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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

#841

Post by jarjoura »

larkeith wrote: post #829
jarjoura wrote: post #821

It's fascinating that so many brilliant people in this thread can talk so casually about any single loss of life for the tech built by the very same people in this thread. I would be devastated if I learned my code ended even one person's life. You're in a bubble if you think a world hyper connected to social media that's in the same world scared that autonomy is about to kill millions of jobs in one jab and would NO…

> Public opinion on human driving is doing just fine with human drivers right now There were over 40,000 motor vehicle deaths in 2016 in the US [1] - more than a hundred daily. While loss of human life is always a tragedy, individual fatalities are absolutely worth it if we can begin to reduce that count sooner than by proceeding with excessive caution. It would be morally unacceptable to delay development merely to…

To clarify, no where in my comment did I say we should stop development for making our roads safer. Consumer accessible cars are already far more aware of the surroundings today and will continue to gain more awareness as time goes on.

If you think rushing to market, in some self-inflicted arms race for fully autonomous vehicles is morally acceptable to you, AND human lives are lost in the process, then I find that fascinating.

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

#842

Post by lacerta »

arnaetra wrote: post #825

I have not been following the development of self-driving car tech very closely, but I have some familiarity with the difficulty of the challenges involved and I have a feeling that we are at least two decades away from having fully autonomous tech authorized for use on public roads. Am I underestimating the progress of the tech? I have the impression that there is a tremendous amount of unjustified hype in this fiel…

It is both an over and underhyped field depending on the area you are looking at.

HUGE difference between consumer self driving car [Everywhere, at all times] and the Machines as a Service [Geo, time, weather-fenced operations][1].

Waymo appears to be at the head of the pack; Sacha Arnoud, Director of Engineering for Waymo gave a talk a few weeks ago at MIT[2] and gives a good idea. We are about 5 years out until these start rolling out as MaaS (machines as a service). Probably 10+ years for level 4 highway operations for consumer models according to Frazzoli.

[1]Emilio Frazzoli, CTO of nuTonomy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWSbItd0HEA [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSX3qdy0dFg

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

#843

Post by felippee »

larkeith wrote: post #829
jarjoura wrote: post #821

It's fascinating that so many brilliant people in this thread can talk so casually about any single loss of life for the tech built by the very same people in this thread. I would be devastated if I learned my code ended even one person's life. You're in a bubble if you think a world hyper connected to social media that's in the same world scared that autonomy is about to kill millions of jobs in one jab and would NO…

> Public opinion on human driving is doing just fine with human drivers right now There were over 40,000 motor vehicle deaths in 2016 in the US [1] - more than a hundred daily. While loss of human life is always a tragedy, individual fatalities are absolutely worth it if we can begin to reduce that count sooner than by proceeding with excessive caution. It would be morally unacceptable to delay development merely to…

The number you pull out is not telling. There are billions of miles driven in the US alone and people get killed on average after 100 mil miles driven. That is where the bar is, and I can tell you, that is a high bar. Even including all the idiots, teenagers, DUI's etc. it is still one fatality on 100 mln miles. So sure, it is a tragedy that those 40.000 people die, but that is not a simple problem to fix. In fact obesity and sugar caused disease is probably a much simpler problem to solve, that could likely save way more people.

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

#844

Post by DoreenMichele »

jarjoura wrote: post #821

It's fascinating that so many brilliant people in this thread can talk so casually about any single loss of life for the tech built by the very same people in this thread. I would be devastated if I learned my code ended even one person's life. You're in a bubble if you think a world hyper connected to social media that's in the same world scared that autonomy is about to kill millions of jobs in one jab and would NO…

It's fascinating that so many brilliant people in this thread can talk so casually about any single loss of life for the tech built by the very same people in this thread. I would be devastated if I learned my code ended even one person's life.

Generally speaking, it is easier to pinpoint X thing led to Y tragedy than to quantify the tragedies that would have happened without X. It is incredibly hard to show what did not happen but "should" have. Even if you can get it straight in your own mind, good luck proving it to the world.

People are living longer and child mortality is down. We don't really celebrate that. We just complain about overpopulation and how we are destroying the environment.

When Iraq lit oil wells on fire on its way out of Kuwait, they were expected to burn for months and be a global environmental disaster. When crack teams from around the world converged and put them out far faster than expected, it was not celebrated with the same degree of fervor that it had originally been decried as a disaster.

Y2K was also predicted to be a global catastrophe. It was quietly prevented and gets remembered as "Those fools who ever thought this was a big deal!"

If self driving cars could reduce mortality compared to current rates and we were confident of that, waiting until it is perfected before releasing it means accepting ongoing deaths that don't have to happen. It's not uncommon for people to feel that new tech needs to be perfected while missing the fact that it may be a big improvement over the current status quo without being perfected.

I don't really know anything about self driving cars. I have mixed feelings about replying to your comment because I don't actually know how I feel about this particular issue. But the thought process you are putting forth is both common and not very pragmatic.

I guess a pithy rebuttal would quote some saying about the perfect being the enemy of the good. But I think that leaves out a lot of important points.

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

#845

Post by CooIHandLuke »

jarjoura wrote: post #821

It's fascinating that so many brilliant people in this thread can talk so casually about any single loss of life for the tech built by the very same people in this thread. I would be devastated if I learned my code ended even one person's life. You're in a bubble if you think a world hyper connected to social media that's in the same world scared that autonomy is about to kill millions of jobs in one jab and would NO…

What we can't do as the creators of the future of autonomous vehicles is give in for emotional appeals when the relevant thing is statistics about car accidents. If the media does it, bash the media (and hope for decent publications to support the appeal of relevant people in the field). If politicians do it, bash politicians, though nothing really helps when it comes to politics. But don't be nice to bureaucrats and their oblivious supporters who are actually preventing thousands of lives being saved every year by slowing down development and deployment.

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

#847

Post by rboyd »

FTA "Elaine Herzberg, 49, was walking her bicycle outside the crosswalk".

The article says "as soon as she walked into the lane of traffic she was struck".

The police sergeant also "said he believed Herzberg may have been homeless".

These three things may together indicate that even a human driver might have struck and killed the lady if she entered into the roadway unsafely. I'm not sure how everyone (especially on Twitter) can be jumping all over Uber yet until the investigation is complete.

Sad of course, either way, but not yet enough evidence to assume that the algorithm+driver combo was any less safe than a human driver alone.

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

#848

Post by greedo »

derefr wrote: post #610
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…

> These are "normal" reasons for bad accidents and we can not only rationalize them, but also rationalize how it wouldn't happen to us: "I don't drive near colleges where young kids are likely to drive drunk", "I don't text (much) while I drive", "I pay attention". Tangent: is there a land vehicle designed for redundant control, the way planes are? I've always wondered how many accidents would have been prevented if…

Pilots don't share control of an aircraft; the copilot may help with some tasks, but unless the captain relinquishes control of the yoke (etc.) he's flying it. So you'd still have issues where a cars "pilot" gets distracted, or makes a poor decision.

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

#849

Post by 0xffff2 »

gowld wrote: post #474
dmoy wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand I'd say give it to the NTSB, because historically they are really good at this sort of thing. On the other hand, I'd wonder if increasing NTSB scope this much would drastically decrease the average quality of NTSB's work. Scaling ain't easy.

NTSB should expand to launch an automotive division. Bonus: Job creation to replace the jobs lost to automation

NTSB already has jurisdiction here, as well as on all rail accidents involving injuries, in addition to aviation accidents.

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

#850

Post by JimboOmega »

rboyd wrote: post #847

FTA "Elaine Herzberg, 49, was walking her bicycle outside the crosswalk". The article says "as soon as she walked into the lane of traffic she was struck". The police sergeant also "said he believed Herzberg may have been homeless". These three things may together indicate that even a human driver might have struck and killed the lady if she entered into the roadway unsafely. I'm not sure how everyone (especially on…

Finding any tidbits on what actually did happen has been very difficult. I get that the investigation is of course ongoing, but that's what I want to know - did the tech actually make a mistake here?

And a mistake in a broader sense - was it an avoidable accident? If it wasn't this barely feels like news, other than as a milestone.

Also... I don't see how her being homeless has anything to do with it.

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