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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

#651

Post by s2g »

rjvir wrote: post #221
w_t_payne wrote: post #51

To ensure that all automotive software incorporates lessons learned from such fatalities, it would be beneficial to develop a common data set of (mostly synthetic) data replicating accident and 'near miss' scenarios. As we understand more about the risks associated with autonomous driving, we should expand and enrich this data-set, and to ensure public safety, testing against such a dataset should be part of NHTSA /…

Why would Uber agree to such regulations? They were unwilling to legally obtain a self-driving license in California because they did not want to report "disengagements" (situations in which a human driver has to intervene). Uber would just set their self-driving cars free and eat whatever fine/punishment comes with it.

The start tossing executives in jail.

It’s the only real solution to corporations misbehaving.

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

#652

Post by danso »

basura045478 wrote: post #648

I see a lot of detailed analysis in this thread, which is impressive given that literally nobody has read anything more than the half dozen factoids that have been released. At best, some of you are looking at maps of the incident site to figure out potential failure cases. Knowing that you don't know something is as important as having the facts. To harken back to Cheney, these aren't even unknown unknowns, you're b…

Cheney? I think you mean Don Rumsfeld: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiPe1OiKQuk

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

#653

Post by stormthebeach »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #70

The reason self-driving car companies have flocked to Arizona is that Arizona chose to pretty much completely deregulate them: They don't even have to report statistics to the state like they do in California. It's unfortunate, but unsurprising, the first pedestrian killed by an experimental self-driving car allowed on public roads was in Arizona.

The other reason is that AZ has very simple grid-based roads without a lot of complexity in determining right-of-way. As a lifelong Arizonian who recently moved to Oregon - I'm consistently surprised at the amount of computing I have to do to figure out how I'm supposed to handle some intersections/on+off ramps around here.

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

#655

Post by basura045478 »

danso wrote: post #652
basura045478 wrote: post #648

I see a lot of detailed analysis in this thread, which is impressive given that literally nobody has read anything more than the half dozen factoids that have been released. At best, some of you are looking at maps of the incident site to figure out potential failure cases. Knowing that you don't know something is as important as having the facts. To harken back to Cheney, these aren't even unknown unknowns, you're b…

Cheney? I think you mean Don Rumsfeld: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiPe1OiKQuk

you got me

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

#656

Post by smsm42 »

I think it would be insane to expect 100% safety from any technology, let alone new technology. People do crazy things on the road, I am witnessing it almost daily. And if you look up dashcam videos on the internet, you'll be scared to ever drive again. Expecting that some magic technology can deal with all this craziness with 100% safety is impossible. And then we'll add bugs and malfunctions, which absolutely every technology has, especially - new one.

So, brace for the incoming wave of similar news. These things will happen, and these things will be heavily publicized. Hopefully it won't cause stupid overreaction to the tune of banning the technology altogether or surrounding it with a bubble of regulations so think as to make in infeasible.

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

#657

Post by tjoff »

anonu wrote: post #605
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…

Totally agree on your premise that we can rationalize humans killing humans - but we cannot do so with machines killing humans. If self-driving cars really are safer in the long-run for drivers and pedestrians - maybe what people need is a better grasp on probability and statistics? And self-driving car companies need to show and publicize the data that backs this claim up to win the trust of the population.

It's a sense of control. I as a pedestrian (or driver) can understand and take precautions against human drivers. If I'm alert I can instantly see in my peripheral vision if a car is behaving oddly. That way I can seriously reduce the risk of an accident and reduce the consequences in the very most cases.

If the road was filled with self-driving cars there would be less accidents but I wouldn't understand them and with that comes distrust.

Freak accidents without explanations are not going to cut it.

Also, my gut feeling says this was a preventable accident that only happened because of many layers of poor judgement. I hope I'm wrong but that is seriously what I think of self-driving attempts in public so far. Irresponsible.

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

#658

Post by rrix2 »

francisofascii wrote: post #599
Johnny555 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self driving cars are still subject to the laws of physics... unless you're going to dictate that self-driving cars never go above 15mph, I wouldn't advocate jumping in front of even a "perfect" self-driving car. Braking distance (without including any decision time) for a 15mph car is 11 ft, for a 30mph is 45 ft. Self driving cars won't change these limits. (well, they may be a little better than humans at maximizin…

The speed limit for this particular stretch was 45 mph. (sounds high to me, considering there is a bike lane)

Phoenix transportation infrastructure is notoriously bad at handling pedestrians and bicycles because so few people are going to be out biking in 120F summers. There's a knock off effect of exclusively designing a city around middle class car and house types of folks. It's why I left after 20 years in Phoenix and Tempe.

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

#659

Post by spyder »

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…

Even worse: There are people who test their DIY self-driving hacks on public roads:

https://youtu.be/GzrHNI6eCHo?t=100

Using https://github.com/commaai/openpilot , which is cool but not on public roads.

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

#660

Post by treis »

floatrock wrote: post #546
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…

> 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. Interesting way of putting it. Kinda echos the "privatize the profits, socialize the losses" sentiment from the financial crisis.

Self driving cars could potentially save tens of thousands of lives a year not to mention all of the other social benefits and quality of life improvements. No doubt whoever gets it working first will make a ton of money, but society will see a massive benefit as well.
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