what the autonomous vehicle will do.

It gets worse when a person is sitting in what appears to be the driver's seat. If the car is stopped and that person is looking toward another passenger or down at a phone, nobody will expect the vehicle to begin moving. Making eye contact with the person in that seat is meaningless, but people will infer meaning.

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

#313

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#314

Post by tomswartz07 »

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.

> The people leading the development of these horse-drawn carriages should demonstrate that they can stop for pedestrians by jumping in front of them on a closed test dirt-path. If they're not able to demonstrate this, they shouldn't be putting them on public carriageways

Sounds silly when compared against old tech.

Accidents happen, best we can do is try to prevent them.

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

#315

Post by WHoWHo »

WHoWHo wrote: post #100

What happens when a self driving car in the future from a service is driving empty back to some parking? And hits someone? Does it call ambulance or police?

... this would make from some creepy film scene - someone shouting for help and the car only watching.

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

#316

Post by will_brown »

Twisell wrote: post #223
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…

Yet this tragic accident will now set a precedent and finally start to scratch the delicate unspoken question: Who is responsible now?

Likely the more apt word is liable.

In law you split that into criminal and civil. Very unlikely there will be any criminal charge, hence no criminal liability but it’s possible.

Civil liability is more interesting, but if the deceased’s estate brings suit it opens up a can of worms in the discovery process. Every internal communication, prior incident, etc...

At the end of the day it’s not much different than any other vehicular fatality case, but there will be a defective product component (again nothing unheard of in the case of vehicular fatalities). At the end of the day the car will be insured for accidents, so we will probably learn more about the insurance coverage for self-driving cars.

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

#317

Post by mtgx »

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…

No, the time to overact is now, before millions of these get on the road.

Actually, the time to "overeact" was even earlier, but most of self-driving cars ignored any criticism. So now you have stupid car companies cutting corners and killing people so they can be "first" on the market or whatever.

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

#318

Post by dmoy »

untog wrote: post #311

This opens up an interesting question going forward. We can't rely on Uber themselves to analyse the telemetry data and come to a conclusion, they're biased. So really, we need self driving car companies to turn over accident telemetry data to the police. But the police are ill equipped to process that data. We need law enforcement to be able to keep pace with advances in technology and let's face it, they're not goi…

On the one hand I'd say give it to the NTSB, because historically they are really good at this sort of thing.

On the other hand, I'd wonder if increasing NTSB scope this much would drastically decrease the average quality of NTSB's work. Scaling ain't easy.

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

#319

Post by jessaustin »

abalone wrote: post #292

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 nex…

Lots of confusion! It seemed the video was for an injury collision rather than a fatality? This is what we get from posting a Cincinnati source for an event that occurred in Tempe.

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

#320

Post by pro_zac »

abalone wrote: post #236

It's likely this was actually a bicyclist, not a pedestrian. The police are saying pedestrian walking outside the crosswalk but here's a picture of the crumpled bicycle: https://twitter.com/daiwaka/status/975767445859287042 You can see it's next to a sign. That sign lets us determine exactly where it happened on Google street view: https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4370667,-111.9430321,3a,75y,... It's exactly where the…

The news video in the original post also says bicyclist. Speed limit goes up to 45 mph just before the bridge.
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