Police Chief: Uber Self-Driving Car 'Likely' Not At Fault In Fatal Crash (arstechnica.com)

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.

Comments

Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[Joe_Dragon]

Why does it look like an sidewalk?

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[guruevi]

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?

[gatfirls]

Sure looks like a sidewalk to me.

https://www.google.com/maps/@3...

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...

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. It’s not a safe place to have bin laden with anything.

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like something designed for emergency vehicles to be able to switch roadway without doing a u-turn in the intersection. Certainly does not look like a sidewalk and there definitely is no crosswalk access to it, which means it can't be...

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[Zaelath]

It's so much not a sidewalk that they have signs to tell you not to use it: https://imgur.com/a/KyxTK

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[The Cynical Critic]

That piece of sidewalk on the median really doesn't make any sense and my guess as to why it's there is that it's some kind of remnant from the way that area used to be. The reason why I don't think it's a turning point for emergency vehicles is that it's clearly a sidewalk and to turn around at the "X" requires a vehicle with a very short turning circle. However seeing how there's no zebra crossings on either side only somebody who is completely careless or really needs to take that shortcut is going to use it.

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[Mal-2]

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.

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[Fly Swatter]

Looks to me like some 'designer' got what they wanted. Nothing more.

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[gatfirls]

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.

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[Maxo-Texas]

In any case, you shouldn't walk out in front of moving cars.

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[aaarrrgggh]

Look closer; plenty of "no pedestrian" signs from street view.

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[rtb61]

That whole shopping precinct looks like a catastrophically bad design, designed for 100% vehicular traffic and if you are on foot, you have to be really careful, no regulated crossing points at all. Of course bias in law to favour corporations clearly demonstrated. Vehicle was speeding, had an accident, the vehicle is at fault, it is the way the law is written, any other way is just wild corporate favouritism, junk for profit law enforcers. Fact if the car had been going the speed limit the accident would not have happened, factual probability outcome (the car would have been much further away, instead of at the impact location, simple categorical fact, in fact in this case speed did kill).

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[VanessaE]

It surely can't be for vehicles (emergency or otherwise) either: there are no ramps/gradients between the median paths and the highway, just hard curbs.

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't matter what it looks like, she illegally and irresponsibly tried to cross and paid with her life.

Go into the street view mode and look across the street. Notice that prominent sign that has a picture of a crossed out pedestrian that clearly states "USE CROSSWALK" with an arrow pointing to the crosswalk? She should have heeded that.

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[Anonymous Coward]

"an" sidewalk. How very American.

Why do Americans keep writing "an" instead of "a"? Is it that difficult?
Why do Americans keep writing "women" instead of "woman"?
"that" instead of "than", or "then" instead of "than". What a country of idiots you are...

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a traffic cross-over for moving all traffic onto one lane or the other and back off. Made a bit decorative but a little asphalt at the curbs and it's back in service.

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[Cederic]

Maybe she doesn't understand what the hell a 'crosswalk' is. Sounds like something John Cleese would incorporate into a comedy sketch.

Is it walking when miffed? A curious form of ambulation involving placing your feet perpendicular to each other as you progress?

Sounds harsh on the knees.

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[Talderas]

There's one lamp and if it's even powered it probably doesn't illuminate much more than the "intersection" of that path. The only way you would see someone "illuminated" by that light is if their figure is obstructing light from what is illuminated by the lamp.

Regardless, if you pop into street view there's no-pedestrian signs.

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your not wrong.

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure if this is a google maps point on the road is where the accident actually occurred but that us clearly a sidewalk and there is a pedestrian stair leading up to it.

However, the road is elevated and there is a wall followed by a drop on the left side. It is hard to picture anyone "crossing" this.

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[GonzoPhysicist]

this makes sense as it is the lead up to a pair of one way bridges and traffic might need to be directed off of one and the other shared

Re:Why does it look like an sidewalk?

[SamTombs]

Not really - the logical place to "cross over" is at the very nearby intersection. Also, note there is no corresponding 'X' on the other side of the bridges.

Re:Still killed though

[war4peace]

Much like a river kills the person jumping in it?

Not Likely

[Anonymous Coward]

A human driver generally would have had the intuition the the walker would or could have walked into the path. How much pronostication does AI do?

Re:Not Likely

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was clear enough to be picked up on the car's cameras why was it not something that the AI thought was not worthy of calculating its possible actions and take actions based on those findings? Or did it and decided that the killings must begin now? SKYNET is HERE!!!!

Re:Not Likely

[wonkey_monkey]

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.

Re:Not Likely

[cogeek]

The police have said that even reviewing the video the pedestrian is walking in shadow until they step out into the lane of traffic. A human driver texting on their smartphone in one hand and stuffing a double 1/4 pounder into their face with the other would have had a much slower reaction time. They likely wouldn't even have noticed they ran someone over until the next time they stopped for gas.

Re: Not Likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Agenda. It is not going to be the machines fault

Re:Not Likely

[bobbied]

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 will be litigated by both the woman's estate and Uber and the trial will be very interesting.

Re:Not Likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Who knows what a human driver would have done. If the woman came out from behind a parked car or SUV, a driver would either have to skid and hit a parked car, or continue straight, and most likely they wouldn't have had any choice in the decision... just reactions. An autonomous vehicle has one thing going for it... it has damn fast reactions. If it couldn't swerve or have time to break for someone crossing in the middle of the street, there is no way the driver onboard could out-react an AI.

In some towns, jaywalking is a must. I know that in Austin, cars don't stop at crosswalks, and if they hit someone, it becomes a hit and run, so it is actually safer to cross in the middle of a road where you can see cars going left and right, as opposed to a crosswalk where someone can hit you from four directions.

Re: Not Likely

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Not Likely

[zlives]

and they would rot in jail for it, just like uber should

Re: Not Likely

[zlives]

check has cleared i guess

Re:Not Likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably. Very convincing. We keep being told that AIs are safer and better. Apparently, not so much. Shadows or not, there is no reason to believe she was invisible in IR. The AI failed to slow in anticipation of odd pedestrian behavior. Exactly what a sane driver should do.

Re:Not Likely

[bmimatt]

Is that why the cop says: "I suspect preliminarily it appears that..." ?

Re:Not Likely

[Rick Schumann]

How much pronostication does AI do?

"Prognostication". And the answer to your question, essentially, is "zero". These pseudo-intelligent machines have no consciousness, no ability to actually 'think', and don't know the difference between a living being and an inanimate object -- or the significance of a living being.

Re: Not Likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Those cost extra.

Got some webcams on craigslist. Fairly affordable automation.

Re:Not Likely

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not going to take the word of a guy in a politically appointed position who has a vested interest in ensuring it wasn't ubers fault without a giant grain of salt. Seriously, if this guy says it's ubers fault, then the city is open to all sorts of lawsuits because they allowed uber to run this trial. A fair investigation by the cities police department is impossible in this case. Conflict of interest plain and simple.

Re:Not Likely

[dgatwood]

Now, perhaps a human might have realized the limited sight lines and the possible pedestrian conflict and slowed down before arriving at this location?

Or used the next lane over. Either way, inadequate visibility is a road design problem.

Re:Not Likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Fifteen pedestrians are killed in the US every day. Please point out any cases where the drivers are 'rotting in jail'.

Re:Not Likely

[fluffernutter]

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.

Re:Not Likely

[ceoyoyo]

"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?

Re:Not Likely

[amicusNYCL]

A human driver generally would have had the intuition the the walker would or could have walked into the path.

Yeah? Is that why 5,000+ pedestrians were killed by cars in the US in 2015, while this is the first time a pedestrian was struck and killed by an autonomous vehicle since they started on roads in 2009?

Re:Not Likely

[amicusNYCL]

We keep being told that AIs are safer and better. Apparently, not so much.

In 2015, over 5,000 pedestrians were killed by collisions with cars in the U.S. (roughly one every 1.6 hours). In ~9 years and ~10 million miles driven by autonomous vehicles, one person has been killed in a collision. So, yes, much.

Re: Not Likely

[amicusNYCL]

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

[amicusNYCL]

These pseudo-intelligent machines have no consciousness, no ability to actually 'think', and don't know the difference between a living being and an inanimate object

So they're just like regular drivers then.

Re:Not Likely

[Bing Tsher E]

You forgot to site how many hundreds of millions of miles the regular cars traveled in your statistic.

Re:Not Likely

[Bing Tsher E]

In jail for vehicular homicide? Not necessarily rotting. In jail? Plenty.

Re:Not Likely

[gweihir]

Apparently, the victim was not visible to either human driver or car sensors and neither had reason to expect an invisible pedestrian there.

Re:Not Likely

[gweihir]

Bullshit.

Re:Not Likely

[fluffernutter]

There are 254,639,386 registered vehicles in the US which amounts to 0.000019 pedestrian deaths per year per registered vehicle. How is the death to automated vehicle ratio looking so far? And they don't even drive in all conditions yet.

Re:Not Likely

[green1]

So do you think the cop was lying? or do you think that you know more about a collision that you didn't witness, and have seen no evidence on, than the people investigating and reviewing the footage?

You're incredibly arrogant to think that this would be preventable when the investigators don't think so.

I could make a vehicle that doesn't have any collisions, but it also wouldn't go anywhere. If you slowed to a speed where collisions were impossible any time there was another person, animal, or vehicle anywhere that could possibly intersect your path if they performed a sudden, illegal, and unlikely maneuver, you'd be driving on the freeway at 5mph, and you'd be stopped on all residential streets most of the time.
Road safety is a combined responsibility by all parties, and the only way anyone can get anywhere is by assuming that those around them don't have a death wish. Sometimes that's not the case, and there's nothing that can be done because the other party does something stupid too close to you and without enough warning. That's life.

Those who think self driving vehicles will eliminate the laws of physics are idiots. Those who think they'll eliminate all collisions are no better. Self driving vehicles have the potential to eliminate all reasonably preventable collisions, and that's absolutely huge, but it's not the same as ALL collisions.

Re:Not Likely

[green1]

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 from either side of the argument states that self driving vehicles are more or less safe than the average driver, they are not basing that on any form of fact, just guesses. These vehicles have the POTENTIAL to be much safer than human drivers, but so far we don't know. It all boils down to whether better programming and sensors, and the impossibility of distraction are enough to make up for the lack of intuition, ease of pattern recognition, and versatility of a human driver.

Right now self driving cars can't handle adverse weather. They also can't handle anything unexpected, only things they've been programmed to deal with. But they handle those situations and those conditions extremely well. Over time they will handle more and more situations well, and fewer will fall in to the not handled category. I do truly believe that Self Driving Cars will one day replace human drivers and be far safer. I also don't think we're there yet, nor that we'll be there for quite a while yet. I don't think it's a problem of safety right now though, I think it's a problem of ability. There are just too many "corner cases" where self driving cars can't handle a given situation at all, that would prevent most people from being able to rely on one as their only means of transport without the ability to take over when the system can't figure out what to do next.

Re: Not Likely

[green1]

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?

Re:Not Likely

[green1]

Highly unlikely. You can't drive assuming that all places that someone could step out from are likely to produce such a result. You'd never get anywhere.

It seems many people on here are advocating that self driving vehicles drive with the assumption that all other road users are about to swerve in to their path at full tilt at any given time. That's just not practical, and although driving schools say you should do that, it's obvious that there isn't a driver on the planet that actually does. You'd never go more than 5mph on the freeway if you thought that way. On streets with people on the sidewalk you'd spend most of your time at a stop.

Safety is a collaborative effort for all. You need to drive with the expectation that not everyone will follow all the rules, but they also have to behave in such a way that doesn't demonstrate a death wish. Not all collisions are avoidable. Sometimes people do crazy stupid things, like jump out in front of moving cars, sometimes they do it without any warning, even if you could see them ahead of time. You can't live your life assuming that they will do that or you just won't be able to actually get from A-B.

Self driving cars have the potential to completely eliminate PREVENTABLE collisions. But not to eliminate ALL collisions.

Re:Not Likely

[green1]

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.

Re:Not Likely

[green1]

While I do agree with you. Don't try the statistical approach here. Just because this is the first doesn't mean anything, there simply isn't enough data on self driving vehicles yet as there just aren't enough miles driven to run the analysis. Especially not enough where no human driver could intervene. The 5000+ number everyone quotes is over a LOT of drivers covering a LOT of miles.

Re:Not Likely

[Bing Tsher E]

One problem is that self-driving-cars will lead to human drivers becoming increasingly poorer at driving. If you don't practice driving under 'good' conditions, when the storm hits and your self-driving-car isn't up to it, you won't be either.

Re:Not Likely

[amicusNYCL]

There are 210 million licensed drivers, so maybe comparing stats for more vehicles than there are drivers isn't the most intelligent analysis.

Re:Not Likely

[amicusNYCL]

Point taken, but I'm refuting the "ban all autonomous driving, the sky is falling and people are dying" rhetoric that is all over these comments.

Re:Not Likely

[green1]

And I agree. That said, while I believe that self driving vehicles at this point are probably fairly safe, I also think they're quite useless. There are far too many corner cases in driving, and I can come up with dozens of them off the top of my head that I've seen no evidence that current generation self driving vehicles can actually handle. I think we're still a very long way away from true, practical, self driving cars.

Re:Not Likely

[green1]

Which is one reason why I don't think we're there yet.

Come back in a decade or 2 and we might be, but right now it's too early.

That doesn't mean I think Self Driving Cars are dangerous, just that they're not capable enough. YET.

Re:Not Likely

[Anonymous Coward]

So, I asked Google News for some vehicular homicide cases. The first ones in the list:
  - DUI
  - DUI
  - fleeing traffic stop
  - DUI
  - leaving the scene (hit & run)
  - 84-year-old hit someone in a crosswalk

I didn't find any vehicular homicide cases for 'hit pedestrian who came from blind spot into high-speed traffic'.

Re:Not Likely

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of those vehicles are even driven, or constantly driven or somewhere in between.

Re:Not Likely

[thegarbz]

Is that why the cop says: "I suspect preliminarily it appears that..." ?

No the reason the cop says that is because he legally is required to until the investigation is conclusive.

Re: Not Likely

[jbmartin6]

Exactly. We have to drive with certain assumptions about how people will behave or no one would get anywhere. There are plenty of times making turns where you have to assume the other driver will slow down rather than plow right into you. Otherwise there would be traffic jams everywhere while everyone waits for the opportunity to turn without relying on the other driver reacting.

Re:Not Likely

[mrclevesque]

"So do you think the cop was lying?"

He didn't say that.

I get the impression that the cop voicing how he feels about it is inappropriate especially considering the context.

And a lot of what he says seems suspect to me.

Re: Not Likely

[mrclevesque]

All we really seem to know clearly is the car was going over the speed limit.

Re:Not Likely

[mrclevesque]

"You can't drive assuming that all places that someone could step out from are likely to produce such a result. You'd never get anywhere."

Humans can take that into account emotionally and slow down a corresponding degree if they're paying attention. But the car didn't, it was even driving over the speed limit.

Re:Not Likely

[green1]

So in other words, the car was driving at least as well as, and probably better than, a human driver would.

Re:Not Likely

[green1]

So you also think you know better than the people who have actually seen the evidence.

Wow this forum is just full of arrogance today!

Re:Not Likely

[mrclevesque]

"So in other words, the car was driving at least as well as, and probably better than, a human driver would."

No. What follows from what I wrote was: The car was driving as badly as *some* drivers would be in the same situation.

Do you think the car should have been driving above the speed limit?

Re:Not Likely

[fluffernutter]

Ok so that changes the number to 0.000024 accidents per year per licensed driver. Is automation looking better now? Should we go with hours driven by humans? That's bound to look a lot worse for automation.

Re:Not Likely

[mrclevesque]

"So you also think you know better than the people who have actually seen the evidence"

No. That's in no way implied by what I wrote.

And it wasn't about 'the people' or 'the evidence', it was about one person and his thoughts about one part of the evidence.

Re:Not Likely

[green1]

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".

The chief of police did not think the speed was excessive, and he's reviewed the evidence. I'll take his word for it over some random slashdot poster who neither witnessed the incident, nor reviewed any of the evidence.

All evidence so far points to this collision being completely unavoidable, by even the best possible driver (Human or computer).

Re:Not Likely

[green1]

And a lot of what he says seems suspect to me.

Actually, yes, it's exactly what you said.

Re:Not Likely

[amicusNYCL]

Ok so that changes the number to 0.000024 accidents per year per licensed driver.

That means absolutely nothing, it's literally a meaningless statistic.

Is automation looking better now?

Yes it is, every day. Every day the systems improve, and eventually we will get the point when private ownership of vehicles is completely unnecessary for the vast majority of the population. There's no reason to stop that progress because we broke an egg. That's a reason to improve the process.

We might be living near the historical peak of private vehicle ownership. The future is in fact automation and shared resources, there's going to be a day when a garage is just another room where the whole wall opens.

Sorry, but we aren't going back, there's no reason to. We aren't where we want to be yet, but that doesn't mean we stop trying to get there.

Re: Not Likely

[amicusNYCL]

I don't think it actually was, from what I can tell the speed limit where it was is 45. I don't know why the cop said 35. This comment and my follow-up should explain why I think that. I don't think she was coming off the center median either, I think she was coming off the right sidewalk based on where the vehicle actually stopped. The speed limit on that street shows 45 at the closest sign on the other side of the 202 though.

Re: Not Likely

[mrclevesque]

He may be mistaken on the speed limit, kind of his field though, and if his ability to get that right is put into question then the rest of what he said becomes even more questionable and leaving pretty much nothing to helps us find out if there was anything the uber car, or its driver, should have done but didn't.

Re:Not Likely

[mrclevesque]

"All evidence so far points to this collision being completely unavoidable"

My criteria for calling something evidence of something isn't as loose as yours.

And I'd expect the vehicle's speed would be measured more accurately than by 'looking' at a speedometer as humans do.

Re:Not Likely

[fluffernutter]

Ok keep dreaming the dream, that automation will ever match humans. Not sure how that will happen if they are missing people with bikes stacked with bags. Doesn't sound very hard to miss.

Re:Not Likely

[mrclevesque]

I said "And a lot of what he says seems suspect to me."

You said "So you also think you know better than the people who have actually seen the evidence."

No, I suspect his off the cuff interpretation may not be a completely accurate interpretation of events, and that there may be other evidence that needs to be taken into account also, before conclusions can be reached.

Re: Not Likely

[stoatwblr]

"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,"

Which was your first warning sign.

"I was watching him."

And thinking what, exactly?

"I slammed on the brakes and barely stopped."

Why didn't you anticipate that he might do that?

Kids do this kind of thing.

If a ball bounces onto the road you need to assume that a child WILL follow it, because whilst it's not true most of the time, there are enough cases where it does happen that you can't take the chance.

If kids are playing on the sidewalk, you need to assume a high probability that one will run onto the road. Again, most of the time they won't, but sometimes one will.

If you're driving past parked cars, you need to be looking for feet in the gap underneath and anticpating what happens next.

Humans can only handle 2-3 hazards at most. Robocars can pay 100% attention 100% of the time, should be looking for all these hazards (and more) all the time and dealing with it accordingly. if that means slowing to a lower speed then so be it. 30mph is quite often dangerously fast in an urban/suburban environment.

Re: Not Likely

[stoatwblr]

"There are plenty of times making turns where you have to assume the other driver will slow down rather than plow right into you."

Speak for yourself.

I assume he _will_ plow into me and make ready to stop, until I've assessed where his tyres are pointing and where he's looking. These tell me where he intends to go. Only when I'm happy that he's registered my presence is when I keep going.

Re: Not Likely

[amicusNYCL]

She, actually, the Tempe police chief is a woman. But from what I can tell the car could have only stopped in 1 location, and if it's going north on Mill the speed limit should be 45. The assumptions I am making are that the speed limit doesn't change after crossing the Salt River/202, and that the speed limit shown on Google Maps is current. Maybe it changes without a posted sign, or maybe the imagery is not accurate.

But the speed limit isn't really a major factor. It's a minor detail to how the car struck the person.

Re:Not Likely

[amicusNYCL]

Thought exercise for you: is it possible to develop an autonomous vehicle that will always, and I mean with 100% certainty, avoid an accident with a suicidal person trying to get the vehicle to impact themselves? If that is not possible, then isn't it also possible for a person to unintentionally enter the street at that exact same time from that exact same location?

Haha, "thought exercise", who am I kidding?

Re:Not Likely

[wonkey_monkey]

He says that for the reason cops call people "suspects" even when they clearly did it.

Re:Not Likely

[wonkey_monkey]

I'm not seeking to convince you of anything, I'm just pointing out someone who has seen the footage - which you haven't - and probably has a better understanding of how accidents occur says that a human driver probably would have been unable to avert the accident as well.

The AI failed to slow in anticipation of odd pedestrian behavior.

How do you know it didn't slow? Maybe it did. Maybe it did everything a reasonable driver would be expected to do, but then something unreasonable happened.

Re:Not Likely

[mrclevesque]

"All evidence so far points to this collision being completely unavoidable, by even the best possible driver (Human or computer)."

But why then didn't the car or driver break or do anything?

Re:Not Likely

[green1]

Because there wasn't any time to do so?

Re:Not Likely

[green1]

Yes, I know your definition of evidence "only things which agree with my preconceived notions".

No thanks.

Re: Not Likely

[green1]

It's not a relevant comparison anyway. A more apt one is when driving straight (as this car was doing) do you always assume that the car in the next lane is going to do a hard 90 degree turn in to your lane with no warning?

If you answer yes, you do, you are either lying, or you are a hazard on the road because you drive under 5mph on all freeways.

Re: Not Likely

[green1]

I didn't anticipate it because it was an unlikely illegal event.

If you answer that you would have anticipated it, than one of 2 things is true: 1) you're lying. Or 2) you're an extremely hazardous driver because you never drive more than 5mph on freeways and sit at a stop most of the time on side streets.

There is no possible way to actually get to your destination if you assume everyone around you has a death wish. It simply isn't possible.

Re:Not Likely

[green1]

In other words, experts who have actually reviewed the evidence contradicted you uneducated preconceived notions, and therefore you are going to treat THEM as being wrong instead of adjusting your preconceived notions.

I'm sorry, there is no possible way to convince you because you aren't interested in evidence or truth.

Re:Not Likely

[corydoras]

I just read about how AI isn't sophisticated enough to pick strawberries out of a plant. Personally, I'd like to see footage of this accident and judge for myself.

Re:Not Likely

[corydoras]

I'd also like to point out that this person seems to be suggesting that the presence of a nearby crosswalk made crossing the street more dangerous.

Re:Not Likely

[mrclevesque]

How come the radar didn't see what's coming up to the point of not even trying to slow down to reduce the impact.

Re:Not Likely

[mrclevesque]

"In other words, expert*s* who have actually reviewed *the evidence*"

See my previous comments.

"I'm sorry, there is no possible way to convince you because you aren't interested in evidence or truth."

What are you trying to convince people of?

Re:Not Likely

[wonkey_monkey]

Well that's not likely to happen. Is there any reason to doubt the word of someone who has? Someone who, presumably, has experience of road accidents and their causes.

I just read about how AI isn't sophisticated enough to pick strawberries out of a plant.

It's also not sophisticated enough to write an Oscar-winning screenplay, but it can kick anyone's arse at chess or go. Driverless cars have come a long way - they still have a way to go, but scoffing at them because AI can't do some other entirely unrelated task - which is probably having far, far less money and time spent on it - is silly.

Re:Not Likely

[corydoras]

They actually did release the video.

It was quite dark, but I expect that human eyes would do much better than the camera. She was at the end of crossing multiple lanes of traffic, she certainly didn't abruptly step into traffic at the worst possible time. The car made NO attempt at slowing down or maneuvering.

Re:Not Likely

[corydoras]

Even in the video, I can clearly see movement that would have alerted me about 3-4 seconds prior to impact.

Re: Not Likely

[Joey Vegetables]

Certainly true. However, SDCs need to be able to refine their assumptions based on observed behavior. Not just with pedestrians, but cars also. We learn to drive differently if passing a drunken, unruly crowd of pedestrians, or if a ball enters a street (meaning a small child might be following behind), or a car that's weaving all over everyplace while its "driver" is talking on the beer bottle and trying to drink the cell phone. SDCs will have to learn to do the same. That might not have prevented this particular collision, but it certainly will help to prevent others.

Re:Not Likely

[green1]

Because there wasn't any time to do so?

Asking the question while inserting another piece of technology doesn't change the answer.

Re: Not Likely

[jbmartin6]

Maybe it would save more lives in the long run if they didn't. After an initial peak of accidents the survivors would know enough to be cautious.

Re: Not Likely

[stoatwblr]

"I didn't anticipate it because it was an unlikely illegal event."

Unlikely: Hardly. Kids do it all the time.

Illegal: Only in the USA.

Grow up.

Re: Not Likely

[green1]

I don't live in the USA, And yes, it was highly unlikely, and no, kids don't do suicidal things "all the time" our child mortality rates clearly show that.

As for "grow up", says the person who can't even drive a car...

Re:Not Likely

[mrclevesque]

No, because the system didn't perform at all as expected.

I don't understand your second sentence.

Re:Not Likely

[green1]

It was expected to defy the laws of physics? That seems unlikely.

As for your reading comprehension. I can't help you there.

Re:Not Likely

[mrclevesque]

"It was expected to defy the laws of physics?"

No, even if we don't know the exact cause of the failure, experts, quoted in various news stories, said there was ample time for the system to react long before the impact.

Re:Not Likely

[green1]

Experts who haven't seen the evidence, vs the experts who HAVE seen the evidence who disagree.

Everyone wants to assign blame here, and it's unpopular to blame the person who committed vehicular suicide, however so far the people who've seen the evidence are the ones I believe.

Re:Not Likely

[mrclevesque]

"Experts who haven't seen the evidence, vs the experts who HAVE seen the evidence who disagree."

I'm taking about experts in autonomous cars and radar systems who said the autonomous system failed badly. The low resolution and low contrast video the cop saw is not what I'm talking about, and the cop surely isn't an expert in autonomous systems or an expert in the interpretation of low quality night time video footage.

"Everyone wants to assign blame here, and it's unpopular to blame the person who committed vehicular suicide"

I'm not trying to assign blame, the courts will do that.

In short, I think a j-walking person didn't notice the car was there or didn't care, the car driver was not paying attention to the road, and the Uber car's systems failed badly.

Re:Not Likely

[mrclevesque]

That should be 'police chief' instead of 'cop'.

Re: Not Likely

[stoatwblr]

I don't live in the USA either and I've been driving since I was 8 years old (on roads since 16).

The fact remains that kids don't appreciate the laws of physics (and nor, apparently do most drivers). They run out on the road often enough that you MUST assume it's going to happen. I live in Europe and in most cities I see it a couple of times per day, especially around school closing time.

I have a bunch of advanced driving qualificiations to my name, but more germane to this wee discussion I showed your anecdote to some driving testers I know in the UK and France. Every single one of them regard this poor a level of driving as an automatic fail - and two of them would have reported your poor driving abilities to the police for immediate action had they been observers - if you think that's an empty threat, an incident like that did occur in the UK in mid 2017 and the resulting dashcam video from a 3rd party resulted in the driver concerned getting a 6 month driving ban.

Re: Not Likely

[green1]

You weren't there, so your attempt to rationalize that my driving was poor is laughable.

I can 100% guarantee that anyone who drives differently has been rear-ended many times, and been involved in many road-rage incidents. You can't stop on all roads all the time, and drive on highways at under 5km/hr and not get in trouble.

There is no possible way to drive and actually get to your destination if you assume everyone around you has a death wish.

As for "advanced driving qualifications"... sure... talk all you want. We won't go down that road as I feel no need to explain the various qualifications that I have, but suffice it to say that my license is of a significantly higher class than the average driver on the road.

Re:Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

Arrest that river!

On a different topic though, what if a self-driving car kills a dog? What if it kills something we eat like a cow? What if it kills a spider? Such a question seems silly until you realize that a computer has to be programmed on what is acceptable to kill. (Even if it's "programming through training the AI".)

Re:Clearly of lower caste

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> Score:2, Troll

Hmmm...not much of a sense of humor out here today I guess.

If you only hear the whoosh, please look up "Simpsons out of my way I'm a motorist"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HESH8U1B4o

Not nearly over yet.

[rickb928]

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.

[alvinrod]

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.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Situations like this are sure to come up and be analyzed extensively, which is a good thing. I think the question is: is it sufficient for self-driving cars to obey the laws or must they act as a defensive and conservative driver? A defensive driver in this situation might have either slowed down well below the speed limit or moved over into another lane even though the person pushing the bicycle was not actually in the lane. Defensive drivers will compensate for things happening near the roadway by changing to more conservative behavior. Self-driving software can also be written/trained in such a way that it will avoid driving full-speed next to entities moving near, but not in, the roadway. This will be an engineering choice, but it seems likely to get tangled up in the legal aspects of how defensive a self-driving car is expected to drive, and therefore what situations it is considered partially at fault.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[Ichijo]

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.

Why can't autonomous cars avoid overdriving their headlights?

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[Tablizer]

Corporations will be prosecuted more often than police officers, and more often than reputable members of the community, IE, government. Or favored citizens...

Oh, please prosecute IE. Its bugs and standards-hijacking are a crime.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[swillden]

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 obviously never be infallible.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[fluffernutter]

There has to be some definition of how good they should be before they go on a public road though. I'd like to force them to submit a high definition video of a driver's line of site from the car and use that to determine if a human would have seen something like this accident coming.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[Maxo-Texas]

Meanwhile 16 other pedestrians died to human drivers that day in the united states and everyone is fine with that.

Also, pedestrians *are* found at fault all the time if the roadway has controlled crosswalks and the pedestrian enters the road at an uncontrolled location.

Being poor doesn't make it easier or harder for people to brake when you enter the road too close ahead of them from the shadows. Standard reaction time and then stopping distance apply.

Even in places where you have right of way- you may be 100% in the right and yet still be 100% dead. Don't be stupid and walk in front of a car or cut in front of an 18 wheeler, Bus, Garbage Truck, etc.

Despite earlier reports, it turns out that the car was driving the speed limit. Which means anything less than 60' in front of the car they are going to get hit full speed unless an F1 race car driver is actively driving the car.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[Maxo-Texas]

I see dozens of posts a day from people on various forums whose expectation for A.I. self driving car is perfection. No accidents ever.

The parent post probably had those in mind.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't cover the case where something enters the area that your headlights cover before you get to it. Of course, that should be very rare as the pedestrian should notice the headlights and therefore know to not enter the street.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[amicusNYCL]

Who is expecting self-driven vehicles to be infallible in all conditions?

Several people commenting in this and the other story, apparently. For them this is a reason to remove all autonomous vehicles immediately, and return to the complete safety of human drivers, who definitely always do the right thing.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[amicusNYCL]

Why do you assume they can't? Do you think the headlights are there for the sensors to see with?

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[amicusNYCL]

There has to be some definition of how good they should be before they go on a public road though.

"Better than a person" seems pretty obvious. The reaction time alone can avoid many accidents, combine that with a suite of sensors better than anything a human can see, and the fact that the vehicle is never not paying attention, and I think we're moving in the right direction. After that it's a basic decision tree, with the most safe option likely being "just stop."

I'd like to force them to submit a high definition video of a driver's line of site from the car and use that to determine if a human would have seen something like this accident coming.

I think we would all like to see all of the videos available. It would definitely clear up a lot of the nonsense speculation and assumptions.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[ElizabethGreene]

> I'd like to force them to submit a high definition video of a driver's line of site from the car and use that to determine if a human would have seen something like this accident coming.

Agreed. I think this is important so other self-driving car manufacturers can learn these lessons as well. It is against the public interest to hoard this data. If the car uses lidar I'd like to see the pointcloud stream too.

I've been checking liveleak but it hasn't slipped out yet.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[fluffernutter]

My point about the videos is that there should be more avaliable than the ones being used to drive the car. There needs to be a driver's view to keep these companies honest. Sure, if the cyclist shows up in the driving feed then is not avoided that is completely damning. We should also have a separate video in order to determine whether a human would have seen this coming.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[amicusNYCL]

My point about the videos is that there should be more avaliable than the ones being used to drive the car.

Well Jesus Fucking Christ, you need to email Uber and Waymo about this immediately, because in 9 years of research and development I bet not a single one of them has ever had a thought like that enter their mind.

Or, maybe just wait until they actually release videos to the public before we start with the stupid suggestions.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[fluffernutter]

Ok well let's count the days until that full set of recordings is produced. As the days go on, it looks more and more like they either aren't there or are pretty damning.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[amicusNYCL]

There's no need to wait! Let's make stupid baseless assumptions today! Look, you're doing it right now!

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[green1]

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 collisions. Not everything is avoidable, no matter how many sensors you add, no matter how slow you drive, no matter what you do, some collisions will always remain.

All of that said, I personally think that self driving cars are nowhere near ready for prime-time at this point. Though I don't necessarily think it's really a safety issue. Self driving cars handle the conditions and situations that they are programmed for extremely well. It's just that driving involves a lot of corner cases. So any time some company shows off a car without a steering wheel, I just picture it as a car that can't actually get me where I want to go reliably. I can't have a car that can't handle a blizzard, or can't figure out what to do with the traffic light that's red, but with a cop standing under it waving you through, or can't deal with 2 conflicting sets of lane markings, or when the lanes aren't visible at all. I think the ability to deal with those situations will eventually come, but I have seen no evidence that any current generation of self driving tech can do so. I think we're 10-20 years away realistically, but even that could be an underestimate for all I know. These aren't easy problems.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if they do they will slow down traffic and other traffic will rear-end them.

You know how you see people always stating that autonomous vehicles can't drive in snow-storms and fog because the cameras won't work.
You know what have equally bad visibility? Humans, but they drive anyway.
If autonomous vehicles are going to compete with humans they are going to need to take the same unnecessary risks that humans do and drive at speeds where they can't possible stop if something unexpectedly shows up.

"But panic swerve to other lane or the sidewalk" someone always say.
Well, that doesn't always work unless you are willing to crash into something else or run over pedestrians.
The only thing that always works is to stop. (Assuming the the car behind you isn't breaking the law.)

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[MrL0G1C]

Because they're not human, they drive as they are programmed to drive, they don't have a choice in the matter.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[MrL0G1C]

Indeed but the question here is did the autonomous vehicle even drive as safely as a careful and considerate driver? It wouldn't surprise me if uber cars were not as well programmed as google cars, a reflection of the companies programming those vehicles.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, if we can't accept that autonomous cars drive over the speed limit too then what have we become.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[Talderas]

I expect a 75-90% reduction in pedestrian vehicular fatality and injury rates. With a current rate of around 4000 fatalities and 50000 injuries I would consider self driving vehicles a success at only 1,000 deaths and 12,500 injuries a year. I would call it a phenomenal success at only 400 deaths and 5000 injuries a year.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[swillden]

Indeed but the question here is did the autonomous vehicle even drive as safely as a careful and considerate driver? It wouldn't surprise me if uber cars were not as well programmed as google cars, a reflection of the companies programming those vehicles.

I agree. I was responding to the OP's hypothetical in which it was found that the vehicle was not at fault, meaning it did at least as well as a human could have done, not claiming that was what happened. And I definitely agree that Google has proceeded cautiously, methodically and responsibly, while it wouldn't surprise me at all if Uber has cut a lot of corners.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

An important part of this discussion is how self driving cars analyze risk. I as a driver can see a pedestrian standing near the street, and assume they will walk into my way. This causes me to slow down and pay some attention to them, in case they do that, so I proactively avoid an accident. Can a self driving car do this? I doubt it. If they cant, are self driving cars worth it? I would say no, at least at level 5.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Read the comments when the original report was posted. A huge number of people think that self-driving cars should be infallible. These people are wrong and if they think it through even a little bit it's obviously a very silly position to have but that doesn't change the fact that many people believe it. Never forget that most people are actually pretty stupid and many are scared of the future on top of that which only exacerbates the situation.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if calling them "corner cases" is legit when there is essentially an endless number of those cases.

The only way an autonomous car could handle all driving situations would be for the car to have actual intelligence. But if we are ever able to create artificial intelligence, are we really going to apply that technology to a problem as mundane as driving cars?

What we really want are robot slaves that do specific tasks without making any errors. The whole thing is an absurd fantasy.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

i hope you have a high tolerance for blood and death. This is the point where the artificial perspective of statistics will be put on public display -- if 10,000 pedestrians are killed every year, and we replace 10% of vehicles with self-driving cars, and the number goes down to 9,500, the statistics will be able to prove there is a benefit to the technology. But will that number be acceptable to the public? As the number of people killed by human drivers go down, the number of people killed by autonomous vehicles will go up, guaranteed. People will start to think: "Who are the people making these killing machines? Why are the cars so dangerous?"

I don't think the public will be patent enough to get us to your "as rare as a plane crash" level of technology.

Meanwhile, it should be possible to dramatically lower the number of automobile deaths simply by cracking down on the drivers and the conditions that cause those accidents: enforce a zero tolerance policy for drunk driving, true enforcement for speed limits, rigorous vehicle safety checks, massive public surveillance of urban traffic, no travel without a specific destination and travel path. Of course we won't do that because it will violate our value for freedom, to be able to get in a car an just go somewhere. We could radically transform society and produce safer roads, but we don't want to, instead we dream of being the masters over our own personal robot slave vehicles.

Re:Not nearly over yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is expecting self-driven vehicles to be infallible in all conditions?

Most /. readers, it seems. Every time I see a self-driving car article there's some guy saying that they're useless unless they can navigate in 5 foot deep snow, with ice underneath, with steep cliffs on either side, with hundreds of children running across the road.

Entitled pedestrians

[DeplorableCodeMonkey]

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.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[CanHasDIY]

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.

Same here; the city even passed a new law last month to "crack down" on jaywalkers, and oddly it seems the behavior has become more frequent ever since... wtf?

To wit - 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.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Luckyo]

The issue is that of differential of consequences. Driver gets bent fender. Pedestrian is maimed or dies.

The differential between consequences is so large, that it would take a psychopath to formulate the idea that pedestrian is the perpetrator and driver is the victim. The most extreme thought that remains reasonable for a person with working sense of empathy is that pedestrian caused his/her own death through his/her own actions, and driver was innocent. Death being present in the formula simply makes it unbendable towards the outcome you're trying to bend it towards when any human empathy is present.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it doesn't take a psychopath.

It takes an understanding of the physics involved and the education level of the average pedestrian.

The average pedestrian knows it's suicide to walk in front of a 5000 lb mass moving at 60 km/h. They just don't care.

When someone jumps off a tall building and cruses a parked car, they bill the estate to fix the car. That you chose to commit suicide doesn't resolve your obligation to others to not fuck up their shit.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Luckyo]

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.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally speaking a mouse doesn't pick a fight with a lion. Pedestrians are the mouse here... they need to be wiser because they have a lot more to lose.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you even know what 'perpetrator' means?
The pedestrian is already gone, your sympathy and prayers wont bring them back. Your have no consideration to the first responders and the innocent driver?
Where did your empathy suddenly go? Was it really empathy or just virtue signaling?

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Calydor]

The driver gets more than a bent fender.

The driver gets years of therapy and recurring nightmares of KILLING SOMEONE.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[amicusNYCL]

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, 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.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[amicusNYCL]

The issue is that of differential of consequences. Driver gets bent fender. Pedestrian is maimed or dies.

You'd think all of the people walking around glued to their cell phones would keep that in mind.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Bing Tsher E]

We have all, always, known that A.C. on Slashdot is a psychopath. It's how psychopaths express themselves safely. Anonymously.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here; the city even passed a new law last month to "crack down" on jaywalkers, and oddly it seems the behavior has become more frequent ever since... wtf?

Streets belong to the people!! Lets JAYWALK! Down with cars!

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[green1]

I've been that driver! the pedestrian then had the nerve to call the cops and tell them I tried to run him over. Once the cop learned that the point of impact was the driver's door of my van he stopped asking any more questions, told the pedestrian to stop wasting everyone's time, and left. My van wasn't capable of driving sideways!

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Arkus]

It sounds as though you were driving straight ahead, the point of impact could be the driver's side door of your vehicle if you were making a turn at the time.

Case in point, years ago I was stopped at a stop sign when another vehicle entered the intersection incorrectly and, while turning, drove the side of their vehicle across the front bumper of my stopped truck's metal front bumper. The side of their car crumpled, but my front bumper just had a little paint from their car on it.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[green1]

While technically possible, the fact that the road I was on was extremely narrow, and dead straight sort of showed that as highly unlikely.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Luckyo]

Reading all the way to the second paragraph would help you.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Luckyo]

Let's assume that you're right and this is 100%, rather than a fairly rare occurrence as it is. So nightmares and therapy for them vs death.

Tell me how they are close enough to be directly comparable in this context in your view?

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Luckyo]

If you view driver as a predatory animal and pedestrian as a prey animal, you're demonstrating clear signs of psychopathy - inability to comprehend emotional state and motivators of the driver nor the pedestrian.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Luckyo]

Have you tried reading the second paragraph in full yet?

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Calydor]

While not a perfect analogy, which is worse: Life in prison or the death sentence?

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Phillip2]

Or they could drive slowly when in an area where there are likely to be pedestrians.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[thegarbz]

Totally unavoidable

Except it would be avoidable. Designing roads to avoid blind spots and drivers driving "to conditions" rather than "to a limit" avoids many of these accidents. Speaking of fuck the traffic laws, what are the jwalking laws like in your area? Where I live it's only J-walking if you're within 10m of a crossing. The only other traffic laws that apply is that cars look out for pedestrians.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Luckyo]

The fact that you equate "nightmares" with "life sentence" demonstrates severe lack of human empathy.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Anonymous Coward]

No its not hard, developed countries do it all the time. You want to know where what you say is practiced?
In developing countries. If your car is hit by a motorbike, you are fucked.
Car damage, motorbike damage, injuries to any party etc, car fault regardless. Oooo the poor bike dude(or gal) is poor/injured so automatically the car driver pays. WTF.

And if you think that's all right, you are an idiot.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Anonymous Coward]

So you really didn't know huh?
Well it's the person who causes something to happen. Say like running out into traffic without looking for example.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Anonymous Coward]

http://iga.in.gov/static-docum...

Indiana Code 9-21-17 are laws governing pedestrians. Pedestrians only have right of way over vehicles in Indiana if they are crossing at a marked cross-walk where the crosswalk is flashing the walk signal. They are to yield the right of way under all other conditions with the sole exception of blind pedestrians that are carrying a stick or have a marked sight dog. Pedestrians committing these violations can be fined up to $500.

IC 9-21-17-5
  Walking or running into the path of a vehicle; prohibition
  Sec. 5. A pedestrian may not suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a vehicle that is so close as to constitute an immediate hazard.

IC 9-21-17-7
  Crossing roadway at point not marked as a crosswalk; yield of right-of-way to traffic
  Sec. 7. A pedestrian crossing a roadway at a 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.

IC 9-21-17-9
  Marked crosswalks; adjacent intersections; duty to obey
  Sec. 9. Between adjacent intersections at which traffic control signals are in operation, pedestrians may not cross at any place except in a marked crosswalk.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew a guy who drunkinly decided to walk around on an interstate and was hit by a car doing 80. While he was thrown up in the air (leaving his shoes on the pavement) and broke a slew of bones he miraculously survived. After spending several months in the hospital and returning home, he was presented with a couple of traffic citations for walking on an interestate, and was served by a lawsuit from the car driver looking for damages to his car.

So the do go after pedestrians in at least some cases.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

This is basically required as a matter of fundamental rights: no person can be held responsible for another persons's stupidity, any other rule ultimately comes down to unethical practice of law - the lawyers are writing the rules in such a way as to create artificial demand for the services of their profession.

The right to ethical practice of law is an universal and inalienable right in any society based on the rule of law, so laws to the contrary - laws that allow people to be held responsible (even to the extent of having their time wasted or being forced to pay for legal or medical or repair services) for other people's stupidity are illegal laws.

Sometimes bad things happen. That's life. Let's not make it worse than it has to be through stupidity entrenched in the legal system that serves nobody but the lawyers.

It's worth remembering that most of the problems we have today in the legal system with car accidents will be gone in 20-30 years once automated cars with sensors and camera systems are the norm. it's going to be a huge improvement to quality of life, comparable to the Agricultural Revolution - but there will still be some accidents because you can't cure stupid.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Anonymous Coward]

http://bgr.com/2018/03/21/dashcam-video-shows-uber-driver-was-looking-down-moments-before-self-driving-car-killed-pedestrian/

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Luckyo]

So in your view, child in this case is "perpetrator"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Hint: no reasonable human being shares this view.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Luckyo]

I can't help but notice that you switched topic entirely to vent about something that happens between two drivers of motorized vehicles that hit each other in a developing country.

In developing countries, legal code and it's interpretations tend to be so bad, that any interactions with police will be detrimental to all parties involved. That's a story of its own. And discussion suddenly went from pedestrian to a biker. An interesting topic certainly, but not one being discussed in any way, shape or form.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be honest I'm not even going to bother looking at that link. If you were being equally honest and not just trolling you would admit that pedestrians can be in the wrong and perpetrators.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Anonymous Coward]

Just be thankful he didn't switch it to China. Where pedestrians have so much right of way that if you hit one you pay medical bills no matter the circumstances or who was at fault. Thats why it's better for the driver to go back and finish them off. Cheaper to pay a funeral bill than ongoing medical expenses.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Luckyo]

Same China were drivers that miss exit on highway will just stop the car in the lane, and drive backwards until they get back to the exit?

There's a good reason why China is one of the few places on the planet where you can't drive on international driver's license.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Luckyo]

Considering your answer, you clearly watched the link and understood that your position is untenable.

Re:Entitled pedestrians

[Anonymous Coward]

I assumed you were smart enough to find a link where the pedestrian wasn't at fault. Maybe I was wrong...
Clueless people like you who think pedestrians can do no wrong are just statistics waiting to happen.

This is what automation looks like:

[Anonymous Coward]

Traveling at 38 mph in a 35 mph zone on Sunday night, the Uber self-driving car made no attempt to brake, according to the Police Department’s preliminary investigation.

Not only was this car speeding, but it did not recognise a road side hazard and drive by cautiously.
Here in Australia we now have "Incident" laws which requires the driver to slow down to 40km/h (25miles/h). Clearly this cyclist was an incident and the uber car would definitely be at fault.
And to just openly say that if there are hazards and an autonomous vehicle doesn't recognise these then it is not the auto makers fault.
Yeah right.

Re:This is what automation looks like:

[Anonymous Coward]

Well automation is usually better than this. And I don't know why a person wouldn't show up as an object to avoid in this case. But it does bring up a good question. Does the automation favor the passenger over the pedestrian?

Re:This is what automation looks like:

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh I get it! In the US, we have laws like this too. When someone puts a blinker on, you're supposed to speed up so they can't pass. >:-D

Re:This is what automation looks like:

[Anonymous Coward]

A quick look at the site reveals how easy this person would have been to spot, I would go as far as to say even at night time this would have been super avoidable by any regular Joe.
The picture also reveals this goes uphill over a long distance. Now this lady was carrying shopping bags on the bike so she was overburdened to ride the bike, so she walked it up. What are the footpath laws of that area? is she required to have the bike on the road on the median? From the median she stumbles, bam, uber car.
Any "normal" person would have slowed down to pass. There are sadistic fucks who may have swerved inwards, but on the whole people are ok.
This should have been 100% avoidable by an autonomous device and raises some serious issues about safety versus time wasted to actually slow down cautiously at the cost of the rich person running late for what ever.

Re:This is what automation looks like:

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS is what the AI would have failed at here.

Re: This is what automation looks like:

[Type44Q]

Well automation is usually better than this.

Alrighty, then...

Re: This is what automation looks like:

[Anonymous Coward]

The Uber autocar was
1) speeding, and
2) killed a pedestrian.
Those are the two hard facts we have.

I guarantee you if the human were a cop, someone would already be in jail.

Re:This is what automation looks like:

[Anonymous Coward]

You might have a point if the cyclist was run over a second time while emergency vehicles were in place with flashing lights, but otherwise you're a dickhead.

Re:This is what automation looks like:

[Notabadguy]

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:

[amicusNYCL]

Not only was this car speeding, but it did not recognise a road side hazard and drive by cautiously.

Are you really 100% confident that you, or most people, would have been able to avoid the accident? Without seeing the video? And with the chief saying it looks like the car wasn't at fault?

There are car crashes every day where the driver made no attempt to brake. That is not an admission of fault, it might just mean that there was no time to brake before the collision.

Re:This is what automation looks like:

[amicusNYCL]

I wonder if they haven't released the actual location, and it was actually on Washington just west of Mill, where the speed limit is 35. They said Curry and Mill, but east of Mill it's Curry, and west of Mill it's Washington.

Re:This is what automation looks like:

[Maxo-Texas]

The car was not traveling 38 in a 35. that was the preliminary investigation. It turns out it was under the speed limit.

It also currently appears that it didn't "try" to stop because there was no time to do so (not even for a machine).

Re:This is what automation looks like:

[Anonymous Coward]

Like most people, I drive everyday.
I see some crazy shit, everyday.
I also have insane reflexes, which from my perspective, means I would have most likely slaughtered you at ANY sport all through-out MOST of your life.
Comparing me, to another half blind, drunk or txter is a non starter - let alone Autonomous vehicles.

I say yeah, I would have avoided that incident. Clearly and unequivocally.
I have avoided many incidents just by paying attention to my surroundings in ways most people have trouble doing when walking.

Re:This is what automation looks like:

[jezwel]

If you looked at the tweets posted in another part of this thread plus read a bit more of the summary, you will notice these factors which are causing the investigation to be not so cut'n'dried:

Cyclist was pushing a bicycle laden with plastic bags.
Cyclist was on a median strip which is:
- Covered with bushes
- signed as not to be used by pedestrians
The pedestrian stepped out in front of vehicle

All of the above hinder sensor detection of the person as an obstacle with potential avoidance required.

Be interesting to see the video/IR footage though.

Re:This is what automation looks like:

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/27/drivers-intentionally-run-over-turtles-college-experiment_n_2371485.html

"came from the shadows?" what? No LiDAR?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Two more women have come forward about Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just "FAKE NEWS" but OLD news too.

Re: Still killed though

[Mr D from 63]

One advantage autonomous cars have is that even if they are found not legally at fault they don't go around feeling guilty about the incident like a person would.

Re:Still killed though

[cogeek]

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? How will it choose if it has to decide between killing 4 people or 1?

Re:Clearly of lower caste

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, it was just taken literally because there's a lot of SocJus propaganda out there that would say just that in all seriousness.

Re:Clearly of lower caste

[cogeek]

You forgot to put a "lol" or "=-)" at the end of your post

Re:Clearly of lower caste

[Anonymous Coward]

I modded you up although I suspect this will soon be negative.

I don't think auto-ownership is the reason though I agree with the analysis of caste.

I bet the police chief got a phone call from the mayor, something along the lines of "We get a lot of tax revenue and good will from this". You know, like the mayor in "Jaws" not wanting to close the beach.

Re:Clearly of lower caste

[RespekMyAthorati]

Hmmm..not much humor here today I guess.

FTFY.

Humans and AI.

[Izuzan]

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.

Sensors

[Volda]

Doesnt the car have sensors that could have detected the person and her bike with bags? Dont get me wrong it appears that the pedestrian was in the wrong but something should have been detected and the car should have done something to try and avoid the accident. Maybe these cars are not smart enough yet. Though once fully certified I would expect them to be better at driving then people. Something to work towards I guess.

Re:Sensors

[Rick Schumann]

Sure it does. It supposedly is watching in all directions all the time and supposedly has a reaction time better than a human. But there is no 'mind' in there; it's a 'pseudo-intelligence', it can't think, it doesn't know the difference between a living being and an inanimate object -- because it has no capacity to think.

Re:Sensors

[angel'o'sphere]

According to the summary, the pedestrian stepped so sudden into the path of the car, that no one/nothing could have prevented the crash.

Re:Sensors

[ColaMan]

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.

 

Re:Sensors

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Doesnt the car have sensors that could have detected the person and her bike with bags?

The car's sensors are probably lasers, radars, sonars, light detectors, microphones . . . but, alas, . . . no nose.

A smell detector probably could have smelled that bag lady in enough time to brake.

A nose would be very useful in an AI car. It could smell if the brakes were getting too hot, or if the backseat passengers ignited themselves while freebasing crack.

Re:Sensors

[Mal-2]

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.

Re:Sensors

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem however is that the car apparently didn't react at all. The report is that the autonomous vehicle did not brake at any point.

So even allowing for the fact that the car had half a second or less to stop, it did absolutely nothing. Even after hitting the pedestrian. Surely the ability to stop after detecting an incident would be a high priority for an autonomous car or do we expect them to just continue driving blithely regardless of what they hit?

Re:Sensors

[Rick Schumann]

The word I think you're looking for is 'intuition', and these machines, aside from having no actual cognitive ability and no actual awareness, are completely and totally incapable of anything even resembling 'intuition'.

Re:Sensors

[Rick Schumann]

Yes, and that is what is so troubling about this. It is incapable of knowing the difference between an inanimate object and a human being. There's nobody inside the box to even care that something just happened. That's why we need actual "artificial intelligence" and not just this "pseudo-intelligence" they're pushing on us. Sadly there's no telling if or when we'll ever be able to create actual 'AI', but it's clear enough to me that this ain't it.

Re:Sensors

[fluffernutter]

But what if a human driver would have seen that person while they were still 150 yards down the road? A human slows down ahead of time, monitors the situation, and doesn't have to react in the last 20 feet. It is very unlikely that the view of the human was totally obscured; though much MORE likely in the last 10 yards. When does the car start paying attention?

Re:Sensors

[amicusNYCL]

Goddamn, but there are a lot of you in these threads. Are you the same person, or what?

Doesnt the car have sensors

Yes it does!

that could have detected the person and her bike with bags

Yes they can!

something should have been detected

I bet it was!

the car should have done something to try and avoid the accident

How do you know it didn't?

Maybe these cars are not smart enough yet.

I guess that's in the realm of things that are possible, yeah. But I bet, even right now, they are dozens to hundreds of times safer than human drivers.

Here's the point: we, as in the public, don't have any evidence of what happened here. We haven't seen videos. We haven't seen sensor data. We don't know if this was an accident that was 100% unavoidable (what if the person fell in front of the car, and the car was driving next to a bus?). But that doesn't stop everyone from trying to claim that autonomous cars are crap. What's wrong with waiting for evidence before we start "just asking questions" when we have no data about what actually occurred?

Re:Sensors

[amicusNYCL]

It is incapable of knowing the difference between an inanimate object and a human being.

OK, first off, what is your evidence for that claim? Pattern and object recognition in photos and videos is pretty robust, so if you're making a claim like that like it's a fact, exactly what is your evidence? You honestly think that over a decade plus of research and development, no one had the idea to add some video object recognition to have the car guess if something is a person, animal, etc?

Secondly - why the hell does that even matter? Shouldn't the vehicle avoid collisions with any object? Why does it matter if that object is a person or not? It's still going to try to avoid hitting it, right?

There's nobody inside the box to even care that something just happened.

Oh no, the horror, a vehicle driving without emotion and feeling. Yeah, let's program this thing to be happy and sad, that's the ticket! What we need is a fleet of vehicles driving around distraught at the fact that bugs keep bouncing off the windshield.

Re:Sensors

[amicusNYCL]

So just like normal human drivers, then.

Re:Sensors

[amicusNYCL]

But what if a human driver would have seen that person while they were still 150 yards down the road?

What if the car spotted her 150 yards down the road? What if she never entered the roadway in the first place? What if she just stayed home that day? What if she were never born?

A human slows down ahead of time, monitors the situation

That's laughable. OK, maybe "a human" does that, but "humans" do not do that, not with any regularity that you can make a statement saying "humans do this".

It is very unlikely that the view of the human was totally obscured

OK, then why did the human in the vehicle not intervene? Huh? If humans are the absolute pinnacle of vehicle controlling technology, like you're saying, then why did the human allow the vehicle to hit the person when it was sooooo obvious it was going to happen?

When does the car start paying attention?

That's its 1 job. It's literally never not paying attention. It doesn't look at the radio, it doesn't look in mirrors, it doesn't look at its phone, or light a cigarette, or take a drink or a bite, it's not thinking about work or what else it has to do that day, it doesn't have to only look in 1 direction at once. It's always reading data from every sensor it has.

Re:Sensors

[techno-vampire]

Shouldn't the vehicle avoid collisions with any object?

Yes, it should. And, it should also stop as soon as it detects that it's collided with something. I think we should also be asking why it didn't stop once it had hit the woman.

Re:Sensors

[amicusNYCL]

Why exactly do you think it didn't stop? This photo would suggest it did, where did you hear that it kept driving, and for how long?

Re:Sensors

[PinkyGigglebrain]

no mater how good the sensors are they are only going to be useful if they have *time* to work. Even if the sensors picked up the pedestrian the moment they stepped into the street it still takes a finite amount of time to bring 3000lbs of car to a stop from any speed. A 25mph a car is going ~36 feet per second. Step out 6ft in front.of said car and it will have .2 seconds to come to a complete halt. Keep in mind the car doesn't have to hit you all that hard to kill. Just knock you down, your head hitting the pavement might be what kills you.

Re:Sensors

[Anonymous Coward]

A human driver _didn't_ see them 150 yards ahead, they apparently aren't even visible on the video until they step out of shadow into the roadway

Re:Sensors

[techno-vampire]

Quite honestly, the description I read made me think that it didn't stop right away. I sit corrected.

Re:Sensors

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a rental car with back-up sensors and an auto-braking function tied to them: I was backing out of my parking space when some idiot decided to keep walk behind this SUV anyway, those brakes engaged instantly before I even saw him show up on the back-up camera screen. This was 2 years ago and just the plain ultrasonic sensors that have been available for over a decade now.

And even if the vehicle was doing 40mph 1) on dry ground it should still have been able to decelerate very fast in a panic stop and at least reduce the chances of killing the person and 2) why isn't the AI at least programmed to slow down when passing the cyclist and/or move over a bit to give them some extra room?

Re:Sensors

[Anonymous Coward]

I walk, a lot.
I can tell you that no human driver that ever passed me would be able to stop if I decided to step out in the road.

Intuition doesn't exist, it is just a word humans use to explain away their own decision processes when they aren't aware of them.

Re:Sensors

[Talderas]

It's a lack of critical thinking skills combined with poor risk assessment. The simple fact is that if the pedestrian and vehicular injury/fatality rate were to be reduced by 50% from full blown adoption of self-driving vehicles it would be a technology well worth implementing.

Re:Sensors

[Anonymous Coward]

They intuitively know you aren't stupid enough to jump into the road. You want proof of this? None of them swerve out of the way preemptively. Likewise, due to your own intuition that they won't jump the curb and run you over, you aren't diving for cover every time a car passes by.

It is a LACK of or BAD intuition that causes human/human accidents.

Re:Sensors

[Rick Schumann]

LOL he wants 'evidence'. Even the programmers who code these pseudo-intelligences don't know what the hell is going on under the hood, how do you expect me to provide you with your 'evidence'?
The damned thing is not a mind, it is just a machine, it doesn't think, therefore how can it 'know' there's a significance to a living being compared to an inanimate object?

Secondly - why the hell does that even matter? Shouldn't the vehicle avoid collisions with any object? Why does it matter if that object is a person or not? It's still going to try to avoid hitting it, right?

So you're saying if you're driving and you find yourself in the unenviable situation of having to decide in a split second whether to run over a kid or run into a telephone poll, it's just a coin-flip to you? Or do you value human life? The machine doesn't know the difference. It has no brain, no ability to think, no conscience, no feelings of remorse, so it kills a human being and it makes no difference to it's programming. Given the theoretical choice I put to you earlier in this paragraph, it WOULD flip a coin instead of automatically crashing into a telephone pole to avoid hitting a human being. THAT is the problem, THAT is why this approach to to this technology is wrong, THAT is why we need REAL AI not 'pseudo-intelligence' and it's half-assed approach to operating a vehicle: You need an actual mind behind the wheel, something that actually thinks and reasons and is aware of the significance of a living being versus an inanimate object -- and that itself is insignificant and should sacrifice itself to prevent harm to a living being; it needs to make human-level judgements, not just follow some cold, dead algorithm.

Re:Sensors

[Rick Schumann]

Oh no, the horror, a vehicle driving without emotion and feeling. Yeah, let's program this thing to be happy and sad, that's the ticket! What we need is a fleet of vehicles driving around distraught at the fact that bugs keep bouncing off the windshield.

Oh and by the way you can shove your sarcasm up your ass. This isn't a joking matter, someone is DEAD, and they want to let more of these half-assed pieces of crap on the roads, without anyone inside it to have any chance to stop it from killing however many people, and it won't even fucking care? Fuck that. Ban the technology, stop this madness.

Re:Sensors

[amicusNYCL]

Even the programmers who code these pseudo-intelligences don't know what the hell is going on under the hood

Again, do you have any reason to believe that which you would care to share, or is that just what your gut is telling you?

how do you expect me to provide you with your 'evidence'?

I know you can't, that's what I'm pointing out. If you want to continue making unfounded claims, that's on you. I just want to point out that your claims are unfounded.

The damned thing is not a mind, it is just a machine, it doesn't think, therefore how can it 'know' there's a significance to a living being compared to an inanimate object?

It's pretty trivial to add object recognition to be able to identify something as a person or animal, and if they want to assign various weights to various objects based on whether they're living, or a person, or whatever, and identify which is "more important", they can do that too. That's basic game theory. This is very similar to what humans do.

So you're saying if you're driving and you find yourself in the unenviable situation of having to decide in a split second whether to run over a kid or run into a telephone poll, it's just a coin-flip to you?

No, that's not what I'm saying.

Given the theoretical choice I put to you earlier in this paragraph, it WOULD flip a coin instead of automatically crashing into a telephone pole to avoid hitting a human being.

Again, do you have any evidence that the system puts the same decision weight on impacting a person versus a telephone pole? No, you don't, so excuse me if I don't automatically assume that what you're saying is in any way accurate. Excuse me if I know that this is not a computer in a vacuum, that it was designed and programmed by actual humans.

What if that car is carrying a load of children, and impacting the pole results in a high probability that many of them would be seriously injured or die? What if impacting one person really is the lesser evil?

it needs to make human-level judgements, not just follow some cold, dead algorithm.

You know, human judgment leads to a lot of terrible things happening in the world. Maybe removing emotion from the equation isn't the evil you're making it out to be. Maybe we need more rationality and less emotion when making consequential decisions.

Re:Sensors

[amicusNYCL]

they want to let more of these half-assed pieces of crap on the roads, without anyone inside it to have any chance to stop it from killing however many people

Who wants that situation? Specifically, who are you referring to? Do you have any evidence that the situation you're describing is the goal they are actually trying to achieve? No, of course you don't. Your entire replies are nothing more than appeals to emotion. That's part of the problem.

Ban the technology, stop this madness.

There's that good old human emotional knee-jerk reaction. Yeah, let's not try to improve anything at all, let's just ban everything and think of the children while we do it. No need to try to progress, let's just ban everything and cower in fear.

Re:Sensors

[Rick Schumann]

"Who wants that situation"? Go read about driverless trucks on the highways. That's literally ready to start, right now. Think how many people a driverless truck can kill when it fucks up.

He wants 'evidence' for everything

No no you're supposed to ask for "Peer-reviewed University studies", silly! Didn't you pay attention in Trolling 101?
We have all the evidence we need -- IN THE MORGUE. If that's not enough for you then maybe there's something wrong with YOU.

This is about HUMAN LIVES. That's all you SDC/driverless car fanboys talk about is how "self driving cars will SAVE LIVES! We have to stop HUMANS from driving so we can SAVE LIVES!". Well here we are, and your goddamned SDC has KILLED someone. Even ONE HUMAN DEATH is too many! Or do you just not give a fuck that someone is dead?
"You're making appeals to emotion" If you're NOT having any emotional response to a human being dying for no damned good reason then maybe you're a sociopath.

They can try to 'perfect' this 'technology' all they want -- OFF OF PUBLIC ROADS, AWAY FROM PEOPLE WHO COULD BE KILLED.
I say this over and over again: SDCs/Driverless Cars have been RUSHED TO MARKET and are not ready to be used on public roads!
Get them off my roads NOW before more people get killed!

Re:Sensors

[ColaMan]

You can easily extrapolate all your emotional outbursts towards people as well. 16 pedestrians were killed by cars the same day that Uber killed someone. So:

EVEN ONE HUMAN DEATH IS TOO MANY OMG, better get rid of all the people driving! Look, people are fallible. You seem to think that there's an alert human being at the wheel for the entire duration of a journey and that is not the case, not by a long shot.

So it seems society as a whole has decided that cars are super convenient and we deal with death and mayhem as it occurs. Actually, we don't. We aim for "as low as reasonably practicable" and it's a moving target as technology and behavioural science advances. And I specifically mention behavioural science here, because if a single person had not made the decision to cross the road outside of designated crossing zones, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Personally, I think more separation and societal reinforcement is the way to go. It might be that you end up with "Automation lanes" in the centre of the road, away from people, buffered by human drivers. People might one day learn to only cross the road at designated crossings, and the road is reinforced as being a dangerous place, just like train tracks. Because it fucking is a dangerous place for pedestrians, no matter how much you squawk about how it should be like a pedestrian mall.

Re:Sensors

[amicusNYCL]

Go read about driverless trucks on the highways.

Oh, OK. So, if I call up Tesla, or whoever is developing those, and say "listen, I hear that your goal is to have these half-assed things on the road without anyone inside them to stop them from killing however many people" they'll say "yeah, that's exactly what we're going for." OK, well you've got me convinced.

Think how many people a driverless truck can kill when it fucks up.

Would you say it's more or less than an angry guy with a cache of weapons? Or, for that matter, an angry guy with a several thousand pound truck?

Didn't you pay attention in Trolling 101?

I must have been absent that day.

We have all the evidence we need -- IN THE MORGUE. If that's not enough for you then maybe there's something wrong with YOU.

Ignore everything, everyone quick look at this emotion! Now! Now is the time to legislate! Just like when 9/11 happened, did we wait until rationality took over? Hell no, we didn't! We immediately outlawed privacy! That's the way forward, let's run on pure emotion, baby! One person DIED! A PERSON! Do you know what that MEEEANS! One death is TOO MANY! Human lives are TOO VALUABLE! Unless we're talking about gun ownership, or the opioid crisis, or sending our soldiers to other countries, or diabetes, or capital punishment, or world hunger, or suicide because of a lack of mental health care, or whatever else. No, this one thing, regardless of the fact that this could completely revolutionize transportation all over the world, for some reason the talented and brilliant Rick Schumann has made the decision for us that our tolerance for death in this case is exactly 0. Since we've already exceeded that limit, we should shut down progress on this front forever and ever.

That's all you SDC/driverless car fanboys talk about is how "self driving cars will SAVE LIVES!

That's part of the reason, yeah. And we can get there, too. I don't know why you think we aren't capable of ever doing this one thing, but we can, and I'm glad people who aren't ruled by emotion are actively working on the problem.

Or do you just not give a fuck that someone is dead?

OK, you understand that appeal to emotion is one of the logical fallacies, and your entire argument is based on that right? When your entire argument is based on a logical fallacy, what do you think that says about the strength of your argument?

If you're NOT having any emotional response to a human being dying for no damned good reason then maybe you're a sociopath.

You know, I would agree with that statement. But that statement and what's going on here are not related to each other.

They can try to 'perfect' this 'technology' all they want

Oh gee Rick, do the people actively working towards progress really have your permission to keep working? Wow, that's super.

OFF OF PUBLIC ROADS, AWAY FROM PEOPLE WHO COULD BE KILLED.

Rick, you understand that at some point they're going to need to be on public roads, right? I mean, you understand that's the end goal, right?

SDCs/Driverless Cars have been RUSHED TO MARKET and are not ready to be used on public roads!

As far as general use is concerned? Sure, I agree with you, there's still a lot to learn. That's why we're continuing to work on this problem instead of claiming that the problem has been solved and everyone can transition immediately.

Get them off my roads NOW before more people get killed!

Rick, the problem is more widespread than any of us are willing to admit. You know what the highest cause of death is other than disease? Accidents, Rick. Specifically, car accidents. You know what that means, Rick? It means that we need to BAN ALL VEHICLES FROM ALL ROADS BECAUSE ONE HUMAN DEATH IS TOO MANY!

Re:Sensors

[Anonymous Coward]

Neural networks are precisely intuition. That's why it's so hard to figure out what they are doing, because they are not logical, they are intuitive. That's actually bad. It would be much better if they were as effective and also logical. We will have a big jump in AI capability once we figure out how to make neural networks logical.

Not just the median.

[Ecuador]

Interesting series of tweets: https://twitter.com/EricPaulDe...
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...

Re:Not just the median.

[Anonymous Coward]

That median looks like it was designed for cop cars/emergency vehicles to cross the median or setup radar traps.

Re:Not just the median.

[dgatwood]

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.

Re:Not just the median.

[Anonymous Coward]

When comparing the width of the X-shaped paths to the widths of the road and footpath, I have to wonder if these weren't originally intended as footpaths, but as calamity passages/shortcuts instead.

Re:Not just the median.

[Bing Tsher E]

Twitter runs ads? I guess I haven't used Twitter enough to notice.

Re:Not just the median.

[AmiMoJo]

That sign is so small I'd have to cross the road to read it, and then I'd be standing on the bit it says not to stand on.

Re:Not just the median.

[Anonymous Coward]

More accurately it's a construction/road closure traffic cross-over. A few scoops of Asphalt at the curbs and it's open for business moving traffic across to the other travel lane should one of the bridges over the river be closed.

Re:Not just the median.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, maybe it is just a trap.
Entrapment is common in the US, I mean they actually dress policewomen as hookers to catch people trying to engage their services.

Re:Not just the median.

[Walking The Walk]

Interesting series of tweets: https://twitter.com/EricPaulDe... The median looks like it has fancy, inviting paths, but it also warns you not to use them.

Those two paths crossing in an X shape are for diverting traffic during construction. When you need to close off all the lanes going in one direction, you split the lanes on the other side to allow side-by-side traffic in opposing directions, and use the path to divert traffic over to that other side. They're very common in split highways, especially when going under an overpass (due to the need to block traffic when doing work on an overpass.) It's just an unfortunate coincidence in this case that it looks like a sidewalk and goes in a direction that some pedestrians wish to travel.

Re:Not just the median.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, don't spew bullshit when you have no fucking clue what you're talking about. That is not suitable for vehicular traffic, and the ends terminate in curbs - nobody with a brain is going to try to turn onto that. This is nothing more than some horrible planning, likely driven by some dipshit designer that was significantly overpaid.

Re:Not just the median.

[SamTombs]

Nonsense. Why dump asphalt when the two roads converge in a few hundred feet? And where is the X on the other side?

Re:Not just the median.

[Anonymous Coward]

The web has ads?

Re:Clearly of lower caste

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

A big reason why I'm still on this board is that no self-respecting SlashDot user would stoop to using emojis or first-generation Internet abbreviation in their posts. We generally grew out of that twenty years ago.

Re:Still killed though

[infernalC]

If it kills something we eat, like a cow, I think a cookout would be good.

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

Eat shit and die, faggot.

Re: Still killed though

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> even if they are found not legally at fault they don't go around feeling guilty about the incident

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 and inspecting the relevant equipment.

Fairly sure their family is happy with that

[WillAffleckUW]

Not.

Robot car kills human.

That's the take home for the family.

What if she could not be seen?

[SuperKendall]

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 actually be detected.

Also, 38MPH on a speedometer is within the margin of error of measurement that it was probably going the speed limit. All speedometers are set to read a bit high, in any case 35 vs 38MPH would not have made a difference to the pedestrian or ability to stop (and some people are saying the speed limit is actually 45, which makes way more sense with a divided median)..

Re:What if she could not be seen?

[Anonymous Coward]

The police said the woman came "out of the shadows"

Laws are designed based on OUR senses.
Sight, sound, touch, taste, smell.
Which one do you think we would be speaking about here when we talk about autonomous cars?
Sight.
Do you know how an autonomous car sees things? Observationally an ignorant person would say it has eyes like ours.
Seeing shadows like us is not how it sees shadows. It doesn't operate in our spectrum for sight. Our shadows are not the same thing as AI shadows. You wouldn't even recognise them digitally. The argument that it would be hard to see because shadows may ONLY wash if there were human interactions only. This car was controlled 99.99% by AI with a human at the helm for what ever emergency they think they could step in to take over. Shadows are completely irrelevant here when spoken by the police or anyone that has no AI experience in that field and serves only to confuse the public.

Re:What if she could not be seen?

[kenh]

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?

Re:What if she could not be seen?

[Anonymous Coward]

The cyclist is human, by all definitions humans ARE hazards to autonomous vehicles.
I do not know enough about the location to accurately gauge what has happened here. What I do know is she was a cyclist with grocery bags going up hill in the median lane next to a footpath under a bridge in the shadows (She was struck from behind by an autonomous vehicle which impacted the front right closest to the median). Are there footpaths laws preventing cyclists at that location to ride on them? The median in my country is for emergency AND cyclists. Cyclists can only ride on specifically marked footpaths.
If I were a gambling man I would say she was tired and stumbled a bit too far in the wrong direction.

Re:What if she could not be seen?

[viperidaenz]

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.

Re:What if she could not be seen?

[AmiMoJo]

Interesting that it couldn't see her in the shadows, which suggests that it isn't using lidar for pedestrian detection, or at least not in that direction. Lidar isn't affected by shadows as it illuminates the object itself.

Re:What if she could not be seen?

[david_thornley]

Active sensors eliminate one possible source of shadows (between the light and the person), they can't necessarily see something if there's an obstacle in the way.

Re:Still killed though

[DontBeAMoran]

How will it choose if it has to decide between killing 4 people or 1?

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.

Can SDCs avoid animals?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope Google's car and others are better than Uber's efforts. If a deer jumped in the road in front of your self-driving car, I guess in Uber's case, it would just plow through it. Aside from any injuries, that could mean costly repairs for the sensors that absorb the impact and to re-certify, calibrate the vehicle.

Re:Humans and AI.

[Kjella]

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.

Re:Humans and AI.

[angel'o'sphere]

An AI cant read that sort of thing.
First of all, self driving cars are not run by an AI.

Most people slow down when they see someone on the side of tge road looking like they are going to step out.
A self driving car can judge such things. And the cars I was involved in do!

The problem imho is that some idiot companies in the USA wanted to reinvent "self driving" technology instead of either partnering or buying european know how.

We have self driving cars on the roads since a decade or longer. Of course only a few still doing their required 100 miles test run (or how many miles that are), of course under supervision of humans (usually a crew and not a single "ersatz driver")

There is no single published incident involving a selv driving car.

And now two companies in the US who are "new to that business" already have several ... yeah, I know "autopilot" is not "self driving", but it is pretty close.

Re:Still killed though

[amorsen]

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.

38 in a 35?

[sycodon]

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.

Re:38 in a 35?

[Kristoph]

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.

Re:38 in a 35?

[amicusNYCL]

Can the AI spot a car traveling at 50 MPH approaching a 4 way stop and not slowing down?

Yes, any reasonably good AI is always scanning the sides to see what might be coming out of driveways or the side of the road.

Re:38 in a 35?

[green1]

Your Tesla can't detect ANYTHING that's off to the side by any more than the width of one traffic lane. It has ZERO cross traffic detection ability.

By the time your Tesla detects someone blowing a stop sign at the same intersection as you, you have already been highly negligent by not addressing it yourself. The Model S is NOT a self driving car, never has been, and never will be (with current sensors, despite what Tesla's marketing lies say) In fact, any time the car slams on the brakes, you've already proved that you're a horrible driver. That's Automatic Emergency Braking, and per Tesla, it is only to reduce the force of impact of an already unavoidable collision. You're lucky that car kept going, because had it stopped in front of you, you would definitely have hit it had you been relying on the car to do the work. AEB will not bring a Tesla to a full stop.

That said, a vehicle actually equipped for self driving (i.e. nothing Tesla has produced to date) has plenty of ability to detect this sort of thing, and should be able to do a good job of it. As stated in this article, it seems that this wasn't a matter of not behaving appropriately to the stimuli, but a case of there being no stimuli to react to until it was too late to do so.

No matter what people say about self driving cars, there will ALWAYS be situations where a collision is unavoidable. Self driving cars will not eliminate all collisions. There is however a good chance that they will eventually eliminate all PREVENTABLE collisions, but that's not the same thing at all.

That said, it does seem that a self driving car that is capable of driving as safely as the average driver in all conditions (which is not that high a bar to pass if you think of the average driver!) is still quite a ways off. So far the best systems only work in ideal road and weather conditions, and while there isn't really enough data yet for statistical analysis to be meaningful, early indications are that their safety record to date isn't any better than that of the average population. This will improve with time, but I think we need a lot more time than many self driving car proponents seem to think.

Re:38 in a 35?

[Whorhay]

I'm pretty sure that the google cars do this. I remember an article talking about google cars getting stuck at 4 way stop signs waiting for the other vehicles to actually stop before proceeding. The other cars weren't coming to a complete stop and so the google car just sat there patiently waiting to go.

Re:Still killed though

[ShanghaiBill]

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, 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.

Re:Still killed though

[angel'o'sphere]

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:Humans and AI.

[ShanghaiBill]

An AI cant read that sort of thing.

Why not?

Re:Humans and AI.

[djinn6]

Without the video itself we won't be able to tell for sure. However, from the streetview imagery, there's a number of places she could have emerged from that would've kept her her hidden behind bushes or trees. And I don't think she stopped at the side of the road at all. If she did, she would have had enough time to see the car that clearly was not slowing down for her.

Re: Still killed though

[angel'o'sphere]

But I'd feel ever better if they shredded people-killers
Tz tz tz ... they should be smelted, with just 1C degree above their smelting point to make their death painful and s_l_o_w!

Continuous improvement

[Morky]

Another key takeaway is that this scenario can now be analyzed and applied to millions of future situations. I just wish all the various autonomous driving companies were sharing their work.

Re:Continuous improvement

[Anonymous Coward]

Bag lady --> Crazy

Keep clear.

Re:Continuous improvement

[fluffernutter]

..and they will introduce five more bugs in the process, I'm sure.

Re:Continuous improvement

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

The previous message brought to you by Yellow Cab.

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

How is that different from the used cars available for sale now? Do you know if any of them ran over someone? Does it matter in that case if there was a human driver or not? It's still just a car.

Re: Wow what a coincidence!

[c6gunner]

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: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

The car will never have to make any such decision.

What you're so poorly trying to Express is called the Trolly Problem. The answer in this case is that until laws are passed which gives different value to different lives, including that of the occupants, the car should minimize damage as much as possible, and limit the POTENTIAL victims based on simple numbers.

Re:Still killed though

[AvitarX]

Dog should be avoided (as should all property damage)

A cow should be avoided (as should all property damage)

Cars hitting bugs is generally acceptable (I've never gotten in trouble for my windshield)

These aren't very difficult.

More interesting is should it protect the driver? Do drivers protect themselves (perhaps swerving onto a sidewalk of people to avoid getting T boned)?

I'd think breaking in an attampted to minimize inact damage is a good enough response when coupled with faster reaction time, the trickey part will be for human drivers to learn that they need a bigger following distance.

Re:Still killed though

[liquid_schwartz]

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 :-)

The car was exceeding the speed limit

[viperidaenz]

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...

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...

Re:The car was exceeding the speed limit

[Anonymous Coward]

In almost all jurisdictions in the US the speed limit is a guideline, but not an absolute.

There are two criteria that trump the speed limit sign.
1) Drive appropriately for the conditions. If you are driving 35mph in a 35mph zone in a blinding ice storm, you are probably going to fast and can be ticketed. You may be going too fast under those conditions if you were driving 25 in a 35mph zone.

2) Drive with the flow of traffic. If everyone on the highway is driving 65mph in a 55mph zone, you can get a ticket for driving 50mph in the fast lane even though you are not exceeding the speed limit.

A variance of 3-5mph is generally considered acceptable based on traffic flow, uncertainty of speedometer calibration, time to accel/decel from differing speed limits, etc.

Re:The car was exceeding the speed limit

[gatfirls]

This is ~50 yards from where the accident happened.

https://www.google.com/maps/@3...

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.

Re:The car was exceeding the speed limit

[Anonymous Coward]

that 3 miles an hour is going to be the difference between a $30,000 payout and a $30 million one... and we're just getting started. we don't yet know what other faults there are or were in the operation of the vehicle.

Re:The car was exceeding the speed limit

[LetterRip]

What reason did the Uber car have for going 38 in a 35 zone?

I was doing 38 it a 45 (there is a photo online of the speed limit sign). The report of it being a 35 zone was a misreport/misspeak by the police representative.

Re:The car was exceeding the speed limit

[LetterRip]

It was doing, not I... stupid typo

Re:The car was exceeding the speed limit

[Anonymous Coward]

The car was not speeding it was headed north in a 45 zone, if you are headed south on the divided road you are entering downtown Tempe and the speed reduces to 35.

Re: The car was exceeding the speed limit

[mapkinase]

Reduction if the speed to zero will completely eliminate the risk of death. I am tired of this stupid "slow down" argument.

If I slow down, so will 1000 cars behind me, you stupid libtards.

Idiotic 55 mph limit on highways was inttroduced in 70s to reduce gas consumption: remember OPEC and oil crisis?

Since then it still stays that way in many places, a monument to liberal idiocy.

Re:The car was exceeding the speed limit

[Anonymous Coward]

They're probably programmed to go over the speed limit just so much that they won't get fined. Human drivers do that.

Re:The car was exceeding the speed limit

[thegarbz]

What reason did the Uber car have for going 38 in a 35 zone?

Control system variance. +/-10% for an object with that amount of mass an inertia is pretty damn good and in many countries that doesn't even legally count as speeding.

Now was the car doing a sustained 38mph in a 35 zone, then we have something.

Re:The car was exceeding the speed limit

[jbmartin6]

Actually a bit of a problem for self driving cars, since this speed limit was changed somewhat recently (according to the article). I am assuming the car can't read the signs, so how does it find out about speed limit changes? Some sort of national database? Small towns are unlikely to register, instead they will happily collect fines from 'speeding' autocars. Imagine automated speeding ticket cameras versus automated cars. Bots fining bots, sounds inflationary.

Re:The car was exceeding the speed limit

[Anonymous Coward]

What reason did the Uber car have for going 38 in a 35 zone?

3 mph? Are you kidding me? Nobody has to justify a 3 mph variance.

As a human driver I am lucky to keep it within a 5 mph variance and that is only when I have had a drink and really pay attention to my speedometer because I don't want to get pulled over.

Re:The car was exceeding the speed limit

[Anonymous Coward]

I did the googling.

What I dont know is if the speed limit has since been reduced. But if you follow the google streetview, that area was most certainly in a 45 MPH zone. The streetview link in the article shows the 45 MPH speed limit sign. If you continue down the road about .5 mile you will find the exact spot where this pedestrian was hit. The accident occurred just before the intersection at Washington ST and Cury Rd. https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4369934,-111.9429875,3a,52.2y,94.95h,90.23t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1scUyILaxFs5z63AL2SupCJw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Notice the blue sign with the trees behind it and the dashed line at the start of the right turn lane.

So, unless the 45 MPH speed limit sign was removed since that google streetview was taken the uber was under the speedlimit by 7 MPH.

Just follow my streetview link and you will find the bridge and the 45 MPH sign about .25/.5 miles before the spot of the accident.

Re:The car was exceeding the speed limit

[Talderas]

While the Uber car was violating posted speed limits by +3 mph the pedestrian was also violating Arizona pedestrian laws as well as Tempe city code. By Arizona law the car had the right of way and the pedestrian was supposed to yield it. By Tempe code the pedestrian was violating crosswalk law by entering the roadway outside of a crosswalk.

Had the Uber SDV been compliant with the law the pedestrian may have survived but probably with medical costs in excess of the funerary costs. Had the pedestrian been compliant with the law the pedestrian would be unharmed.

Re:The car was exceeding the speed limit

[backwardsposter]

I've got a scenario. You're driving behind a car in a 55 mph zone. You encounter construction and it reduces to 35. The car in front of you unexpectedly breaks to get to 35 as soon as possible. You're probably rear ending that car because nobody does that.

Re:The car was exceeding the speed limit

[viperidaenz]

If you're following at a safe distance, which at 55mph is about 50 metres, you will have plenty of time to slow down too.
You should have also seen the upcoming construction with its temporary speed limit signs and started slowing down before you reached them. Once you pass a sign you're supposed to be going that speed. That's not the point where you should start slowing down.
Same thing when you're going in to a faster zone, you don't start speeding up until you pass the sign.

Where the hell did you get your license? the back of a weetbix box?

Re:The car was exceeding the speed limit

[viperidaenz]

If the car can't read signs, how does it handle a temporary speed limit? Like when there is roadworks.

Re:The car was exceeding the speed limit

[jbmartin6]

I looked around a bit and I was wrong in my assumption, they do actually read the signs.

Re:The car was exceeding the speed limit

[david_thornley]

I wouldn't be surprised if it did read the signs. One thing about self-driving cars is that there's lots of things that are designed and standardized for the sake of human drivers, so they can generally benefit from those.

Re:Still killed though

[angel'o'sphere]

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?

Re:Still killed though

[lactose99]

I've seen Christine, I know how this is going to end.

Re:Still killed though

[RearNakedChoke]

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 kill people in ways that humans won't because but car AI "thinks" and operates differently than the human brain. But ultimately it will kill far less people in total than humans, and that's what's ultimately the most important.

Re:Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

Dogs should be targeted.

Added bonus: being able to eat whatever's left on the roadway.

Re:Clearly of lower caste

[Anonymous Coward]

;)

8====D ~~~

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't have felt guilty at all. 100% fault on the cyclist.

I would be upset she couldn't pay to fix my car though. That should come out of her remaining belongings or cash supply.

Re:Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? Most humans make the right decision in trolley problems.

Re:Wow what a coincidence!

[CptLoRes]

Tire markes would mean that you braked to hard locking the tires, causing you to lose traction. A system breaking at optimal efficiency would and should not leave tire marks under any circumstance.

Sheeeiiiiiit

[Anonymous Coward]

Feminists be like: Go blame the victim, why don't you?

Re:Wow what a coincidence!

[Ken McE]

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. I was just not fast enough to do anything.

A human driver, valuing the life of a fellow human being (or any other living creature for that matter) would at least try to not hit them, even if that meant swerving into a stationary object (parked car, lamppost, etc) or having to brake so hard they were struck from behind by another vehicle. Did any of these things happen?

It's not that the machine didn't care, but a human would. There was a licensed human driver sitting in the driver seat. They weren't fast enough to do any of these things either.

Or did it just digitally shrug and keep going?

No, you can see that the car is still there in the various photos.

The answer to these questions matters greatly. These so-called 'self driving cars', ...supposedly has a reaction time better than a human driver; sure doesn't look like it from here.

I have no trouble believing that a machine can react faster and often more reliably than me. It cannot however react in zero amount of time. We don't know how to do that. I am running wetware that has a million years of field testing behind it, and yet I am still not perfect. I do not expect the first generation self driving cars be infallible when I am not myself.

Given time they may become the safest drivers on the planet, but not yet, not right now. Besides, even if it reacted in some vanishingly small fraction of a second, it takes time and distance to bring a ton of rolling steel to a full stop.

Variance

[rsilvergun]

Is usually around 5mph. It's difficult to keep a car at a rock solid 35mph, even for a computer. Changes in elevation can quickly alter your speed and religiously adjusting for it isn't even always the safest thing to do.

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.

Re:Variance

[Ichijo]

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 the right choice.

Re:Variance

[Anonymous Coward]

The law is agnostic about your ability to drive at the speed limit. It is a one-sided, maximum amount. Competent drivers stay below that limit with the margin equal to their driving ability.

Re:Variance

[volmtech]

My father in law had the opposite experience while turning left on a country road. The road was not busy but the oncoming car was closer then he thought so he just punched it straight across. The woman in the car saw him but instead of braking she veered left to go around him. He was off the road on the other side when she hit him. She was cited for not maintaining her lane.

Re:Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

"acceptable" - yes, code understands this word

"kill" - equip it with an ECG to detect when brain activity stops, since that's the closest we have to a definition of alive->dead

"dog" - if you're lucky the code is able to categorize obstacles with a tag called ProbablyLivingThing

When you program a robot to make a PB&J sandwich you only use the word "spread" in an instruction after you spend a week defining "spread" using only code that the pile of sensors and motors DO understand.

These cars were told (1) anything that isn't XYZ is errant conditions (2) 99% of errant conditions are a one-step flowchart that says "Brake, beep at operator."

Re:Clearly of lower caste

[Anonymous Coward]

Aaand it's at +5, Interesting. Guess you're right.

Lighten up

[rsilvergun]

Francis :).

Re:Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

> if the car has to hit someone
Yeah, no, here's your entire tree of navel-gazing philosophy scenarios you watch the code handle: DetectedObstacle{True|False}

The scenario-handling flowchart (which is mostly a bunch of arrows all pointing at ActivateBrakes) will start at the first sign of anomaly. There's no anomaly evaluation, Christ.

Re:Wow what a coincidence!

[Anonymous Coward]

supposedly, watching in all directions all the time and supposedly has a reaction time better than a human driver; sure doesn't look like it from here[/quote]

You're fucking blind then; nice agenda you have there bucko.

Re: Wow what a coincidence!

[Rick Schumann]

15 pedestrians are killed every day by human drivers in the US alone.

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. You fanbois keep trotting out how fucking safe SDCs are supposed to be, yet here's a case where with all the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in developing them, all the media hype, all the cheerleading by fanbois like you, touting how much SAFER it's going to be, yet right out of the gate here's someone dead. Your SDCs don't have real AI, they're 'pseudo-intelligent' at best, the approach to this is all wrong, the technology is being RUSHED and PUSHED on us, and this is the predictable result: someone is dead because of it. Won't be the last person dead because of it, either. I just wonder how many people are going to have to die before someone in authority says "enough is enough" and puts a stop to it.

Will SDCs someday be a helpful tool for humans? Maybe. But we need actual Artificial Intelligence, not the 'pseudo-intelligence' they keep trotting out and CALLING "AI". It needs to be able to actually think, like we do and be aware like we are. That day is not today.

Re: Wow what a coincidence!

[Anonymous Coward]

Human drivers cover more miles in a single day than SDCs have covered in their entire history.

It doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that someone was killed in an incident involving the car is sufficient. Many of you are talking about the tech as though it's a pet or has sentience - it doesn't. You can't make a human comparison. This doesn't bode well for autonomous cars dealing with mixed traffic, either. The world is not a perfectly flat, smooth, and dry grid consisting of perfectly predictable, logic-based variables like a testing facility is. Tools that kill people performing their intended function are tools that will likely not be adopted by society. There will probably never be fully autonomous cars, deal with it.

Re:"came from the shadows?" what? No LiDAR?

[sl3xd]

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.

Re:Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike most humans, the SDC will do the right thing.

The point of the trolley problem is that there is no correct answer. That is how it was formulated by experts in the field. Claiming that there is a "right thing" comes off as cringeworthy levels of ignorance.

Re:Humans and AI.

[gatfirls]

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.

defensive driving

[fluffernutter]

How far do these cars look ahead? In defensive driving, they teach you to look WAY up the road. 150 yards back from the intersection, you are more likely to see people running onto the road than 5 yards from the intersection; it may just be a flash of them seen between vehicles up ahead. Are these cars properly watching as they pull up? They should have to submit high definition video from the moment the car starts to when it stops, from the perspective of a driver. If that person that it hits becomes visible at any time and the AI doesn't show any reaction in some way, "she ran out in front of the car" isn't good enough if you're only paying attention 20 feet before the intersection. I know some people don't notice these things, but a lot of people do and it prevents accidents. I would rather have autonomous cars be modeled after defensive driving techniques and I am concerned that they are not.

Re:defensive driving

[amicusNYCL]

How far do these cars look ahead?

800 meters, minimum. In a sphere.

Are these cars properly watching as they pull up?

Eeeeeverything. They know what you're thinking about. They'll text you to tell you to watch your step before you leave the curb.

If you're wondering where I'm getting my information from, I'm getting it from the same place as everyone who is "just asking questions."

Re:defensive driving

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering she walked out from behind an outcropping of rock and a tree not very far.

Re:Wow what a coincidence!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up, faggot.

Re:Still killed though

[Kristoph]

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. )

Sorta depends on the kind of autonomous vehicle

[rsilvergun]

doesn't it?

Re:Wow what a coincidence!

[fluffernutter]

But if that deer was in the middle of a wide open road at night, would you have missed it?

Re:Still killed though

[Calydor]

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.

Re: Still killed though

[mysidia]

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.

It doesn't require a psychopath

[DeplorableCodeMonkey]

that it would take a psychopath to formulate the idea that pedestrian is the perpetrator and driver is the victim.

If you disobey the jaywalking laws and a reasonable driver hits you, you are objectively the perpetrator of the accident. What is so hard for you to understand about that? If I'm driving 45mph down street and a pedestrian decides to run across the street, odds are good that I won't be able to break in time. People like you think that'd make me the bad guy if I hit them, despite it being likely impossible between the sheer Physics and normal driver reaction time.

I see this shit all the time where pedestrians will simply disregard the law AND Physics like oh yeah, that big SUV can just stop on a dime if I keep walking despite them having the right of way.

If anyone is the [insert proper medical term defining asshole who doesn't care] it's the pedestrians who smugly walk out in front of vehicles expecting the forces of nature to bend to them.

Re:It doesn't require a psychopath

[Maxo-Texas]

Aye. pedestrians try really hard to be pedeadstrians some days.

Part of the problem is I've seem people post that "pedestrians *always* have right of way!" Which is wrong and dangerous. (even if you are right- you will be dead right.)

Re:It doesn't require a psychopath

[Luckyo]

Pedestrian has the right of way where law of the land dictates so. In other cases, they don't. However a reasonable person driving a vehicle understands that he is commanding a heavy and well protected metal cage on wheels, which will maim an kill even if pedestrian makes a mistake that was fully his to make, and as such will invest heavily into actions that will avoid maiming or killing the pedestrian.

Basically, this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:It doesn't require a psychopath

[Anonymous Coward]

So the driver should take care and look out for other people because it's the sensible moral right things to do. Everyone gets that. Why the fuck doesn't the pedestrian look out for his own well being? Does he himself value his life so little he's willing to jump out into traffic and rely on other people to keep him save? You are quite clearly an idiot.

Re:It doesn't require a psychopath

[Maxo-Texas]

You kinna change the laws of physics, jim.

Re:It doesn't require a psychopath

[Luckyo]

Have you tried interacting with the topic of dicussion instead of just spouting random phrases that bear no relationship with the topic of discussion?

Re:It doesn't require a psychopath

[Luckyo]

He does. That's why driver doesn't get convicted of whatever version of vehicular manslaughter there is in legal code of your state if pedestrian is at fault.

Driver does get increased responsibility because his ability to cause damage to the pedestrian is massively higher than vice versa. With great power comes great responsibility, and commanding a heavy metal cage with immense amount of kinetic energy is very powerful in relation to a human being wearing nothing but clothing for personal protection.

Re:It doesn't require a psychopath

[Anonymous Coward]

So why do your sympathies lie with the careless idiot who valued his own life less than you apparently value it. And yet you have no sympathy for first responders who have to scrape a dead body of the road, and the driver who through no fault of their own now has to live with the fact they killed somebody. You are the real psychopath in this thread.

Re:It doesn't require a psychopath

[Maxo-Texas]

God. How dense are some people?

You cannot stop a car in 10 feet. Not even 30 feet. You can not change the laws of physics (i.e. friction and velocity). You can't improve human reaction time.

And it is also a reference to a star trek song, just in case you missed that too. /facepalm.

Re:It doesn't require a psychopath

[Luckyo]

I literally have a video for you linked above where a truck was stopped in about 15 meters. While you cannot "change the laws of physics", you can eliminate various uncertainty factors.

I really recommend you look up that breaking system in Volvo trucks which saved the child in the video I linked. It demonstrates my point.

Re:It doesn't require a psychopath

[Luckyo]

Because the careless idiot is a human being. The rest of your claims are bold faced lies and inventions.

Re:It doesn't require a psychopath

[Anonymous Coward]

was

Re:Still killed though

[dfsmith]

Clippy: "It looks like you've hit a cow. Would you like help writing BBQ invitations?"

Re:Still killed though

[ceoyoyo]

"How will it choose if it has to decide between killing 4 people or 1?"

How would you?

Re:"came from the shadows?" what? No LiDAR?

[fluffernutter]

'Shadows' could also mean "Uber already payed me a shitload of money to downplay the situation".

Show me the video

[stabiesoft]

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:Show me the video

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point. This car has so much packed into it for self driving. Surly a dashcam would not cost that much more, as well as add value to the car?

Re:Show me the video

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh fuck right off. Your personal satisfaction means less than the PD chief's last shit. You have zero right to the video and I'm pretty sure if you called the department and asked them for it, they'd tell you where they'd like to stick a copy of the video for you. And this is why everyone who works in the public sector fucking hates you all! Citizens feel like some entitle whiny ass bitches.

Re:Show me the video

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Are we going to scream murder every time a computer can't prevent a fatality, but the 6000 people killed by human drivers last year are just business as usual?

Unlike most of those thousands of pedestrian fatalities with human drivers there was actually video recording of the collision and the investigation has shown that the collision couldn't reasonably be avoided... I'd be willing to bet that you couldn't say the same for many of those 6,000 pedestrian deaths last year.

Autonomous cars save lives.

Re:Show me the video

[cordovaCon83]

As long as your salary is paid for by taxes then get used to it. You should try switching to the private sector, the bosses are much less demanding there I hear. Hope you don't live in an at-will state with that attitude.

Re:Show me the video

[Anonymous Coward]

A short clip was released a short time ago.
A human would have had 1-1.2 seconds to react. At that time the woman was already in the middle of the car's lane ... looking the other way!

I would expect LIDAR to detect the object on the road much faster even in bad lighting conditions.
I also expected to see some attempt at swerving from the car (couldn't see any).

Re:Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I can gather after looking at the intersection and what the police said, a homeless woman walked out from the dark of an underpass late at night into oncoming traffic. The nearest light is a ways from the overpass and it likely would not have been very well lit.

Tempe had clear weather at the time of the accident and it never has enough humidity to have fog or similar things, given that it's a desert.

Re: Wow what a coincidence!

[c6gunner]

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!

[c6gunner]

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?

Re:Humans and AI.

[ceoyoyo]

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....

Re: Wow what a coincidence!

[ceoyoyo]

Are you a relative of this woman or something? I'm just reading through the thread and my first impression was that you were a corporate sock puppet, maybe for some Uber competitor, but the hysteria in this post seems more like someone emotionally involved.

Re:Still killed though

[Strider-]

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.

And the world is rarely that clean. Random shit happens and you have to make a decision. You're on ice, your brakes don't work. Do you ram into a group of people in your lane, or do you hit the parked car? A child darts out into the road in front of you, close neough that you're not going to stop. Do you hit the kid, or go into the ditch?

Vehicles are 1500+kg of mass and momentum, they can't stop on a dime. At some point something will happen forcing the driver (be it human or computer) to make a least bad decision.

But the biggest question is this.

[Anonymous Coward]

If not guilty the question will ALWAYS be, could the accident been avoided IF a real person had been driving? Could the accident been prevented or if not lessened if the driver tried differently to avoid the death. The machine and it's AI has no value for life. It makes decisions base on logic that no one understands or knows other than a few programmers. Do they decide to be careful and brake when unnecessary 'just in case' or do they program the AI to drive like an 18 year old who has his daddy's hot rod for the weekend?

Until there are standards and rules defined as to what is acceptable AI behavior and wht is expected to be programmed AND that expection is in writting by companies as to their liability should they fail meeting those requiremens, we should all be avoiding this disaster. Most of you have already forgotten Volkeswagon's diesel gate which IS STILL being investigated. Companies cannot be trusted.

Re:Wow what a coincidence!

[ceoyoyo]

I've hit a deer in the middle of a wide open road, at night, while I was going 60 km/h. Something coming at you from the side can be VERY hard to avoid, particularly if it jumps out from cover after your headlights have swept over.

Re:Wow what a coincidence!

[fluffernutter]

No you're not picturing it. You're in a road, and there is a deer crossing the opposing traffic lane; you would see something like that.

Re:Still killed though

[LinuxIsGarbage]

How will it choose if it has to decide between killing 4 people or 1?

I assume it can just follow right of way laws.If 4 people that jump out in the middle of the road, and the car has the choice of hitting them, or 2 pedestrians lawfully on the sidewalk, or kill the driver by plowing into a concrete post, it should hit the 4 pedestrians in the road.

It's possible the car may misinterpret who has the right of way, but it should be the basis of the decisions of what to hit.

Re:Still killed though

[Enigma2175]

Less than 10% of these accidents are due to mechanical failure

This research indicates mechanical problems are about 2% of accidents.

Re: Wow what a coincidence!

[Anonymous Coward]

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,

I'm super confused by this talking point that keeps coming up in the comments. Obviously current prototypes aren't safe; they're prototypes! This isn't a "no true Scotsman" argument; Uber clearly doesn't believe their product is production-ready as they had a human driver in the car. The fact that this is being treated any different legally from a car where the human driver was in full control is absurd.

Once we develop self-driving cars, they will be very safe. We clearly have not done so yet.

Re:Still killed though

[Bing Tsher E]

The two pedestrians on the sidewalk have the strongest right-of-way. By law the driver has the least, which is a sucks-to-be-him deal. When you get into and drive a car you assume risks that cannot be reassigned to anybody else who is not driving a car, even if they are out in the street in your 'right of way.'

Re: Still killed though

[Bing Tsher E]

You should put that on a bumper sticker. I bet there are cyclists with cinder blocks in your neck of the woods.

Re:Still killed though

[Dread_ed]

I would imagine second or third generation self-driving cars will be networked together: transmitting obstacle information down the line to cars farther behind, around corners, etc. Having that capability will be inevitable in my opinion.

I can't see government passing up the opportunity to place "road safety cameras" along every street, ostensibly transmitting off-road pedestrian and obstacle movement details to the approaching cars, thereby preventing accidents just like the one that started this discussion. The resulting constant and pervasive population monitoring would just be a pleasant side effect for the new overlords.

Wow, it occurs to me that Facebook would probably put the cameras up themselves, free of charge, just so they could know even more about everyone. Fuck the future, man.

Re:"came from the shadows?" what? No LiDAR?

[amicusNYCL]

In the same way that you could be a paid shill for taxi drivers, I guess you have a point. If you want to see a conspiracy no one can stop you.

Fuck it, just destroy his character anyway. It's the American thing to do. In fact, threaten any children he might have while you're at it.

Re: Still killed though

[Dread_ed]

Not to mention haunting. Hail fire, the universal cleanser.

Re:Still killed though

[gweihir]

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 is far, far better than what a human driver could do after his slow brain works out what is happening. Starting to brake that 0.5...1 second earlier an autonomous car will be able to alone will safe countless lives, and that is the comparison with a non-distracted competent driver.

Re:"came from the shadows?" what? No LiDAR?

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Ah there he is. I knew we'd hear from our resident Cab Company Shill.

Re:Still killed though

[gweihir]

It makes for stories that sell well, because they anthropomorphize the car. "See, _cars_ will make _ethical_ decisions!" It does not make for any kind useful description of technology as it is complete horse manure.

Re:Still killed though

[gweihir]

The car will go straight on as that gives it maximum brake efficiency. Seriously, this is solved.

Re:Still killed though

[gweihir]

Given that there is a lot of distracted driving, unsafe driving, drunk and tired driving in these accidents, at the very least self-driving cars will provide a significant reduction, probably a massive one. Yes, they will still kill people (most technologies do), but far fewer of them than human-controlled vehicles. Control (often craved by humans) does not come with the skills to use that control competently.

Re:Still killed though

[angel'o'sphere]

Yes, I simplified a bit.
But it would not pick a small group of people for not hitting the big one ...

Re: Humans and AI.

[Izuzan]

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. Or as another poster said a stray dor or a dog on a leash. A human can see these things and knkw they pose different risks to the driver.

Re:Still killed though

[angel'o'sphere]

A self driving car knows if the road is iced.

Show me a driver who goes for the ditch when he has to make that decision, and then invite him to the programmers and teach them ho to make the car that decision.

You and other guys here are talking about stuff that is fully out of scope for a normal human but expect other normal humans, the programmers, to blow some artificial ethics into a stupid self driving algorithm?

Re:Still killed though

[angel'o'sphere]

I would imagine second or third generation self-driving cars will be networked together: transmitting obstacle information down the line to cars farther behind, around corners, etc. Having that capability will be inevitable in my opinion.
Off the shelf cars right now are already networked to inform each other about traffic and accidents an other shit.

Re: Wow what a coincidence!

[amicusNYCL]

Do you have to work hard at being that obtuse, or does it just come naturally to you?

You fanbois keep trotting out how fucking safe SDCs are supposed to be, yet here's a case where with all the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in developing them, all the media hype, all the cheerleading by fanbois like you, touting how much SAFER it's going to be, yet right out of the gate here's someone dead.

Did you realistically think that self-driving cars would always avoid every fatality? Have you seen anyone make that claim, and can you cite it? Do you believe that the fact that a computer is controlling the vehicle makes the vehicle immune to the laws of physics, so that it can stop immediately? Is the coefficient of friction between the tires and the road any different if the vehicle is operating autonomously?

Secondly - "right out of the gate?" Self-driving vehicles have been on public roads in the US since 2009. They have driven in the neighborhood of 10 million miles across several different cities during all conditions. That is not "right out of the gate". And, in all of that time, 1 fatality has been produced as the result of a self-driving car hitting a pedestrian. Contrast that with the fact that in 2015 in the US, a car killed a pedestrian on average every 1.6 hours. And if you're going to try to gloss over those facts in pursuit of your weird agenda, then you're the fanboi, buddy.

Won't be the last person dead because of it, either.

No shit. Name any risky major venture that mankind has pursued over decades without anyone dying from it. When the Apollo 1 astronauts died on the launchpad, should we have immediately suspended all space operations until we were 100% certain that no one could possibly die from any possible cause? You can die choking on food, does that mean you're going to stick to a liquid diet for the rest of your life?

It needs to be able to actually think, like we do and be aware like we are.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but a lot of people are pretty shitty drivers.

Re:Wow what a coincidence!

[amicusNYCL]

Is that what happened here? The road was "wide open", and the person was "in the middle" of it?

Re: Wow what a coincidence!

[Bing Tsher E]

Wow. We thought you were here to discuss the topic. And here you are, tipping your hand. You're just here for the snark.

Re:"came from the shadows?" what? No LiDAR?

[sunking2]

I have to agree, fault has little to do here. The fact is the sensors failed to pick out a hazard. I highly doubt that the car goes into super sensitive mode when approaching a known crosswalk. If it were a kid chasing a ball people would not have the same reaction. They'd say the car needs to do better.

However there's still a lot to know. Mostly where the car did start to react, if at all. Talking about lighting and shadows to me makes little sense.

Nope

[twistedcubic]

The car was driving 38 in a max 35 mph zone. The car was speeding, so Uber is at fault.

Re:Nope

[cordovaCon83]

Mod up, mod up

Re:Still killed though

[amiga3D]

I worked with a lady who killed herself and her child because a cat ran in front of her and she swerved to avoid it causing her to lose control and roll the car. The person in the other lane saw it because they ran over the cat. The irony was overwhelming. I'm pretty sure the SD car would have motored on.

Re: Wow what a coincidence!

[c6gunner]

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.

So robots have more rights than human beings.

[Anonymous Coward]

If it had been a white person that ran over a poor immigrant carrying trash bags you dam well know that that person would have been totally accountable for the actions of themselves , the maintenance of their vehicle and for not properly anticipating the likely actions of poor people carrying trash bags on a bicycle. Visibility and darkness be damned. However since this is a robot and there are billions of dollars on the table for self driving vehicles, the police will naturally take a holistic look at the situation and give the self driving vehicle the benefit of the doubt that they would never ever give a white or black person (assuming it was not a millionaire or city council member driving)

Re:Still killed though

[fluffernutter]

But ultimately it will kill far less people in total than humans, and that's what's ultimately the most important.

You really have no way of knowing that before it happens. Whether humans will be able to string together sensors and 'AI' to be a successful driver.

Re:Still killed though

[BlueStrat]

How will it choose if it has to decide between killing 4 people or 1?

Oh, that's easy!

It kills the four-person group and then backs up to take out the single person too so as not to be accused of racial, cultural, ideological, gender, wealth, or political discrimination and/or bias by Progressives.

Easy-peasy!

Strat

Dangerous to cross at night

[techdolphin]

"Moir added that "'it is dangerous to cross roadways in the evening hour when well-illuminated, managed crosswalks are available.'"

Note that it is dangerous to cross a street at night under any conditions. Generally, by the time a driver sees a person in their headlights, there is not enough time to avoid hitting them. That is why you should always use crosswalks at night, (and, as a matter of safety, even during the day.) At a crosswalk, I still wait for the cars to stop even if I have the signal. If there is no crosswalk, I always make sure that I have enough time cross even if the driver does not see me, I would rather be wrong than dead right.

Re:Dangerous to cross at night

[david_thornley]

I also wear a safety vest while pedestrianing at night. I had a near-collision a few years ago, and it made me decide I'm never going to be unnoticed again.

Re: Humans and AI.

[ShanghaiBill]

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 stupid? They have libraries of millions of scenarios, both simulated and real recorded events, which they use for training and testing. It is unlikely that you are going to think of anything new that isn't already handled.

Re:Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternatively, if the SDV is owned by a politically-connected 'liberal' Democrat, it continues directly on it's way and kills whomever is in it's path, returns home, and alerts the liberal Democrat owner to "wipe it, like with a cloth".

Self Driving Doesn't Mean Miricle

[Anonymous Coward]

Self driving car doesn't mean it will be able to subvert the laws of physics.

Re:Still killed though

[schematix]

When I see a squirrel in the road i stay the course. All but twice they've moved out of the way at the last second.

Hard time believing..

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a hard time believing if a human was driving at the time they would not see her. I am sure the person in the car did see the girl and thought the car would stop if she stepped into the street.

Re:Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

If you go into the ditch your insurance is going to hang you out to dry. The right answer is to plow the kid and then sue the parents for damage to your car.

Re:Still killed though

[gumbi west]

Read, humans agree with humans in the trolley problem.

So Much Money - No Fair Trial

[BrendaEM]

I doubt most courts could give a fair and impartial trial--with so much money at stake.

Re:Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahaha, just NO.

Re:Still killed though

[cyn1c77]

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.

"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."

Re:Still killed though

[lgw]

You might want to have the batteries replaced in your sense of humor.

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

anybody know why the AIs all suddenly started to accelerate and steer?

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds acceleration is prudent and profitable

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

Good, poor people are cheap to replace.

Re:Still killed though

[Joce640k]

If there is a potential to crash into someone/something it breaks.

It breaks down, the wheels fall off....? What? How does it break?

Re: Still killed though

[cyber-vandal]

bake hard

Quickly making a sponge cake to lessen the impact damage?

Re: Clearly of lower caste

[Anonymous Coward]

( ÍÂ ÍoeÊ- ÍÂ) orly?

under the table

[Reverend Green]

How much do you suppose Uber had to pay out to get the boss cop to exonerate their robot? Bet there'll be a lotta lawyers and coppers shopping at the Tesla dealership next week...

Cardboard Crash Re:Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

You might find this interesting... it poses an ethical question assuming self driving cars will be able to analyse an accident scenario and decide among various outcomes.. down to including insurance costs etc.

http://www.metronews.ca/news/v...

The article above is informative but if you prefer, skip to the trailer for the "game" ( it was presented at Sundance ):
https://vimeo.com/150956968

Re: Still killed though

[mapkinase]

Humans should be nowhere near the car traveling at 70 mph, and vice versa.

Re: Still killed though

[mapkinase]

Breaking and swerving simyltaneously sometimes lead to additional probability of sliding

autonomous vehicles 60 times worse than human

[bingoUV]

You are intentionally comparing uncomparable data ? Or you don't understand elementary statistics ?

In 2015, over 5,000 pedestrians were killed by collisions with cars in the U.S.

3 trillion miles driven by human drivers in the US in 2016. Suppose it is slightly lower or roughly the same for 2015 - that is one pedestrian killed every 600 million miles in 2015.

Autonomous vehicles : 1 pedestrian killed per 10 million miles driven. Autonomous vehicles are clearly 60 times worse. If you opine that data is insufficient until autonomous vehicles complete a trillion miles - I would not disagree except to say that you don't get to opine autonomous vehicles are any safer than human driven ones.

Most of those 10 million miles have been supervised by a professional human, and most of the 3 trillion miles by human drivers have been unsupervised by a(nother) human. So autonomous vehicles themselves deserve much lower credit for the safety their 60 times worse records show.

Re:autonomous vehicles 60 times worse than human

[BradleyUffner]

You can't make that argument with a single data-point.

Re:autonomous vehicles 60 times worse than human

[bingoUV]

And you can make this statement without reading my post ?

If you opine that data is insufficient until autonomous vehicles complete a trillion miles - I would not disagree except to say that you don't get to opine autonomous vehicles are any safer than human driven ones.

Re:autonomous vehicles 60 times worse than human

[Anonymous Coward]

And its not like uber wouldn't cut corners in their development. A lot of other manufactures could have much safer or much more dangerous SDC software as well.

Re:Entitled pedestrians or Blame the Victim

[Phillip2]

Why do we assume that our cities should be places for cars and motor transport? Why do we assume that it's okay to drive at lethal speeds routinely? Frankly, even if you drive safely, you are still contributing to the hidden massacre caused by pollution (in the UK that's about 40,000 deaths per annum, or 10 times the numbers killed by motor traffic).

Still, it's easier to blame pedestrians, so let's stick with that rather than asking the difficult questions of why we think its okay for so many people to die every year.

Re:Still killed though

[thegarbz]

Neither a programmer nor a car is deciding if it hits 2 3 4 or 1 person.

Interestingly neither are humans. Anyone who thinks that humans attempt to make a rational choice during an emergency situation has never been in the situation before. People at best slam on the break and try to avoid hitting something. Rarely if ever are they even able to register if that something is a child or a deer.

I remember slamming on my breaks one day to avoid a wallaby which jumped out from behind a car. My wonderful passenger armed with all the hindsight in the world smugly said that it was illegal to swerve avoid wildlife. Reality: The fact it was wildlife didn't even register until the car was nearly stopped.

Re:Humans and AI.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem imho is that some idiot companies in the USA wanted to reinvent "self driving" technology instead of either partnering or buying european know how.

There is plenty of American know how to partner with or buy, but Tesla and Uber thinks that they know better than those with experience.

Well, from what I've heard Uber will shut down their self-driving project so there is always that.

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

Truth, but I will never meet someone like your mamma!

Re:Still killed though

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Re:Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

What if it kills something we eat like a cow?

This happened to a friend of mine.
He was driving in a rented car through Brazil, and hit a cow. Stopping was poor advice, as the inhabitants of the village surrounded him. Some of them had guns, and were angry. He was Canadian and did not speak Portuguese. He was explaining the theory of insurance and police reports of accidents required by the rental. When a gun was put into a place that it would hit him if discharged, he offered US$50; we used to carry US$ because it was cheaper than CDN$ to change. They treated him like a long-lost son afterwards (he could have had any of their daughters). However, he got out of the place as quickly as he could in the car - luckily it could drive. He discovered that the car rental company took his word on the wreck, and just charged the repair costs to his AmEx.

How Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Typically the police say "it would be inappropriate to comment on an active investigation".

How much money was this doofus paid by Uber to issue this uselsss wishy-washy statement. It's only purpose is to keep the Uber share price buoyant.

Re:"came from the shadows?" what? No LiDAR?

[Anonymous Coward]

""Shadows" can simply mean "obscured from view,"" - no, it can't. I've never heard anybody use "shadows" to mean "obscured from view". They are two different things. You could be sunbathing in direct sunlight behind a wall and be "obscured from view", it has nothing to do with "shadows" whatsoever.

Re: Humans and AI.

[Freischutz]

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 stupid? They have libraries of millions of scenarios, both simulated and real recorded events, which they use for training and testing. It is unlikely that you are going to think of anything new that isn't already handled.

I think he is questioning the state of current AI technology rather than trying to insult you and AI engineers. If all these scenarios were already 'handled' and considering that this car can effectively see in the dark with it's LiDAR and night vision cameras, you'd think that this Uber cab would have spotted that woman, identified the threat she posed, slowed down and then stopped in response rather than running her over. Clearly something is not quite as advanced and 'handled' in the world of self driving cars as you'd have us believe.

Re:Still killed though

[bingoUV]

hit the brakes. And SDCs are FAR better at that

Really ? So why do humans manage to kill only one human every 600 million miles driven ? And the "Artificial Intelligence" unleashed upon various cities managed to kill 1 human within 10 million miles driven - many of them overseen by yet another human to override the stupid AI if necessary ?

The "rare corner cases" are not interesting to you because you don't understand them.

NTSB was fast

[sphealey]

The National Transportation Safety Board usually takes a minimum of a year to complete an investigation with as many complexities and contributing factors as this one; they must have put in unbelievable effort to get the investigation done and the report written in less than 36 hours.

Re:NTSB was fast

[Anonymous Coward]

And how many bribes did Uber pay to make that happen?

I doubt they were even caught off guard, they must have planned for this happening all along.

Re: Wow what a coincidence!

[bingoUV]

What kind of simpleton freaks out about one pedestrian killed in the entire history of self-driving cars?

Human drivers : 30 trillion miles driven in last decade, 50,000 pedestrians killed.

Self-driving cars : 10 million miles driven in last decade, 1 pedestrian killed.

Humans 60 times better than machines restrained by humans from killing pedestrians.

Re:Still killed though

[angel'o'sphere]

Sad story. We learn in driving school to only break and not swerve ... but even then you can be partly guilty when one crashes into you from the rear.

Reminds me about a friend of mine who came late to a party ... brought by an ambulance. He had a collision on his motorbike with a wild boar. The bike was a complete loss and he was pretty bruised.

Next morning a score of hunters went out to find the boar and shoot it (assuming it would be heavily wounded and would be suffering) ... they found lots of blood traces and skin but never the animal ... it seems it also only got a bit bruised.

Re:Still killed though

[angel'o'sphere]

By pushing the breaks ...

If that is incorrect english, correct it, instead of trying to make a smart comment. After all your comment looks pretty retarded to me.

Re:Still killed though

[angel'o'sphere]

Understandable, I actually never had an encounter with wildlife on the road.
Only saw them on the meadows or in the trees besides the road.

The only nearly accident was a bird of prey that nearly crashed into my windshield. No idea what it saw there and was trying to catch. But with far over 100km/h on the highway that probably could have ended very nasty for me.

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh whatever. I put those shits in their place all the time. Come at me with a cinder block and you're going in the dirt, bloody. Cyclists are subhuman vermin. I cheer every time one gets killed.

Re:Still killed though

[Joce640k]

I looked up "break" in the dictionary and found a verb.

break brÄk/ verb

        1. separate or cause to separate into pieces as a result of a blow, shock, or strain. "the rope broke with a loud snap"
        2. interrupt (a continuity, sequence, or course). "the new government broke the pattern of growth"

https://encrypted.google.com/s...

How do I push one?

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. There is no super deep ethical questions here. Itâ(TM)s just greed and rushing to market with no government oversight.
These self driving systems should be more human than human. Why was this car not outfitted with IR detection to see the women in the road REGARDLESS of lighting!

Re:Still killed though

[CrimsonAvenger]

By pushing the breaks ...

If that is incorrect english, correct it, instead of trying to make a smart comment.

Okay. The word you were looking for is "brakes". English has a lot of homonyms, which are differentiated in writing by spelling...

Re: Still killed though

[TheMeuge]

No, kind of like a gun kills its victims.

Re: Still killed though

[TheMeuge]

That's why it's imperative that we ban humans.

Re:Wow what a coincidence!

[ceoyoyo]

And this is relevant to what the OP said, or the article, how?

Re:Still killed though

[angel'o'sphere]

You push the brake with your foot.
Some people call it "slam" though.

Re:Still killed though

[angel'o'sphere]

Thank you :D

The smart ass is still harassing me with stupid comments, like "look what I found in the dictionary about 'break'" instead of pointing out, I made a typo.

I hate stupid people that think they are smart.

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to be that person, but a typo is when you type it wrong, not when you don't know about the rule.

Re:Still killed though

[dfghjk]

A computer does NOT have to be programmed on what is acceptable to kill just like drivers don't have to think that way. Furthermore, the word "kill" is inherently inflammatory in this context. A car is not programmed to kill and your claim is absurd on its face.

It is not acceptable to "kill" a dog or a cow nor will a car even detect a spider. A car will avoid collisions always but cannot avoid them when put in a no-win situation, just like human drivers.

Re: Wow what a coincidence!

[fluffernutter]

Ok so if I promise you a bridge, will you give me $10,000 now? Because that's basically what the "self driving will save lives" promise is.

Re:Still killed though

[fluffernutter]

Then a reduction needs to be demonstrated. They aren't doing that by hitting pedestrians so soon in the game.

Re:"came from the shadows?" what? No LiDAR?

[wisnoskij]

It's probable that these cars are just not even looking to the sides in that way. They likely do not track all pedestrians close enough to be a problem like a human driver, and just assume that anything not right in front of them can be ignored for the most part. I don't think image recognition is really at the state where a car can have a live understanding of its surroundings in this way. And predictive pathing sounds like it is probably hard enough that they just didn't want to spend the effort.

A human can see another walking in some direction and deduce what their intentions are. A car is not going to see the worn down grass path indicating a crossing point. It is not going to use predictive psychology if its sensors are turned in that direction.

It is likely closer to: if(At this time there are no obstacles in front of me) Drive

Re:Still killed though

[fluffernutter]

That's not really the point though. A computer is not a human. They have a chance to program the choice in a computer, unlike a human. So what are they programming?

Re:Still killed though

[dfghjk]

Unless the squirrel and the child are the same size, the answer to this is pretty straightforward. Furthermore, a squirrel is less predictable. Behavior and size will dictate this every time regardless of the value you place on the respective lives. Teach your child not to run in front of cars, problem solved.

Regarding the 4 lives vs 1, it is unlikely that an AI would encounter this hypothetical in a context where its programming would be able to make a difference, however one could argue that it could "choose" to "kill" all 5 and that would be acceptable since that car iwould not be the cause of the accident in any case.

The responsibility to avoid these situations lies with the people who cause them, not with the computers that can't solve them. It's not the train that's to blame when a person jumps in front of it.

Re:Wow what a coincidence!

[fluffernutter]

Somehow this girl managed to be totally invisible to the car. That doesn't happen in a road; sure people get partially obscured by other vehicles and traffic controls and the like but they have been designed not to obscure vision. It is important to know why the car didn't see the girl.

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a great way to monetize! Buy the Super Life Value subscription so Uber cars weigh your life more favorably!

Re: Still killed though

[DontBeAMoran]

Rich people rarely have any skills, so they're much lower on the priority list.

Re:Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

Murderer!

Re:Still killed though

[gnick]

If the one person is more important than the other four...

The problem where you have to decide whether to let a train run straight and kill 5 people or switch the track so that it only kills 1 becomes more complicated when that one person is the president and the 5 people are his bodyguards. My guess is that passenger safety outranks jaywalker safety, but I'll bet a lot of situations are covered by "panic and brake".

Re:Still killed though

[gnick]

Squirrels are fine. You could blow a tire on a bunny.

LOL the AI just followed procedure!

[Anonymous Coward]

This should be assessed as if a human was driving the car.

Re:"came from the shadows?" what? No LiDAR?

[sl3xd]

It’s profoundly unwise to attempt for a company to bribe the police in the US. Given the NTSB is involved, it would be exponentially worse of an idea.

The NTSB’s standard faire is investigating airline accidents, and are used to far higher stakes than a mere traffic collision.

Re:Still killed though

[be951]

Those are valid ethical questions

I wouldn't say that. At least not in the near term. Currently, the programming or "AI" we are talking about can't distinguish between a living thing and an inanimate object. We've even seen cases where they have difficulty distinguishing between a large white object and empty space (or perhaps a close vs. distant object). If it sees something in its path, it will stop. If something enters its path in less than its current stopping distance, it should brake and attempt to steer away from the object if there is a clear path. If there is no clear path, it should just attempt to stop.

So, what about in the future when the machine is smart enough to distinguish between a person, a dog, a trash can, churches, lead, a duck, whatever? It might not be an issue at that point. With that much intelligence in the machine, it should have much better predictive ability and much greater ability to process larger amounts of incoming sensor data. Meaning it can have more and/or better sensors that can see farther outside the vehicle's path and process the data more accurately to estimate whether something outside its path is likely to move into the path, which could necessitate decreasing speed in case it has to stop, or changing lanes if it seems likely (perhaps even slightly) that a vehicle/pedestrian/whatever will move into the SDC's current lane.

Re:"came from the shadows?" what? No LiDAR?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or it could be that he is saying, "Had a human been driving, they'd have hit her too."

Re:Still killed though

[thegarbz]

So what are they programming?

Stop in case of obstacle. Change lanes if clear. That is what they have been programming from the start and that is precisely the best outcome. The other possible scenarios are littered with a stupendous amount of variables that make programming them impossible.

Point is that this isn't a case of ethics, it's a case of best normal response. If that response involves killing a family with 5 children while the elderly person in the car survives in order to claim that there was an ethical problem you need to first prove that the decision wasn't the best course of action which is impossible to do given the variables involved.

I've seen this framed as a "protect the driver" vs "protect the pedestrians" but the reality is the former simply isn't possible. Any action that puts the former in threat involves a whole lot of variables that are impossible to predict: e.g. do you swerve to avoid one child at the expense of the driver in the car and how can the car tell the difference between hitting a parked car as a result (the protect the pedestrians route) vs hitting a car full of children (same scenario as protect the driver but with a now even worse outcome than just running over the single child in the first place).

What we program is what we can control: Stop. Change lanes (on your side of the road only) if its safe to do so. Its exactly how existing collision avoidance systems have been programmed thus far and these have already saved an incredible number of lives.

Re:Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

How much is the AI insensitivized to hit the squirrels though?

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

You're entirely right. This is probably a net safety win.

My concern with it, though, has always been that a human knows that a dog standing on the sidewalk can become a dog in the road in 2 seconds and it should be given a wider clearance and slow down a bit.

A garbage can on the curb on a windy day is just as much of a potential hazard as a garbage can in the road.

And a human might have known that there was no visibility if a biker with plastic bags decides to step into the road.

I think overall, driverless cars are going to be a huge boon to safety, especially at night in the suburbs and rural areas where bars are far away and taxis are limited. But this is a hard problem, and we shouldn't stop at "good enough".

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

Version 1 won't. Version 12, post "the s or driving massacre at _______" definitely will.

Thinking it through like an INTJ ...

[FreedomFirstThenPeac]

This incident suggests we should start a 10 year transition during which:

* Self-driving cars are required to have three green flashing lights, front and both sides (LED green)

* Newly produced human driven cars are required to have purple flashing lights, same configuration (LED purple)

* By 2025, everyone will be driven nuts by the flashing lights, and we'll all figure out how to ride bikes while wearing pajamas on our way to the broom factories.

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because humans are allowed to drive without IR vision. And it's just one more system you'd have to calibrate that could screw up.

But she walked out in front of t he car. IR won't help that.

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

Given 210 million licensed drivers and 13,500 average miles per driver, and 37,500 traffic deaths per year, you end up wityh something like 75 million miles per death, not 600.

One death in 10 million miles is probably reasonable given some statistical variance.

But you never had any math classes beyond high school algebra, so alarmism.

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

and when the autonomous car has a bug or has been hacked to speed up and steer into people....what then?

Re: Still killed though

[bingoUV]

With your limited brain capacity, try to get simpler data .

Pedestrians killed (remember the topic being discussed) : over 5000 per year. https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehic...

Miles driven : over 3 trillion per year. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se...

Demand back your money from your "algebra" classes. Because they admitted ineligible students like you who failed arithmetic.

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

Now you're just being silly.

Re:Still killed though

[fluffernutter]

No, when you have every opportunity to make the choice before it happens then it IS a case of ethics. Perhaps the AI is too simplistic for that kind of reasoning, in which case it is too early to have automated cars on public roads.

Re:Humans and AI.

[Anonymous Coward]

When walking, riding a bike, and riding a motorcycle I always try to make eye contact with drivers coming up on me that could cause me problems. I think having someone behind the wheel who isn't in control of the vehicle is particularly dangerous for this reason. I can look someone in the eye to make sure they see me, and assume that means I am OK to do something when the vehicle really has no idea.

I really think that cars need a clear indication to traffic when they are being controlled automatically verse when a human is actually steering.

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

And when you go crazy and start eating your own toes for some bizarre sexual gratification, then what?

Re:Entitled pedestrians or Blame the Victim

[max99ted]

Why do we assume that our cities should be places for cars and motor transport?

Because they are designed that way (at least in North America)

Re: Two more women have come forward about Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, this _is_ /. so it fits.

Cultural assumptions become deadly fuckups.

[stoatwblr]

Many people were expecting this to happen sooner or later.

Thanks to nearly a century of lobbying, the USA has a pedestrian-hostile culture and many states have car-centric laws (eg, jaywalking) which state that pedestrians must give way to cars except at designated crossing points and even then can only cross on a green light.

Growing up with these kinds of rules translate into assumptions that people generally don't walk ontot he road unexpectedly, which translate into robotic rules that people NEVER do that - meaning they're not setup to "expect the unexpected"

A human driver should have seen the pedestrian on the median some distance off and reacted (slowed down or changed lanes) even if she was stationary because someone standing there is likely to move. The robot just kept going thanks to cultural assumptions programmed into it that became rigid operating rules.

(Anticipating kids running onto the road is one of the classic tests for danger perception in many countries. Virtually all US drivers fail such tests badly, which is why trading your USA license in for any EU one generally involves at least a full license test.)

Sure, there shouldn't be a pedestrian on the freeway (or a deer either) but I'm not going to run him over. I sure as hell don't want my robot car to do so. Nor do I want it to ignore the 12 point stag, or cow on the road - one of those would come through the windscreen and kill the vehicle occupants. Ditto for the unexpected solo road cone. There might be a pothole behind it.

Arizona has to be one of the worst possible places to test self-driving vehicles. It's extremely car-centric, shitty and hostile for pedestrians and the number of edge/corner cases that happen is low, meaning the human supervisors get complacent. My bet is that the twit in the driver seat didn't even have eyes outside the cabin until after the poor woman in question was bouncing down the road.

Re:Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Unless self-driving cars are going to be capable of breaking the laws of physics, there will always be one 'HAS to hit someone' situation in real life--that of somebody stepping into the road immediately in front of the car, in a situation where it cannot brake fast enough and cannot switch lanes.

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor people are often more expensive to allow living.

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

It will avoid a collision uf it can. It can't know the outcome of the actions of others. For example, an incoming car is suddenly in it's lane. It will brake to reduce the force of the impact. If an adjacent Kane is empty, it may seek to get out of the way.

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, thought we were talking about fatalities, the relevant metric.

Ok, your example and concern is still meaningless. The woman was in a situation where a human driver would have also hit her.

But keep up the alarmist tone. Won't someone think of the edge cases!

Re:Still killed though

[Mike Van Pelt]

But sometimes they don't, then watch out.

http://lifeisaroad.com/stories...

Re:"came from the shadows?" what? No LiDAR?

[Outta_the_way_peck!]

They likely do not track all pedestrians close enough to be a problem like a human driver, and just assume that anything not right in front of them can be ignored for the most part.

As a runner and cyclist, I can assure you that most human drivers don't bother tracking pedestrians.

Re: Still killed though

[bingoUV]

The woman was in a situation where a human driver would have also hit her.

Ok, run your time machine, replace the car with a human driver at the same place and same time. Let us see.

If your time machine is broken, shut up about what would have happened and concentrate on what happened. And learn some math.

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

Its because of the law of averages. If you kill 1 person every 600 million miles SOMEWHERE in the distance you kill a person. If you stop counting after 10 million miles then you're not allowing the car to travel the other 590 million miles. In addition you need to take into account the average distance for that particular location or style of road and the driving conditions. Let make this a fair comparison before we shoot all the machines.

Punching it isn't the way to go

[rsilvergun]

my problem was I slowed down. e.g. speed limit was 45 and I dropped to 35. If I'd kept an even speed no harm or foul.

Re:Entitled pedestrians or Blame the Victim

[Talderas]

Pedestrians are willfully ignorant of the law and violate it under a potentially fatal misunderstanding of physics. In general, across the US the only place where pedestrians have the right of way over cars is at crosswalks at controlled intersections when signally indicates that a pedestrian may pass the cross walk. At all other places where it is legal for a pedestrian to cross a road they are almost always required to yield the right of way to traffic on the roadway. Another common law is that pedestrians are not allowed to cross a roadway between two controlled intersections where crosswalks exist.

70% of pedestrian fatalities do not occur at crosswalks. 34% of pedestrian fatalities involve a pedestrian with a BAC .08 or greater.

Re: Still killed though

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooh, we got a real tough guy here.

Re:Still killed though

[Krishnoid]

Or if you're living under a government that's figured out how to leverage social media, you can look for all that info in just one place.

Re:Wow what a coincidence!

[Ken McE]

fluffernutter:
But if that deer was in the middle of a wide open road at night, would you have missed it?

If I had seen it, I would have *attempted* to miss it. Where I live every adult has a when-I-hit-the-deer story. Sometimes people joke about putting tape over their deer whistles and going out to get them some venison, but really everybody knows it's a bad idea to hit them. You can pick up a thousand dollars worth of damage in just the time it takes to move your foot from one pedal to the other.

The point I was trying to make is that it does not look (at this point) like the car demonstrated what in humans would be called "Depraved Indifference", (which is what I think the poster ahead of me was concerned about,) it looks like it failed an impossible test.

There is of course a lot that we don't know yet. The N.T.S.B. report won't be out for a while yet, none of us have seen the dash cam video from the car, we don't know what the cars black box says, we don't have testimony from the human backup driver, we don't know if the bike with all the bags may have hidden the human being behind it, we don't know if she waited until it was right on top of her and then stepped out, etc, etc.

I do expect that some very bright engineers are going to go over the events with great care, and if it is possible to improve their algorithms I'm sure they will. Of course the engineers may be up against the limits of what physics permits, in which case the car will only be as good as an alert and attentive human would be.

Re:"came from the shadows?" what? No LiDAR?

[david_thornley]

If a ball comes into the street from behind a parked car, I assume there's a kid following, and react accordingly (probably slamming the brakes). AIs can do the same. If a person just comes out from behind a large vehicle at the exact wrong time, without any warning, I'm going to hit that person.

Re:Wow what a coincidence!

[Ken McE]

fluffernutter :
It is important to know why the car didn't see the girl.

It may have seen her, but assumed she would stay on the sidewalk, not jump out in front of it.

Re:Still killed though

[david_thornley]

I fail to see the moral quandary in that particular dilemma, at least with the current President.

The AI doesn't have to be programmed with any fancy criteria. It can brake as hard as possible. It can swerve if safe, if not not it can just brake.

Re:Still killed though

[david_thornley]

instead of trying to make a smart comment.

You must be new here.

Re:Still killed though

[david_thornley]

My father-in-law was hit by a deer once while driving to work.

Re: Wow what a coincidence!

[david_thornley]

Self-driving cars, when widely deployed, will save lives. (Otherwise, they won't be widely deployed.)

Re: Still killed though

[gweihir]

Same as when the nuclear power station has a bug and blows up: Boom. Then, if the industry is smart, it fixes that bug in future instances. (The nuclear industry is too greedy for that in many instances.) Also, system like these come with a lot of redundancy, so "one bug" will never do anything like that.

Re:Still killed though

[gnick]

at least with the current President

Well, yeah. I meant in principle. I'd be just fine with DJT stepping in front of a bus if it wasn't for Pence.

It can swerve if safe...

That's a big "if" with a TBD definition of "safe".

empathy

[nten]

Not all of us with reduced or absent empathy are psychopaths. That isn't even an APA diagnosis anymore, it is a pejorative. Antisocial personality disorder, the preferred term, requires multiple criteria, and diminished affect is just one.

Re:empathy

[Luckyo]

Thank for you for sharing the more politically correct interpretation. My medical education, as basic as it is is from 2000s. And I genuinely don't care about political correctness, so psychopathy it will remain.

Re: Still killed though

[bingoUV]

1. But what if the machine "driver" kill one pedestrian every 1 million miles, but the human "driving assistant" stops them initial 9 times and lets a pedestrian be killed the 10th time?

2. If data is not enough, one can't say that "machines are better drivers" either.

3. Nobody is "killing" all machines.

Re: Wow what a coincidence!

[c6gunner]

There are a number of problems with that reasoning:

1. You can't really draw statistical conclusions from a one off occurrence. The fact that one pedestrian was killed after 10 million miles does not mean that driverless cars kill 1 per 10 million miles. It could be 0.01 per 10 million, or it could be 10 per 10 million. We won't really know until we have a larger sample size.

2. It doesn't account for types of miles. AFAIK the majority of testing for driverless cars has occurred in city settings, while the majority of miles driven by humans are on highways. One of those environments is far more risky than the other.

3. It only looks at pedestrians and not at collisions as a whole. If the number of fatal crashes as a whole is significantly lower then driverless cars may still be safer, even if they do turn out to cause more pedestrian deaths.

Still, at least you're actually talking about the numbers, which is a big improvement over the OP. I'm fully willing to accept that driverless cars could currently be less safe than human drivers, but I'm not going to accept that conclusion based on the emotional ravings of some lunatic. Show me the numbers!

Re: Wow what a coincidence!

[bingoUV]

1. You can't really draw statistical conclusions from a one off occurrence.

That is fine*. But I see people here drawing conclusions that self-driving vehicles are far safer than human driven ones, from nothing other than their own imagination, or far less data, or misleading data like yourself. And I also see you not correcting most of the ones I noticed.

Your own conclusion is highly suspect. 15 pedestrians killed per day is not comparable at all to "entire history of self-driving cars" for anyone with a clue in statistics.

2. It doesn't account for types of miles

Yup, most self-driven car miles have been overseen by humans - so if they avoided accidents it is completely unknown how much credit can be given to the humans.

3. It only looks at pedestrians and not at collisions as a whole

In many places, self-driving cars are prohibited from carrying passengers** . Why would you ask for evidence that legally and likely cannot exist in large quantities if you have a clue about statistics ?

Show me the numbers!

That is a big problem. With the available data you have made misleading statements, what would you do with more numbers ?

The raw data is "proprietary". These vehicles would drive around, potentially killing people. The data we have is for miles driven with human oversight, potentially sanitized to remove their culpability.

This is absolutely worth freaking out. The burden of proof is on these companies about to profit from firing human drivers. One important strategy for nurturing a conspiracy theory is to invert the burden of proof. You are doing that nurturing, not the critics of self-driving vehicles here, like it may seem to shallow readers.

* : I mentioned as much in one of my posts where it was more directly relevant. I don't mind mentioning it again, except to conserve a semblance of readability by not flooding a post with disclaimers.

** : Even though the "driver" or "driving assistant" in this case looked more like a passenger.

Re:Still killed though

[MisterFnortner]

A good rule of thumb is never to swerve to avoid an animal. This should be the default. The risk to human life is too great, generally. The unpredictable always occurs. In individual situations, there may be enough time or sufficiently low risk that swerving reduces all damage. But the bias for not swerving should be so strong that leaving your lane abruptly should be a final choice, not an early or first choice. When you and those you share the road with finally die of old age, there will be enough gratitude among everyone to compensate for the odd blown tire.

Re:Still killed though

[gnick]

A good rule of thumb is never to swerve to avoid an animal.

There's a world of difference between a squirrel and a moose. If there was room, I'd absolutely swerve to avoid a moose.

Re:Still killed though

[david_thornley]

We can define "safe" conservatively here. If the car can determine that swerving would be safe, it can swerve.

Re:Still killed though

[gnick]

I'm not sure "safe" is as simple as you're trying to make it. A person steps out in front of you. Is it safe to swerve if it means hitting a dog? A curb? Is it safe to swerve into the oncoming lane if there's no traffic there? Maybe you're defining "safe" as not hitting anything or violating any road regulations, but a slightly more liberal definition could save lives.

Re: Still killed though

[geowar]

This is a BS ethnical question: If the driver (human or AI) has time to ponder ethnics then it has time to avoid both. Thereâ(TM)s a reason the speed limit in a parking lot isnâ(TM)t 65 mph.

Re:Still killed though

[david_thornley]

I'm thinking of "known to be safe", which presumably means if the area swerved into is going to be free of obstacles for a moment. That would rule out hitting the dog. Other definitions are possible, but that's the one I think is likely to be applied.

Re: Still killed though

[cogeek]

I can see you thought out a well reasoned and logical retort. To respond to your definition of "a BS ethical question" imagine if you will....

A self driving vehicle is driving on a highway with a posted speed limit sign of 65 mph. The vehicle is tracking and monitoring all traffic and pedestrians around it. A child on a bicycle darts out 10 feet in front of the vehicle. Next to the vehicle is another vehicle with an elderly person in it. An example of an ethical question in this case would be "do you swerve into the vehicle carrying the elderly person or run over the child?" The self-driving car has broken no laws at this point, but simple physics would prevent it from avoiding injuring or possibly killing one or the other.

And yes, parking lots don't have a speed limit of 65mph, but highways do. Once you've progressed past the point of sitting on daddy's knee to drive around the parking lot you'll learn these things.

Re:Still killed though

[Bing Tsher E]

So you are saying that when you sit in the drivers seat of a car, you have license to run over anybody in your way?

Re:Humans and AI.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

This is absolutely the kind of thing that AI can do today. You just need enough data to train a classifier for pedestrian propensity to walk into the road. With enough AI miles driven, there will be enough data. Google and Tesla almost certainly already have enough data for that. Though in this case the problem was likely visibility, so it's not really relevant.

The car failed

[Stan92057]

The CAR failed to see the pedestrian the car is 100% at fault if it was running in auto-drive mode. The driver was doing just what an auto-driveing car would have done NOT pay attention to the road the car is doing the driving and that's what the automaker advertised auto-driving abilities..the car failed badly. cops an idiot go back to writing tickets to people who don't stop at stop signs..or get some tech company to do that for ya too.