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Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

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Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#611

Post by phyller »

This was not what I was expecting. If this had been an accident with a normal vehicle, I think the driver would have been found to be at least partially at fault, and guilty of involuntary manslaughter. But I'm not a lawyer.

I thought the victim jumped out into the street, but that clearly isn't the case. The pedestrian always has the right of way, a human would have seen her and slowed and swerved, and no one should be driving so fast that they can't stop for an obstacle that is just coming into view. And like many others mentioned, I'm sure she was visible to the human eye where the camera's exposure was set up to not wash out what was in the headlights.

Uber screwed up on this, maybe they were just lucky it didn't happen earlier.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#612

Post by cmurf »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #594
cmurf wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know that I would even feel that sorry for her, >there is only so much we can (and should) do to protect... This strikes me as a good example of willful blindness and could subject a person to a charge of criminally negligent homicide. And I even see that possibility in this video, that the driver was maladapted for night conditions due to a display in the car that maybe wasn't supposed to be there. Imagine…

This strikes me as a good example of rebutting a point that nobody made. I didn't say I'd hit her on purpose. But if the conditions depicted in the video are accurate -- meaning, not artificially manipulated to make the lighting appear darker than it was -- then it would be awfully easy to rationalize away any guilt I might feel. If that amounts to victim-blaming, then so be it. When no malice is present, sometimes t…

Hitting her on purpose would not be criminally negligent homicide, it would be homicide. What you described is a blase attitude that suggests it's OK to have no imagination of risks that can get people killed, and that's OK because after all they're drunk or stupid. Your words.

Malice is not required for criminally negligent homicide. And yes, indeed, much better to fix the problem, that was my point. Not blame drunk or stupid people, which was your point.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#613

Post by osrec »

mdorazio wrote: post #603
osrec wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lady can be seen fairly clearly (even in this poor quality video) at 0.03 and impact occurs at 0.04. That's 1s, which means a distance of approx 17m. If the guy was watching (sort of the point of him being there really) he could have slowed the car significantly and probably even stopped it. These are test vehicles being treated like prod vehicles. They should probably not be on streets with pedestrians quite so…

You're massively underestimating human response time to visual cues and also the distance needed to stop a vehicle traveling at 35-40mph. It takes a full quarter of a second to respond to a visual stimulus on average, and more than that to also move your foot and depress a brake pedal. By that time the car was less than 50 feet from the pedestrian. At 40mph braking distance is about 80 feet in good conditions. There…

Or swerved perhaps? I think the Uber employee developed a false sense of security with respect to the car's capabilities.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#614

Post by 51Cards »

bigtunacan wrote: post #575

Clearly there are still issues with the car. The sensors should have picked up on this. I would be surprised if the automated emergency braking in my Honda wouldn’t have picked this up based on past experience of a close call at night where it saved my ass. I want to focus a bit though on the human failure here. Uber has been piloting this program with human backup drivers just for situations like this until there is…

While I do agree there is a level of responsibility on the driver's part here I will also say that I think it's equally unreasonable to expect someone to stay alert in that situation. Human brains need stimulus and interaction to stay alert focused. To me this is as much a failure of understanding how the human mind functions... not just on Uber's part but of all the companies that think the human will stay alert while the car does the work. Our brains just don't work that way. Once the brain starts to trust the car it disengage and wander off onto other distractions.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#615

Post by hcknwscommenter »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #447
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…

Human eyes have the same issue: if you are next to a bright light source, the areas without or less light will look much more dark. I assume cameras work the same way?

Cameras work the same way, but much much more poorly. A human eye can see multiple orders of magnitude higher range of light to dark areas at the same time. The accepted estimate is that the human eye can detect a 1 million: 1 range from light to dark in terms of photon intensity.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#616

Post by donpdonp »

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…

I agree thats a textbook case for the non-visual-specrum sensors. Its possible that lidar DID catch it, but the avoidance logic decided to continue forward. For example if it decided a collision was immpossible to avoid, swerving might make things worse. Also its possible the logic thought the timing was such that the bike would pass after the car crossed where the bike was going, so slowing down would actually cause a collision.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#618

Post by brokenmachine »

aianus wrote: post #155
brokenmachine wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point? She wasn't driving a car. Imagine if the uber hardware was installed into a petrol tanker. It just just as pointless a discussion. If self driving cars can't be trusted to not smash into any obstacle that appears such as a deer/roadwork/child/runaway shopping cart, then they shouldn't be permitted on the road.

The point is that humans who have poorer sensors and do even stupider things are allowed to drive. So the bar for self-driving is a lot lower than people around here make it sound.

Stupider things - I'll give you. But where is the evidence that humans have poorer sensors?

All I saw is a car plowing into a person without even applying the brakes. That strongly implies to me that the car wasn't even aware the person was there, as reflexes should not be an issue.

Most humans would see that person directly in front of them.

So I contend that the car's sensors are poorer than a humans.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#619

Post by foolinaround »

jeffmould wrote: post #135
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…

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…

I can confidently assert that Asian or atleast Indian drivers will almost assuredly not hit the pedestrian in this scenario; We have trained our eyes and senses to watch out for these as it happens all the time.

EDIT: what i meant, in light of the downvotes is that humans can train themselves to see, and just that folks driving in Asia have heightened sense of alertness, due to their environment. Hope it came out alright.

Re: Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident

#620

Post by devit »

Driver not looking at the road (as obvious in any automated vehicle).

Might be wrong, but it looks like either the headlights are not the maximum setting, or they are broken or the camera is underexposing the picture.

And complete software or hardware failure at detecting the obstacle.

Definitely not a combination that should be driving on public roads at night.

That said, the pedestrian is crossing outside of a crosswalk at night without looking at the road, so they are at fault as well.

Note however that obviously even a terrible driving system like this one is extremely more likely to hit an unattentive than an attentive pedestrian (and in fact even more than a good driver, who tend to have accidents due to more exceptional circumstances than "neither party was looking at the road"), so that doesn't excuse Uber's fault, and actually makes their position worse.

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