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Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

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Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#71

Post by bryanlarsen »

splouk wrote: post #38
joncrane wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And welcome to why self-driving cars will always be 3 years away. It's also possible that human/pedestrian behavior will adapt to the consistent behavior of driverless cars.

Or jaywalking will become more strictly enforced with policing or physical barriers. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/4/2/automated-vehic...

That's a very good argument but I don't think it will come to pass, for this reason: http://theoatmeal.com/pl/minor_differences/cutting_off

There's something about driving that turns ordinary people into assholes. I've observed it in myself. Bus passengers are much more considerate, and I think that passengers in self-driving vehicles will behave like passengers, not like drivers. So if a pedestrian cuts them off they'll just shrug and keep playing their game or whatever they're doing.

I hope.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#72

Post by Maybestring »

Symmetry wrote: post #56
freditup wrote: post #18

I'm curious what degree of "cultural context" is built into automated cars - I feel that there has to be a lot of locale-specific techniques for driving. For example, in NYC, there's nothing at all uncommon about a pedestrian beginning to cross the street in front of you and approaching the area of your lane where you will shortly be. Pedestrians typically then stop about a foot away from your lane, let you drive pas…

I think you're overselling the extent of the difficulty here. People from out of state usually manage to get through New York, pedestrians and all, without getting into an accident. A car won't get through a block as quickly as it could if it merely obeys the laws makes sure it doesn't run into anybody. I'm sure this will cause great joy among people crossing the street and consternation among other drivers but the p…

>I think you're overselling the extent of the difficulty here. People from out of state usually manage to get through New York, pedestrians and all, without getting into an accident.

At this point, "it's easy for a person to do it" is probably better evidence that it's a hard problem in AI.

In this case, I believe it's an inverse learning problem. We observe other agents acting in an environment, deduce their policy, then implement that policy ourselves.

A self-driving car that can reconfigure it's software to mimic the behavior of other cars it observes, sounds difficult to me.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#73

Post by hmschreck »

kbutler wrote: post #8
tlb wrote: post #4

The disturbing thing about this crash is that it's such a basic thing to test on a test track. A pedestrian walking in front at night, with nothing else unusual happening, should be on the list of scenarios to get 5 9s reliability on before taking it out in public. The things you have to test in public are the complex real-world interactions, like these: https://medium.com/kylevogt/why-testing-self-driving-cars-in...

5 9s sounds impressive, until you think that's 1 failure per 100,000 interactions. There are individual intersections in the US that have that many vehicles pass each day. I haven't seen estimates on number of specifically vehicle-pedestrian interactions, but 5 9s is nowhere nearly safe enough.

How many times does a car see this particular interaction, though?

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#75

Post by dahart »

Rotdhizon wrote: post #39
freditup wrote: post #18

I'm curious what degree of "cultural context" is built into automated cars - I feel that there has to be a lot of locale-specific techniques for driving. For example, in NYC, there's nothing at all uncommon about a pedestrian beginning to cross the street in front of you and approaching the area of your lane where you will shortly be. Pedestrians typically then stop about a foot away from your lane, let you drive pas…

Not related to the article but I want to chime in on your point. Having spent some time in VA, aggressive driving and dangerous scenarios were infrequent from my experience. Then having spent some time in FL, aggressive driving was the norm and driving laws did not exist for most people. So I wonder, do self-driving cars needs something like driving profiles for certain regions, where defensive/aggressive response be…

Personally, I’d rather see driving behavior normalize nationally than cater to regional differences in enforcement. The driving laws in each city & state the US are less different than the locally accepted behaviors, but it would be safer all around if drivers and pedestrians all expected the same things, and if we took traffic & safety laws more seriously. More enforcement of existing traffic laws will save many orders of magnitude more lives than customizing autonomous cars for various cities.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#76

Post by 0x00000000 »

chris11 wrote: post #63
frankharv wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't beleive they would do a trail run with an automous truck weighing 80,000lbs barreling down the freeway. This revolution should have started with mundane tasks, such as city street sweepers and perhaps garbage trucks. Vehicles that move slow on a predefined path in the night. Then advance to faster moving objects like taxis. Just like the DARPA Grand Challenge that started this mess. Many of those vehicles wer…

> This revolution should have started with mundane tasks, such as city street sweepers and perhaps garbage trucks. Honestly I would think that automating a slow moving vehicle in the city would be a much harder engineering challenge. City driving can be a lot messier than driving on the freeway.

The stakes are much lower though. A standard car drifting into the oncoming lane is basically death. If it can't handle city driving, the methods are probably too immature to put people's lives against.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#77

Post by dsfyu404ed »

Johnny555 wrote: post #68
freditup wrote: post #18

I'm curious what degree of "cultural context" is built into automated cars - I feel that there has to be a lot of locale-specific techniques for driving. For example, in NYC, there's nothing at all uncommon about a pedestrian beginning to cross the street in front of you and approaching the area of your lane where you will shortly be. Pedestrians typically then stop about a foot away from your lane, let you drive pas…

I think legally, the car has to stop for an approaching pedestrian if it's physically able to stop, so if the pedestrian doesn't "stop about a foot away from your lane" as expected, you don't run into him. Though I don't know the NYC traffic code. In California, I believe 21950 paragraph C applies... the pedestrian that stops just before walking into the path of the car might be violating paragraph B since the driver…

Typically the law is broad enough and redundant enough that who's in violation is simply up to the discretion of whoever has the blue lights.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#78

Post by marnett »

splouk wrote: post #38
joncrane wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And welcome to why self-driving cars will always be 3 years away. It's also possible that human/pedestrian behavior will adapt to the consistent behavior of driverless cars.

Or jaywalking will become more strictly enforced with policing or physical barriers. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/4/2/automated-vehic...

if this happens i will surely protest self-driving cars. cities should be built for pedestrians, not cars.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#79

Post by Sangermaine »

frankharv wrote: post #60
rockostrich wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is already happening in the trucking industry. Self-driving trucks are being developed to be able to drive 99% of the trip that's on highways and then human drivers take over for the local 1%. To make it easier, transfer hubs are being built near cities off major highways to make everything easier and non-disruptive. The same thing could be done with cars without the need for the transfer hubs and it basically i…

I can't beleive they would do a trail run with an automous truck weighing 80,000lbs barreling down the freeway. This revolution should have started with mundane tasks, such as city street sweepers and perhaps garbage trucks. Vehicles that move slow on a predefined path in the night. Then advance to faster moving objects like taxis. Just like the DARPA Grand Challenge that started this mess. Many of those vehicles wer…

>This revolution should have started with mundane tasks, such as city street sweepers and perhaps garbage trucks. Vehicles that move slow on a predefined path in the night. Then advance to faster moving objects like taxis.

No, you've got it backwards. The point of all of the above comments is that driving in cities and densely populated areas is a much more difficult challenge than driving down a straight open highway in the middle of nowhere. That's the easy part, the hard part comes when there are humans and all sorts of obstructions and road/land features to deal with.

Re: Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

#80

Post by Lionsion »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #10
retSava wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That, and the inattentive safety driver. It's quite infuriating really, letting lose a ton and a half of fast-moving mass without even the decency of looking where it's going. There's really no excuse.

Unfortunately I think it's one of those things that is both inexcusable and guaranteed to happen. It absolutely makes sense to put a human in a car you're testing and don't have full confidence in yet but are sending into real traffic. Not doing so would be ludicrously negligent. However, humans simply don't maintain focus for a long period of time without some sort of extreme, years-long training. The ability of mon…

> However, humans simply don't maintain focus for a long period of time without some sort of extreme, years-long training.

And anyone who's achieved this ability is unlikely to be willing to be hired as 1099 contractor for whatever low pay is being offered.

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