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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.
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.
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...
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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.