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Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

fortune.com

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Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#311

Post by TulliusCicero »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #306
DoreenMichele wrote: post #96

I didn't notice it mentioned in this piece, but a different article on HN is suggesting she may have been homeless and was crossing where there was no crosswalk. Homeless individuals frequently sleep under bridges, on the sides of off ramps and other infrastructure near highways. They are often walking where no pedestrian should be at all. I would like to see the affordable housing crisis solved. Currently, there are…

It's like a story out of a dystopian sci-fi novel. A society that can make self-driving cars but cannot solve homelessness.

Strictly speaking, we can. We just choose not to.

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#312

Post by rootlocus »

naveen99 wrote: post #124
omarforgotpwd wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course a self driving car should be able to speed. My understanding is that speed limits are set by measuring the speed people are driving on the road and then determining a speed at which roughly 15% of the drivers are exceeding that limit. There is an expectation that people will speed, but by setting the speed limit a little bit lower almost all traffic will fall under safe bounds. Driving 38 in a 35 zone is co…

What speed would you drive if there was no speed limit ?

In Europe there are global definitions for speed limits. With a few notable exceptions, there's no such thing as "no speed limit".

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#313

Post by [deleted] »

brokenmachine wrote: post #227
mattigames wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah there are a lot of subtleties that are hard to program; that's why it must be extremely effective on things that _can_ be programmed such as quick breaking, quick steering; prefer lanes that are farther away from pedestrians near-by, beep when entering a non-illuminated zone and hundreds of other details.

Quick braking is the one thing you would have thought they could get right for sure, and they didn't manage even that on this occasion.

[deleted]

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#314

Post by ShorsHammer »

r_klancer wrote: post #225

My takeaway from the comments in this thread: self-driving Ubers don't drive defensively, almost surely can't "read" pedestrian behavior, and even with lidar may never have seen Elaine Herzberg. Oh, and they speed. This sounds like straight out of the "hell" scenario for driverless cars: "we cannot accept responsibility for what happens to pedestrians and cyclists foolish enough to stray out of their designated safe…

I don't see why autonomous vehicles are so big. Virtually all travel is one person, ideally it would be a tiny 4 wheel electric with the sole passenger highly reclined.

The hangover from internal combustion is real.

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#315

Post by URSpider94 »

in_cahoots wrote: post #158
franciscop wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What speed would you drive? Would you take close corners at 120km/h? People (on average) drive at the speed their actually very well tuned survival instinct tells them to.

I don’t think that’s true at all (though I only have my own experience to go off of). I tend to use the speed limit as a point of reference, and then drive a little above it. Prior experience has told me that going the speed limit plus some percentage ‘feels’ safe. If there were no speed limit I’d actually have to pay more attention to the road and surrounding environment to determine what a safe speed is. Right now…

This is well-studied. It turns out that the 85th percentile speed (the speed where 85% of drivers are below that speed, 15% above) is nearly insensitive to speed limit. Road design is the biggest single determinant of travel speed. http://www.lsp.org/pdf/troopc85thSpeed.pdf

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#316

Post by numismatex »

ShorsHammer wrote: post #314
r_klancer wrote: post #225

My takeaway from the comments in this thread: self-driving Ubers don't drive defensively, almost surely can't "read" pedestrian behavior, and even with lidar may never have seen Elaine Herzberg. Oh, and they speed. This sounds like straight out of the "hell" scenario for driverless cars: "we cannot accept responsibility for what happens to pedestrians and cyclists foolish enough to stray out of their designated safe…

I don't see why autonomous vehicles are so big. Virtually all travel is one person, ideally it would be a tiny 4 wheel electric with the sole passenger highly reclined. The hangover from internal combustion is real.

Because A) Crash-safety and B) Luxury still being in the bigger packages.

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#317

Post by Theodores »

r_klancer wrote: post #225

My takeaway from the comments in this thread: self-driving Ubers don't drive defensively, almost surely can't "read" pedestrian behavior, and even with lidar may never have seen Elaine Herzberg. Oh, and they speed. This sounds like straight out of the "hell" scenario for driverless cars: "we cannot accept responsibility for what happens to pedestrians and cyclists foolish enough to stray out of their designated safe…

Thanks for the Youtube video, that is making sense to me now, it explains what I see as a cyclist. I have thought about 'investing' in an electric vehicle and participating in the brave new future that will eventually be autonomous driving machines, but it is quite badly thought out. But I think I will stick with the bicycle, it really is the fastest transport when combined with rail, there is no quicker way across town and these autonomous cars are not going to change that. Public transport and bikes are the only way.

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#318

Post by URSpider94 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #165
ronilan wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can be several ways to explain this but generally speaking you are right. It shouldn’t go over the speed limit, and under no circumstances should it take the liberty drivers usually take of being within 10% above the limit. I hope no one wrote it that way.

Why not? The range between 1-10 MPH over the speed limit is statistically the safest. (Yes, I know, good luck finding a citation for a study I read 20 years ago...) It's hard to argue against the notion that you're safest when you keep up with prevailing traffic. That means that self-driving cars shouldn't be programmed to go slower. Speed limits are usually too low. Often they have nothing to do with engineering or…

Man, sorry for the downvotes. This link -> http://www.lsp.org/pdf/troopc85thSpeed.pdf doesn't include any references, unfortunately, but the statements are that:

-- 55% of drivers regularly exceed the speed limit, meaning that the speed limit represents the 45th percentile speed

-- driving between the 50th and 90th percentile speeds is the safest

Taken together, driving at the speed limit is significantly unsafe.

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#319

Post by girvo »

portofcall wrote: post #254
viraptor wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More like "autonomous cars are better than people at stopping in a flash" rather than "just like people this car didn't stop in a flash". It's a single example. You can't extrapolate to better or worse from it. A self driving system better than people by 2 orders of magnitude will still kill people. But that's neither a comfortable thought, nor something media will get used to over the next decade or so. This speci…

3.2 fatalities per billion km driven by humans. So far 1 fatalities per 4 million miles by automated vehicles, which when you do the conversions... isn’t better. It’s not a lot to work with, but for the people speaking in stats, the actual stats don’t support them. A lot people in this thread seem to be cashing in a human life against future hypothetical gains which have in no way been demonstrated. I sincerely hope…

A single death doesn’t tell you all that much statistically. But I’m with you on how sad it is, and I’m a bit appalled by some of the comments...

Re: Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona

#320

Post by petre »

caconym_ wrote: post #162
akira2501 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps it will finally cue people in to how intrinsically dangerous cars are. Until you consider the _billions_ of miles that cars in the US drive every month. Cars are exceptionally safe, and they're getting better every year.. because we keep driving _more_ miles year after year, yet fatalities continue to drop. Also, how do you interpret facts like: California has 30% more people living in it than Texas, yet TX…

Cars are a leading cause of death in the US, especially among young people. That's a fact worth taking notice of, regardless of how many miles are driven or whatever else. Yes, it's great that fatalaties are trending downwards.

So cap the power, weight and speed of cars young people are allowed to drive. In the US you can only vote at 21, but you can join the army and kill people if you're 18 and in most states drive powerful cars at 16 (although subject to some conditions such as a curfew and limits on the number of underage passengers present in the vehicle). In most European countries one can only drive heavy quadricycles (Same for autonomous vehicles: until the NTSB or whatever federal or state agency is responsible decides which tech is mature enough and issues licenses for a given AV system. A person has to have a driver's license, however AV systems do not. Why not certify which of them are able to operate heavier/more powerful/faster vehicles without human intervention (meaning they'd slow down to a stop when the driver would take his/her hands off the wheel).
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