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Uber's Self-Driving Car Saw Pedestrian 6 Seconds Before Fatal Strike, Says Report (tucson.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Arizona Daily Star: The autonomous Uber SUV that struck and killed an Arizona pedestrian in March spotted the woman about six seconds before hitting her, but did not stop because the system used to automatically apply brakes in potentially dangerous situations had been disabled, according to federal investigators. In a preliminary report on the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday that emergency braking is not enabled while Uber's cars are under computer control, "to reduce the potential for erratic vehicle behavior." Instead, Uber relies on a human backup driver to intervene. The system, however, is not designed to alert the driver.
The report comes a day after Uber announced it will be ending it's self-driving vehicle testing in Arizona. The full NTSB report is available here.
How much will Uber be paying that family?
This can't be right. They are saying that Uber's self-driving car rig is neither designed to stop for nor alert the driver about pedestrians obstructing the path of the vehicle. It's just designed to... log them?!
What part about this is considered "self-driving" then, exactly?
So they were only testing the lane following aspects and forgot to tell that to the test driver...
Criminal negligence, then.
Classy.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
how you gonna stop if you don't apply the brakes
and don't tell the driver to apply the brakes
and tell the driver the car gonna drive itself
i'm just a simple caveman programmer
your world of artificial intelligence, vision systems and advanced hardware frightens and confuses me
but because i'm a caveman, there is one thing i do know. someone stone cold f--ked up
It's time for regulatory control - like how the FAA regulates the skies, the autonomous car industry needs to have sensible regulations. Right now it just seems like a bunch of cowboys in the wild west are trying to one-up each other.
Get this: The car "saw" the person 6 seconds before striking the person. The emergency system was disabled. The emergency system was not set up to alert the driver. So many things wrong here that would have been avoided had there been sensible regulations written by sensible engineers.
Whatever engineer was in charge of this mess and allowed it on the road should be in prison.
So they have a system that they know works so badly that they disable it "to avoid erratic driving."
Then, instead of not letting the car on the road they instead put a driver in, but no way to warn the driver that someone has been detected.
This is so incredibly bad it's not even funny. Makes you wonder how they ever got permission to run this test at all.
The laws of man are not the laws of nature.
The logical conclusion is that a large, mobile contraption of rubber, steel, plastic, and controlled explosions gets the right of way; a pedestrians must be responsible for ensuring his own safety. This is the same logic that gives way to the common sense inherent in "private" endeavors such as white water rafting, for example: If you're in a kayak, you know the rule: A bulky, poorly maneuvered raft of 8 people has the right of way.
Of course, a politician wins votes by pandering to the unwashed masses, most of whom are probably pedestrians on account of the cost of owning a car. The result is that bureaucrats craft entitlements that trick people into believing that a "walk symbol" has magically reconfigured the laws of physics in favor of their absolute safety.
Look both ways, folks. Whether the driver is a computer or a human, you are in danger.
-=-=-=-WARNING-=-=-=-
This product has not been tested with meth- and weed-soaked individuals, dressed in dark clothing, walking across unlit non-crosswalked streets, in the dark, without any reflectors on their bicycles.
Use at their own risk.
Hmmn
on an FYI basis, my self-driving car (written in Python using PyTorch) does not work either...
Just saying !
Clive DaSilva Email: clive.dasilva@gmail.com Ubuntu 18.10 Kernel 4.18
The New Uber Terminator Car will eliminate any unwanted pedestrians.
Ask us how!
There was a human in the Uber car. Theoretically she was there to provide a human element that backed up the self-driving. But she was not giving her full attention to safety.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/24/17388696/uber-self-driving-crash-ntsb-report
I think Uber should change their procedure. Have two humans in the car: one to provide safety backup to the driving, and one to manage the iPad app. That will cost more than just having one human in the car, but would have saved a life in this case.
Note that the NTSB says the pedestrian was crossing unsafely, which contributed to the incident. Again quoting from the above-linked article in The Verge:
I don't see what the drugs in her system had to do with anything; I think this would have happened the same way even if she was completely sober. But she was doing an unsafe thing when she died.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
because the system used to automatically apply brakes in potentially dangerous situations had been disabled
Sensors on the fully autonomous Volvo XC-90 SUV spotted Herzberg while the car was traveling 43 miles per hour and determined that braking was needed 1.3 seconds before impact, according to the report.
A diagram in the NTSB report shows that the Uber system determined that the SUV needed to brake when it was at least 20 meters (65.6 feet) from Herzberg; it was traveling 39 mph (63 kilometers per hour) at impact. Kornhauser said that was enough distance for the SUV to stop, or slow considerably to mitigate damage from the crash.
Uber also disabled the Volvo's factory-equipped automatic emergency braking system when the vehicle is in autonomous mode, the report said.
So what was disabled? The factory auto brake, or Uber's auto brake? Surely they weren't allowing a car that wasn't able to brake itself out on the roads. Does the Uber system have a separate "emergency braking" subsystem?
Headline says the system "saw" her 6 seconds before impact, but it determined that it needed to brake just over 1s before impact? (traveling at about 59fps at impact)
This article sucks.
It goes to show that development of the next generation of self-driving or autonomous cars has to be undertaken by companies heavily driven by pedestrian and passenger safety. It seems like an engineering failure was partly to blame here when the car was aware of the pedestrian, but neither alerted the driver nor attempted to stop or redirect its path. A tech company masquerading as a car company strikes me as the exact conditions that could lead to this failure.
And I suspect intentionally so.
It has been clearly stated, BY UBER that they both disabled the Volvo emergency braking AND their own emergency stop/avoidance code.
To imply it was just the Volvo system is trying to avoid the fact that Uber had intentionally removed their own code that would make emergency stops.
They had intentionally made a system that had NO automated method of making an emergency stop, and no method of warning the secondary driver that one was needed (which would be stupid anyway,. they are supposed to be testing a system for future use without such a driver).
They should be hammered for this - it would be the equivalent of removing the emergency brakes from a buildings lifts, or the airbags from a car, without telling anyone.
Hitting people on the road doesn't show the car is not self-driving. For example, Uber could currently say that their car only kills drug addicts and poor people that find themselves in front of the car. It just means that in addition to being self-driving the cars also automatically kill people without any warning. Uber will likely change this automatic kill feature to avoid future court settlements.
Hopefully the Trump administration won't advocate for the Uber cars to kill only immigrants. The best conclusion would be if the Uber cars avoid killing any demographic.
Uber are dilletantes. Airbus has murdering robotic vehicles down pat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGHVnIxNUIw
A bit of system engineering discipline, FMEA , might have prevented this. It helps when innovators are trained to manage complexity, capability, and risk.
Or common sense, but such things can be on short supply on large projects run by program managers who have an 'MBA' mentality: https://www.inc.com/nathan-fur...
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
So it's ok to kill people in every state except Arizona? Ridiculous! If you aren't operating in Arizona then you shouldn't be operating anywhere.
This is utter madness. I would say 'pants on head' crazy but there's something a tiny bit endearing about that phrase, suggesting a gentle kind of crazy. No, this is 'dissociative, dig out your own eyeballs and eat them, psychotic break' insanity.
How about this: lets make a machine gun that's just always shooting bullets. It chooses which direction to point, and it's usually right. Sometimes, though, it might point at random civilians, but that's okay, because there will be a man standing nearby who could push a button that makes it stop shooting. If he's paying attention.
they originally had 2 people driving the car, one to watch the road and one to watch the numbers and make notes about the car's performance. As a cost cutting measure they dropped it down to 1 person doing both jobs. The woman behind the wheel was busy making notes on the screen when she should have been watching the road.
Uber wants data and they don't care how they get it. You can't get data on risky events if you're too cautious. kinda like how they used to vivisect criminals.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Might still happen though, if the manufacturers keep up the shoddy security we've come to expect from them.
Maybe victims of shooting should've ducked. After all, common sense says incoming fire has the right of way.
You're a dumbass, Harry.
That's way more than enough warning. Uber needs its nuts stomped and Elon doubly so.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
An analogy isn't an argument, Dale.
Guess what? There's no expectation of bullets flying through an office building in Podunk, Louisiana.
However, there is an expectation that a car will be flying down a well used road.
That is, your analogy isn't applicable.
Hey, if you go into a war zone, you'd better watch out for those bullets, Dale.
At least when the machines are actively trying to kill us, we can be fairly sure that once in a while they'll screw up and leave their victim alive.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
According to the FA she wasn't texting, she was minding the screen in the car, per Uber's instructions, to take notes on interesting events for later research. Uber used to have two people, one to watch the road and one to take the notes and they did away with the second one to cut costs.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
In other words Uber self-driving cars are like LifeLock commercials except "security monitor" stands silently never bothering to state the obvious.
Way to go. Sure is nice to know people working on self driving technology are taking their jobs seriously.
A computer asks... what is that? Is it a bird? A plane? Maybe I should do something other than hit whatever is in my.. Squish...oh well.
no surprise scummy uber company tries to throw the safety driver under the bus to save itself! scummy scummbags
Six seconds lead time is HUUUUUUUGE could have stopped a hundred times.
The cars work fine. The management are terrorists.
The previous stories had a bunch of posts defending uber by insisting that it was too dark and there's no way the car could have seen the pedestrian, yet I don't see any of them admitting that they were wrong and apologizing.
humans. What's up Doc?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
and hardtime for the CEO/VP's at uber!
they're not up on charges of obstruction of justice.
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It always struck me as odd when people say "or when it's a kid". I mean, kids; they're useless to me—I'd cry a lot more over a productive member of society.
It wasn't a doctored video. Just a bad quality video.
Go outside at night to a lit street similar to the one where the accident occurred. You should be able to see things some distance away pretty clearly.
The vehicle is not responsible for alerting the driver, it is the driver's responsibility to alert themselves and to apply the brakes. Problem exists between car seat and steering wheel.
"autonomous Uber SUV" "did not stop because the system used to automatically apply brakes in potentially dangerous situations had been disabled"
Then it wasn't autonomous at all.
So even advertising it as a "self-driving" or "autonomous" car, even for a test, is a huge amount of fraud.
Uber will likely change this automatic kill feature
Yeah, it'll become a premium upsell.
(basing this purely on historical decisions made by Uber management)
"In a preliminary report on the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday that emergency braking is not enabled while Uber's cars are under computer control"
Sue them out of existence. That is totally ridiculous. They disabled a safety system designed to fulfill one of the most important duties of a driver...
Come on, you don't need to 'REALLY THINK' in order to drive a car.
The main issue here is not self-driving, but Uber itself. They are in a win-win situation: either they develop self-driving on the cheap, being one of the first to market, or they kill a few people and ensure their current market has a few more years of revenue.
They should NOT be approved for testing due their intrinsic (profit-motivated) lack of interest in safety. Right from the beginning they've been known to take unsafe shortcuts, proven out by the factors at play here, and now its resulted in someone's death. It's only a matter of time until the next one.
pretty soon. If she was entering data on a screen there will be a log of it.
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You're my favorite Slashdotter. And I'll be in Reykjavik May 27, May 28 and June 7... may I buy you lunch?
(Sorry to spam a bunch of your posts, but I wanted to be sure you saw my invitation.) Reply to GPSpilot1@NOsPam.gmail.com.
And you're right... it's ridiculous that we can't type a thorn here.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
You're my favorite Slashdotter. And I'll be in Reykjavik May 27, May 28 and June 7.... may I buy you lunch?
(Sorry to spam a bunch of your posts, but I wanted to be sure you saw my invitation.) Reply to GPSpilot1@NOsPam.gmail.com.
And you're right... it's ridiculous that we can't type a thorn here.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I'm not OK with any of it.
However, personal responsibility is the foundation of a free society; it doesn't guarantee a free society, but it's necessary for a free society.
Didn't your driving instructor teach you to keep a safe distance from the car in front of you? It doesn't matter whether it's "illegal" that the refrigerator was improperly secured; all that matters is that you smashed into it, ruining your car and breaking your legs in the process.
... emergency braking is not enabled while Uber's cars are under computer control, "to reduce the potential for erratic vehicle behavior." Instead, Uber relies on a human backup driver to intervene. The system, however, is not designed to alert the driver.
There is so much wrong with this that I don't even know where to begin.
Are there ANY capable people left in Silicon Valley, or is it just hipsters and sociopaths?