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Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

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Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#311

Post by hueving »

galdosdi wrote: post #149
hueving wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For what? To advance technology and make AZ attractive to other R&D. Not everything has to be tied to a direct economic boom.

Advancing technology overall is nice, but does not benefit Arizona any more than if they let some other sucker state do the experimenting. Not everything has to be tied to a direct effect, but if you think this, maybe you could explain at least one mechanism by which you think Arizona could actually indirectly get some benefit?

>Advancing technology overall is nice, but does not benefit Arizona any more than if they let some other sucker state do the experimenting.

If every government operated by this selfish model, we would have no basic science funding.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#312

Post by lern_too_spel »

hueving wrote: post #310
lern_too_spel wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California remains the center of autonomous car research and industry with carefully thought out regulation designed with public input. Laissez-faire regulation and rolling out the red carpet for bad actors in Arizona didn't change that. It just led to the predictable result.

California remains the center because the companies are already headquartered there due to decisions made 50 years ago by the military for radar technology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo That's despite it's often idiotic regulations driven by populist ignorance. A governance policy in favor of developments of new technology most certainly can have an impact over time. > Laissez-faire regulation and roll…

> California remains the center because the companies are already headquartered there due to decisions made 50 years ago by the military for radar technology:

Poor argument. It doesn't explain why the auto industry didn't hire all the self driving car engineers to work in the Midwest or why the communications companies didn't hire them all to work on the East Coast. Google itself has offices all over the world, but it put the Chauffeur team in Mountain View. If you really think that the military industrial complex that started Silicon Valley gives it an insurmountable advantage for building a self driving car company, Arizona's decision to even try to pull them away looks even more stupid.

> Oh, red carpet for bad actors? Where is it that Uber is headquartered again?

In California, which reaps all the benefits from taxing its highly paid employees without incurring any of the costs of its out-of-control self driving car program, which Arizona's governor welcomed with much fanfare.

> And doesn't Waymo also test in Arizona?

It does. It also tests extensively in California and has engineered its vehicles to comply with the new California regulations that allow cars on public roads that have no human driver inside. Notably, all the highly paid engineers remain in California, and the advanced testing facility with highly paid testers (unlike the temp workers hired for the public road tests) was built in California too because advanced testing on private facilities is correctly less regulated. Arizona's problem is that it underregulated testing on public roads.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#313

Post by owenversteeg »

galdosdi wrote: post #140
lern_too_spel wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arizona did something reckless and stupid. Unfortunately, somebody other than the decision maker paid the price. Arizona stupidly allowed Uber to operate after California kicked Uber out and after seeing the videos of Uber cars running red lights in SF. For what? For a few temporary (the plan is to be fully autonomous quickly) low paying test driver jobs? The engineers making the big salaries stayed in California (or…

This is what's always confused me. The usual play is to suck up to a corporation in the hopes that a bunch of jobs or other investment will show up, but self-driving testing is kinda a perfect example of something that will not give any economic benefit to the testbed state at all. It takes very little local investment, and it's a temporary thing that will only yield benefit for the corporation doing the testing, and…

Now, I totally agree with your comment that other states can let Arizona do the testing then reap the rewards. But at the same time, I think there can be other indirect benefits: Arizona getting known for being innovative, for example. Arizona was getting in the news a lot for positive self-driving tech things, and that's great. It's bad that they didn't vet Uber carefully enough and thus a woman died, but the general attitude of encouraging innovation even without direct, immediate benefits is a great thing.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#314

Post by muraiki »

muraiki wrote: post #308
pgreenwood wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello! I'd be interested to hear what you think the correct interpretation of these CIs are in this case. Failing that can you explain what is wrong with saying something like "with xx% confidence we can conclude that the rate is within these bounds" is? The assumption of using Poisson seems pretty solid to me, given we are talking about x events in some continuum (miles traveled in this case), but always happy to he…

The Poisson distribution assumes equal probability of events occurring. That seems to me to be an oversimplification, given that AV performance varies over time as changes are made, and also given that terrain / environment plays a huge factor here, whether looking at one particular vehicle or comparing to vehicles across companies (and drivers in general). Since AV performance will hopefully be improved when an acci…

To be more clear, when you run poisson.test(1, conf.level = 0.95) with the default values of T and r (which are both 1) you are performing the following two-sided hypothesis test:

Null hypothesis: The true rate of events is 1 (r) with a time base of 1 (T).

Alternative hypothesis: The true rate is not equal to 1.

The reason that you end up with a p-value of 1 is because you've said that you've observed 1 event in a time base of 1 with a hypothesized rate of 1. So given this data, of course the probability of observing a rate equal to or more extreme than 1 is 1! As such, you're not actually testing anything about the data that you claim you are testing.

I'm not trying to be harsh here, but please be careful when using statistics!

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#315

Post by eftychis »

fastball wrote: post #220
mtgx wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His point was that machines should be held at much higher standards than humans. This is a point I'e been making since the beginning myself. If you want self-driving cars to be accepted, they need to be at least 10x better than the best human drivers . Comments such as "self-driving cars only need to be 50% better than humans on average " are absolute nonsense. Humans will never go for that.

I don't think the risk of death from walking up the stairs is very high... so I'm assuming elevators are about equivalent, because people have definitely died in elevators.

Actually, death by elevator is extremely unlikely. Comparatively staircases are death traps.

Source by googling a bit (you can find many more): http://www.lifeinsurancequotes.org/additional-resources/dead... (1 in 10,440,000). That said I wouldn't trust an elevator in China or what you would consider underdeveloped countries (incorrectly called 3rd world) (I have heard various stories of cutting corners and lack of inspection).

Self-driving cars don't need to be 10x better, but they are going to be. Humans introduce a delay of 1sec in best cases which is in the same order of magnitude to a car going 60 to 0. Again as mentioned above by others, self-driving cars don't experience fatigue, attention fatigue, emotions, focal vision degradation due to light conditions etc.

Uber tried to cut corners from what is apparent [to me and quite a few others I guess]. I am really trying hard to imagine a scenario where the LiDAR would have missed the pedestrian. From my knowledge there are no stealth-material-dressed pedestrians out there, no matter how cool that idea would be for a movie. Try to check youtube about videos of the Uber car's behaviour in San Francisco and you would see issues a year ago. Driving conditions in Phoenix are much better (personal experience and I have witnessed self-driving cars in both cities). Uber needs to drastically improve their quality assurance and scenarios. (I am not trying to reach any conclusions and pass judgment without having all the evidence at hand. Even though my comments are extremely critical.)

I think it is a good idea we Waymo, Uber, etc propose a standard for adoption with different levels and an independent committee argues and improves on it and we reach a common list of milestones. I think otherwise state governments are making decisions on a whim. Of course that path is a public relation nightmare as they will have to accept existing issues. Nobody wants to write down there is a 0.001% a pedestrian will die in this scenario, even if with a human driver behind the wheel the chance would be higher; for instance 1 or 10% or even 50%.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#316

Post by galdosdi »

foobarian wrote: post #250
galdosdi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike Uber, Waymo has always said they do not believe (based on data and experience) "safety drivers" are a realistic safety measure, because normal human beings do not have the ability to concentrate hard on a task for 8 hours a day that they have absolutely no control/feedback upon. If this is not obvious to you, you have never tried doing such a task. Try it and you will change your mind immediately.

It could be done; they could drive in shorter shifts, and they could have automation like some high end cars that detect eyes off the road or off the wheel. I guess the main issue is that it would be expensive.

I agree with that actually. The task /as defined now/ is impossible for a human, but yes, actually designing it for human psychology would make it better. A great idea I saw on another comment thread was to keep safety drivers busy by giving them a task like labelling objects on the road as pedestrians, cars etc. Even if it is not that useful, it means their eyes will be on the road when it counts. I mean, we all do that when we do normal driving on boring roads, don't we, try to become more observant, count silly things, to fight boredom?

Pretty sure Uber doesn't give a damn and they see the safey drivers as window dressing. My bayesian gut tells me it's more likely the safety driver program is systemically weak, not that this guy was a huge outlier.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#317

Post by Steeeve »

sokoloff wrote: post #298
Steeeve wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the driver's handbook: > Most crosswalks are located at corners, but they can also be located in the middle of the block. > Pedestrians have the right-of- way in marked or unmarked crosswalks. > Crosswalks are often marked with white lines. Yellow crosswalk lines may be painted at school crossings. Most often, crosswalks in residential areas are not marked. Interesting that the legal definition points out right…

So, that's not legally an unmarked crosswalk under California rules, then? (Streets are not meeting at approximately right angles and the local authorities have posted 'no pedestrians'.)

On the surface, no.

But...

The end of that walking path is perpendicular to the roadway. The other end of that walking path is perpendicular to the roadway on the other side. How it behaves in the middle (not perpendicular) is irrelevant. The walking path itself is legally considered a roadway.

The "no pedestrians" sign does not face pedestrians crossing as this pedestrian did, it faces the road.

So... in California drivers would be expected to give the right of way to anyone crossing the street.

Assuming that the argument is won that this was not an unmarked crosswalk - California also has a blanket vehicle code law that requires drivers to "exercise due care for the safety of any pedestrian upon a roadway".

Arizona actually does have a similar law:

1. Exercise due care to avoid colliding with any pedestrian on any roadway.

2. Give warning by sounding the horn when necessary.

3. Exercise proper precaution on observing a child or a confused or incapacitated person on a roadway.

--- Everything is arguable. Uber threw the first shot in the PR war by producing a sub-par video and pushing the social media perception that the pedestrian was in the wrong. In a civil courtroom, different lines will be drawn. You'll have statements from Volvo, Google, and the LIDAR manufacturer that say the accident was entirely preventable. You'll have video showing that the time to react by an alert driver at the same time of night was plentiful. You'll have a dead body that was thrown a significant distance. You'll have an undertrained driver, who was without a partner in the first month of that experience. You'll have a driver not paying attention to the road. And you'll have Uber staff testing the vehicle without the full use of it's available safety systems.

The question isn't fault. It's how much damage was done to Uber's self-driving vehicle program and self-driving vehicle programs in general, and how much it's going to cost Uber both financially and in PR - both of which can effect future investment, which was already nearing a close.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#318

Post by pgreenwood »

muraiki wrote: post #314
muraiki wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Poisson distribution assumes equal probability of events occurring. That seems to me to be an oversimplification, given that AV performance varies over time as changes are made, and also given that terrain / environment plays a huge factor here, whether looking at one particular vehicle or comparing to vehicles across companies (and drivers in general). Since AV performance will hopefully be improved when an acci…

To be more clear, when you run poisson.test(1, conf.level = 0.95) with the default values of T and r (which are both 1) you are performing the following two-sided hypothesis test: Null hypothesis: The true rate of events is 1 (r) with a time base of 1 (T). Alternative hypothesis: The true rate is not equal to 1. The reason that you end up with a p-value of 1 is because you've said that you've observed 1 event in a ti…

Facinating, thank you. Particularly the part about multiplying the CI. I wonder if the analysis could be resuced to some extent? I feel there must be a way to use the information we have do draw some conclusions, at least relative to some explicit assumptions.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#319

Post by tim333 »

Aspyre wrote: post #283
tim333 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Google, said that in tests on roads in California last year, its cars went an average of nearly 5,600 miles before the driver had to take control from the computer to steer out of trouble. As of March, Uber was struggling to meet its target of 13 miles per “intervention” Quite a difference.

I know you're under the impression you are informed. These metrics, however, are not the same. You don't know what Uber's equivalent metric is at. That doesn't mean you should compare different metrics as if they were the same.

I was just quoting from the NYT. I don't have any special knowledge but there does seem a difference there.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#320

Post by icebraining »

ducktoller wrote: post #292
michaelt wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is no one acknowledging that this woman was responsible for taking over the wheel if necessary for any reason. Nobody in the industry really believes safety drivers work, beyond the early point in testing where they're intervening regularly. It is widely known [1, 2, 3] that it's extremely difficult for humans to remain vigilant when monitoring systems for rare events. Airport baggage screening systems perform "t…

"It is widely known that it's extremely difficult for humans to remain vigilant when monitoring systems for rare events." It may be difficult to remain vigilant, but it's not difficult to stay off of your phone while you're at the wheel. There are signs all over the road and commercials on tv telling people that texting and driving kills. Being on your phone while you're driving is illegal for that reason. Having a s…

How do you know she was on her phone? Was anything released on that regard? All we know is that she's looking down, I assumed it could be to some self-driving debug screen.
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