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Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

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Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

#331

Post by leereeves »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #226
freehunter wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people blame SUVs when pickup trucks are some of the the highest selling vehicles in America and vans/minivans have existed since forever and are still popular? And they’re both the same size as SUVs?

If you have five children, you're likely buying a car with seven seats. If you regularly transport thousands of pounds of stuff, you're getting a pickup truck. SUVs, on the other hand, often get purchased in lieu of a sedan; pickup trucks and minivans have use-value that often justify their place on the road.

SUVs have use value as well: driving in difficult conditions.

Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

#332

Post by Piskvorrr »

awakeasleep wrote: post #132
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #121

There's at least two other trends that are, IMO, more to blame. SUVs in general for one, and the proliferation of particular mixed-use road antipattern. SUVs is an easy one. When an SUV hits a bicyclist, motorcyclist, or pedestrian, the unfortunate person tends to go through rather than the over they'd be subjected to by a sedan. Motorcycle accident stats bear this out - the overall accident rate has gone down as peo…

I'm a dreamer, but I'm dreaming self driving cars or even just sensors on normal cars are able to record the data and make this kind of thing indisputable. Then maybe we'll have corporate pressure aligned with social pressure to change the laws and move traffic patterns beyond what random luck has 'evolved' to safe and sensible defaults.

Well...there's supposed to be a video. The police claims to have seen it, so at least NTSB should have it.

The proliferation of dashcams makes your dream far more likely.

Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

#333

Post by Piskvorrr »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #246
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #121

There's at least two other trends that are, IMO, more to blame. SUVs in general for one, and the proliferation of particular mixed-use road antipattern. SUVs is an easy one. When an SUV hits a bicyclist, motorcyclist, or pedestrian, the unfortunate person tends to go through rather than the over they'd be subjected to by a sedan. Motorcycle accident stats bear this out - the overall accident rate has gone down as peo…

If this piece of road is the one I’m thinking of, there’s nary a crossing area for at least a mile. Phoenix isn’t known for walkability, and this isn’t downtown Tempe.

Seems to be a bit down this road (location chosen because of the speed limit sign): https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4350531,-111.941492,3a,75y,3...

Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

#334

Post by slx26 »

jdavis703 wrote: post #265

When I was getting my learners permit I was practicing on a curvy mountain road. I saw a person with a camera phone on the "drop off" side of the road, taking a picture of from what my angle would've been a boring cliff face. But I knew that a camera phone photographer was probably actually photographing a human, who would likely be on the other side of the blind corner. So I slowed down, despite my instructor chasti…

I wouldn't particularly blame your instructor, a lot of people would have reacted the same way, which to me proves that it's not just AI, it's the roads and the driving that are unsafe. As pedestrians, we learn what's dangerous and what we can't do, and as drivers, we assume pedestrians behavior from our own knowledge. But both AI and humans are subject to occasional 'irrational behavior'. Humans are not safe either in that situation. Even if in some cases a human might have advantage over AI, AI has many other advantages over humans. It would be a big mistake to reject AI just because there are situations where its performance can be inferior to some humans.

I agree there's still a lot of work to be done, but my point is that the problem is the driving system itself, and a lot of people dies because of it. AI can't directly change that, but if it can still do better than humans (in a few years), then it's worth it.

Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

#335

Post by petee »

paul7986 wrote: post #274

Oh it's her fault she was jay walking and the robots now take precedence. No need to ticket jay walkers! Uber's fleet will take care of these law breakers! Ridiculous and this company after all it's done is still around and now it's killing people!

it'll be a matter of time before autonomous manufactures push to outlaw pedestrians and bicyclists from roadways as a 'safety measure'

Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

#336

Post by petee »

akkat wrote: post #312
princeb wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cars are not trains, for one. road usage is shared among cars, motorcycles and scooters, trucks, pedestrians, bicycles, mobility scooters, and other things.

Train tracks are also shared at train crossings. Yet if a car went there after the warning lights went on, the car would be to blame.

So autonomous vehicles should come with flashing warning lights every where they go?

Also, trains don't change lanes, or stop quickly. Its simply a bad analogy.

Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

#337

Post by cimmanom »

prawn wrote: post #191
kristjansson wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a 35 mph zone.

Are you sure? Per Street View, there's a 45 mph sign where the road goes under the underpass, prior to the site of the accident. Unless that's since changed, of course.

Another possibility: the car was relying on outdated speed limit data. Which is another potential failing of such systems.

Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

#338

Post by dmix »

aetherson wrote: post #62
drcross wrote: post #53

At the risk of sounding macabre, the engineers will be pouring over thousands of lines of logs and if Uber self driving cars ever do survive to make it onto the roads again, the circumstance of woman's death and the after analysis will mean it will never ever happen again. I expect that during the coming years we will analyse car crashes with the same scrutiny as airplane crashes with the hope to solve every single e…

That's a very optimistic view of what will happen -- or I suppose a pessimistic one. I agree that there will be a lot of scrutiny of the logs, but unless they identify an actual bug ("Oh shit, we had a buffer overrun right here!") it's not necessarily going to be possible to preclude this or something very similar from happening again. The driving of an autonomous vehicle is an emergent event of large numbers of comp…

But it's still optimistic compared to todays current status quo. We now have a system we can optimize and build into to make our best effort to prevent in future events.

Which is how it similar to airplane crashes, as it's a heavily automated and centralized system (ie, humans are far less a factor in the event than cars, which can't be optimized nearly as easily).

While cars have had improvements in safety via vehicle design, and popular culture, road signs, traffic laws, etc can influence human behaviour to drive differently, I don't think there has ever been a better time to reduce these events if not everytime, then at least far less often than the current standard.

Which is what is so often missing in these conversations: a rational baseline and a clear reliable process that we will now be in a better position going forward for this not to happen again (assuming the right processes are in place, which they may very well not be in this case).

Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

#339

Post by akkat »

petee wrote: post #336
akkat wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Train tracks are also shared at train crossings. Yet if a car went there after the warning lights went on, the car would be to blame.

So autonomous vehicles should come with flashing warning lights every where they go? Also, trains don't change lanes, or stop quickly. Its simply a bad analogy.

You are right, a better analogy would be if a person tried to cross in the middle of a random track segment. The woman didn't cross at a crosswalk so that part of road was not designated to pedestrians at all.

Cars (at lease autonomous ones) signal before changing lanes and slowing down.

I think that flashing lights is too annoying, but forcing cars that drive in the night to have lights sounds like a reasonable (and existent) rule.

Re: Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

#340

Post by dmix »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #95
daodedickinson wrote: post #90

If this car hit a woman coming from so far on the other side of the street, how are they going to deal with suicides? A coworker was driving home once when a man jumped out in front of her van and she barely stopped in time. He started whomping on her driver's side window screaming "Why didn't you hit me?!?!" again and again. She quickly got away and tried to come up with an explanation for her kids and called 911.

I don't think we can really know whether or not this incident was a suicide.

The fact the woman was pushing a bike with tons of plastic bags late a night makes me think it wasn't. It sounds to me like a homeless person jaywalking in a dangerous fashion.
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