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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

#441

Post by emilsedgh »

tree_of_item wrote: post #433
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…

Do better than what? This is a technology news forum, the relevant question is how this affects the technology. People are going to talk about the potential long term trends in self-driving technology. What exactly were you expecting?

I think the relevant question must be how the technology is going to affect lives.

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

#442

Post by larrykwg »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #65

The people leading the development should demonstrate that they can stop for pedestrians by personally jumping out in front of them on a closed test road. If they're not able to demonstrate this, they shouldn't be putting them on public roads.

very good point, I would not be surprised if Uber put those cars out with a barely working model to collect enough training data, the human operator to correct such errors was tired and didn't intervene. Some basic driving test for self driving cars or other mitigating factors need to be added IMMEDIATELY otherwise tons more will probably die or be injured. Train operators need to prove they are awake and with attention using some button presses, similar things need to be required for those research vehicle if you want to allow them at all.

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

#443

Post by IgorPartola »

orbitur wrote: post #421
IgorPartola wrote: post #390

This is what's going to happen. If you've ever seen a machine learning algorithm in action, this isn't surprising at all. Basically, they'll behave as expected some well known percentage of the time. But when they don't, the result will not be just a slight deviation from the normal algorithm, but a very unexpected one. So we will have overall a much smaller number of deaths caused by self driving cars, but ones that…

> I won't be surprised if someone at some point wears a stripy outfit, and the car thinks they are a part of the road, and tries to explicitly chase them down until they are under the wheels. Or if the car suddenly decides that the road continues at a 90 degree angle off a bridge. Or that the splashes from a puddle in front is actually an oncoming car and it must swerve into the school kids crossing the perpendicular…

I am definitely not. Their version of the future is too damn bleak for me.

Your fear is very much grounded in reality. US lawmakers tend to be very reactionary, except in rare cases like gun laws. So it won't take much to have restrictions imposed like this. Granted, I believe some regulation is good; after all the reason today's cars are safer than those built 20 years ago isn't because the free market decided so, but because of regulation. But self driving cars are so new and our lawmakers are by and large so ignorant, that I wouldn't trust them to create good regulation from the get go.

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

#444

Post by acdha »

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…

That’s technically true but the number of truly unavoidable cases is orders of magnitude lower. With human drivers, “jumped out in front of me” really means inattention 99.9% of the time and police departments historically tend to be unlikely to question such claims. (For example, here in DC there have been a number of cases where that was used to declare a cyclist at fault only to have private video footage show the opposite - which mattered a lot for medical insurance claims)

With self-driving cars this really seems to call for mandatory investigations by a third-party with access to the raw telemetry data. There’s just too much incentive for a company to say they weren’t at fault otherwise.

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

#445

Post by Mtntk »

there is a standard in motor industry called misra, because the target user is human you have to met some certain safety level. Otherwise bad things happen like this.

Maybe self driving industry needs to have some safety rules too to prevent when the unexpected happens.

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

#446

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

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…

>> Sounds like Uber's platform may not be up to that standard yet, which makes me wonder why they're on public roads.

They're on public roads because they've decided that deploying their tech is more important than safety.

I don't see any other explanation. We know that it's pretty much impossible to prove the safety of autonomous vehicles by driving them, so Uber (and almost everyone else) have decided that, well, they don't care. They'll deploy them anyway.

How do we know that? The report by RAND corporation:

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1478.html

  Key Findings

  * Autonomous vehicles would have to be driven hundreds 
  of millions of miles and sometimes hundreds of billions 
  of miles to demonstrate their reliability in terms of 
  fatalities and injuries.

  * Under even aggressive testing assumptions, existing 
  fleets would take tens and sometimes hundreds of years 
  to drive these miles — an impossible proposition if the 
  aim is to demonstrate their performance prior to 
  releasing them on the roads for consumer use.

  * Therefore, at least for fatalities and injuries, 
  test- driving alone cannot provide sufficient evidence 
  for demonstrating autonomous vehicle safety.

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

#447

Post by slavik81 »

alyx wrote: post #393
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?

Would you care that seatbelts are statistically likely to save lives if your loved ones died drowning in their car due to them?

What do we do differently based on the answer to that question?

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

#448

Post by wongarsu »

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…

The news isn't about the fact that a human died, unless I'm somehow missing the constant flood of ~50 news items a day about other deadly car accidents. The news is very much about self-driving cars and our relation to them. That's what people react to. The human death is tragic, but not really the topic.

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

#449

Post by prestonh »

conductr wrote: post #87
timmaah wrote: post #32

The video mentions she was on a bike and shows a mangled bicycle. Also the line markings on the street indicate there is a bike lane to the left of a right turn lane. Definitely very bad. https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4369934,-111.9429875,3a,75y,...

Not to be insensitive to the death. But, that bike lane design is just horrible. Are human drivers really known for respecting the "do not cross solid white line" rules? 9/10 drivers that realize at the last moment they need to turn right are going to quickly cross over this bike lane probably without much time to check their blind spot. If I was cycling on this path, I'd want to use the sidewalk and be extra cautiou…

That looks completely identical to all bike lanes I've seen in suburban areas. I think bike lanes are just inherently dangerous. Would be interesting to see what a well-designed suburban bike lane looks like.

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

#450

Post by rmwaite »

rockarage wrote: post #369
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…

> 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 only true for the uninitiated, never let it get to that. I drove for Uber/Lyft/Via in New York city so I can experience and study these situation. These sort of accidents are preventable. The following is the basic: 1.) Drive m…

While what you are saying can reduce the number of occurrences, it does not change what your parent post said.
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