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

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

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, in the US at least, the speed of traffic will be much faster than the speed limit, so driving the limit is unsafe.

Driving the speed limit is never unsafe. And especially not in a residential area 35 MPH zone.

Driving the speed limit is frequently unsafe. I drive on highway 401 in Ontario frequently, where the speed limit is 100kmh, but traffic flows at 120kmh or above, with faster traffic going more like 130. Going the speed limit means you are going 20kmh slower than the speed of traffic, and 30kmh slower than faster moving cars, which can definitely be dangerous since accidents are more often caused by speed differential, rather than absolute speed.

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

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, in the US at least, the speed of traffic will be much faster than the speed limit, so driving the limit is unsafe.

Driving 38 vs 35 is hardly an unsafe difference... These are machines. They should obey the speed limit. For people learning to drive -- the first step is learning how to obey the rules. The second step is learning which rules can be bent. Let's focus on step one at the moment.

Where I'm from, at least, for people learning to drive the first thing you learn is that, if you go the speed limit, you are going too slow and will irritate everyone around you.

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

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're opening yet another can of worms when you try to evade. Sometimes it's the right/optimal thing to do, sometimes it's worse (e.g. switch to the lane going in the opposite direction because it seems free - until another car your computer eyes could not see comes quickly around a corner and there are four dead instead of one; that's one of the reasons driving instructors tell us, at least in my country, to do a f…

But that is due to the limited ability of humans to asses all those conditions instantly in a sudden unpredictable situation. The machines should in theory be much better at that.

Grab some introduction to ethics book and think how you would implement what's written in there - and how you choose which one is the right ethical theory for the situation you're in. We had a lecture on that (lecturer had MSc in C.S. and was doing a PhD in philosophy), and many problems are very hard to reason about.

Even if you don't plan to build such software, I can really recommend any computer scientist to get an idea of ethics; in addition to the lecturers slides we used the book "The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics". Research in that direction is only gaining traction right now (not only, but also the "how do you implement an ethical decision automaton?"-part).

Remember: We humans can be lucky to have intuition and reflexes, which kind of put us out of the ethical issue: Usually accidents happen so fast, you can't think about the ethically acceptable reaction and just act more or less random/whatever your training and reflexes tell you to do (or you're so in shock when you realize what's about to happen you can not react at all). If you run over a child because you evade an elder person that's a bad situation to be in either way (assuming your driving was within legal parameters); if the computer actively decides to run over person X instead of person Y due to some algorithmic decision (or coin flipping, doesn't really matter) that's basically worse - because it ultimately decided person Y deserves the right to live more than person X.

That's why there was/is that large hype involving the trolley problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

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

#404
post #52

> According to the Chronicle, the preliminary investigation found the Uber car was driving at 38 mph in a 35 mph zone and did not attempt to brake. Herzberg is said to have abruptly walked from a center median into a lane with traffic. Police believe she may have been homeless. I know this isn't the most pertinent issue here, but I'm surprised the self-driving AI is allowed to speed , though with further research, th…

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…

It's one thing to state that it's common and simple to, say, overclock a CPU, even if the processor specs have a speed a few percent lower. Typical headroom, operator requirements, and a decent cooler suggest that everyone could probably bump clock speeds by a few percent without issue.

But you wouldn't expect a plane crash investigation to mention offhand that the flight computers were mildly overclocked.

A test drive of a new self-driving car should not speed, even if it's common or normal.

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

#406

Looking at the google street view I am astonished someone thought it was a good idea to allow a bunch of random plants to grow in the median. It makes visibility insanely complicated, especially at night.

You're just saying the driver is even more to blame - going faster than the speed limit even though visibility is reduced should increase, not decrease, culpability.

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

#407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no traffic "around" them, just the car behind. And if the car behind is speeding it's up to them to slow down if the car in front is obeying the speed limit. This kind of argument is just used to justify speeding.

> There is no traffic "around" them, just the car behind. How about when merging, or changing lanes? The speed limit is not _always_ safe or practical to obey strictly.

>How about when merging, or changing lanes? The speed limit is not _always_ safe or practical to obey strictly.

In the case of overtaking, you just need to make sure you don't cut someone off in the overtaking lane. No need to go over the speed limit just because you're too impatient to wait for a proper gap in the traffic.

I've never seen a situation where you're merging onto a freeway and everyone in the right-most lane is speeding excessively. That would be a very dangerous situation, and if you yourself go significantly faster than the speed limit to merge you're just adding to the dangerous problem.

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

#408
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no traffic "around" them, just the car behind. And if the car behind is speeding it's up to them to slow down if the car in front is obeying the speed limit. This kind of argument is just used to justify speeding.

You don't seem to drive. If you don't follow traffic flow, people will cut off in front of you, tailgate, zigzag, and do other dangerous lane changes/maneuvers much more frequently. And that's when the trigger-happy ones don't yell obscenities at you.

>You don't seem to drive

LOL. I'm not sure if you're trolling, rude or just don't pay attention to the cars around you when you're driving, but I'll guess it's a combination of all 3.

>If you don't follow traffic flow, people will cut off in front of you, tailgate, zigzag, and do other dangerous lane changes/maneuvers much more frequently.

From my 45 years of observing people's driving and driving myself for about 30 years, I find that most people generally obey the speed limit or don't go much faster. Probably about 90% of people in general. At rush hour, it drops to about 50%. Some of the other 50% certainly do do all those fucked up, rude and dangerous things you mention, but it doesn't mean that the 50% of people obeying the speed limit are at fault. It's the impatient speeders who are at fault.

It's sometimes a bit of a Darwin award scenario. I live on Vancouver Island, and there is only a single highway over the mountains to Victoria. During commute times, about 50% of people speed significantly, and they do some of the dangerous and rude shit you mention. A few times a year one of them drives too fast for the conditions and ends up killing themselves, which then shuts down the entire north-south highway (the only fucking route) for 4 hours. The government is currently spending a shit ton of money to put barriers in the centre of the highway to try and prevent the excessively speeding idiots from killing themselves so often.

So no, I don't have much patience for the rude people who tailgate me, go 50km/h over the limit even in rain, and then get themselves killed and hold up the entire island for 4 hours because of their stupidity and lack of knowledge of basic physics.

(And I'm not calling out everyone who speeds, I do it myself sometimes, it's only the ones who go way over the limit with no consideration for weather conditions or safety, and the rude idiots who are in too much of a hurry to extend basic courtesy to other road users).

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

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which means she wasn't moving quickly.

"walking your bike" is just an expression, you can certainly run while "walking" your bike – especially across a street

Sure, but starting and stopping takes time, which means she did not "suddenly" run into the street.

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

#410
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't seem to drive. If you don't follow traffic flow, people will cut off in front of you, tailgate, zigzag, and do other dangerous lane changes/maneuvers much more frequently. And that's when the trigger-happy ones don't yell obscenities at you.

>You don't seem to drive LOL. I'm not sure if you're trolling, rude or just don't pay attention to the cars around you when you're driving, but I'll guess it's a combination of all 3. >If you don't follow traffic flow, people will cut off in front of you, tailgate, zigzag, and do other dangerous lane changes/maneuvers much more frequently. From my 45 years of observing people's driving and driving myself for about 30…

> I find that most people generally obey the speed limit or don't go much faster.

Regional culture definitely plays into this. I grew up in the midwest and almost everybody speeds. Now I live in Seattle and I'm the fast guy in the left lane going 5 MPH over the speed limit.

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