sort of OT autonomous car fatality

[Louis]

Originally Posted by Kontact

Do you have radar, lidar and electric nerves?

Yes, in fact, I do. Don't you?

Originally Posted by Kontact

The Uber didn't even attempt to stop or swerve.

As one might expect, if the sensors didn't "see" the pedestrian.

Machines aren't magic. I don't understand why people expect them to work in all situations.

[ripvanrando]

Originally Posted by Louis

Yes, in fact, I do. Don't you?



As one might expect, if the sensors didn't "see" the pedestrian.

Machines aren't magic. I don't understand why people expect them to work in all situations.

Someone walking across the road with no other traffic present and you excuse the manslaughter? Recognizing a human on the road and braking to a stop is not magic-in fact, the technology has been employed for several years already.

[Louis]

Originally Posted by ripvanrando

Someone walking across the road with no other traffic present and you excuse the manslaughter?

There's a difference between "excusing" something and saying we don't have access to all the information to know why it happened. Don't you think it's a bit early to pass judgement? I'm perfectly happy to wait for more information based on technical analysis of the situation before deciding.

[ripvanrando]

Originally Posted by Louis

Don't you think it's a bit early to pass judgement?

No.

[Kontact]

Originally Posted by Louis

Yes, in fact, I do. Don't you?



As one might expect, if the sensors didn't "see" the pedestrian.

Machines aren't magic. I don't understand why people expect them to work in all situations.

Do you get in elevators and expect there to be a decent chance you will plummet to your death?

We don't expect machines to never fail, but we do expect them to work as designed except under extenuating circumstances. There don't appear to be any extenuating circumstances to this incident. Straight road, no weather, the victim had a metal bike to help reflect radar.

I can't understand how at least one of the three "visual" systems didn't detect the woman and/or bike and make some speed or directional change before barreling into her. I'm betting that part of the car did "see" her and just didn't make up its "mind" to do something. Yet it saw the lane markers and managed to track its lane perfectly.

[Louis]

Originally Posted by Kontact

Do you get in elevators and expect there to be a decent chance you will plummet to your death?

The conditions in which an elevator is expected to operate are way more predictable than an autonomous vehicle, so the machines that are to do the job are vastly different in complexity and this really isn't a legitimate comparison.

But to answer your question, I bet if you compared the injury and death rate of elevator users to car and truck users, I think you'd find that passengers in cars and truck are involved in serious incidents far more often than those in elevators.

[Davist]

Originally Posted by tuscanyswe

How would he know when to intervene unless obvious and by that time i bet its often to late anyways.

This is what happened with that Air France flight that went down between Brazil and Paris in the South Atlantic, they didn't know what to do.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/busi...ight-447-crash

As to the ethics issues, funny how it doesn't really stray too far from Asimov's 3 robot laws, from I, Robot (in fact a semi-autonomous vehicle crash was the basis for the Will Smith movie of the same name..)

[verticaldoug]

Originally Posted by Louis

Lots of blame to go around on this one:

1) Pedestrian crossing in an unsafe manner. (color of clothing, low light, right in front of an oncoming vehicle etc)

2) "Safety monitor" clearly distracted by smart-device, probably texting. Why bother having a monitor there if they aren't going to watch the road?

3) Vehicle systems (hardware + software) - it sure as heck looks as if they were not able to sense the pedestrian and/or react in time. And surely that's an expected and typical situation (where something suddenly crosses the road in front of the moving vehicle). I don't know if here the sensors were visual only, but if they weren't, the non-visual (e.g. radar) didn't do a good job.

Finally, there are plenty of cases where neither the best drivers nor the best machines could possibly avoid an accident. It's probably too early to say if this was one of them. Driving can be hard and dangerous, depending on the conditions.

I think you are missing the most important part of the blame- Uber's history of flouting rules and cavalier attitude regarding product deployment. It seems pretty obvious that the system is not ready for prime time. And here they are driving around public streets.

Yeah, people do stupid things, but anyone who has ever driven a car knows that.

I think software developers can be pretty cavalier about new version rollouts and the debugging process. I bet the techies even jokingly refer to this stuff as a feature. It is one thing when a system gets hung and you can't close your screen, it is another when a system gets hung and kills someone.

This is total bull***** on Uber. You can say a system failure occur, but more important, an organizational faillure enabled this.

[ripvanrando]

For those who feel that the killed women ""jumped out" in front of the Uber, consider how far ahead of the Uber she was and whether any of us on our bicycles give more "notice" when we take the lane.

By my estimation the deceased was least 200-300 feet ahead of the Uber (in the opposing lane) when she entered the roadway. Why didn't Uber recognize the bicycle then? Why didn't Uber register the cyclist at all?

What if you were riding your bike crossing a street and there was an unseen pothole taking you down, would Uber ignore your corpse?

[MattTuck]

Originally Posted by ripvanrando

For those who feel that the killed women ""jumped out" in front of the Uber, consider how far ahead of the Uber she was and whether any of us on our bicycles give more "notice" when we take the lane.

By my estimation the deceased was least 200-300 feet ahead of the Uber (in the opposing lane) when she entered the roadway. Why didn't Uber recognize the bicycle then? Why didn't Uber register the cyclist at all?

What if you were riding your bike crossing a street and there was an unseen pothole taking you down, would Uber ignore your corpse?

I get what you're saying. The software obviously did not work, and the human back-up system was insufficient.

"It absolutely should have been able to pick her up," said Sam Abuelsmaid, an analyst for Navigant Research who follows autonomous vehicles. "From what I see in the video it sure looks like the car is at fault, not the pedestrian."

At the same time, the pedestrian could have easily avoided the fate that she did. To say she was in the right, but dead, is little consolation to her family and friends. It could have been avoided simply by waiting to cross the street until there were no cars coming.

Her death wasn't inevitable. If it had been a drunk driver, she'd have met the same fate, and you'd blame the driver, but in this case you blame the computer, not the human driver in the car. In both cases, the pedestrian would have been not at fault, but still tragically dead.

Do you really live your life like everyone is going to get out of your way? Maybe I am too careful, but when I cross the street, I never assume that a car is going to stop for me, even if they flash their lights, I wait to make sure they've slowed down enough and clearly see me. Why? I'd rather be alive and slightly inconvenienced than technically in the right and run over.

[Tony T]

In their tests, does Uber (Google too) review that the "safety drivers" have there hands "hovering above the steering wheel (which is what most backup drivers are instructed to do because it allows them to take control of the car quickly in the case of an emergency) — NY Times"?
Easy enough to have sensors in the car to do this.

[goonster]

Originally Posted by MattTuck

the pedestrian could have easily avoided the fate that she did.

We hold people and machines to different standards. We can't reprogram all pedestrians to not be absent-minded sometimes. We do expect to revise the programs on these cars so that they are not occasionally blind.

Originally Posted by Tony T

Easy enough to have sensors in the car to do this.

[MattTuck]

Originally Posted by goonster

We hold people and machines to different standards. We can't reprogram all pedestrians to not be absent-minded sometimes. We do expect to revise the programs on these cars so that they are not occasionally blind.

I think you actually make a good point. Different people are held to different standards. If it were a person driving and they were absent mindedly fiddling with the radio, and not paying attention to the road when they hit a pedestrian, you wouldn't absolve them because that is somehow part of the human condition. But if it is a pedestrian, it is ok to be absent minded on our public roads?

The woman who was killed did not know it was an autonomous car at the time. She just knew it was a car driving at night, that was not slowing down.

Trying to assign blame only goes so far. The more important question for me is to ask how we can prevent the next accident. To me, the choice is between A.) waiting for autonomous cars to achieve 100% safety and B.) looking both ways and waiting to cross the street until it is safe to do so. B seems like the more practical thing to do right now, even if it is taxing on the average road user.

[ripvanrando]

Originally Posted by MattTuck

I get what you're saying. The software obviously did not work, and the human back-up system was insufficient.



At the same time, the pedestrian could have easily avoided the fate that she did. To say she was in the right, but dead, is little consolation to her family and friends. It could have been avoided simply by waiting to cross the street until there were no cars coming.

Her death wasn't inevitable. If it had been a drunk driver, she'd have met the same fate, and you'd blame the driver, but in this case you blame the computer, not the human driver in the car. In both cases, the pedestrian would have been not at fault, but still tragically dead.

Do you really live your life like everyone is going to get out of your way? Maybe I am too careful, but when I cross the street, I never assume that a car is going to stop for me, even if they flash their lights, I wait to make sure they've slowed down enough and clearly see me. Why? I'd rather be alive and slightly inconvenienced than technically in the right and run over.

Me neither. That is why I now use a mirror on all bikes and if a car does not move over, I am diving off the road. Riding legally with the right of way and an Uber mows you down, would you think the same way?

[Kontact]

Originally Posted by MattTuck

Do you really live your life like everyone is going to get out of your way? Maybe I am too careful, but when I cross the street, I never assume that a car is going to stop for me, even if they flash their lights, I wait to make sure they've slowed down enough and clearly see me. Why? I'd rather be alive and slightly inconvenienced than technically in the right and run over.

As cyclists, we absolutely do. The vicitim was hit on the right side of the far right lane by a vehicle that should have seen her and gone around. If she was riding in the direction of traffic at 10 mph on the right of the right lane she would be just as dead.

What do you do when you ride to make sure that overtaking motorists observe you and don't run you over from behind? We ride on faith that vehicles won't simply ram into us from behind because they are blindly staying in the lane markings. All respect to mirror users, but I actually doubt there is time in a 45 mph zone to tell the difference between "haven't changed lanes yet" and "I don't have time to get out of way" when the oncoming car is approaching at 4 car lengths a second and only needs to move 6 feet to the left to pass.