Uber's Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Uber's robotic vehicle project was not living up to expectations months before a self-driving car operated by the company struck and killed a woman in Tempe, Ariz. The cars were having trouble driving through construction zones and next to tall vehicles, like big rigs. And Uber's human drivers had to intervene far more frequently than the drivers of competing autonomous car projects. Waymo, formerly the self-driving car project of Google, said that in tests on roads in California last year, its cars went an average of nearly 5,600 miles before the driver had to take control from the computer to steer out of trouble. As of March, Uber was struggling to meet its target of 13 miles per "intervention" in Arizona (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), according to 100 pages of company documents obtained by The New York Times and two people familiar with the company's operations in the Phoenix area but not permitted to speak publicly about it. Yet Uber's test drivers were being asked to do more -- going on solo runs when they had worked in pairs. And there also was pressure to live up to a goal to offer a driverless car service by the end of the year and to impress top executives.

Comments

Pressured to proceed despite poor test results....

[hey!]

Why does that sound so familiar?

Oh, wait. I'm a software developer.

Self driving car hype

[Teckla]

Self driving cars are mostly hype. They're primarily self driving on very good, very clean, very well mapped roads only. Take them out of perfect conditions, and they fail miserably.

That being said, the technology is still cool, even though it has a long, long way to go. A lot of the technology could eventually be incorporated into normal everyday cars to help human drivers avoid accidents.

But the hype, at this point, is kind of out of control.

Re:Self driving car hype

[Rei]

Right. So it's perfectly okay for a "self driving car" to have a LIDAR that doesn't work, a radar that doesn't work, cameras that can't see at night and/or a neural net that doesn't work, and ultrasonic sensors don't work, and to have the "self driving car" rely on a person who's not been driving being suddenly instantly able to hop into "driving mode" during each of the once-in-every-1500-mile occurrences where the car tries to crash itself without warning. Got it! This is all totally okay.

Re:Self driving car hype

[toonces33]

A human driver would have seen her and not hit her.

Re:Self driving car hype

[aaarrrgggh]

Victim was already crossing the road, in the adjacent lane, as the car approached. The condition was caused by a bad self driving car that should apparently never been on the road.

That the root cause was someone jaywalking doesn't change the fact that jaywalking happens and is a predictable event. It also suggests that the car is inadequately prepared for avoiding hazards. (It also doesn't change the fact that when you don't have crosswalks at reasonable intervals people will improvise.)

Re: Self driving car hype

[bill_mcgonigle]

The problem with the hype is that high early expectations of perfection will drive fear which may lead to regulations that will ultimately cause more deaths. Give it ten years and this stuff will probably outperform human drivers, but watch one kid chase a ball out in front of a robot car and e.g. Utah will ban the technology.

Re:Self driving car hype

[AC-x]

And what if the obstacle was a fallen tree, or a large animal, or anything else that could be fatal to the car's occupants? I guess they shouldn't be so entitled to expect a self-driving car not to kill them either right?

Re:Self driving car hype

[fluffernutter]

It's not up to Uber or any self driving company to make stupidity a capital offense.

Re:Self driving car hype

[JonnyCalcutta]

Jaywalking doesn't even exist in the rest of the world. It is some weird concept spoken about in movies and TV shows from the US.

For example, in the UK we would call it 'crossing the road' and 'crossing the road' is not illegal (it is expected that pedestrians will use common sense). The idea that 'crossing the road' could be illegal is very strange to someone from the UK.

Re: Self driving car hype

[Anonymous Coward]

You apparently don't work in the industry. I do. The "hype" is to attract investors. It's purely for money. The actual timelines I've seen from the companies developing the sensors don't even suggest autonomous driving is possible in 10 years. There aren't any sensors that can detect common road obstacles, and there are no known solutions. A child is the road? Can't see it. This is by their own admission. Remember the time when a car crashed head on into a semi-truck? Can't see them either - they admitted that too. Couple that with the idea of human test drivers that think that they can take their eyes off the road, there will be accidents. The only reason why there aren't more accidents is very likely because humans prevent them by watching the road. The whole "testing" and stat reporting is very flawed, because it is still mainly humans preventing accidents. The way to improve "autonomous" stats, is to drive on the nice, straight, wide roads in Tempe. It's obvious why they drive on the roads here. I know the valley well. But these are over-glorified power-steering systems. Anybody today has a car that can do that. Hype indeed.

Re:Self driving car hype

[burtosis]

I agree. Look at how well lit the stretch of road is at night The camera view uber showed us was either purposefully darkened (just look at a histogram of a random frame or two), or the camera had an insufficient light sensitivity. The driver, had she not been texting but paying attention, would have had 5-6 seconds to do something. That said, I agree putting a human safety driver in the seat for 200 hours doing nothing except take over on a seconds notice is safety theater.

Re:Self driving car hype

[burtosis]

Worse, the scene was actually well lit to the point this should be vehicular homicide

Re:Self driving car hype

[Kjella]

Jaywalking doesn't even exist in the rest of the world. It is some weird concept spoken about in movies and TV shows from the US. For example, in the UK we would call it 'crossing the road' and 'crossing the road' is not illegal (it is expected that pedestrians will use common sense). The idea that 'crossing the road' could be illegal is very strange to someone from the UK.

Germany has the same rule, I think. Came as a surprise to us from Norway, but we crossed so far from traffic nobody fined us or anything. But then Germany is notorious for having rules for everything and actually sticking to them. It's kinda nice and incredibly frustrating at the same time, depending on what side of the stick you're on.

Re:Self driving car hype

[Bing Tsher E]

Or a toddler.

Which won't work here. We hate children on Slashdot.

Re:Self driving car hype

[Anonymous Coward]

Jaywalking doesn't even exist in the rest of the world. It is some weird concept spoken about in movies and TV shows from the US.

That's because it's an invented concept created by car companies to trick people into thinking that roads are only for cars and not for walking. No, seriously: the origin of the term comes from "jay drivers" and has to do with the fact that "jay" was 1900s American slang for effectively "idiot." Drivers of the time were frequently called "jay drivers" and were seen as a menace. After all, originally, there were very few cars (as they were expensive) and quite a lot of pedestrians and horses (as that's how people had moved around for millennia).

To combat this negative view of drivers, car companies invented "jay walker" and started heavily promoting it, trying to convince Americans that they were seriously stupid if they thought that roads were for people.

And, as you may be able to guess, they succeeded.

Re:Self driving car hype

[amiga3D]

And yet if a human had hit her they wouldn't have been judged to be at fault. Over 4000 pedestrians get killed and another 50,000 injured every year and many of those are because of their own error. The real question here is would it have made any difference if it had been a human driving the car. Most likely not. I personally have barely avoided killing an individual running on the side of the road in the dark. I managed to miss them by 2 or 3 feet and spent the next few miles running 20 mph below the speed limit looking for more fools running on a highway before dawn. Then I realized that I was going to kill someone else as impatient rush hour traffic blew by me in unsafe passing areas. Some people seem to have death wishes.

Re:Self driving car hype

[fluffernutter]

I think that's obvious, but it doesn't change the fact that self driving should be held to a standard where they can accommodate people doing stupid things, otherwise the whole line about saving lines is just blowing smoke. Defensive driving is a 'thing' for good reason and very little of it changes if a computer is driving. If you see something curious, you slow down. Simple?

Re:Self driving car hype

[goose-incarnated]

And yet if a human had hit her they wouldn't have been judged to be at fault.

Yes, they would. Drivers are routinely held to be responsible for hitting almost stationary objects in the middle of the road. That is irrelevant anyway. What's relevant is that the car did not see an almost stationary object in the middle of the road. That the object happened to be an old lady pushing a bike is irrelevant.

Re:Self driving car hype

[Knuckles]

Germany has the same rule, I think. Came as a surprise to us from Norway, but we crossed so far from traffic nobody fined us or anything. But then Germany is notorious for having rules for everything and actually sticking to them. It's kinda nice and incredibly frustrating at the same time, depending on what side of the stick you're on.

In Germany it depends, but is is not illegal to cross the road. The law is:

(3) Wer zu Fuß geht, hat Fahrbahnen unter Beachtung des Fahrzeugverkehrs zügig auf dem kürzesten Weg quer zur Fahrtrichtung zu überschreiten. Wenn die Verkehrsdichte, Fahrgeschwindigkeit, Sichtverhältnisse oder der Verkehrsablauf es erfordern, ist eine Fahrbahn nur an Kreuzungen oder Einmündungen, an Lichtzeichenanlagen innerhalb von Markierungen, an Fußgängerquerungshilfen oder auf Fußgängerüberwegen (Zeichen 293) zu überschreiten. Wird die Fahrbahn an Kreuzungen oder Einmündungen überschritten, sind dort vorhandene Fußgängerüberwege oder Markierungen an Lichtzeichenanlagen stets zu benutzen.

-- https://www.gesetze-im-interne...

Translation:
Someone walking on foot has to cross roadways, while heeding vehicle traffic, speedily on the shortest path perpendicular to driving direction. If the density of traffic, speed of traffic, visibility conditions, or the flow of traffic require it, a roadway must only be crossed at road intersections, at traffic lights, on the inside of markings, or at pedestrian crosswalks. If crossing the roadway at road intersections, any available pedestrian crossings or markings at traffic lights must be used.

I.e., you cannot simply cross just anywhere on a high-level road with dense, fast traffic (think Autobahn) or in really bad visibility like dense fog. But a road like in the accident video, even if it's dark, is just fine if there is no dedicated crossing nearby

Re:Self driving car hype

[Knuckles]

What's relevant is that the car did not see an almost stationary object in the middle of the road. That the object happened to be an old lady pushing a bike is irrelevant.

Exactly. And any modern non-autonomous car with "simple" collision avoidance system would have noticed. Dunno what Uber is doing, but it does not come as a surprise that it's Uber who are the most irresponsible and reckless

Re:Self driving car hype

[aaarrrgggh]

I can think of a few different kinds of Jaywalking: indifference by walker, convenience to the walker, indifference by planners, and just crossing the street when there is a reasonable break in traffic.

The indifference kind (think San Francisco) is really inexcusable. The convenience kind is a shame, but kind of reality-- going a couple blocks out of your way to cross at a marked intersection rather than an unmarked intersection can be a bit of a pain. In an area where there should be an expectation of walkability, I am happy to give it a pass.

The planning type of indifference -- especially pisses me off though. This is the type of crap that makes it nearly impossible to walk anywhere. I remember a planning commission actually *banning* sidewalks for some insane reason. The same concern holds true if you ignore natural pedestrian routes. If people need to go significantly out of their way, they will either not walk, or they will cross "illegally."

Re: Self driving car hype

[Lanthanide]

So Waymo being able to drive 5,600 miles without human intervention is just a lie then?

Re: Self driving car hype

[fluffernutter]

80% of driving is easy, 20% of it is full of a million edge cases like this one. Furthermore, edge cases like this are easily avoidable if you have a vested interest in choosing where and when to drive. Waymo could easily rack up 5600 miles and never hit an edge case. We only got elucidated on this one because of a bad test driver and it gave us a window into how bad the situation really is.

Re:Self driving car hype

[Phillip2]

Jaywalking has an interesting history actually. During the early days of the car manufacture, there were quite a few fatalities as a result of cars hitting pedestrians, to the point that the car industry got a lot of bad press.

So they got some heavy duty PR, invented a word "jaywalking", pushed this into the press, and lobbied intensely that it was all really the fault of the pedestrians. They managed to get it passed into law with one or two years effort. Very effective. Blame the victim.

The Uber video was a classic example.

Re: Self driving car hype

[aaarrrgggh]

What about this makes it an edge case? I appreciate most of driving (on a per-mile base) is keeping lane, following the speed limit, and not running into any other cars; and that this part is relatively trivial to manage. Detecting traffic signs/signals is the next increment, and defensive driving follows.

But, saying that a pedestrian at an unmarked crossing is an "edge case" I think belies what driving is.

I will accept a beach ball blowing across a highway as an edge case though.

Re: Self driving car hype

[Jeremi]

I call it an edge case because a person dressed in dark standing in a darkly lit section of road with an outcropping behind and choosing to walk into the path of the car is not a common event

Note that while the above is a difficult case for a human, there is really no excuse for LIDAR/Radar/Sonar sensors not to have detected this particular human. My suspicion is that we'll find out that the either some or all of those sensors weren't working properly on that car, or the car's software was inadequately tested and some sort of bug prevented it from reacting appropriately to its sensors' input. Really, "don't hit pedestrians, no matter what" should be the First Law of Automotive Robotics, and this car failed it badly.

Re:Pressured to proceed despite poor test results.

[Anonymous Coward]

What I'm shocked about is that, of all companies, Uber would make morally dubious decisions in its race to profit off of a new market. I mean, when have they ever acted like that before?

Corporate death penalty...

[aaarrrgggh]

Ok, so forcing them to liquidate might be extreme, but clearly there is some kind of regulatory framework missing here!

I hope the victim has some relatives that want to get rich though.

Re:Corporate death penalty...

[phantomfive]

The regulatory framework is there.......Arizona made regulations allowing them to do this. Clearly they didn't think deeply about the problem, they just trusted tech companies.

You want good? Or cheap?

[BeerCat]

Clearly, not all autonomous vehicles are the same.

It's very like camera - a cheap one and an expensive one will both offer "autofocus" and "zoom lens"

The cheap one will have 3 or 4 focus settings, while the expensive one will be continuous. The cheap one will have 2 or 3 zoom settings, while the expensive one will, again, be continuous.

So, Uber's cars look to be at the "what is the minimum that can make a car steer itself" end of the scale, and the Google ones are "have we missed anything off the long list of things that will help a car steer itself" end

Re:You want good? Or cheap?

[fluffernutter]

The problem is:
1) It is damn expensive to do it right, and
2) There is no standard method to prove if someone is doing it right before allowing them on public roads

Re: Nice company

[bill_mcgonigle]

Their mutual rating system actually does do just that. Get used to the gig economy - your 19th century factory model is going away.

Not just a jaywalker....

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Also, how many of us have had kids run out in front of us? I have. And if I weren't paying attention, the kid, his parents and I would have a very bad year. Who cares who fault it is: I was part of hurting someone.

And so what if someone was an "airhead" and stepped out in front of the car? Doesn't make it OK. The purpose of self-driving cars is to make the roads safer because the machines are supposed to be better than humans.

Re: Uber hatred turned political a long time ago

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a baldface fucking lie, and you know it. Uber has come under massive criticism from day 1 for shamelessly and egregiously breaking livery and employment laws in nearly every jurisdiction in which they have established themselves.

Now their half-baked AI implementation has killed someone, and you want to beg off criticism of blatant criminality as merely political grandstanding? These mobsters deserve every ounce of criticism they get regardless of who is in office.

Re:Uber hatred turned political a long time ago

[Junta]

When Uber started as a 'ride sharing app', ostensibly helping people coordinate carpooling where they were going to be going anyway, it was fine.

When it became "a taxi, but paying drivers less and trying to get out of the same regulations for no other reason than somehow being 'cooler' than taxi companies", a lot of deserved criticism came about.

Re:That's exactly what the parent said.

[AC-x]

If that machine is incapable of detecting and avoiding unexpected obstacles and that unexpected obstacles is less squishy than a human it could easily be the occupant of said machine that dies...

Re:Uber hatred turned political a long time ago

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Yes, because nobody had criticized Uber before. Projecting much?

Re:Pressured to proceed despite poor test results.

[complete loony]

Sounds like just about every failed IT project. Rush to market, ignore test failures, probably a thermocline of truth.

From what we've been hearing, somebody in the chain of command between the inattentive driver and the CEO, deliberately created this situation and should be charged with manslaughter.

Re:Uber hatred turned political a long time ago

[elrous0]

When it became "a taxi, but paying drivers less and trying to get out of the same regulations for no other reason than somehow being 'cooler' than taxi companies", a lot of deserved criticism came about.

If that's the case, then why isn't everyone piling on Lyft as well?

Re: Pressured to proceed despite poor test results

[Anonymous Coward]

Well then, stop using them. The only way for the market to punish this behavior is to stop using the service. But as we see time and time again, convenience, compliance, and human stupidity will allow them to succeed. We really are out worst enemies.

Re:Uber hatred turned political a long time ago

[stabiesoft]

Did you not even bother to read TFS? In the summary it quite clearly states the other self drive companies were achieving 5600 miles between interventions while uber could not meet it's 13 mile goal. Sounds to me like uber's system is just plain not ready. I'd even question 5600 miles. Once they get to 1 million I'd say they are there.

I think you are the one making this political.

Re:Pressured to proceed despite poor test results.

[sunking2]

This isn't an IT project though, it's the real world. Failed IT projects seldom costs lives, just money. This is what the app IT world needs to understand when moving into the real world of engineering. Rushing to market has real consequences.

Why set the bar so high

[monkeyxpress]

Self driving cars are mostly hype. They're primarily self driving on very good, very clean, very well mapped roads only. Take them out of perfect conditions, and they fail miserably.

But even a car that could drive under such conditions would be extremely useful. Take, for example, public buses. They just drive around the exact same route everyday, and the route in many places is upgraded with special lanes and signalling infrastructure to make their job easier. There is no reason why you couldn't start with replacing such bus routes in cities with moderate weather conditions. Over time a combination of roading infrastructure improvements (special lanes, intersection redesigns, beacons etc) and the tech getting better could easily expand out to cover the majority of vehicle uses in a city. Again, we do this for bicycles and buses, so why is it impossible to imagine it would make sense to do some road works to cater towards driver less cars?

Another example is motorway driving. Motorways are already an extremely controlled and regular environment. It would be great to have a driver less truck that can go door to door, but there is no reason why we can't start with depots built off the side of motorways where local human drivers pick up and drop off longhauled trailers. As for weather conditions guides in the road way and other navigation infrastructure could be added if these problems cannot be dealt with using lidar and cameras.

Yes, I agree that a car you can just dump into an unknown urban environment is a long long way off. But I don't understand the fascination with meeting this goal before driver less vehicles can be useful to us.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Uber hatred turned political a long time ago

[Applehu Akbar]

So Uber lags Waymo in self-drive? Microsoft has been getting away with being the laggard in operating systems for years, yet it still makes billions.

Re: Nice company

[Anonymous Coward]

What? The gig economy IS the 19th century factory model. Back then workers assembled at places and the bosses pointed out which got to work that day. No job security, bad wages, no insurance.

The gig economy is just a scam trying to fool people into believing that they are "freelancers" or "consultants" when they in fact are making slave wages working more hours than is legally allowed. A freelancer or consultant can set their own wage and negotiate on it. In the gig economy you have to accept whatever wage is offered, no negotiating allowed. And if someone made an app to act as a intermediary they get to rake in 30% or so off the top because you are their slave now.

I will never get used to the gig economy and hope that any civilized economy outlaws it. We already allows freelancers/independent contractors in todays economy, but that wouldn't make Uber and its' ilk any money, so off course they don't want that.

Re: Pressured to proceed despite poor test results

[hey!]

Someone is dead because of a faulty development process, which in turn is the result of a toxic business climate.

I suspect this happens more often than we know; it's just seldom that you can connect the dots so readily.

Re:Dubious

[Whorhay]

Given that Waymo has cars that go 5600 miles on average between human interventions, and Uber was only averaging 13, I'd say your being alarmist. If I had a Waymo car I could in theory get away with intervening less than twice a year on average. What all of this has shown is that Uber isn't competent or responsible enough to be working in this field.

Re: Pressured to proceed despite poor test results

[plopez]

It happens all the time which is why I am finally running away screaming fro software.

Re: I've seen that video

[Known Nutter]

Give GP a brake. It's a doggy dog world out there.

Re:Uber hatred turned political a long time ago

[Kjella]

Waymo claims 5600m between interventions. Maybe it's true, but until they are forced to release some data (say, via a fatality) I see no reason for believing a claim made by a company spokesperson.

It's public because California's regulations require it to be public. 352454 miles driven, 63 disengagements = once every 5600 miles. Read the report (pdf) yourself.

Re:Uber hatred turned political a long time ago

[complete loony]

It's also likely that those 63 interventions were because the car was *too* cautious. For example, around construction zones.

I remember hearing one anecdote. Workmen were moving around their vehicle, inside the border of traffic cones. The car was predicting that they might step out in front, so it just didn't move.

Re: I've seen that video

[vtcodger]

Naw, probably the police just assessed the situation as they would for a human driver. Nighttime. Pedestrian in a place a pedestrian shouldn't have been. An unimpaired human driver might well have been unable to avoid an accident and very likely wouldn't have been held responsible. BUT. The damn car seemingly SHOULD have done better than it did. Disturbingly it never seemed to try to avoid the accident even though it might have been too late to do so by the time the pedestrian was recognized. THAT seems very bad.

Conclusion: Probably not really ready for prime time.