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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

#391

Post by tachyonbeam »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #234
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…

It'll likely never get passed, but we truly need an "acceptable death" metric to be passed to protect the companies (and apparently people too, since some in these comments what the developers held responsible) from deaths. In my opinion, a law should be passed that per mile driven, 5-10% of the current deaths per mile is allowed, and it should begin decreasing after 10 or so years to something low (maybe 1%, maybe .…

In general, I like having a diverse set of options available in terms of software implementations (eg: multiple C++ compilers to choose from). It does worry me a little bit, however, that so many companies are trying to implement their own self-driving cars from scratch. If you just look at how buggy new OS releases tend to be, how many blatantly obvious bugs you run into every month, it's clear that many software development teams don't properly test their stuff. Some companies, like uber here, will act irresponsibly and fuck up, resulting in the loss of human lives.

I would guess it's inevitable that in the medium/long-term, there will only be one or two companies developing and selling self-driving tech to every car manufacturer. Small players won't have enough data, everyone will be too afraid of the risk, the amount of government regulations surrounding self-driving cars will increase. More regulations will protect people but it will also mean it's much harder to start gathering the data you need and testing your product.

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

#392

Post by newnewpdro »

Having these massive robots on our public streets better at least result in unfettered, transparent public access to all the data informing the thing in the time surrounding the crash.

This shift towards autonomous vehicles is utterly unnecessary. They could be simply improving the safety systems of the vehicles to intervene when the driver is about to cause an accident.

Instead they're doing the opposite - expecting the human to intervene when the robot is about to cause an accident.

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

#393

Post by alyx »

apeace wrote: post #366

I'm really shocked at the trend in comments here. Yes, we get it. Fatalities will happen sometimes, they are unavoidable sometimes, and what matters in the long run is if we can achieve a significant overall reduction in fatalities. But my god, a person was just killed by a computer. Can't we have some compassion and humility? Let's, as a community, set the standard for how we will react to these events. Let's make s…

I find what might help those that quote statistics is to self-reflect and ask the question, how would you react if your father/mother/sister/son/daughter/etc was the victim?

Would you care that statistically self-driving cars have killed less people than human drivers?

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

#394

Post by danso »

The Washington Post has an updated story with the victim's name:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2018/03/1...

> Police said the vehicle was northbound on Curry Road when a woman, identified as 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg, crossing from the west side of street, was struck. She died at a hospital, the department said.

No mention of her being a bicyclist. My gut instinct is to accept that the victim was indeed a pedestrian -- with the assumption that they'd have that detail cleared up by the time they have her identity ready to release to the public.

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

#395

Post by dsacco »

mtgx wrote: post #293
olympus wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> First off, by definition like 49% of the drivers are technically better than the "average driver".

No, that’s not the definition of mean, that’s (something like) the definition of median.

In a skewed distribution (which driving skill may very well be), the mean can be very far from the middle. If a relatively small number of people are extraordinarily bad at driving, most people are above average. If a relatively small number of people are extraordinarily good at driving, most people are below average.

Why this nitpick matters: if the leading point of your thesis depends on is quantifying how many people are above average, you should really know if the average is at the 10th, 50th or 90th percentiles (or somewhere else entirely).

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

#396

Post by zkms »

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…

> 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 friction between your tyres and the road.

This holds iff the control input you apply is only braking. Changing the steering angle is generally far more effective for the "pedestrian darts out from hidden place onto road" situation. It's far better to sharply swerve away to ensure that there's no way the pedestrian can get into your path before your car arrive there than it is to stand on the brakes and hope for the best.

Indeed, the faster you're moving, the more you should consider swerving away over braking -- take advantage of that lethal speed to clear the pedestrian's potential paths before he can get into yours.

Yes, this intentionally violates the letter of the traffic laws (and might involve colliding into a a parked or moving automobile on the other side of the road) and also involves potentially unusual manoeuvring on a very short deadline; but it's far better to avoid a vehicle-pedestrian collision even if it's at the cost of possibly busting into the opposing lane / driving off the road / hitting a parked car. Decently experienced drivers can do this, I can do this (and have successfully avoided a collision with a pedestrian who ran out between parked cars on a dark and raining night), there's no fundamental reason that computer-controlled cars can't do this.

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

#397

Post by cup-of-tea »

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…

> As of December 2017 Uber had driven 2 million autonomous miles[1]. Let's be generous and double that, so 4 million.

How often did the human have to take control?

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

#398

Post by orbitur »

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.

This stuff needs to be regulated sooner rather than later.

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

#399

Post by ryanwaggoner »

davesque wrote: post #387
apeace wrote: post #366

I'm really shocked at the trend in comments here. Yes, we get it. Fatalities will happen sometimes, they are unavoidable sometimes, and what matters in the long run is if we can achieve a significant overall reduction in fatalities. But my god, a person was just killed by a computer. Can't we have some compassion and humility? Let's, as a community, set the standard for how we will react to these events. Let's make s…

What trend in the comments is bothering you? It's a little unclear from your comment.

Fatalities will happen sometimes, they are unavoidable sometimes, and what matters in the long run is if we can achieve a significant overall reduction in fatalities.

I haven't even read any of the comments on this story yet, and this type of pro-self-driving-car response is what I expect to be in the majority. That and anything anti-Uber :)

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

#400

Post by hikarudo »

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…

If the accident had happened with the autonomous vehicle of ANY company, we would still be talking about this and estimating the number of deaths per 100 million miles.

Therefore, I think it would be more fair to consider all miles run by all autonomous vehicles all over the world in the denominator.

It is for the same reason that we want to consider all miles driven everywhere, not just those in Arizona.

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