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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.
And yet, in most cases now they're orders of magnitude safer than the distracted meatbag texting away on their iPhone. Or the late-night drunk trying to make it home from the bar without getting caught. Yeah, even now I'd probably take my chances with the self-driving cars instead of humanity at the wheel, thanks.
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
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
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.
There is no data to support your statement. Self driving cars haven't even started driving for real yet and Musk's marketing tweets don't count as a scientific study. Testing is not the same as real driving. At this time WHEN CONDITIONS GET BAD WE DON'T LET THE AI DRIVE. Let that sink in. If AI is so much better it should be able to outperform the worse the conditions get, not the other way around.
Your statement is like saying you are a great basketball player but only during controlled ideal practice and you have never played a real game.
the intersection of Mill ave and curry Rd in Tempe is not known to be commonly obscured by rain, snow, and at 10pm, not sunlight either.
It is, however, a broad intersection, and the speed limit is either 40 or 50 MPH for both roads.
It is also the site of a popular music venue, and a hip hop concert was booked then. Probably good attendance. They do serve alcoholic beverages and simple food.
We don't know much, but I would expect this woman didn't use good judgement crossing this intersection, which requires a pedestrian to cross 6 lanes and bike lanes in every direction. It's not easy in the best of conditions, and if, God forbid, this woman was crossing without a walk sign, she was unwise. Hopefully the black boxes involved will share some info.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You have a very low opinion of your driving ability.
sig: sauer
An argument for not building cities where cars come first at the expense of people who want to walk or cycle. Regardless of what's driving the cars.
Now no one will be safe.
Can't happen? Zero fucking times. Prove me wrong with a link.
(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.
I don't know about you, but I personally power-cycle my brain every day or it starts to malfunction. My computer, not even every month.
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.
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
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.
> You have a very low opinion of your driving ability.
Nope, but I have a very low opinion of the driving ability of many people I see on the roads every time I drive somewhere. Self driving cars are probably already better than the lower 30% of licensed drivers out there and will only get better whereas that 30% will get worse as they age and let their bad habits get worse.
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
If a human was driving the car we would still be looking at what the human driver did wrong.
No. If a human was driving the car, it wouldn't have hit the news.
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.
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?
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.