Police Chief: Uber Self-Driving Car 'Likely' Not At Fault In Fatal Crash (arstechnica.com) 527
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The chief of the Tempe Police has told the San Francisco Chronicle that Uber is likely not responsible for the Sunday evening crash that killed 49-year-old pedestrian Elaine Herzberg. "I suspect preliminarily it appears that the Uber would likely not be at fault in this accident," said Chief Sylvia Moir. Herzberg was "pushing a bicycle laden with plastic shopping bags," according to the Chronicle's Carolyn Said, when she "abruptly walked from a center median into a lane of traffic." After viewing video captured by the Uber vehicle, Moir concluded that "it's very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode (autonomous or human-driven) based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway." Moir added that "it is dangerous to cross roadways in the evening hour when well-illuminated, managed crosswalks are available." The police said that the vehicle was traveling 38 miles per hour in a 35 mile-per-hour zone, according to the Chronicle -- though a Google Street View shot of the roadway taken last July shows a speed limit of 45 miles per hour along that stretch of road.
Why does it look like an sidewalk? (Score:3)
Why does it look like an sidewalk?
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It doesn't, it looks like a median, it's not a safe place to be as a bicyclist laden with anything.
Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure looks like a sidewalk to me.
https://www.google.com/maps/@3... [google.com]
Maybe it's for design since it doesn't make any sense. If you move around on street view they put up signs telling people not to use it so something like this has probably happened before.
https://www.google.com/maps/@3... [google.com]
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I just noticed the path is also lighted. Like with a light in the middle of it. And it's next to a park.
I'm starting to think the local funeral home designed that area.
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Not just the median. (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting series of tweets: https://twitter.com/EricPaulDe... [twitter.com]
The median looks like it has fancy, inviting paths, but it also warns you not to use them. And the actual crossing is kind of daunting...
It is a rather bad design, but it does look dangerous in any case, so if I wanted to cross that way I would exercise extreme caution...
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Twitter actually ran an ad about how chicken gets to your table, on these tweets about someone getting killed while crossing the road. I reported it as "I don't like this ad", because there's no "This is highly inappropriate in this context" option. Lovely.
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It doesn't. Those paths are as wide as two traffic lanes. They look like they're there so that maintenance crews can get around, and also to be able to get their vehicles out of the road.
Not nearly over yet. (Score:5, Insightful)
There will be a thorough investigation of the vehicle, the programming, all of the data and details. Even if it is decided that the victim acted imprudently, such accidents always (at least around here, unless it was the police involved) are fully investigated, and the driver is rarely exonerated from all blame, just the proximate causal fault.
Now, for you ignats who see class discrimination in the description that the victim was pushing a bicycle laden with shopping bags, a word; the police are the upper caste in these situations. Corporations will be prosecuted more often than police officers, and more often than reputable members of the community, IE, government. Or favored citizens. This is not new.
There was more than one factor leading to this tragedy, and if the end result is change in how these vehicles monitor their surroundings to have more time to analyze and react, excellent, and if the result is a recognition that even self-driving vehicles are unable to avoid such accidents, just as even skilled and careful human drivers are, well, then we've learned that self-driving does not equal infallible. That's important, and useful information.
Re:Not nearly over yet. (Score:5, Insightful)
There was more than one factor leading to this tragedy, and if the end result is change in how these vehicles monitor their surroundings to have more time to analyze and react, excellent, and if the result is a recognition that even self-driving vehicles are unable to avoid such accidents, just as even skilled and careful human drivers are, well, then we've learned that self-driving does not equal infallible. That's important, and useful information.
Who is expecting self-driven vehicles to be infallible in all conditions? No matter how quickly they can react to sensor data indicating an emergency, they're still bound by the laws of physics and may not be capable of avoiding collision with something that suddenly enters their field of observation. I suspect that this incident will help engineers to design a better autonomous vehicle, but as with any new safety feature we create nature has a way of designing better idiots as well. If someone were to jump out (or be pushed in front of) a vehicle traveling at some speed, there's always a limitation to how much that vehicle is going to be able to deviate from its current trajectory and anyone who falls inside of that window is going to be hit. The only thing that can be done about that is to engineer vehicles that can come to a stop within a shorter window.
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Why can't autonomous cars avoid overdriving their headlights [driversed.com]?
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Who is expecting self-driven vehicles to be infallible in all conditions?
Quite a few posters in this thread, and every other thread that has existed on self driving cars on this, or any other, forum.
they're still bound by the laws of physics
Heresy! That is NOT a popular opinion around here!
In all seriousness, I'm sick of all the people who think self driving cars will avoid all collisions, and even more sick of those who think that if they don't we should just give up on them.
Self driving cars have the potential to, one day in the future, eliminate almost all preventable collisions. But that is not the same as all colli
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then we've learned that self-driving does not equal infallible
What will we learn next? That water is wet?
No one with a brain has ever claimed that self-driving cars are or ever could be infallible. Nor do they need to be. They only need to be better than the average human, which is a low bar. And, then, over time they'll get better and better as the algorithms and sensors are refined. In a few decades the NTSB will be combing through car wrecks with something akin to the same scrutiny they apply now to plane crashes because the wrecks will be so rare.
But they'll o
Entitled pedestrians (Score:5, Interesting)
In my community, we have great sidewalks, many crosswalks and all that needed to create a safe and walkable community. What do the pedestrians still do, you ask?
Walk out into traffic if it's more convenient. If a car hits them after taking reasonable measures to stop, they ought to be liable for all of the damage caused including to the vehicle and the driver's therapy if required.
My wife knew someone who killed a pedestrian who just walked out into traffic like this without thinking. Totally unavoidable. The "victim" was the driver, not the pedestrian because the driver was obeying the law and some stranger decided "fuck the traffic laws" and made her party to an accidental vehicular homicide.
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I like how you come off as a psychopath in your statement of "it doesn't require a psychopath", by doing things like conflating an accident and suicide.
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I almost splattered a girl the other day, because she had her head so deep in her damned phone that she didn't even bother to look up at all before launching herself into the street against the traffic light. If I had, you can be damned sure I'd be suing her estate for the damages to my vehicle and psyche.
No! You're wrong! Drivers should always be aware of everything happening in a sphere of radius 100 meters around their vehicle. If you're driving this van [imgur.com], and you can't avoid that collision, then you shouldn't be on the public right of way! Pedestrians are never in the wrong, in fact I bet that van was driven by an AI.
"came from the shadows?" what? No LiDAR? (Score:2, Insightful)
The police chief needs to get some facts straight about the technology of autonomous vehicles work. LiDAR comes from LASERs. From the VEHICLE.
Unclear which "shadows" Chief Moir is talking about. Streetlights are but a one illumination source at play here.
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The police chief is using non-technical, human terms, rather than quibbling over semantics of idioms.
"Shadows" can simply mean "obscured from view," and is a common American English idiom.
It could also mean "shadows cast by the headlights" or "shadows cast by the LIDAR beam".
If you're in the shadows of a car's headlights, it's a sure bet the driver can't see you.
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Humans and AI. (Score:4, Insightful)
Humans can adjust to changing situations, they can also ready body language. Most people slow down when they see someone on the side of tge road looking like they are going to step out. An AI cant read that sort of thing. They can only react tl basic things presented to them.
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Humans can adjust to changing situations, they can also ready body language. Most people slow down when they see someone on the side of tge road looking like they are going to step out. An AI cant read that sort of thing. They can only react tl basic things presented to them.
My impression is that they detect and react to the actual physical posture and motion. But they can't read the person and tell if he appears drunk, high, mentally challenged or in some other way odd and likely to do odd things. It's a bit like the difference between a dog on a leash and a street dog with no leash, to a human they pose very different risks. But without programming in a ton of "human" logic they'll look just the same to a computer.
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An AI cant read that sort of thing.
Why not?
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Can a self driving car tell if 2 people on the side of the road are drunk and wobbling all over the place, or if its 2 friends horsing around.
Sure. In either case, the pattern of movement would be different from 2 sober people purposely walking parallel to traffic, and the prudent thing to do is slow down. An ANN should have little problem learning those patterns. Most likely, this is already a solved problem, or considering the millions of miles driven, there would be more than zero avoidable pedestrian deaths by now.
Or as another poster said a stray dor or a dog on a leash.
That also seems like a relatively easy pattern for an ANN to learn.
Do you think the engineers designing these systems are stupi
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I've seen enough road fails youtube videos to have quite a bit of anecdotal evidence that people do not slow down and react extremely poorly when the person does step out.
Also the police chief, who has seen the video, made it clear that the person "stepped out of the shadows" and "would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode (autonomous or human-driven) "
Seems like people are hell bent on the belief that autonomous cars can't be better than the amazingly faulty human.
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My brain is magic. It's such a common (and strong) reaction whenever anyone mentions automation or AI that it almost seems like some kind of instinct.
Maybe this has all happened before....
Sensors (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Sensors (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't matter a damn if it has a reaction time better than a human if someone steps out onto the road 20 feet in front of the car and you've got half a second to judge and react.
There are basic physical numbers at play here - the mass of the vehicle, the ability of the braking system in the car to scrub off speed, the conditions of the tyres, the road surface, etc. In those kinds of short-distance collisions, a computer will be able to reduce the speed of the car by a few mph over a person and that's it.
The only saving grace that a person has is the ability to read body language and judge that someone might step out onto the road. And even then that usually only results in a foot off the accelerator, and not yet placed on the brake.
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According to the summary, the pedestrian stepped so sudden into the path of the car, that no one/nothing could have prevented the crash.
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Sensors aren't omnipotent. They can't see around obstructions any better than humans can, although some things that are obstructions to humans aren't to sensors. Still, if someone hides behind a parked car and then jumps into traffic, no sensors on the vehicle are going to spot them. The only hope is that they get a warning from a vehicle ahead, who saw the person as that preceding vehicle passed.
Continuous improvement (Score:4, Interesting)
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The car was exceeding the speed limit (Score:5, Interesting)
What reason did the Uber car have for going 38 in a 35 zone?
Surely the speed limit was lowered from 45 to 35 for a reason, probably for safety reasons.
Can the car not read road signs? It doesn't have the excuse of "I was watching the road, not my speedo" for a minor speeding offence. Did Uber fail to update the map data when the speed limits changed?
The risk of death being hit by a car below 30mph is relatively low. It increases rapidly as speed increases.
9% chance of death at 30mph.
50% chance of death at 40mph.
Starts reaching 100% fatal over 50mph.
There's a reasonable chance the woman, who may well have been in the wrong, would still be alive if the car was traveling at or below the 35mph limit.
source: https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/re... [nacto.org]
There's another study that showed a reduction in speed by 5km/h would result in 30% fewer deaths. That happens to be how much the Uber car was over the limit.
http://humantransport.org/side... [humantransport.org]
Variance (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the hard lessons I had when driving is that if you slow down too much aggressive or stupid drivers will take that as a signal to go. My first accident was a t-bone where a girl hit me because she was trying to do a left into a busy road. I saw her start to move and put on my breaks. She saw me coming and did the same, but then saw me breaking and decided this somehow meant I was going to come to a complete stop in the middle of a busy street (the only option that would have stopped the accident by then). If I had not breaked she wouldn't have gone and the accident wouldn't have happened.
What I'm saying is there's such a thing as too much caution. Now, maybe if we can get the meatbags off the road that won't be true anymore.
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Imagine 4 scenarios:
1. You braked and she saw it as a cue to proceed. End result: a low-energy collision.
2. You braked and she braked. End result: no collision.
3. You didn't brake so she did. End result: no collision.
4. You didn't brake and neither did she. End result: a high-energy collision.
Whether you braked or not, there was a possibility of no collision, so we can cross out options 2 and 3, leaving you to choose between a low-energy collision (option 1) or a high-energy one (option 4). I think you made
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This is ~50 yards from where the accident happened.
https://www.google.com/maps/@3... [google.com]
Maybe the car was decelerating after identifying a newly posted 35mph sign?
But I am sure those "what if's" along with that same data will net the surviving family a nice chunk of change in litigation. It's not the fault of the person walking to oncoming traffic that's the problem here it's the ED-209 killer car traveling marginally outside of the posted limit.
defensive driving (Score:4, Insightful)
Show me the video (Score:3)
If it is clearly the woman's fault, then produce the video for us all to see. Please blur the impact though. I just want to see for myself how much time before the woman entered the lane until impact. Simple, where is the video?
Re:Still killed though (Score:5, Insightful)
Much like a river kills the person jumping in it?
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If it kills something we eat, like a cow, I think a cookout would be good.
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Re:Still killed though (Score:4, Funny)
In a microsecond, it will request the files of each person from Facebook, Google and the IRS and calculate the value of each person' life. If the one person is more important than the other four, those people will be dead before the car even hits them.
Re:Still killed though (Score:5, Informative)
You are overcomplicating it. If a car ends up in a complicated situation where it has to guess at how many will get killed, the answer is always to just brake. Get the amount of energy in the collision down, and who knows, some people just might survive. If not, too bad.
Squirrels don't count for the evaluation, you are obliged to not risk anything to avoid a squirrel.
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Indeed. Good safety engineering practices dictate to always remove system energy as fast as possible when you have no clear strategy. The examples given in the press of these "ethical dilemmas" are bogus. The car in question will not have enough information about the situation and can only a) bake hard without steering (as that could make matter much worse) or only minimal steering and b) tell any following cars what it is about to do. If there is a crash, it can c) directly alert emergency services. This i
Re: Still killed though (Score:3)
Quickly making a sponge cake to lessen the impact damage?
Re:Still killed though (Score:5, Insightful)
Those are valid ethical questions that have to be answered by the AI and the programmers. If a car is forced to make a choice between killing a squirrel or killing a child, will it treat them the same?
This is not a "valid ethical question". It is just silly.
How will it choose if it has to decide between killing 4 people or 1?
Unlike most humans [wikipedia.org], the SDC will do the right thing.
But these rare corner cases are not that interesting, because they are ... rare. Far more common are accidents where the correct course of action is obvious: hit the brakes. And SDCs are FAR better at that. A typical human takes about 1.5 seconds to realize what is happening, move a foot to the brake, and start depressing it. An SDC can do it in less than 10 milliseconds. At 70mph, a car travels more than 150 feet in 1.5 seconds. The response time will be even worse if the human is not paying attention.
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The car makes no choices.
If there is a potential to crash into someone/something it breaks. And usually it breaks long before that, so that the situation does not even escalate to such a point (decission)..
What the fuck is ethical in avoiding hitting 4 people who cause an accident and hitting a bystander instead? You have some mental problems I think.
What is next? 4 sick old retirees versus a young pregnant mother?
Re:Still killed though (Score:5, Informative)
No one is programming a car that way.
The first rule is to anticipate and slow down before anything could happen.
The second rule is to brake.
And the third is to stay on your lane. Except you have a spare lane going same direction.
Neither a programmer nor a car is deciding if it hits 2 3 4 or 1 person. If the thing in its lane is not going away, and the car has not stopped in front of it: it is hit. As simpel as that.
What is next is a realtime auction between the life insurance companies of the potential victims to determine who gets hit.
Run by AI bidding bots?
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Actually, most self driving cars don't simply brake. I was in my Tesla S in the leftmost lane of a highway - doing about 65 mph - with auto steer enabled. A car drifted into the lane from the right. The Tesla did brake but it also swerved onto the shoulder to avoid the other car.
This all happened so fast I didn't really have time to react until after the fact. ( It's sort of an interesting question if it knew there was a shoulder to drive onto or if it would have driven me into a ditch if there wasn't one.
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That sounds more like an error, than planned action.
Tesla autopilot isn't designed for that kind of avoidance. It's a driving aid that keeps you in a lane and at a constant speed. It can only change lanes when the driver tells it to.
More likely the other car obscured its view of the road markings, and it suddenly thought it was way off the centre line for the lane and moved over. The only emergency action autopilot is designed to take is braking.
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The next generation of self-driving cars will be able to run a hundred different braking and steering simulations in a fraction of a second. There is never going to be a 'HAS to hit someone' situation in real life.
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How will it choose if it has to decide between killing 4 people or 1?
Roughly 3000 people in the US are killed each month from cars, or 36000 a year. Many times that are injured. Less than 10% of these accidents are due to mechanical failure, so in a perfect world we could save 32,400. While I doubt that we'll achieve a perfect world, anything lower than 32,400 is an improvement. Thus delaying an improvement over the status quo due to hypothetical and unlikely events may kill people by delaying progress. Stop killing people :-)
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Less than 10% of these accidents are due to mechanical failure
This research [dot.gov] indicates mechanical problems are about 2% of accidents.
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"How will it choose if it has to decide between killing 4 people or 1?"
How would you?
Re: Still killed though (Score:2)
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We often tear down buildings where mass shooting occur. Not sure about train cars; I think we generally just clean them up and put them back into service after they run someone over. Cars? Well, I'd love to be able to "run a carfax" and tell how many peds this particular jalopy's mowed down before climbing in. But I'd feel ever better if they shredded people-killers after downloading their innards
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But I'd feel ever better if they shredded people-killers ... they should be smelted, with just 1C degree above their smelting point to make their death painful and s_l_o_w!
Tz tz tz
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We often tear down buildings where mass shooting occur.
If a mass shooting occured, then chances are the walls and ceilings have been penetrated by bullets, and that building may no longer be safe to use --- E.g. hidden damage, potential threats to the structure, electrical, etc, could have rendered the place unsafe.
Sorta depends on the kind of autonomous vehicle (Score:2)
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I've seen Christine, I know how this is going to end.
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It will, but each time, the software will be improved to nearly eliminate the chance of it happening again. Over time, through iterative improvements, driving software will be near perfect.
Meanwhile, no matter how many laws you make, humans will ALWAYS: eat, text, do makeup, yell at their children, look down while searching for something, drink and drive, and engage in every other manner of distraction or impairment that cause accidents. You will NEVER be able to fix this without technology.
AI cars will kil
Re:Not Likely (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes likely. Look, the guy who's seen the video says that a human driver probably wouldn't have averted the accident. You, who haven't seen the video, are only going on "generally." This incident isn't "general," it's very specific.
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Unfortunately at this point in self driving vehicle development it's also a meaningless statistic.
Statistics like that are averages, not absolutes. If something happens on average once every hundred million miles, that's no guarantee that it won't happen 4 times in the first 2 miles. The problem is that there are so few miles that have been driven by self driving vehicles, and so few incidents to date, that there's just not enough data yet to make ANY comparison to the safety of the average driver.
If anyone
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There are 210 million licensed drivers, so maybe comparing stats for more vehicles than there are drivers isn't the most intelligent analysis.
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and they would rot in jail for it, just like uber should
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check has cleared i guess
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Why would a machine have trouble seeing someone moving out of a shadow, are they telling us that they didn't bother to use something as simple as infrared sensors for night vision to avoid a dependence on visible light?
Are you telling us you've seen the IR video? No? Is it not possible that the person was in a place where IR couldn't detect them against the background?
Or, you know what, you're exactly right. 9 years of testing, who knows how many man-hours developing and researching, around 10 million miles driven, but all of those people just plain forgot that IR was a thing. Yeah, you're probably right, anonymous genius.
Re: Not Likely (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe the person wasn't doing anything that would appear to be a problem until they suddenly changed direction immediately in front of the car?
You can't have the vehicle assume that all people have a death wish and are likely to dive in front of the car at any moment. If you program it like that it will never be able to move if there are pedestrians anywhere nearby. You have to assume that the person will behave in a somewhat rational way or your car will never be able to actually get anywhere.
I had an incident a while back where I was driving on a residential road at fairly slow speed, there was a kid running all out on the sidewalk beside me, I was watching him. As I passed him, without looking, he made an abrupt 90 degree turn straight in front of my truck. I slammed on the brakes and barely stopped. Had he turned 1/4 second later I wouldn't have been able to stop in time, had he turned 1/2-1 second later the best computer wouldn't have been able to stop in time. But there was also no reason to stop or slow down until he'd already made the 90 degree turn, as it was a highly unlikely thing for him to do. It was illegal, it was dangerous, and it wasn't something you'd expect anyone to do. I thought about it a lot afterwards, and have many times been in similar situations but where the kid didn't make that 90 degree turn. There's just no way I can justify driving with the assumption that every person on the sidewalk, median, lawn, etc, could at any time make that abrupt turn in front of me. I'd never get anywhere, and I'd likely get in a different type of situation caused by the road rage from any driver behind me.
Not all collisions are preventable. They never will be, and no technology can ever prevent all collisions. What we can do is prevent all AVOIDABLE collisions, and doing that would save millions of lives. Is that not worth doing, even if a few UNAVOIDABLE collisions still remain?
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As I read the article, the video evidence shows that there was no possible way to avoid the pedestrian who stepped in front of the car. She wasn't visible until it was too late. Unfortunately by the time the conflict became apparent, there was no avoiding contact.
Now, perhaps a human might have realized the limited sight lines and the possible pedestrian conflict and slowed down before arriving at this location? Maybe, maybe not, I've not seen the video yet so I cannot say. However, I'm guessing this wil
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Or used the next lane over. Either way, inadequate visibility is a road design problem.
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"Now, perhaps a human might have realized the limited sight lines and the possible pedestrian conflict and slowed down before arriving at this location?"
Ha ha ha, sure. Unless drivers in Phoenix are very different from drivers, well, everywhere else?
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38mph in a 35 zone as measured by the speedometer would presumably put it almost exactly the speed limit as all speedometers read slightly high. Beyond that there's reason to believe the actual speed limit in that location is 45 not 35, or that it is in the process of changing from 45 to 35 at that intersection. In any case, the car was not driving at any excessive speed. Additionally, we usually refer to people who drive at exactly the speed limit, or below the speed limit, by the term "obstructing traffic
38 in a 35? (Score:2)
Sure...only 3mph, but my Cruise Control can do better than that.
Plus, any reasonably good driver is always scanning the sides to see what might be coming out of driveways or the side of the road.. This time it was a person. What if it's a car next time.
Can the AI spot a car traveling at 50 MPH approaching a 4 way stop and not slowing down? Happened to me just last weekend.
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My Tesla S can do that. I was doing about 45 mph on one of those country streets when someone blew by a stop sign. The Tesla beeped, slammed on the brakes then sped up again after the car passed.
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Who knows what a human driver would have done.
If there isn't enough data available for submission in order to make that determination then there needs to be more requirements to collect that data.
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We already know the answer. There was a human driver, he did nothing. We also have a second opinion from a person that is presumably a qualified driver, who reviewed the footage. He agreed that the human driver, and the AI driver, likely followed the appropriate course of action.
So we know EXACTLY what a human driver would do, AND what the AI would do. They were the same.
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Lighten up (Score:3)
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Hmmm..not much humor here today I guess.
FTFY.
What if she could not be seen? (Score:3)
Not only was this car speeding, but it did not recognise a road side hazard and drive by cautiously.
The police said the woman came "out of the shadows", it's likely that the car couldn't see the women before she stepped out, any more than a human could have (or did, since there was a human driver in the car too who said she had no idea anyone was there to step out).
Most self driving cars DO respond to anomalies by the side of the road and slow down or move over... but again, they have to be things that can
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Not only was this car speeding, but it did not recognise a road side hazard and drive by cautiously.
The police said the woman came "out of the shadows"
She wasn't a "roadside hazard", she was a person on the side of the road, and she made the decision to step in front of a moving car.
Did she not see the car?
Did she turn her head to try and see if there was an oncoming vehicle?
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3mph can be as much as 30% increase in fatality when hitting a pedestrian
Especially when it's in the range of 30 - 40mph.
Below 20 is minimal risk, above 40 is major risk. Anything in between is highly dependent on speed.
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Police said the the car was doing 38 mph in a 35mph.
Google street view shows this strip is 45 MPH.
There's contention on the speed limit in the press.
Re: This is what automation looks like: (Score:2)
Well automation is usually better than this.
Alrighty, then...
Re: Wow what a coincidence! (Score:3)
What a coincidence that it just happens to be a SDC that just happens to kill a pedestrian!
Uh, yeah. 15 pedestrians are killed every day by human drivers in the US alone. What kind of simpleton freaks out about one pedestrian killed in the entire history of self-driving cars?
Re: Wow what a coincidence! (Score:2)
So what? We're not talking about 'human drivers' we're talking about your Savoir the Self Driving Car that's supposed to be so goddamned wonderful, and it just killed a human being. That's what's on trial here. I don't give a flying fuck about how many people are killed by human operated cars every day.
I appreciate your honesty, but don't worry, we could already tell. It's obvious that you don't care about how many people are killed, and you don't care about whether driverless cars are safer; all you really care about is finding an opportunity to rant and rave and generally act like a dick.
The rest of us DO actually care about how many people die, and we care about reducing that number. This is why you'll never be part of any actual discussion on the subject.
Re: Wow what a coincidence! (Score:3)
Wow. We thought you were here to discuss the topic.
I'm here to discuss the topic with anyone who is interested in having a serious discussion. I'm not here to discuss the topic with a jackass who is predisposed to demonizing driverless cars and openly admits that he doesn't care about safety statistics.
Re: Wow what a coincidence! (Score:2)
Human drivers cover more miles in a single day than SDCs have covered in their entire history.
So, in other words, driverless cars are 15 times safer?
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Were there any tire marks indicating the car tried to swerve or brake to even try to miss the pedestrian? Or did it just roll right over her like she wasn't even there?
The last time I hit a deer, it came out of the shadows at the side of the road, and stepped out just in front of me. I didn't mean to hit it, but it got inside my reaction time. I didn't leave swerve marks (well not much), I rolled right over the poor thing like it wasn't there. I don't hate deer. It wasn't callousness or indifference.
Re: (Score:2)