Slashdot Mirror
Self-Driving Uber Car Kills Arizona Woman in First Fatal Crash Involving Pedestrian (gizmodo.com)
Joe_Dragon writes: Last night a woman was struck by an autonomous Uber vehicle in Tempe, Arizona. She later died of her injuries in the hospital. The deadly collision -- reported by ABC15 and later confirmed to Gizmodo by Uber and Tempe police -- took place around 10PM at the intersection Mill Avenue and Curry Road. Autonomous vehicle developers often test drive at night, during storms, and other challenging conditions to help their vehicles learn to navigate in a variety of environments.
According to Tempe PD, the car was in autonomous mode at the time of the incident, with a vehicle operator sitting behind the wheel. A police spokesperson added in a statement that the woman's 'next of kin has not been notified yet so her name is not being released at this time. Uber is assisting and this is still an active investigation.' The woman was crossing the street outside a crosswalk when she was hit, the spokesperson said. Update: Uber says it is suspending self-driving car tests in all North American cities after a fatal accident.
According to Tempe PD, the car was in autonomous mode at the time of the incident, with a vehicle operator sitting behind the wheel. A police spokesperson added in a statement that the woman's 'next of kin has not been notified yet so her name is not being released at this time. Uber is assisting and this is still an active investigation.' The woman was crossing the street outside a crosswalk when she was hit, the spokesperson said. Update: Uber says it is suspending self-driving car tests in all North American cities after a fatal accident.
I'm very familiar with the types of sensors used in these cars. They have trouble with rain, snow, sunlight, scratches, dirt, basically anything. Try sticking your head out the window while driving and pretend your eyeballs are the sensors. It's a pretty comparable comparison. We're 50 years out from a working self-driving car. The AI isn't there, the sensors aren't there, and every amaaaaazing show-off event being held is on a perfect road with perfect weather or some conditions they know the car can handle.
. . . to the existing legal system. So many have speculated what would happen when a self-driving car inevitably killed a 3rd party. Might as well get the process started so the litigation / legislation is resolved quicker and things move ahead . . .
Yup, death penalty for jaywalking. That sounds about how a fucking monster thinks.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Agreed. I'm sure they'll spin this as a smear against self-driving vehicles... but realistically, the human was 100% in the wrong.
Let's all jump to conclusions. Don't disappoint me now. We should be at the root cause with all the information within the next 5 minutes.
Self-driving cars don't need to be perfect, just better than people.
If self-driving cars rack up fewer pedestrian deaths per mile driven than human drivers, that's the critical metric.
--PM
Outside a crosswalk does not always mean jaywalking. In many jurisdictions if you are a certain distance from the next corner it is legal to cross. So she may or may not have been legally crossing.
We're 50 years out from a working self-driving car.
Thank you Mr Luddite. It's a shame that we currently live in a perfectly safe world where no pedestrians ever git hit and these darn self-driving cars come along and...
Wait, what? Drivers hit pedestrians all the time? Especially so when they cross in the middle of the street at night in the rain?
Remember, there WAS a human sitting behind the wheel. The fact that he didn't see here / could not react in time means she was (A) really hard to see, and (b) probably came in front of the car very suddenly.
We are not 50 years from self-driving cars. We are *0* years from self-driving cars. They are being deployed today and the ramp-up will only continue, because even if they make mistakes it's still FEWER mistakes than people will make, on average.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In many civilized countries (i.e. UK), pedestrians always have the right-of-way -- cars are expected to exercise due care not to hit someone, and "jaywalking" as a legal concept does not exist.
But yeah, Tempe (and Phoenix sprawlopolis) in general are terribly designed for pedestrians -- you often have to walk a long distance to even get to a crosswalk, and traffic light timing can be too short to allow pedestrians to cross without running.
So many missing details here. Was it raining causing limited visibility? Did she dart out between two cars right in front of the moving vehicle? Was she crossing and then doubled back? Did the human behind the wheel have time to try and react?
The good thing about this being an autonomous vehicle is that there are likely cameras and sensors all around the vehicle that will be able to tell investigators exactly what happened.
And while jaywalking is certainly not a capital offense, it's hard to argue that this would have happened if she'd been in a recognizable crosswalk with as many miles and hours as have been racked up by self-driving vehicles already.
There was an operator behind the controls in the test vehicle. He didn't hit the brakes or steer around the pedestrian.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Would a human driver been able to react differently? It is a difficult question. This woman was crossing a multi-lane divided highway at 10PM not at a crosswalk. The highway has plenty of landscaping (trees, shrubs, etc) and if It was dark, there may have been obstructions and she may not have been wearing colors or bright clothing that would have stood out. I don't want to victim blame, but I'm not going to AI blame for something that may have turned out the same for even the most highly trained human drivers.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
This incident makes no one a "monster" -- just like CSX and Amtrak aren't "monsters" when a pedestrian gets struck by one of their trains (which is almost universally because someone trespassed onto the right-of-way, or just plain decided to commit suicide by train). You can't bubble wrap the world.
I feel bad for the lady As well as the first responders who couldn't save her.
Uber and the team -- working for a company that wants to eventually replace private and public transport with their "rented" autonomous vehicles, nope. Uber's long-term model doesn't allow for privacy, since each rental is tied to a profile, reputation, and bank account or credit card. The data will be there, to be sold to marketeers and governments.
The "team" and "Uber" itself can go eat a week-old spoiled sausage.
While it's hard to say what happened yet, what I can say with confidence is that we should be able to figure out what happened far more easily than if any non-self driving car had hit her...
Why? Because of the vast amount of sensor data collected by the car every second. We should be able to see exactly when she left the sidewalk, exactly where she went in the road, and exactly what led to the car not "seeing" her.
Otherwise you'd MAYBE have some dash-cam footage and some super poor traffic camera footage.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I know that intersection. If she tried to cross against a light and burst out from behind a car waiting for a left turn, which is pretty common there, no driver operating legally and prudently could avoid her, neither a human nor automated driver. It happens.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
" autonomous cars need to drive more like humans"
You mean poorly and distractedly? ;)
If the sensors were not adequate for the conditions, I would expect a criminal vehicular homicide case against Uber. If a human was driving with their eyes closed and it could be proven, they would suffer the same fate.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
As I suspected, a bunch of people blaming the pedestrian for crossing the street wrong. Cars still have to stop for them legally, and autonomous cars are no less liable. Once again, autonomous cars need to drive more like humans, not the other way around.
I suggest you test this theory by jumping right in front of a speeding car with a driver, and see how it goes.
Both you and the people you are arguing against don't have all the facts. Anyone who hasn't seen the evidence is just talking out of their asses if they're trying to assign blame already.
It's a pretty good bet that the car has a video record of what happened, so it should be possible to determine what really happened here.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I can't believe any autonomous car would be designed to assume peds can only be encountered in crosswalks. That's just too obviously wrong of an assumption for me to believe it survived to an actual product. There are all kinds of water bags (kids, animals) that randomly shoot out into the road. They'd have to have some detection of unexpected obstacles active at all times.
I think there's two most likely causes of the accident. If it was machine error, then whatever process filters the fire hose of data from the various sensors to detect obstacles didn't recognize the person as an obstacle.
The other possibility is that the machine recognized the human and tried to stop but couldn't given distance of the person & speed of the car. I don't see anything in the news reports that state whether the car tried to stop or not. The limited pictures in the article make it look like the road could be a four lane city thoroughfare which could have a 45-50 MPH speed limit. If the person darted out directly in front of the car traveling at that speed, even if the car slammed the breaks, it could easily fail to stop in time. If that's the case, then the question is whether a human driver might have noticed the person on the side of the road and slowed down out of caution. Either way, it's unlikely you'd ticket a human driver who was doing the speed limit for *not* slowing down at the sight of a person on the sidewalk.
a driver sitting ready to take over is not the same as one driving in manual mode
Now no one will be safe.
Can't happen? Zero fucking times. Prove me wrong with a link.
I'd have a lot more trust in Uber's autonomous car program if they hadn't used the project name "Skynet"!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
(a) Every pedestrian crossing a roadway at any point other than within a marked crosswalk or within an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection shall yield the right of way to all vehicles upon the roadway unless he has already, and under safe conditions, entered the roadway. - https://law.justia.com/codes/g...
And of course the thousands of laws and ordinances stating that pedestrians have right of way on marked and unmarked crossings which would be pointless if pedestrians always had right of way.
a driver sitting ready to take over is not the same as one driving in manual mode
There are plenty of times drivers behind the wheel remove hands from controls to reach for something, or simply get sleepy, or are singing along to a song not paying attention... or maybe reactions are slowed because they are tired, or have had a bit to drink.
The truth is a human driver out at 10pm at night in an empty downtown would not expect anyone either, and would almost certainly have hit the same women crossing in front of them well away from a crossing. Why is that so hard to believe, when it happens all the time?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Working in Tempe AZ I am familiar with the area of the intersection. This area is not a high volume pedestrian area like South Mill Avenue. I really can't imagine anything more than infrequent pedestrian traffic on a Sunday evening at 10 pm. You go a mile south on Mill Avenue (walk under the 202 Freeway overpass, and then cross over the Tempe Town Lake bridge and yes you will find plenty of pedestrians. But looking at the Google Maps this area is pretty much undeveloped desert park on the east and a theater venue on the west. O.T. Genasis was playing at the theater Sunday night at 7:30 so if I had to guess I would place money on the pedestrian having attended the show (bar in the theater) and may have parked in the park parking lot some distance to the east (free parking versus pay or full parking at the venue). I am just guessing, but this is a plausible informed guess. https://www.google.com/maps/pl...
Despite the pedestrian jaywalking, Uber's had a LONG history of problems with their self-driving program. The worst google's self-driving program has gotten itself into is having cars crash into it because of confusion between right of way. Meanwhile Uber's managed to rollover one of their cars in a collision. At this point, I think Uber's rushing to have a successful IPO, Google is taking the time to do it right. So no thanks to Uber for giving self-driving cars a bad name...
The original reporting on ABC15 Self-driving Uber car hits, kills pedestrian in Tempe actually includes a video that has the caption "Self-driving vehicle hits BICYCLIST". The video also shows a crumpled-up bicycle.
Unfortunately, ABC15's text article says "a woman walking outside of the crosswalk was struck" and that is what the rest of the media is regurgitating as their own reporting.
There is a reason why we have lighted intersections, and crosswalks with bright signs calling them out to cars.
Jaywalking is intrinsically dangerous. Physics can't be escaped. Reaction time and stopping distance mean that even under perfect circumstances a jaywalker could wind up dead (depending on the road).
It is ridiculous to say that a jaywalker is 100% not responsible. Jaywalker is knowingly putting themselves in the path of fast-moving vehicles in a place designated for the vehicles to have the right-of-way (and, in this case at a time of low visibility!). This is a dangerous, stupid, and illegal thing to do! So, doing it puts you partially at fault.
If by "mistreat" you mean "jail and deport" and by "undocumented worker" you mean "non-us citizen here illegally" then I don't see where your argument is.. It's not right to enforce some laws but not all. Regardless of your feelings, if you want it to work another way lobby to have he law changed.
Not true, I live in Las Vegas.. In 2011 or so we had so many idiots J-walking and getting hit by cars(multiple a week) the city made it legal to run over anybody J-walking as long as you were sober and driving legally.. The rate of people getting run over in Vegas has fell through the floor since then.
Did you mean criminals? FTFY
I disagree. We obviously don't know all the details yet, but if a car was on a road being driven by sensors that were not adequate for the conditions then the people who put that car on the road are the real monsters. If the sensors were fine and the woman literally ran out from behind a brick wall and in front of the car (ie was not visible for even a brief moment before the collision) then Uber is excused. Otherwise, they are the monsters for putting a car on the road that can't detect a person crossing with a trajectory that would meet with the car.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Yup, death penalty for jaywalking. That sounds about how a fucking monster thinks.
It's not a "penalty". It is an unavoidable consequence of some kinds of jaywalking --- for example, running off from the side into the street just ahead of a vehicle approaching that point in the road at the speed limit. It is possible there was no "obstacle" for the car to detect Until it was already too late to avoid an incident.
There is a certain minimum sight distance required for an approaching vehicle's driver to recognize that there is a pedestrian in the road, AND react, AND take action, and then even after the breaks are being applied -- there is stopping distance.
For example, if the vehicle is travelling 45 MPH down an arterial street, and a pedestrian jumps out 20 feet ahead of the vehicle.... it will be nearly impossible for an accident to be avoided.
Illegal aliens do not pay federal income taxes. A social security number is required for that.
In many civilized countries (i.e. UK), pedestrians always have the right-of-way
They don't have right-of-way. Cars are not under any obligation to stop to let you cross a road, except at a zebra crossing.
Just because there's no offence of jaywalking, that doesn't mean pedestrians have priority over cars on the road.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
...if these cars can't avoid an adult jaywalking, how can they avoid:
Large Animals? Deer, and other wildlife that often end up as hood ornaments.
Children? They are famous for unexpectedly running out into the street.
Other obstacles?
You would have thought that these considerations were first and foremost on the minds of the software folks.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Because humans are never, ever hit/killed by cars with human drivers!
There is nothing in the constitution about MJ dispensaries. There is, however, plenty in the constitution granting control of immigration policy to the federal government.
These vehicles are coming, like it or not. They will be safer. Even if they are not safer now, not by a long shot; technology will do what technology does. It will improve.
Unless you are advocating altering humans to make them better drones to drive, technology is the answer. Any moron can see that. Humans will never be able to compete at driving where technology can make huge strides in so many facets of driving.
Even if we have to sacrifice some level of safety now, the payoff will be massive.
It comes from the millions of people each year who file their taxes and the IRS comes back and asks for W2s from jobs they never knew they had. The criminal is falsifying documents to collect the paycheck, and the tax liability of the person who's social was stolen has to prove it wasn't him. #nowyouknow
Where's your source that the woman was jaywalking?
It isn't legal if you do it on purpose (that is called murder) but if you accidentally hit someone who is jaywalking, the jaywalker is responsible for the accident and may be prosecuted both criminally and civilly.
Obviously if you are DUI or driving dangerously yourself and that caused the jaywalker's demise, then it could be considered manslaughter or you may also be prosecuted criminally and civilly, the onus could also revert back onto the driver to prove the person was not jaywalking, you can 'legally' walk across the street if it was safe to do so and you would not have to expect a car coming at 90mph around a corner.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Not perfectly.
While I can't comment on the proportion of autonomous vehicles to human-operated vehicles, there are multiple thousands of pedestrian hit and killed each year. Multiple tens of thousands hit and injured. I would expect this number to go down dramatically for every increase in autonomous cars.
You can't pay taxes legally if you're not a legal resident.
Yeah you can. You sign up for an ITIN (Individual Taxpayer Identification Number) and use it for your taxes when you don't have a social security number. Please stop spreading misinformation when you don't know what you're talking about.
It's never legal to intentionally run someone over and it has always been the pedestrian's fault if they cause an accident jaywalking. You cannot legally run anyone over, regardless of their position, you can however be indemnified for hitting a jaywalker.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Not if one sets their withholding to zero on their W-4. You've never filled out a W-4 have you?
It's a new thing. Literally everyone on the planet foresaw the potential for this has very very high. I'd be amazed if the developers themselves found themselves in a quandray that often occurs in machine learning: holy crap these are amazingly good results but we can't tell you when it will fail. After not seeing failures in all the test cases you find yourself letting go of that worry that it will fail catastrophically.
When cars were new themselves there were some remarkably crazy pedestrian protecting rules put in place such as requiring a flagman to walk in front of a car. But the thing about cars was that they really weren't a big leap from horses,trains, or boats. Propulsions systems controlled by human drivers are dangerous too of course. But were used to them and have mental models to protect us well ingrained.
Not so with driverless vehicles. And everyone thought this would happen even if they hoped it would not.
The whole tesla didn't see the truck thing should have been a tip off that the system wasn't flawless yet.
As usual it's the race to market that takes off the safety restraints. This is why we have regulations. To add some friction into the tragedy of the commons.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
perhaps the people who insist that automated cars can see everything everywhere all the time will be quiet now.
You were probably the only one insisting that.
Could you bubble wrap this red herring for me? I'm afraid he might get hurt by your straw man.
Is your job to sit under bridges and jump out at unsuspecting travellers?
There is nothing in the constitution about MJ dispensaries. There is, however, plenty in the constitution granting control of immigration policy to the federal government.
Yes yes.. only the constitution matters. No other law is viable right? If it's not in the constitution why are we even talking about it. What next? we listen to people who hold "court" in rooms with fringed flags?
Just another second banana
That Vox story is ludicrous. They even say very clearly that they have no statistics to back up any of their suppositions. If illegals were interested in following US tax law and identity theft law they would've followed immigration law as well.
Ugh... people...
right of way, not right-a-way
jaywalking, not J-walking.
Is your job to sit under bridges and jump out at unsuspecting travellers?
Waymo says they have logged 5 million miles of testing. But what sort of testing it is really? There's these safety arresters for table saws that stop the blade harmlessly if a human finger touches it. While you can run 5 million hotdogs through it, do you really believe it works till some person actually tries it? And who's going to do that? And Is testing under controlled conditions with well maintained saws any test of neglected heavily worn saws in real shops?
Same with car testing. If you aren't having real bicyclists darting in front of these things under bad driving conditions at lethal speeds how are you testing these things for real? Perhaps they should require car company execs to actually perform these acid tests.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
26 comments on this article so far? You need a different hobby dude.
So Phoenix, as the Uber test city, has registered its first fatality. With no information made public other than it involved a jaywalking pedestrian, we have 250 posts predicting the entire future of the automated car industry. And illegal aliens, for some reason.
I can't wait to see what the all-wise multitude will say once we actually know what happened.
Except not hitting pedestrians is kind of important. Knowing you're in a residential area and being on the lookout for kids chasing balls is important. Regardless if you had the right of way your not going to win any brownie points by saying that after you run down a kid.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
No, jay walking was invented by car companies and entrenched through a massive advertising campaign. It's not the as simple as you think it is.
Cheap storage VM.
This isn't a pedestrian story, but I had a bicycle pull out in front of me and I managed stop without hitting him, but he fell over as he tried to avoid me. He wanted to sue me for his own recklessness, but the policemen onsite informed us both that it is illegal for a bicycle to be traveling (1) on the sidewalk, and (2) against the flow of traffic. The officers gave me the opportunity to press charges. I declined because my only concern was that he was not injured, But if a car hits (or almost hits) someone it is not necessarily the fault of the car. Neither does it mean that the person in the wrong deserves to be hit. I don't know the circumstances of the incident in the article, but it is quite possible that there was nothing the car could do to avoid the collision. My dad will walk right out in front of a car if he is at the crosswalk because he insists he has the right of way. Maybe so, but stepping out in front of a car at the last minute is a good way to get run over.
I guess you have not filled a W4 either.
Of course he hasn't. In Russia, it's a Ve4
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
Nearly impossible is an understatement. Given the typical coefficient of friction between asphalt and road in *IDEAL* conditions, the absolute minimum stopping distance at 45mph is nearly 100 feet, and that's before you even allow for reaction time.
However, assuming that you could get reaction time down to zero by using a computer to control braking, you can easily show that the scenario of a person jumping out in front of a car only 20 feet away is not realistic. In fact, if a person tried to jump out in front of a car when it was only twenty feet away, a person jumping out might be suddenly moving at perhaps 10 to 15 miles per hour, and if they wait until the car is only 20 feet away to try and jump in front of it, the time that the car takes to travel that 20 feet is so short that by the time the person manages to get into traffic, the car will have already passed him. The car behind, assuming it was at a safe following distance for the speed, would actually have more than enough time to stop.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Google self-driving cars run literally millions of miles and the worst accident they get into is one of their cars getting rear-ended by somebody else. Uber gets into the game, and 3 months later they've killed someone. Can't say I'm surprised. Google is generally a responsible company. Uber uses a "break things, move fast, skirt the laws and let someone else pick up the wreckage" business model. Expect quite a bit more of this. I'm not opposed to rapid development of new tech like this. Sometimes, accidents will happen. 100% safety isn't a physical possibility. It's just that nobody should be surprised when outfits like Uber rack up an impressive body count.
She was hit here:
https://www.google.com/maps/@3...
I know this because I looked at
https://www.reuters.com/articl...
and I know the location intimately. The speed limit here is 40. The road, Mill Avenue, going northbound is two lanes plus it is adding turn lanes to go west and east. There is a bike lane. The road has just gone over a bridge (man-made lake) and under a freeway bridge (202) -- there are no off- or on-ramps at this location. There is a parking lot under the bridge for the concert venue (SW corner: visible in the Reuter's image) plus there's a public park/beach on the north side of the lake.
As
https://tech.slashdot.org/comm...
states, there was no rain.
http://alert.fcd.maricopa.gov/...
I haven't seen the crumpled bicycle photo, but we JUST started a bunch of "share bike" schemes in the Phoenix metro area (well, Phoenix proper has had one for while -- Tempe/Scottsdale ones are more recent): Limebike is the main one, I think (we have some that have "Ono" on them, as well). So if the bike is yellow or yellow/green, it was probably one of those. Tempe is hugely bike friendly for a US city because it is both (a) the site of ASU (b) progressive.
The southbound lanes are 2 wide at this point, so this lady was riding a bike across ~5 lanes of traffic plus a BIG (mostly paved) median. There's a shortcut trail just RIGHT there to go east, so maybe she was aiming for that.
A sad situation for sure. I see the Uber and Waymo vehicles all the time, so there's no lack of miles in and around that area.
No matter what the law says, the truth is that some idiot trusted the software for do that they should have been doing, which is paying attention and giving a crap.
It's too early to say where the "fault" in the collision lies; details are just not available, and it'll probably be a few days until the Police report is issued.
I caution about this, because when I was a kid, there was a neighbor boy who was seriously injured across the street from me. He rode his "big wheel" tricycle out into the street. The driver had no warning (even at 25 MPH) because there were shrubs lining the side of the road, blocking the driver's ability to see the kid. Were the child walking, he would have been visible above the shrubbery, but riding the big wheel lowered the child below the line of sight.
The collision didn't happen because the driver didn't care, or wasn't paying attention. It happened because a five-year old kid made an illegal blind merge into the road.
In this case, we literally don't know what happened, and it doesn't do anybody favors to lay harsh judgement on anyone at this point. Wait for the police report, and then blame Uber for being a wretched den of scum an villainy.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
This isn't the case you're looking for. There was a driver behind the wheel, and he (or she) was responsible for the operation of the vehicle.
I haven't heard of any good cases regarding autonomous mining trucks like CAT 794f, but those might come first.
Bruce Perens.