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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

#471

Post by dwighttk »

nonbel wrote: post #461
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 be…

"It's not so bad compared to the alternative"

I mean, we two are still capable of discussing it, at least!

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

#472

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

propman wrote: post #326

This is purely an emotional initial reaction to hearing this without knowing most facts, but I just have to vent and for once be part of the outrage culture and make emotionally charged statements before more info comes out. Uber ruining self driving cars that can save 20k lives each year and improve our economy and get millions out of poverty and improve everyone's quality of life by being short sighted, financial d…

> 20k lives each year

Road deaths are ~40k each year in the US alone.

I agree about Uber; smells like shit, looks like shit, tastes like shit, you better believe it's shit to the core.

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

#473

Post by oldgradstudent »

nodesocket wrote: post #8

Striking a pedestrian in a crosswalk is horrible and terrible news. The reality though is how many pedestrians are hit by manual driver's vs automous drivers? On a percentage basis I gotta believe autonomous cars are orders of magnitude safer. Self driving cars aren't going to be perfect. How many people lost their lives in early factories to machines during the industral revolution? Imagine if they had pulled the pl…

The problem is that you 'believe' it to be orders of magnitude safer.

How about we test it properly before allowing it on public roads?

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

#474

Post by gowld »

dmoy wrote: post #318
untog wrote: post #311

This opens up an interesting question going forward. We can't rely on Uber themselves to analyse the telemetry data and come to a conclusion, they're biased. So really, we need self driving car companies to turn over accident telemetry data to the police. But the police are ill equipped to process that data. We need law enforcement to be able to keep pace with advances in technology and let's face it, they're not goi…

On the one hand I'd say give it to the NTSB, because historically they are really good at this sort of thing. On the other hand, I'd wonder if increasing NTSB scope this much would drastically decrease the average quality of NTSB's work. Scaling ain't easy.

NTSB should expand to launch an automotive division.

Bonus: Job creation to replace the jobs lost to automation

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

#475

Post by m3rc »

danso wrote: post #460
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'm far from being an Uber-supporter here but I think you're overreacting. As others have pointed out, this story is only relevant to HN (and to the national media at large) because it involves Uber and AV, not because it involved a pedestrian dying. It makes sense that the discussion centers around policy and systems since few people here can claim to have even known the victim. Nor does participating in this discus…

What is that supposed to mean? If the only way it directly impacts a forum is because of the company doing the killing, the killing is irrelevant?

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

#476

Post by Shivetya »

decacorn wrote: post #439
jonthepirate wrote: post #415

Former Lyft eng here. From my vantage point, as an industry, we're nowhere near where we should be on the safety side. The tech companies are developing driving tech privately instead of openly. Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads? The public is at serious risk of getting run over by hacked and buggy guidance / decision system. Even when a human operator has his hands hoverin…

The counterargument you propose is invalid because it would be DECADES until >90% of the entire current automotive market is converted to fully autonomous. MEANING cars currently on the road either being retrofitted or completely removed from road and replaced by an AV. So we are all in a lose-lose. I'm anticipating severe backlash from Congress this week, if not today.

because it does not require handing over control to the car to get a good test. the cars can simply record their decision making process and immediately flag all exceptions, which includes hitting anything. It would be very interesting to see all exceptions because it is to be expected all these systems must fail.

we don't need active testing on our streets. automakers would have dared to test ABS or "safety" systems in such a manner for the simple reason of liability.

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

#477

Post by zepn »

This paradigm-shift is a chance to address one of the leading causes of preventable death in the world.

It doesn't surprise me for a moment that this was Uber (though it might have been a Tesla). From all I've seen and read, these companies are racing unscrupulously, and some have inferior technology compared with others.

Waymo seem to be approaching the problem from a safety direction rather than a pure race for profit.

We need to hold SDs to a higher standard than we hold human drivers. Not 1.5x the standard; 1000. 10,000. 100,000.

And every death must be treated as a serious failure of engineering. These are preventable deaths.

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

#478

Post by dang »

carussell wrote: post #458
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…

While you're admonishing people for their comments and employing stealth implicature like, "let's make sure Uber releases detailed data", do you think that maybe you should include a prominent notice disclosing your (and your former colleagues') ties to the industry that Uber is operating in—most importantly as a competitor?

Yikes - bringing someone's personal details into threads as ammunition in an argument is offside. It crosses into personal attack, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#479

Post by Tobba_ »

tracker1 wrote: post #195

Really? This is a completely new tech, and process. How is any reaction "a standard move?" I guess it could be standard for any new tech to result in a death from autonomous machinery. In any case, things like this are why I don't think fully autonomous is nearly ready in city environments. I'm not saying it isn't close, and shouldn't be worked on. I just don't think the intelligence systems are near as worked out as…

I'm sure that pile of data will gain intelligence if we stir it hard enough. Any moment now.

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

#480

Post by burlesona »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #225

In the early 20th century the automobile industry mobilized to downplay the deadly threat automobiles posed to pedestrians, and lobbied to create new laws to frame pedestrians as being at fault instead of car drivers (eg. jaywalking). I expect we'll soon see tech companies do the same in order to favour their autonomous automobile businesses at the expense of pedestrians and cyclists.

This. There are many posts on this thread suggesting we could fix all this by lowering speed limits, etc. That's been known for a hundred years at this point.

If you want to get up on the history you can grab a copy of "Fighting Traffic," by Peter Norton. He goes through all the efforts cities made in the 1920's to limit cars, and how the motor lobby formed in opposition to this and little by little reversed the tables to the situation we find ourselves in today.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/fighting-traffic

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