Slashdot Mirror
Human Driver Could Have Avoided Fatal Uber Crash, Experts Say (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The pedestrian killed Sunday by a self-driving Uber SUV had crossed at least one open lane of road before being hit, according to a video of the crash that raises new questions about autonomous-vehicle technology. Forensic crash analysts who reviewed the video said a human driver could have responded more quickly to the situation, potentially saving the life of the victim, 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg. Other experts said Uber's self-driving sensors should have detected the pedestrian as she walked a bicycle across the open road at 10 p.m., despite the dark conditions. Herzberg's death is the first major test of a nascent autonomous vehicle industry that has presented the technology as safer than humans who often get distracted while driving. For human driving in the U.S., there's roughly one death every 86 million miles, while autonomous vehicles have driven no more than 15 to 20 million miles in the country so far, according to Morgan Stanley analysts. "As an ever greater number of autonomous vehicles drive ever an ever greater number of miles, investors must contemplate a legal and ethical landscape that may be difficult to predict," the analysts wrote in a research note following the Sunday collision. "The stock market is likely too aggressive on the pace of adoption."
Based on the video I saw, she was practically invisible until she entered the car's headlight beams. The road was poorly lit, and she had dark clothing, no reflectors on the bike and no lights.
I don't see how I could have stopped or swerved in time to avoid her in that brief window.
Believe me, I don't care for self-driving cars at all, but I have to remain unbiased here because I know I would have hit her in the same situation.
Be safe out there, people. Put lights on your bike or yourself when you're out there on the road at night.
raises new questions about autonomous-vehicle technology.
No, it raises further questions about Uber's poor, perhaps criminally negligent, implementation. In the last year Uber's had more, and more serious, accidents than I think every other driverless program combined. Google/Waymo has been testing in San Francisco - not Tempe - for years with nothing comparable.
.: Semper Absurda
I actually watched the set of videos and there's two major things to note:
First of all the safety or backup driver appeared to be distracted. Although in all fairness if you're suppose to sit there hours on end without taking an active roll at driving this is probably going to happen. This is why google believes in all or nothing approach, half-baked systems are going to get people killed. While this wouldn't save the cyclist from being hurt, quick reflexes may have saved it from being fatal.
Second, LIDAR works by projecting a super high speed panning laser that maps out the 3D spacial environment. It causes the computer to produce a 3D model of the surroundings. This should NOT be affected by the dark! Unless Uber decided not to use LiDAR which would be a dangerous move. If they're using LiDAR the only explanation is the AI image recognition system failed to recognize the cyclist which is weird considering an object that BIG moving should register as a collision threat. Google has noted that in their own self-driving program the computer can sometimes panic over a flying piece of newspaper while a normal driver wouldn't because it looks like an object heavy enough to threaten the car.
But the other question would be why didn't she see the oncoming vehicle. It had its lights on and even coming around a bend, the light it threw onto the roadway would be visible long before the car itself appeared.
Even if one party in a collision is not at fault, that doesn't mean they couldn't have avoided it.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Note, the place is apparently a pedestrian crossing zone just without zebra stripes. You see the marking if you check Google Streetview.
Kudos to everyone in the last story who commented LiDAR being able to see the pedestrian and the crash being totally avoidable. Comments have also been more accurate than the news in the recent Intel and AMD (non-story) about security.
The fact that the highly moderated comments is more accurate almost any news outlet is why I keep coming back. That and I'm *still* looking for Natalie Portman's brand of hot grits.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Clearly we need more people to die before the statistics can be compared.
Yes, that's why night vision devices use extracted human eyeballs instead of optoelectronic components.
Ezekiel 23:20
If there is no need to steer, the attention wanders and it is impossible to stay alert. This was discovered almost 100 years ago in the railroads. The engineer had the exacting task of watching for grades and monitoring speed, especially those days with weak steam locomotives that responded very slowly. Still they would get bored and fall asleep. They invented the dead man's treadle. The engineer must keep it pressed, or the locomotive will stop. Even now there are various techniques to check and keep the engineers alert on railroads.
With that much of history, it is stupid for autonomous cars to just leave the driver there. They should have active devices that do challenge and response to make sure the human operator stays alert. Else it is a waste to put a human being there.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It looks like a crossing (and it certainly should be) but it's actually not:
streetview
Real life is overrated.