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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

#461

Post by nonbel »

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…

Reminds me about this comment a few weeks ago (which made an impression on me) :

>'How low has the SW development bar gone, if "it's okay" now means "at least it's not directly killing people"?' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16541235

We now see the standard has slipped to: "Is the death of one person relatively so bad? People die every day."

Next a large crowd of people will be killed and the standard will become: "It's not so bad compared to creating skynet or starting thermonuclear war."

I'm not sure what comes after that.

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

#462

Post by intopieces »

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…

A person was not killed by a computer. There was a person behind the wheel responsible for taking control of the car in a situation like this. If this is a computer killing someone, then every instance of a person being killed while cruise control was engaged also counts.

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

#463

Post by whyleyc »

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?

"The relevant question is how this affects the technology"

Is arguably the whole problem with our industry in a nutshell. The more relevant and largely ignored question should be "how this affects human beings".

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

#464

Post by phyzome »

DangerousPie wrote: post #322

I know this is a slightly insensitive question to ask right now, but assuming that what happened was that the car tried to turn right and the cyclist came from behind and crossed into its path[0]: Who would actually have been in the wrong? I cycle along paths like this from time to time myself, and I always assume that I should let a turning car pass in front of me. As soon as I see the turn signal I will either fall…

Depending on the state law, the right-turning car probably is supposed to yield to a cyclist in the bike lane going straight. But of course, every experienced cyclist knows that what is right is not what is safe; you should aim to travel just behind the car's rear bumper to give yourself time to stop if they swerve right.

This is the insanity of (most) bike lanes, that you have a lane to the right of a right-turn lane that can go straight. And that's why I don't use most bike lanes. They're trouble.

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

#466

Post by dsfyu404ed »

zkms wrote: post #396
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 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…

>Yes, this intentionally violates the letter of the traffic laws...

...so you probably won't find any support for it in this crowd.

> there's no fundamental reason that computer-controlled cars can't do this.

Sure, there's no fundamental reason you can't swerve but you need to identify the thing in the road you're trying not to hit before you can decide whether to swerve or brake. Self driving cars can't yet reliably ID things well enough to take the only evasive action they know (stopping).

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

#467

Post by Alex3917 »

wtetzner wrote: post #152
Alex3917 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? It’s not a problem if Uber kills pedestrians, even in situations where it’s completely avoidable. It’s only (legally) a problem if they’re violating the rules of the road while doing so.

> It’s only (legally) a problem if they’re violating the rules of the road while doing so. I doubt that's true, but even if it were, I believe the rules of the road are "always yield to pedestrians, even if you have the right-of-way".

People jump in front of the NYC subways multiple times per week in an attempt to commit suicide, how often do you read about the train engineers going to prison for that? Literally never. If someone tries to commit suicide by jumping in front of your car then you're generally not legally liable, as long as you're not intoxicated and you pull over immediately and phone it in.

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

#468

Post by ChuckMcM »

Something of a self-driver car Rorschach test. On the one hand there is the tragedy (car hits person, person dies), on the other there is the technology (computer doing the driving), and then there is the fog of reporting where actual data is hard to come by because people are people and report on the things they saw/heard that were important to them.

Last night there was a story on CBS about the first 'self driving bus' going live in San Ramon California. [1] Where the reporter steps out in front of it to see if it will stop (spoiler alert, it does).

And while it was a tragedy, its unfortunate that because it was a 'self driving' car this fatality gets more coverage than the thousands who are killed by 'human driven' vehicles. Bicycle advocacy groups have been arguing for years that better, separated, bike lanes would save lives. Perhaps the companies behind self driving can get behind that effort to protect bike riders from humans and make it easier on their cars.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/live/video/20180319105443-california...

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

#469

Post by TillE »

danso wrote: post #394

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 w…

> the vehicle was northbound...crossing from the west side of street

So, she approached from the left. That would make it significantly less likely that she just suddenly appeared in front of the car, right? It's not a narrow street.

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

#470

Post by phyzome »

grecy wrote: post #143

To play Devil's advocate, there were over 100 people killed in the US TODAY from non-autonomous vehicles [1]. Obviously we'd need to know the number of miles driven in each category to get a meaningful comparison, but let's all keep in mind a USA where only one person per day is killed on the roads would be a two order of magnitude improvement over today. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_…

If you look elsewhere in the comments, you'll see some numbers. Autonomous vehicles are new enough that they come out as more dangerous even with one death.
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