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Uber Vehicle Saw But Ignored Woman It Struck, Report Says (engadget.com)
gollum123 writes: Uber has reportedly discovered that the fatal crash involving one of its prototype self-driving cars was probably caused by software faultily set up to ignore objects in the road, sources told The Information. Specifically, it was that the system was set up to ignore objects that it should have attended to; Herzberg seems to have been detected but considered a false positive.
So sorry for any inconvenience.
Probably the person playing on their phone as it was their job to override decisions made by buggy software.
Also the video Uber released is highly altered. I drive on that street frequently and it is very well lit.
I understand that programmatically telling a blowing plastic bag from a child's toy is difficult.
But she (and her bike) were clearly large enough to damage the vehicle. Even if the code saw her as debris, the car should have avoided it.
I think the code had to have dismissed her as lens flair or something similar.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Yeah, really. How do they know the vehicle "ignored" the woman? Maybe it just acted like it didn't recognize it needed to take action when it really was targeting her.
This is a clinical trial. The FDA has long long long long long experience in conducting clinical trials. Now one can argue if FDAs caution is too much but even in the worst case everyone would agree they have a well established process for assuring something is safe and effective before you release it onto the public.
Uber is conducting experiments on the public.
If this were a new drug or treatment or medical procedure they would be shut down.
This is actually far worse than that because most new drugs or treatments have clear lineages from prior ones that give us high expectations of what the outcome will be.
The argument that something has to be allowed prematurely because in the long run it will save lives is a failed argument for medicine.
In this case there is nothing to support the claim that this will save lives in the long run. Sure one could imagine that it would. But I don't think thats very well established. And if this were a drug study people would have spent the time and money to establish that.
The claim that they have conducted 5 million miles (or whatever of testing) is rubbish. Those are not statistically valid tests. We execs dashing in front of the cars going 50 miles per hours in any of those tests? I assure you that did not happen.
Moreover we already have evidence from those tests that driver re-aqusitions do happen frequently, and there is a substatnial lag in the hand over dues to human inattention. THe fact that they only had one driver in it says Uber is negligent.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Uber's entire business model is based on cutting corners (not paying employees as employees, not following local taxi laws/regulations, etc.). I wasn't at all surprised to hear that one of their self-driving test cars killed somebody. I immediately assumed that it was the result of yet another corner that they cut.
I don't respond to AC's.
I think you mean kill mode
WTB [sig], PST!!!
Does the safety driver get any feedback on what the autopilot is planning? I'd think that even a simple green/yellow/red indication to show what it's perceiving (everything's OK/I see something and am prepared to take action/I am taking action) would be useful.
I could see the car recognizing a potential hazard well in advance of a need to take action - that info should be given to the safety driver. If they in turn take action before the autopilot would have, perhaps an algorithm needs tweaking. And, if the driver sees a potential hazard first, they should be able to provide feedback on that, too, so they can figure out why the human is doing a better job.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Actually, there are a number of videos that people took from their cars on the following nights that show the area as well lit and it seems unlikely a moderately attentive human would have hit her. The video released from the car camera does not appear to be representative of what a human would have perceived. Notice that the "safety" driver obviously could see her easily when he glanced up from whatever she was distracted by. I am, of course, assuming that the street lighting hadn't suffered a massive failure that night and been restored the next few nights.
Excellent point re execs. I read that in England sometime in the middle ages bridge engineers were required after the construction to sleep for two weeks under the bridge -- with their families.
Of course you jail the engineers or architects, when they are criminally negligent.
There is little doubt that the Uber CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, was criminally negligent and aware that this kind of accident was not only possible but likely.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
When I drive and see a possible danger (kid playing with a ball by the side of the road, dog wandering around near the edge of the road without a leash, motorcycle rider looking the wrong way on a side street as I approach, etc.) I always take my foot off the accelerator and cover the break - ready to instantly respond if something stupid happens. It's called defensive driving, and is how everyone should drive.
I never really picked up this habit though until I had been riding motorbikes for a while, when you absolutely have to drive defensively id you want to survive commuting in London or Tokyo traffic. (I used to ride in both).
The safety driver should have been doing this, and it would not be any impediment to testing the autonomy of the car - it can still do the driving, but the safety driver would have had time to react appropriately.
The safety driver completely failed in her duty - possibly due to lack of training - but if your getting paid to be a safety driver then you should do your job instead of buggering around with your phone.
No one is guilty of vehicular manslaughter. This is an accident due to bad design. You don't jail the engineers or architects who design a building that fails in an earthquake.
You do if it wasn't designed to code.
You don't arrest the airline execs when a plan component fails.
Maybe not the exec, but certainly the maintenance engineer who committed fraud that resulted in the death of people.
So here - who's to blame? Who decided to live-test an experimental system that can operate with the safety disengaged?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Even if it was as dark as they edited it, it would mean the car was driving too fast for the human in the car and the lights on the car wbhere not bright enough for the human in the car.
You can not blame the human if you close his eyes and then ask him what he sees and he is wrong.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.