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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.
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.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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.