Human Driver Could Have Avoided Fatal Uber Crash, Experts Say (bloomberg.com) 408
An anonymous reader shares a report: The pedestrian killed Sunday by a self-driving Uber SUV had crossed at least one open lane of road before being hit, according to a video of the crash that raises new questions about autonomous-vehicle technology. Forensic crash analysts who reviewed the video said a human driver could have responded more quickly to the situation, potentially saving the life of the victim, 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg. Other experts said Uber's self-driving sensors should have detected the pedestrian as she walked a bicycle across the open road at 10 p.m., despite the dark conditions. Herzberg's death is the first major test of a nascent autonomous vehicle industry that has presented the technology as safer than humans who often get distracted while driving. For human driving in the U.S., there's roughly one death every 86 million miles, while autonomous vehicles have driven no more than 15 to 20 million miles in the country so far, according to Morgan Stanley analysts. "As an ever greater number of autonomous vehicles drive ever an ever greater number of miles, investors must contemplate a legal and ethical landscape that may be difficult to predict," the analysts wrote in a research note following the Sunday collision. "The stock market is likely too aggressive on the pace of adoption."
I probably would have hit her (Score:3, Informative)
Based on the video I saw, she was practically invisible until she entered the car's headlight beams. The road was poorly lit, and she had dark clothing, no reflectors on the bike and no lights.
I don't see how I could have stopped or swerved in time to avoid her in that brief window.
Believe me, I don't care for self-driving cars at all, but I have to remain unbiased here because I know I would have hit her in the same situation.
Be safe out there, people. Put lights on your bike or yourself when you're out there on the road at night.
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Re:I probably would have hit her (Score:4, Insightful)
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Agreed. Braking is the right thing to do, not swerving. I know most people wont do it, but that's one of many reasons I put a big brake kit on my car. It isn't even a sports car! Just a V6 Accord coupe. If I brake down to half or a quarter my speed before I hit someone they might survive, but I am not swerving.
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And I think this is actually kindof the crux of the problem here...we are now at the spot where we are going to expect vehicles to decide, either hit that person, or swerve or brake and injure the driver or someone else. Those sorts of split second decisions people rarely have to make, but they *do* occasionally have to make them.
I'm of the opinion that we use applied philosophy...that is, given a person the option of two different types of software in their cars, and they have to decide which one they wan
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we are now at the spot where we are going to expect vehicles to decide,
either hit that person, or swerve or brake and injure the driver or someone else
No need to make a person-oriented decision.
If the car detects an obstacle, whether a child, an adult , a dog or a traffic cone,
the car just has to solve one problem: is there a free lane that I can swerve into safely?
If so, do it.
If not, hit the brakes as fast and as hard as it can.
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I will never swerve on a two lane road. That's a conscious decision I've already made.
You're a fucking shit driver then, get off the road.
People swerve safely a lot. A hell of a lot. Often at high speed. They know how their car handles and they maintain situational awareness that lets them know whether the other lane is clear.
As an example,
It can easily get you killed, through a roll, head on, or into a tree, building, fire hydrant
If you can't swerve without rolling your car, learn to drive.
If you can't tell whether there's an oncoming vehicle that makes swerving dangerous then you don't know what's happening on the road. Learn to drive.
If you can hit a tree, building or fire hydran
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Yeah, I came around a corner to a momma deer in the middle of my lane. I was going too fast to tighten the radius (which would have also brought me into currently unoccupied, but not necessarily for long oncoming lane), so I widened the radius onto the wide shoulder.
Where the baby deer was illuminated by my lights. At that point is was either try to swerve back to momma, or off the road, down the embankment into the oak trees. Where the rest of the deer were.
The baby deer didn't make it, but I'm pretty su
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If you had hit the mother deer, the baby deer would likely also have died later. Also, an adult deer coming through your windscreen is probably not survivable.
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Maybe you should buy a car that can do more than go in a straight fucking line.
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Uber is a pretty scummy company, having people operate unlicensed taxis for below minimum wage.
Basically the Wal*Mart of taxis.
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Based on the video I saw, she was practically invisible until she entered the car's headlight beams. The road was poorly lit, and she had dark clothing, no reflectors on the bike and no lights.
I don't see how I could have stopped or swerved in time to avoid her in that brief window.
Believe me, I don't care for self-driving cars at all, but I have to remain unbiased here because I know I would have hit her in the same situation.
Be safe out there, people. Put lights on your bike or yourself when you're out there on the road at night.
Then you should drive slower because I would have avoided her.
When I drive at night I drive at an appropriate speed so I can stop in time if my headlights detect something on the road ahead of me. And if my headlights and eyes were as terrible as the crappy video we've been shown I would have been driving very slowly indeed.
Re:I probably would have hit her (Score:4, Interesting)
Speed limits are set according to fixed rules that have been set by carefully examining statistics and the theoretical capabilities of cars and drivers. A self-driving car would be obeying the speed limit (well, this is Uber, maybe not). A human driver would assume that driving at the posted limit was safe for all but the most severe conditions (dense fog, or heavy snow, icy road, and night).
A cyclist crossing the road on foot, wearing dark clothing, should be able to see approaching headlights from hundreds of yards away. This seems like a case of extreme bad judgement on her part.
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this also took place in the PHX metro; a car going the speed limit will get shot at and/or run off the road.
obeying the speed limit so useless on the IL Toll (Score:2)
obeying the speed limit so useless on the IL Tollwall.
Late nights with low traffic and really good lighting you can fly. No one does the 55 even cops do 75-80 in the 55.
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Speed limits are set according to fixed rules that have been set by carefully examining statistics and the theoretical capabilities of cars and drivers.
In all countries other than the USA, where they are often set by policy and manipulated politically.
A human driver would assume that driving at the posted limit was safe for all but the most severe conditions (dense fog, or heavy snow, icy road, and night).
Maybe in the USA. In many other countries we are told to "drive to conditions". The speed limit has never been a defense against an accident. Breaching it however has always been a contributory factor. Take for instance the european right of way rules. Literally give way to anything coming from your right. In an average built up area with a speed limit of 50km/h you never are able to get that fast despite tha
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Thereâ(TM)s a difference between the speed limit and the speed appropriate for the conditions. The posted speed is a limit, not a target.
Not really. Many states have a basic speed law that dictates the speed limit is the safe and appropriate speed. The speed appropriate for the conditions IS the speed limit.
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Night time isn't ideal conditions, especially not if you really can only see as far as the video makes it appear.
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I agree with you. In poorly lit areas I often go ten under. If the road is well lit I'll go faster, but it's all based on conditions. I don't speed in a blizzard like some of the maniacs I live around.
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Speaking from experience (Score:3)
Speaking from experience :
A.
I drive quite a lot when on vacations/week-end, including often on nights, including sometime in fog.
- The human supervisor *should* have turned on the high beams. It seems to me that only the low beams were active, reducing the visibility range. (This might have affected the camera part of the sensors). The super visor is supposed to supervise the self-driving car and thus should be able to see in order to anticipate and compensate bugs, instead of relying the whole thing to wor
That's video (Score:2, Informative)
....she was practically invisible until she entered the car's headlight beams
Human vision is MUCH more sensitive than cameras. What looks dark in the video wouldn't be so bad to a human. That's why they use all those lights when shooting video.
So, it wasn't as dark as it appears.
Re:That's video (Score:4, Funny)
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Night vision has amplification, this camera did not.
What the car should have had was infra-red and if it doesn't then I can't see how you can suggest it's fit to use at night in any conditions.
If it did have infra-red she would have been a massive bright spot on a black background moving across the cars path, and it reacted by ... doing nothing.
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Maybe, the BMW version seems to be about $1000. But I'd pay that for infrared around here pretty happily, for kangaroos rather than people or deer, but would easily pay for itself.
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Apparently it did have a lidar system for obstacle detection; so the darkness is irrelevant.
Also the nice thing with lidar is that unlike infrared, it doesn't rely on the object's heat signature for detection
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Often those dark shapes at night can be seen when you look straight at them, but they are not at all easy to see with peripheral vision.
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Humans don't see with their eyes. What you see is created by your imagination. It is easy to see the gorilla when you know it is there.
If you don't see the man in a gorilla suit when he is break-dancing across the empty street right in front of you, you have severe problems.
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I would not have. I have been in situations like that many times. The low light is far enough that you have time to avoid stationary objects in the road, or things moving slowly onto the road.
Re:I probably would have hit her (Score:5, Insightful)
Its hard to be certain, the video is rather low quality and typically cameras struggle to capture image at night. Even in the low quality video I saw on BBC's site you can see white shoes moving in the shadow which makes me suspect the person was more visible than the video would have you believe.
Perhaps more concerning - the video released of the person supposedly monitoring the car spent an awful lot of time looking down not ahead and out the window.
Re:I probably would have hit her (Score:4, Insightful)
the video released of the person supposedly monitoring the car spent an awful lot of time looking down not ahead and out the window.
It's truly amazing watching other people drive. You'll be amazed if you take the time to focus on them how little time they actually spend looking forward.
Re:I probably would have hit her (Score:5, Insightful)
But consider this. Next time you're a passenger at night on a poorly lit road take out you phone and record the road. I'll wager that your real eyes can see better in the low light then your phone or the camera attached to the Uber car.
Morally, I think the woman is at fault for crossing the road in the dark without looking for oncoming cars and not having any kind of light. But the autonomous car's other sensors should have picked her up anyway. To be successful autonomous cars need to be significantly better then the average driver, they need to be better then the best drivers out there.
I am bias, I can't wait for autonomous cars to come to market. But even I have to admit that it should have seen her coming with plenty of time to spare.
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It's the sensor failures that really worry me. Radar should have seen her, the lidar should have seen her. The cameras should have seen her - most autonomous cars use cameras with some IR vision capability so they can see at night.
The cameras on my Nissan Leaf have better night vision than the one in the video, which makes me think it's not the one the system uses.
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I am amazed at how many jaywalkers I see wearing dark clothes at night crossing a four lane road that I often drive on.
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Two second reaction time? Average reaction time to visual stimulus is about a quarter of a second.
You might have slowed down though (Score:2)
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Maybe if the woman who was supposed to be watching what was going on were not half asleep we'd know the answer. I think in a situation like that a person who wanted to be more aware would have been. This is exactly why auto pilot is dangerous. Everyone wants to blame it on it being dark, the car shouldn't care. It's not relying on visible light.
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Re: I probably would have hit her (Score:2)
Take with a pinch of salt: low light, high contrast and over compressed. How much do you really expect to see in such a video?
More interesting is what he human driver was looking down at instead of having their eyes on the road. If they weee looking at a screen then they also compromised their night vision.
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Re:I probably would have hit her (Score:5, Insightful)
Based on the video I saw, she was practically invisible until she entered the car's headlight beams. The road was poorly lit, and she had dark clothing, no reflectors on the bike and no lights.
I don't see how I could have stopped or swerved in time to avoid her in that brief window.
Then I suggest you try driving by looking out the windshield, and not at a crappy video of whats in front of you. I say that not as a joke. People seem to keep judging this situation by the video we see, but the video quality is pretty much crap. I guarantee the human eye would capture much better detail (both in terms of resolution as well as shadow detail) then what we see in that video. The video is absolute crap, so please don't say what you couldn't have done based on it.
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Dashcams tend to expose for the light and make things in darkness less visible than they are to human eye.
But even ignoreing that the pedestrian was in the traffic lane when the headlights reached them - they didn't step into the headlights out of darkness from the side. So a human could have stopped in time assuming they were driving at a safe speed and hence didn't have their stopping distance out past their view distance. If you can't stop in that situation you are driving too fast for the conditions.
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I think you're seeing the limitations of the camera. There were two streetlights nearby, and if the headlights on the car were anywhere near focused properly, a human driver would have easily seen her.
In most of the US, large animals, like deer, commonly enter a roadway. Deer do not wear reflectors or have LED lights
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You don't just cross roads like that without looking while wearing black in the middle of the night.
I'm not even sure how the pedestrian missed the car. It's not like there was a lot of other things to look at in the darkness besides the very obvious headlights coming quickly at you.
Uber's implementation sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
raises new questions about autonomous-vehicle technology.
No, it raises further questions about Uber's poor, perhaps criminally negligent, implementation. In the last year Uber's had more, and more serious, accidents than I think every other driverless program combined. Google/Waymo has been testing in San Francisco - not Tempe - for years with nothing comparable.
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Yeah. It seems Ubers implementation is basicaly a level 2 AI marketed and tested as a level 3, and then they are just hoping their safety drivers can keep the scam working until they have gotten some more investor money to burn in their corporate dumbster fire.
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They are supposed to have their hands poised over the wheel and be aware of everything going on around them at all times while the vehicle is in motion.
Which is completely unrealistic for the individuals that would take that job.
When the passager in the Tesla was killed when the vehicle mistook the white side of a semi trailer for the sky. Tesla said, all drivers while using autopilot were su
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Shouldn't have happened: (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually watched the set of videos and there's two major things to note:
First of all the safety or backup driver appeared to be distracted. Although in all fairness if you're suppose to sit there hours on end without taking an active roll at driving this is probably going to happen. This is why google believes in all or nothing approach, half-baked systems are going to get people killed. While this wouldn't save the cyclist from being hurt, quick reflexes may have saved it from being fatal.
Second, LIDAR works by projecting a super high speed panning laser that maps out the 3D spacial environment. It causes the computer to produce a 3D model of the surroundings. This should NOT be affected by the dark! Unless Uber decided not to use LiDAR which would be a dangerous move. If they're using LiDAR the only explanation is the AI image recognition system failed to recognize the cyclist which is weird considering an object that BIG moving should register as a collision threat. Google has noted that in their own self-driving program the computer can sometimes panic over a flying piece of newspaper while a normal driver wouldn't because it looks like an object heavy enough to threaten the car.
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First of all the safety or backup driver appeared to be distracted. Although in all fairness if you're suppose to sit there hours on end without taking an active roll at driving this is probably going to happen. This is why google believes in all or nothing approach, half-baked systems are going to get people killed. While this wouldn't save the cyclist from being hurt, quick reflexes may have saved it from being fatal.
To me randomly driving around seems like poor test methodology - they should only allow the AI to drive to test specific scenarios and the time should be limited such that a human can reasonably supervise it. Otherwse they should have a human drive a vehicle collecting sensor data which can be used in simulations. Unlike a person, an algorithm doen't know the difference between a simulation and real life.
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Uber do use LIDAR. Looks like there was a hardware or software issue. The car was also breaking the speed limit at the time.
Re: Shouldn't have happened: (Score:3)
The driver looks like they have consumed many rolls but are not at all active
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Re:Shouldn't have happened: (Score:5, Interesting)
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I wonder if they removed LIDAR after Waymo lawsuit?
I doubt it, LIDAR is likely to be someone elses tech bought off the shelf. Not sure about Uber but Alphabet (Google) uses Helodyne units which I've used for aerial terrain survey. Phenomenally accurate units except if its raining, snowing or there's cloud in the way.
Human pedestrian could have avoided fatal crash (Score:2)
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Seriously. Pay attention when driving a car, especially at night.
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Seriously. Pay attention when crossing the road, especially at night.
Seriously. Pay attention when driving a car, especially at night.
Unfortunately paying attention as a driver is no immunity from getting hit as a pedestrian. It doesn't matter if I have the right of way, I'll be the one injured, crippled or dead. And when you know that by far most of the adult population have a driver's license so when you're scraping the bottom of that barrel there's some pretty terrible drivers out there. Looking out for yourself is simple self-preservation, not matter how much the rules say you shouldn't have to.
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Why didn't SHE see the car? (Score:4, Insightful)
But the other question would be why didn't she see the oncoming vehicle. It had its lights on and even coming around a bend, the light it threw onto the roadway would be visible long before the car itself appeared.
Even if one party in a collision is not at fault, that doesn't mean they couldn't have avoided it.
This is why I ready /. (Score:4, Funny)
Kudos to everyone in the last story who commented LiDAR being able to see the pedestrian and the crash being totally avoidable. Comments have also been more accurate than the news in the recent Intel and AMD (non-story) about security.
The fact that the highly moderated comments is more accurate almost any news outlet is why I keep coming back. That and I'm *still* looking for Natalie Portman's brand of hot grits.
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Most be something rigged in the "enabling legislation" if the companies get away with it.
keep in mind (Score:2)
video camera's dynamic range is much less than that of a human eye. meaning we can't judge what a human might/could have seen based on this video.
that said, i'm not necessarily in agreement that a human could have avoided a collision is a similar scenario BUT sensors in my view should have noticed the pedestrian. if not that should be considered a fixable flaw.
Extremely boring (Score:5, Insightful)
If there is no need to steer, the attention wanders and it is impossible to stay alert. This was discovered almost 100 years ago in the railroads. The engineer had the exacting task of watching for grades and monitoring speed, especially those days with weak steam locomotives that responded very slowly. Still they would get bored and fall asleep. They invented the dead man's treadle. The engineer must keep it pressed, or the locomotive will stop. Even now there are various techniques to check and keep the engineers alert on railroads.
With that much of history, it is stupid for autonomous cars to just leave the driver there. They should have active devices that do challenge and response to make sure the human operator stays alert. Else it is a waste to put a human being there.
So, why didn't the computer see her? (Score:2)
If it can be determined that the car *should* have seen her, then what was going on that time that the car didn't see her?
It's a freakin' computer... you can go through its logs and track what it saw and what it didn't see, and figure out based on the logic in the code why it didn't respond to the pedestrian appropriately.
Figure that out, and then add it to repertoire of situations that the car knows about to at least make it safer for the future.
TFA says what I've been saying all along (Score:2)
It's all about numbers (Score:2)
This looks like a "not my problem" problem. (Score:2)
So, something in another lane crosses into yours,
Let's look at it from the computer's perspective.
You can be driving in your lane and have stationary traffic in the next lane (eg. a turning lane). This is not a problem, they are not in your lane.
At the extremes of your sensing range, you see an object in that lane that is not moving towards you. In this case, at that distance a person pushing a bicycle across the lane is - generally - not really approaching you, not if you look at lidar. This is not a probl
Re:She fucking Darwined herself (Score:4, Interesting)
Note, the place is apparently a pedestrian crossing zone just without zebra stripes. You see the marking if you check Google Streetview.
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Exactly...there's a paved walkway in the middle of the fucking median WITH A TRASH CAN next to a light. And no crosswalk. They apparently built this thinking that is where people would cross to the buss station which is across the street, but decided against it and tried to force people to walk a hundred feet down to the actual intersection. I would have crossed there too if that is where I was heading.
Re:She fucking Darwined herself (Score:4, Informative)
It looks like a crossing (and it certainly should be) but it's actually not:
streetview [google.hu]
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Note, the place is apparently a pedestrian crossing zone just without zebra stripes.
The roadway is poorly designed. There is only ONE pedestrian crossing in a two mile stretch.
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Looked like a human pushing a bike.
A human pushing a pram doesn't look like a human either.
Re:False Equivalency (Score:4, Insightful)
Clearly we need more people to die before the statistics can be compared.
People need to die (Score:3)
That's actually true, it is the way statistics work.
Let's say that AI cars have a 'true rate' of 100M miles between fatal accidents, somewhat better than human. Or they could be 50M miles, somewhat worse. The technology is still in development, so who can say.
The fatal accident can happen anywhere in that 100/50 million miles. It could happen mile 1. Mile 20M. Mile 99,999,999.
Spreading that even more, you could have 200M miles with 2 deaths, and have both happen in the first 100M, second 100M, etc...
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That's actually true, it is the way statistics work.
Well, not really for practical purposes.
i.e. to demonstrate that the automatic system is safer than human driving you
"only" need to drive a sufficient number of miles without a death, but in which
there would be e.g. a 99.99... (select your significance)% that a death would
have occurred.
Now, to measure the actual death rate you do indeed have to kill a statistically
significant number of people. But practically, you only really care about obtaining an
upper limit that's significantly below the human driver dea
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But we did have a lot of people who did not expect to see cars on the road, and instead expected to see a horse. Cars travelled faster than horses, and made different sounds, so if you were not expecting it you could have easily been hit. Take a look at old video of cars and trolleys going down market street in San Francisco from the 1910s and 20s, and you can see how it was a miracle people didn't get mowed down left and right.
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Cars more a lot = more time to get out of the way = far less serious injury when you get hit anyway.
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Nope... (Score:2)
Government policies to limit liability (responsibility) are like policies that allow construction of leaky nuclear plants that blo
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I agree. I think Uber's LIDAR needs work, and that Tesla's, Google's, and Waymo's systems probably could have avoided the death (but maybe not the impact). But also, don't play chicken with cars when you're on foot.
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So, what you are telling us is your sister was following a truck too close and looked away without leaving herself enough space.
Got it. She should learn how to drive better.
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And quietly after the interview Mr Moir though to himself how nice it will be to enjoy his free unlimited Uber account.
Really, the BS he has been coming up with shows that he either thinks of the victim has some kind of human trash who has no worth, or he has a vested interested in protecting Uber - this rhetoric seems unrelated to the facts starting to come out.
not to mention the fact that LIDAR doesnt care about 'shadows' (and there were no shadows, she was on an open straight bit of road - if the Uber wa
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Which part of the article makes you think they are arguing that the pedestrian couldn't have avoided the crash?