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Waymo CEO Expresses Confidence Its Cars Wouldn't Have Killed Elaine Herzberg (washingtonpost.com)
theodp writes: Nearly a week after an autonomous Uber SUV claimed the first life in testing of self-driving vehicles, The Washington Post reports that Waymo CEO John Krafcik says he is confident its cars would have performed differently under the circumstances (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), since they are intensively programmed to avoid such calamities. "I can say with some confidence that in situations like that one with pedestrians -- in this case a pedestrian with a bicycle -- we have a lot of confidence that our technology would be robust and would be able to handle situations like that," Krafcik said Saturday when asked if a Waymo car would have reacted differently than the self-driving Uber.
In explaining its since-settled lawsuit against Uber last year, Google charged that Uber was "using key parts of Waymo's self-driving technology," and added it was "seeking an injunction to stop the misappropriation of our designs." In announcing the settlement of the lawsuit last month, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi noted, "we are taking steps with Waymo to ensure our LIDAR and software represents just our good work." A Google spokesperson added, "We have reached an agreement with Uber that we believe will protect Waymo's intellectual property now and into the future. We are committed to working with Uber to make sure that each company develops its own technology. This includes an agreement to ensure that any Waymo confidential information is not being incorporated in Uber Advanced Technologies Group hardware and software." All of which might prompt some to ask: was Elaine Herzberg collateral damage in Google and Uber's IP war? "I want to be really respectful of Elaine [Herzberg], the woman who lost her life and her family," Krafcik continued. "I also want to recognize the fact that there are many different investigations going on now regarding what happened in Tempe on Sunday." His assessment, he said, was "based on our knowledge of what we've seen so far with the accident and our own knowledge of the robustness that we've designed into our systems."
In explaining its since-settled lawsuit against Uber last year, Google charged that Uber was "using key parts of Waymo's self-driving technology," and added it was "seeking an injunction to stop the misappropriation of our designs." In announcing the settlement of the lawsuit last month, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi noted, "we are taking steps with Waymo to ensure our LIDAR and software represents just our good work." A Google spokesperson added, "We have reached an agreement with Uber that we believe will protect Waymo's intellectual property now and into the future. We are committed to working with Uber to make sure that each company develops its own technology. This includes an agreement to ensure that any Waymo confidential information is not being incorporated in Uber Advanced Technologies Group hardware and software." All of which might prompt some to ask: was Elaine Herzberg collateral damage in Google and Uber's IP war? "I want to be really respectful of Elaine [Herzberg], the woman who lost her life and her family," Krafcik continued. "I also want to recognize the fact that there are many different investigations going on now regarding what happened in Tempe on Sunday." His assessment, he said, was "based on our knowledge of what we've seen so far with the accident and our own knowledge of the robustness that we've designed into our systems."
I'm sure this statement is made in absence of any bias or potential for personal gain.
There are no stupid questions, just stupid people.
Waymo killed Elaine by forcing Uber to take out the parts that worked..
is how good the damage control from Uber was. They got videos out fast with pitch black cameras that made it look like she came out of nowhere. Several days later videos popped up from locals showing the stretch of road was actually well lit. Even now I'm having a trough time finding those videos. There are stories now saying Uber's cars are behind Waymo, but I'm only just now seeing stories that say Uber should have avoided the crash. The first several /. posts about this story were riddled with comments from folks saying the crash was unavoidable and the pedestrian was completely at fault.
/. are going to end up assuming this was just an unavoidable accident caused by a crazy old homeless woman (a fact that was emphasized in many stories I read). I can't help but think we're being manipulated to think these cars are safer than they really are.
I think Some of this is the media at large siding with corporations to our detriment. The big outlets (CNN, Fox, MSNBC) have long since stopped covering the story on their front page websites, even as a single link. There's a little bit of left wing press, but I heard about those videos showing how well lit the road was from a post on Ars Technical that was on my feed.
Based on this I'm guessing that most people who don't read
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NO MORE DEATHS AT THE HANDS OF SELF DRIVING CARS! GET THEM OFF THE ROADS!
You don't actually give a good goddamn about deaths due to cars, or you'd be agitating to get rid of cars period. We do have alternatives, like PRT. Self-driving cars will kill people, but human-driven cars kill people.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Maybe that is something we should tackle first
Maybe there is more than one department / corporation in the world and we should tackle multiple problems at the same time.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2...
After looking at that it's pretty obvious Uber's video is very very misleading.
Uber cars can't manage 13 miles between interventions. Whoever is doing the debugging must be buried under tens of thousands of reports.
THAT is why they are to blame. An automatic car can mess up. It will happen once in a blue moon, and someone will die. Too bad, but that is the price of progress and you cannot really blame anyone, you can just compensate the family.
Sending cars out on the road that demonstrably cannot function is different. That is reckless manslaughter. There is no way that Dara Khosrowshahi was unaware of the (lack of) performance of the Uber cars. He needs to be prosecuted.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
There is a difference between saying "This ship is unsinkable" and "This ship would not have been sunk by that particular iceberg."
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
While the way that was expressed was moderately reprehensible, the underlying facts aren't wrong. You can't hold self-driving vehicle technology to a higher standard than human drivers yet. Now, how visible Ms. Herzberg was to a human eye is a matter of debate. A human eye can discern far more contrast differences than a camera does, so whether she was visible to a human eye while in the shadow is questionable. There can be no real dispute, though, that she was careless, didn't watch where she was going, and would have been difficult to avoid even if she was visible in the shadow. In short, her death may not have been preventable with an alert human driver at any skill level.
If that is the case, then any amount of added safety by a self driving vehicle is just gravy.
As for Google's statements, they are not necessarily wrong either. They are essentially saying "If Uber hadn't stolen our tech then misapplied it then Ms. Herzberg would be alive today", and that is totally fair game. If someone stole my invention, then because not inventing it they didn't understand the tech well enough to use it properly or to its potential and that got someone killed, I'd be angry too. And rightfully so.
WE can now do something to prevent it from happening again... with human drivers that's not really possible.
[($)]
The Uber cars have a failure every 13 miles. Normally when we talk about self-driving cars on /., we point out that a safety driver isn't very useful because they just can't avoid the boredom. If you look at pools, most lifeguard only work 30-45 minutes without a break just for this reason. The Waymo drivers can probably barely stay awake. But the Ubers cars are rolling sarcophagi with a failure every 13 miles. If I were the "safety" driver on those death traps I'd be white knuckling the steering wheel and eyes glued to the road.
Google's self-driving car technology has been around longer and probably done far more miles than Uber's tech ever has and we have yet to hear of them running over a Pedestrian. Even Tesla's Super-Cruise technology despite it missing trucks and killing the driver hasn't run over Pedestrians yet. Plus the statistics that the makers are required to provide show that the Uber self-driving tech has an alarmingly large number of required Driver interventions. Heck it was speeding to begin with! Plus we know Uber's in a rush to get this tech to work because the hope to IPO in about a year so at the end of the day, can't say I'm surprised they'd be first to kill a Pedestrian.