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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.
Much like a river kills the person jumping in it?
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
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.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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.
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.
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.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
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.
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.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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?
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.