sort of OT autonomous car fatality
 

So I saw a scrolling news alert that a self driving uber hit a woman pushing a bicycle (hence the sort of OT) in AZ, apparently pushing a bike last night through an intersection. At work I can't access new sites (but can this forum--duh). A quick search on my phone said the uber had a "control driver" as back up. So I guess the conditions must have been bad for both the self-driving electronics and the human pilot to both miss seeing her. Just wondered if anyone had more details.

I dont but thats one of the clear problems with these cars.
They should either do it all or they should do nothing imo. Driver in the car thats not suppose to drive is a passenger imo. How would he know when to intervene unless obvious and by that time i bet its often to late anyways.

Sad that a person had to die so we can have computers driving us to work. Well that we test them in public before fool proof at least.

well that won't load for me
 

I'm sure they will discuss it on CNN when i get home if someone else hasn't been poisoned, or fired, or resigned to completly monopolize the news

How many people do you think were killed today because we allow humans to drive cars?

Answer, almost 3300 a day, or 1,300,000 a year

Now we have self-driving trucks on the highways too: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/06/t...ng-trucks.html.

Who's responsible if a self-driving vehicle kills someone? The manufacturer?

The loss of life is tragic.

This squares with many bicycle/pedestrian deaths in that it happened at night. Article says the woman was crossing the street, outside of a cross walk. Not sure of the exact details, which I am sure will come out eventually. My dad always told me, when crossing the street, to assume that cars cannot see you. Hence, stop, look both ways, listen.

Not sure what the circumstances were that led to this, but it seems to confirm that roads are dangerous places for pedestrians and other vulnerable road users, and all caution should be taken.

As for regulations of the autonomous driving industry, policy makers have a real chance to create a system that is fair and internalizes all the costs... but they'll likely mess it up.

If the occupant has override capabilities I would assume the operator would be responsible for accidents as the operator presumably has the possibility to avoid the accident.

It will indeed be interesting to find out the specifics of this exact case. I would assume the car has cameras that can be viewed by the developer so a real picture may eventually come to light.

good point on cameras
 

that would make sense. I can't decide whether to marvel or cringe at self-driving. It makes total sense that it is possible as the aviation stuff is pretty amazing these days, but then I think of the roomba i saw last year getting "stuck" and wonder what sort of redundancy and reliability is possible.

Its not the same tho is it? Once they have concluded that the statistics are in favor of computer driven cars thats one thing but right now they are testing it! Wondering if the tech is good enough to make it work to an acceptable level.

To me, its sad someone died because of poor tech. Thats how i c it at this point in time (without more info than currently available).

And for the statistics i think without checking that if i were to do the math of hours of human driven cars in usa vs hours of computer driven cars in usa who hit a person crossing the street on foot with a bicycle the statistics would favor the human drivers. I dont know that but i would guess by a lot. And no 1 case is not a good data point i know but u brought up statistics.

Statistics, public perception, and regulatory actions are all completely independent.

Even after the 9/11 terrorist hijackings, commercial aviation remained the safest form of transportation by far. And yet, we now have a multi-billion dollar agency call the TSA (which even after 17 years, has yet to demonstrate that they have ever stopped a terrorist attack).

Google's statistics currently show that their self-driving cars have far lower accident rates (per mile traveled) than human driven cars. And yet, I am sure that there some people who will never feel that safe-driving cars will ever be safe enough.

Sure i get that.

What constitutes an accident in googles data? Fatality is something else. And fatalities from a person outside a car are quite rare. I think even 1 death here puts them behind on this front but again this is me with a hunch could be way wrong.

Add to that stat...well over 90% of traffic deaths involve operator error. I recently read that there are over 1,000 individuals employed in the autonomous driving industry in Pittsburgh alone...the grey Volvos are everywhere here, mostly in the dense, urban neighborhoods and downtown.

PENNDOT stated in an article today that they're looking to use autonomous driving trucks in the future (as the safety bumper trucks and line striping trucks) to accompany road crews. I think that the technology is fascinating and there are predictions that the day will come where if you own a car, you can let it work while you're at work...as an autonomous driving vehicle.

Some pretty high grade whataboutism going on in this one.

Whether this was avoidable or not in the software is just part of the larger issue that these cars will need to be programmed to make life or death decisions, including prioritizing in some cases who lives and who doesn't. Like a pedestrian outside a crosswalk.

But hey, let's use traffic deaths for cars driven by people to excuse one killed by a beta autonomous system. Because the streets can be places where we all serve as guinea pigs, right?

I mean, the same could be said for people who drive drunk, or drive distracted, or drive under the influence of prescription or illicit drugs... that we're just guinea pigs to see if those things are dangerous.

I'd rather like to see a tax that funds some sort of victim compensation fund. In the case of autonomous cars, there could be a 'autonomous vehicle testing registration' that would be some amount of money, with a portion of that going to fund regulatory activity, and the bulk of it going to a fund designed specifically to compensate the inevitable victims of errors, mistakes, accidents caused by autonomous cars.

I'd like to see the same for things like prescription opioids, guns and mobile phones... but I suspect the ship has sailed on all those. Atleast they have the chance to do it right with autonomous cars, but they probably won't.