Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident • Hacker News Board

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#521

Post by sgc » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 2:13 AM UTC

dschuler wrote: post #431

sgc wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite! According to https://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/sites/roadsafety/... , there are 6000-6500 pedestrian deaths per year in the EU (the data is only in graph form). EDIT: here is the raw data: https://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/sites/roadsafety/... As someone who has spent a fair amount of time in both places, I can say that the US pedestrian feels more entitled due to an almost universal pede…

The first link is very interesting - for example the UK was able to reduce pedestrian fatalities from ~1500 per year (absolute numbers) in 1991 to ~500 in 2014.

I was definitely impressed with the improvements. There is an EU wide plan for fatality reductions for 2020. It doesn't appear they will hit their targets, but much seems to have come of it.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#522

Post by emodendroket » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 2:13 AM UTC

EamonnMR wrote: post #360

That look of horror on the driver's face... I can't say a human driver would have managed to stop or swerve any quicker either.

Uh, really? You don't think a human driver could have taken any corrective action if they were paying attention to the road? The risk I see with these semi-autonomous systems is precisely that they invite the sort of inattention seen here. The brakes, at least, should have been applied.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#523

Post by eric_h » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 2:14 AM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #356

jeffmould wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree. Just like a normal camera has issues in low-light, it is clear that this camera is diminishing exactly how light the road ahead was. While I can't say confidently that I would have been able to stop to prevent hitting them, watching the video in full screen does lead me to believe that I would have seen them and been able to apply the brakes at least enough to reduce the impact. Also, watching the vi…

This is pretty much the experience I have with my dash cam, a Yi. In its recorded video, its automatic exposure control make it look like everything outside of the headline cone is pitch black, but it is actually not. I have seen deer and possums by the side of the road, and debris etc, that did not show up when I later checked the video for the same period. There is enough spillover light from modern headlights that…

> I have seen deer and possums by the side of the road

Both of those have eyes that act as reflectors and you can see their eyes well before you can actually see the whole animal.

This[0] suggests that the total time required for a human to avoid an incident like this is 3.6s (at 35 mph, casual googling suggests the car was doing 40). Even if we add 1 second of extra time to deal with it I'm not sure that makes the cut.

0) http://www.visualexpert.com/Resources/pedestrian.html

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#524

Post by emodendroket » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 2:14 AM UTC

kodis wrote: post #33

I sure couldn't have reacted quickly enough to have prevented this collision. I'd expect the car to have better reflexes then I do, but given the little time from when the pedestrian first showed up on camera and the time when the collision occurred, I doubt that there was anything that the car could have done, regardless of the sophistication of its software.

If the brakes were applied the collision may not have been avoided but it could have been at a lower speed.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#525

Post by ACow_Adonis » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 2:15 AM UTC

jackpirate wrote: post #78

atonse wrote: post #25

How did LIDAR and IR not catch that? That seems like a pretty serious problem. It's clear from the video that a human driver actually would've had more trouble since the pedestrian showed up in the field of view right before the collision, yet that's in the visible spectrum. When I argue for automated driving (as a casual observer), I tell people about exactly this sort of stuff (a computer can look in 20 places at t…

It's clear from the video that a human driver actually would've had more trouble since the pedestrian showed up in the field of view right before the collision, yet that's in the visible spectrum. That's not at all clear to me. I don't know too much about cameras, but it looks to me like the camera is making the scene appear much darker than it actually is. In the video, you can see many street lights projecting down…

I do know a bit about cameras, and you're spot on.

You will frequently see dash cam footage and night photography blow out the relative highlights and blacken the relative shadows.

This is because (cheap) hardware does not have the same dynamic range as human eyes, especially at night. So "properly exposed" it has to make a call to capture light values in the middle somewhere. Those light values too far out the top it interpreted as white, those out the bottom it interpreted as black, created an artificial high contrast version of what a human eye would see.

This is pretty intuitive, generally when we're driving down the road with our lights on, we aren't literally moving between pools of black, often in many urban areas I'll even forget to turn my lights on because I can see well enough.

You MAY be able to get a VERY BAD interpretation post processing of what a human would see by increasing the brightness of those pixels near the black threshold.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#526

Post by linkregister » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 2:15 AM UTC

danso wrote: post #108

Anyone here have expertise on the current state of law governing autonomous vehicles? I know AZ is supposed to be lax compared to California, so I wonder if there is any situation in which Uber could be at fault (besides a civil suit from victim's family)? Let's say that the car's LIDAR was indeed dysfunctional, or obviously inferior compared to the industry standard. It could be a hardware problem, or the software a…

There’s nothing in the tort or criminal justice system that prevents responsible parties from being held responsible for negligently causing the death of a person in the realm of self-driving cars. If Arizona prosecutors don’t have enough for a case now, they might later after the NTSB investigation. No charges have been brought, so they could be brought up later.

I would suspect that the backup driver would bear the criminal responsibility for any collision the car got into. What the general consensus of the other HN commenters is that the driver could not have reacted better, though the LIDAR should have detected the woman.

In that case, the woman’s family would have a strong wrongful death case against Uber.

(I’m not a lawyer)

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#527

Post by xvf22 » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 2:15 AM UTC

pishpash wrote: post #391

xvf22 wrote: post #299

It's very disingenuous to release this video. This is not the picture the car saw nor the human. That coupled with the fact that no radar or lidar data was released makes me wonder why the police seem to be bending over backwards to absolve Uber.

The police sure seems eager to be on someone's side.

Yup, and I look forward to the NTSB report. Let the facts speak for themselves.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#528

Post by foodstances » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 2:16 AM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #123

HankB99 wrote: post #27

This seems like a simple case. I would have expected the driver assist in my 2017 Subaru to have reacted to something in the road. I'm surprised that the much more sophisticated self driving system did not.

I can't count the number of commercials I've seen for Fords and Nissans and Subarus and every kind of modern car that has this exact feature, and this is exactly how the advertising plays out. Someone sprints in front of the car, the car stops automatically, everyone is safe, pedestrian continues with their life. I've never used it in real life, but I assume it works how the ads show it. If Uber can't match a $25,000…

The system in my car does this but only under a certain speed, much lower than what the vehicle in this video appears to be doing. It's intended for stop-and-go city driving or to avoid hitting a kid that sprints out of a driveway in a slow residential area, not to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a deer or person at 40mph.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#529

Post by sundvor » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 2:16 AM UTC

eric_h wrote: post #478

jackpirate wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clear from the video that a human driver actually would've had more trouble since the pedestrian showed up in the field of view right before the collision, yet that's in the visible spectrum. That's not at all clear to me. I don't know too much about cameras, but it looks to me like the camera is making the scene appear much darker than it actually is. In the video, you can see many street lights projecting down…

The whole reason many people on here have been advocating for self driving cars is that they can see obstructions more or less perfectly in the dark with LIDAR. I am much more interested in what that sensor said. I'm reluctant to infer exactly what a human eye would have seen in that situation. I have absolutely driven down streets in suburbia where the gap between street lights was large enough to make them quite da…

Sad side note that most people appear unaware of the benefits even the simplest and cheapest of reflectors do provide.

The seemingly random design decision of many runner manufacturers to embed tiny reflector strips in their shoes have no doubt saved countless lives. And their owners would probably be none the wiser.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#530

Post by thinkloop » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 2:17 AM UTC

andrei_says_ wrote: post #492

This exact situation happened to me on an unlit road 3 years ago. I swerved in the opposite lane and avoided the collision, without thinking. I was just lucky that my reflexes kicked in on time and that there was no opposing traffic. I had to stop and shake out all the adrenaline and rage after that. Real question, what would have happened to me, a human driver, if I had hit the person?

Police ruled it wouldn't be your fault.