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Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

reuters.com

81–90 of 91 posts

Re: Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this looks more like a defensive move than an opportunitistic marketing opportunity as OP framed it to be.

¿Porque no los dos? When you say this is why we've been calling for everyone to take it slow that's a defensive move. When you say your setup would have detected her a second before the impact, that's an opportunistic marketing opportunity.

Incidents like these could very well kill the technology just as its leaving the crib, if mishandled.

It's all defensive. In this case, the interests of the companies and the interests of the users are aligned.

Re: Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She absolutely should, in my opinion.

then it negates that whole idea of having a "self-driving" vehicle. the whole point is to let the vehicle drive itself while you can do whatever-it-is you want without paying attention, like sleeping or playing on your phone... you essentially are a passenger, not a driver.

She wasn't in a self-driving car. She was testing a prototype self-driving car. She's absolutely culpable for her negligence. She had one job.

Re: Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

#83
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were crossing a low speed, brightly lit street.

Did you watch the video? I think any decent self-driving tech would've seen her, but I highly contend with OP's assertion that an "alert human" would have stopped in time. The road was very dark, and she came out of nowhere. If the car was speeding, you might be able to make that argument, but I don't think anyone has made that claim yet.

The video is misrepresentative of the actual road conditions.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/police-chief-said-uber-...

Re: Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

#84
post #12

We really won’t know what happened until the NTSB report comes out, but I’m not convinced this was an object detection failure. It seems really possible to me that the sensors detected the bike-walking person as a bicyclist, and a bicyclist in a different lane is not a reason to slam on the brakes. They might have just forgotten to add a rule that a bicyclist in a parallel lane is a reason to brake if it’s perpendicu…

Any sane self-driving system needs to be a lot smarter than this. It needs to do motion tracking and estimation of future position. Otherwise it's going to run into lots of cyclists and pedestrians, and continue to fail for objects it can't identify (imagine a cyclist carrying something big and bulky). The software needs to be smart enough to not hit anything, and in order to do so it needs to extrapolate future posi…

Obviously it needs to be smarter. As for motion tracking, it might have gotten confused as the victim stopped moving. But I’m just not sure that the issue was the sensors or object detection.

Re: Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

#85
post #12

We really won’t know what happened until the NTSB report comes out, but I’m not convinced this was an object detection failure. It seems really possible to me that the sensors detected the bike-walking person as a bicyclist, and a bicyclist in a different lane is not a reason to slam on the brakes. They might have just forgotten to add a rule that a bicyclist in a parallel lane is a reason to brake if it’s perpendicu…

You don't slow down and proceed with caution when overtaking a bicyclist in an adjacent lane?

When they have a whole lane? No. As a cyclist I rarely even see drivers slow down when they’re going 55 and I’m just on the shoulder.

Re: Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

#86
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any sane self-driving system needs to be a lot smarter than this. It needs to do motion tracking and estimation of future position. Otherwise it's going to run into lots of cyclists and pedestrians, and continue to fail for objects it can't identify (imagine a cyclist carrying something big and bulky). The software needs to be smart enough to not hit anything, and in order to do so it needs to extrapolate future posi…

Obviously it needs to be smarter. As for motion tracking, it might have gotten confused as the victim stopped moving. But I’m just not sure that the issue was the sensors or object detection.

The victim stopped moving ... right in the path of the car, which never braked. It needs to be a lot smarter if it doesn't even understand that it should break when there's a large unidentified object, the size of a person plus something else, right in the lane it's traveling in.

We won't know yet exactly what happened, though hopefully the NTSB is getting full access to all sensor data from the car. It could be a huge combination failure of multiple different things. It sounds like it's nowhere safe enough to be driving autonomously on public roads though.

Re: Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

#87
post #32
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't just sound insensitive. Watching the video, I'm convinced that person died for no good reason beyond Uber rushing tech out the door before it was ready. An alert human would have braked and swerved in that circumstance. People do die from drunk driving, and those drivers go to jail because they fucked up in a huge way. That's no reason to give Uber a dead-person mulligan. Indeed, it's a reason that some…

Should Uber Test Driver go to jail? She was on camera looking down at her phone at the moment of accident.

I think expecting a backup driver to pay that kind of attention on a continuous basis is unrealistic on Uber's part.

Are you familiar with Threat Image Projection? It's a system where baggage scanning machines put in images of fake threats into real baggage. Why is this necessary? It's because regular baggage doesn't have enough in the way of actual threats to keep operators alert.

I think it's the same deal with being a backup driver for a robot car. Sure, they should be ready to take over when the car asks for help, and it's great if they notice a problem and stop the car. But I don't think expecting them to have this kind of reaction time is realistic.

(That may not stop Uber from throwing the backup driver under the bus, though.)

Re: Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were crossing a low speed, brightly lit street.

It's a gamble that jaywalkers lose every year. When you're going to jaywalk, ensure that the next car is far enough away to where it doesn't matter if they stop. That's the correct way that would've saved this person's life without any further analysis. I'm taking issue with this: >that person died for no good reason beyond Uber rushing tech out the door before it was ready Well, no. They died because they lost their…

No charges were filed yet, but that's unlikely to happen until after the NTSB report.

It's true that jaywalking is a gamble, but so is crossing a street with the light. Leaving the house is a gamble. That doesn't mean we can blame the victim of a collision for leaving the house. It can be simultaneously true that A) jaywalking is not always a great idea, and B) the Uber car should have avoided this collision.

Re: Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

#89
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were crossing a low speed, brightly lit street.

Did you watch the video? I think any decent self-driving tech would've seen her, but I highly contend with OP's assertion that an "alert human" would have stopped in time. The road was very dark, and she came out of nowhere. If the car was speeding, you might be able to make that argument, but I don't think anyone has made that claim yet.

Perhaps you would be so kind as to contend with what I actually said. I did not actually say a human would have stopped in time. I said a human would have braked and swerved.

Re: Mobileye says its software would have seen pedestrian in Uber fatality

#90
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't just sound insensitive. Watching the video, I'm convinced that person died for no good reason beyond Uber rushing tech out the door before it was ready. An alert human would have braked and swerved in that circumstance. People do die from drunk driving, and those drivers go to jail because they fucked up in a huge way. That's no reason to give Uber a dead-person mulligan. Indeed, it's a reason that some…

Watching the video, I'm convinced that person died for no good reason beyond Uber rushing tech out the door before it was ready. An alert human would have braked and swerved in that circumstance. It's likely that the accident still would have been fatal, or at least the pedestrian would have been seriously injured if the safety driver was driving. Based on the video there was only a second or two to react from the ti…

The video camera doesn't have the same vision as a human. A human would have seen something sooner and so would have had more reaction time.

You also mis-cite your numbers. Reaction time to braking in that study was 2.2 seconds, but steering is 1.6 seconds, and beginning to slow is 1.0-1.3 s. Those numbers are also from a study environment; it's plausible to me that people would be more relaxed in a test than if they see a live human appear in front them.

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