Uber Suspends Driverless Car Program After Pedestrian Is Struck and Killed

[Muse]

my dad can't see well enough to drive himself. a car that can drive for him is freedom and autonomy.

Speaking for myself, I can see well enough and my reflexes are really good. But I figure there's a good chance that my next car will be self driving. The one I'm driving now is 20+ years old and doesn't even have ABS. I don't drive a lot, typically 1000-1500 miles/year. I prefer to bicycle or roller skate around town when possible.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I'll be all for them if it means we can go faster than 75. But if they are going to make them slow then meh, no care.

 

[Kaido]

Disagree. Freedom and autonomy and self-determination are FAR more important, than a few thousand deaths each year.

Can you elaborate? Self-driving cars still let you drive manually. But if we could save 25,000 people a year by rolling out self-driving vehicles, that sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Or are you talking more about the data collection & other Big Brother stuff that goes on?

 

[IronWing]

I think it's amazing that a self driving car so quickly learned to drive like an Arizonan.

 

[XavierMace]

I think it's amazing that everyone is immediately going with it's the cars fault even though it had the right of way.

 

[ElFenix]

I think it's amazing that a self driving car so quickly learned to drive like an Arizonan.

i shouldn't laugh, but i did

 

[DigDog]

you guys don't see what is so awesome about driverless cars.

1. install the driverless function on your car
2. kill that person you reeeally hate using your car
3. press that button that switches on driverless mode
4. blame the car



you think this is a joke, but think about this, who takes responsibility for the killing of this pedestrian?

if the card had been a regularly driven car, the driver would go to jail.

 

[sourceninja]

The description I heard on the radio made it sound like even a human would have hit this lady. She walked out directly in front of a car. I'm interested to see the video of her walking out to see the timing.

 

[preslove]

The venn diagram of people who say "autonomous cars are inevitable" and "cryptocurrency is the future" is a circle

 

[IronWing]

The venn diagram of people who say "autonomous cars are inevitable" and "cryptocurrency is the future" is a circle

I think autonomous automobiles are far more likely than a useful cryptocurrency.

 

[Genx87]

Wait I did not realize driverless cars were ACTUALLY live yet. I thought the tech was still highly in prototype stage and that there was always a driver.

Interestingly enough driverless cars and true "auto pilot" is probably more complicated than autopilot on a plane. A plane is in the open sky with nothing around it, and has lot of time and distance to react. Using various sensors like altitude and compas, and ADS-B and radar, they can more or less avoid each other. Cars on the other hand are always operating on split second decisions and moving within feet of obstacles and have to account for road conditions and stop and go a lot. Planes don't stop, they just move around anything and have lot of time to do so.

Then again, ships are probably even simpler than planes in terms of traffic avoidance because of being on the open sea with relatively little traffic compared to a road, yet the US military has managed to crash at least 2 within a year. lol

Auto-pilot in a plane doesnt avoid collisions. It will do what it is told. Very simple. That is how an L-1011 drove itself into the Florida everglades 46 years ago. An auto-pilot in a car is much more complex.

 

[Genx87]

I think it's amazing that everyone is immediately going with it's the cars fault even though it had the right of way.

People fear loss of control. It sounds like in both car crashes involving a driver less Uber. It was not the driver less cars fault for the crash. But people will still want to ban and blame them.

 

[Fritzo]

The description I heard on the radio made it sound like even a human would have hit this lady. She walked out directly in front of a car. I'm interested to see the video of her walking out to see the timing.

Correct. She walked in front of the car while it was going 45MPH and was not at a crosswalk.

 

[IronWing]

Arizona ranks #5 in pedestrian fatality rate. Thanks Delaware for making the rest of us look not so bad.

https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2017-03/2017ped_FINAL_4.pdf

 

[Red Storm]

"Pedestrian hit by car" needs way, way more details before any kind of judgement could be made. From what I have heard this lady stepped out in front of the car and was not at a crosswalk. Would need to see video (doubtful) or a visualization of some kind to understand exactly what happened. Autonomous or not, if someone decides to suddenly move in front of an automobile travelling faster than ~25MPH, I don't see how it can stop in time.

Need more details, but this seems to be an unfortunate lesson in the importance of crossing the road at the proper time and place.

 

[drnickriviera]

As long as they don't get covered in snow and ice... Nothing will save you there. I imagine they do a self test before they start though, so it would tell you that it's blocked. Maybe they also have deicers to keep them from getting full of snow while driving in storms. To me that would be the biggest issue. On TV shows they always show them in a perfect scenario, nice clean paved road with lines (what's lines? My city does not know what that is) and even sidewalks and no snow etc but in the real world it's rarely like that.

I saw one article where a company in Scandinavia designed a system that can see the road through snow. Pretty amazing. As far as no lines, I think that is what our infrastructure money needs to be spent on. Ask what they need to make them work better. Need lines? Need magnets? Need a standard practice for construction work closing lanes?

 

[jtvang125]

Correct. She walked in front of the car while it was going 45MPH and was not at a crosswalk.

Might explain why the driver didn't have time to react and take over.

 

[rh71]

I'll be all for them if it means we can go faster than 75. But if they are going to make them slow then meh, no care.

It will be a pain in the ass to drive near autonomous vehicles as they will still have to follow 55mph for example. We will have to deal with this integration phase for a few decades at the very least. It will be a very long time before the roads are only auto-vehicles at the current rate of new-car adoption.

 

[DietDrThunder]

I think it's amazing that everyone is immediately going with it's the cars fault even though it had the right of way.

WRONG! In the U.S. pedestrians always have the right of way. It is amazing to me that they are trying to shift the blame of person's death on her. Sure, she was walking her bike across the street outside of the cross walk, but she was still near the intersection, and the operator behind the wheel was not paying attention and failed to stop this fatality from happening.

To be honest, I'm really surprised that this technology has been allowed to be on the street so soon. There should be federal safety regulations like the aircraft industry has in place, and they should be strictly followed before allowing these vehicles on the street. You wouldn't believe the safety of flight certifications we have to go through before a prototype aircraft can begin flight testing. This should be even more stringent for the auto industry because you're more likely to hit something on the ground than in the air.

But I guess a few ambient temperature bodies don't mean much to an industry or country hell bent on having driverless automobiles.

 

[DrunkenSano]

100% pedestrian's fault this time, definitely not the car's fault. Whether it was automated or manned, results would have been the same. People seem to think that crosswalks are a joke and can cross anywhere. If she followed what we teach little kids and look both ways before crossing, she would have been safe. Blaming the car here is like blaming the train conductor for hitting a car that ignored crossing signals and guards that have already come down.

 

[BudAshes]

I think it's amazing that a self driving car so quickly learned to drive like an Arizonan.

Hahah, you stole my post. Just watch the phoenix news. Despite everyone being over 80 years old it seems the majority of people in Arizona die from someone driving the wrong way down the highway, getting run down in an intersection or getting drunk and accidentally shooting themselves or their family member.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

WRONG! In the U.S. pedestrians always have the right of way. It is amazing to me that they are trying to shift the blame of person's death on her. Sure, she was walking her bike across the street outside of the cross walk, but she was still near the intersection, and the operator behind the wheel was not paying attention and failed to stop this fatality from happening.

To be honest, I'm really surprised that this technology has been allowed to be on the street so soon. There should be federal safety regulations like the aircraft industry has in place, and they should be strictly followed before allowing these vehicles on the street. You wouldn't believe the safety of flight certifications we have to go through before a prototype aircraft can begin flight testing. This should be even more stringent for the auto industry because you're more likely to hit something on the ground than in the air.

But I guess a few ambient temperature bodies don't mean much to an industry or country hell bent on having driverless automobiles.

Ped's may technically have the right of way, but it's no comfort if the person gets creamed doing something stupid. 'Right of Might' is a thing too, and while a ped may legally be permitted to be in the street over the vehicle, they absolutely have to be mindful that doing so might get them hit by a car. The way I see it is this: if a computer couldn't stop/change the course of the car in time, there was no chance for her to walk away from this one.

 

[DietDrThunder]

Ped's may technically have the right of way, but it's no comfort if the person gets creamed doing something stupid. 'Right of Might' is a thing too, and while a ped may legally be permitted to be in the street over the vehicle, they absolutely have to be mindful that doing so might get them hit by a car. The way I see it is this: if a computer couldn't stop/change the course of the car in time, there was no chance for her to walk away from this one.

You can't honestly say that. There could have been many factors that could cause a sensor (either LIDAR or Optical) which could malfunction or not register the person as being visible where a person with normal vision would be able to see the pedestrian. I work with RADAR, LIDAR, Targeting Forward Looking Infrared (TFLIR), and Digital Aperture Sensors (DAS) systems on tactical aircraft, and all of them have their weaknesses.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

You can't honestly say that. There could have been many factors that could cause a sensor (either LIDAR or Optical) which could malfunction or not register the person as being visible where a person with normal vision would be able to see the pedestrian. I work with RADAR, LIDAR, Targeting Forward Looking Infrared (TFLIR), and Digital Aperture Sensors (DAS) systems on tactical aircraft, and all of them have their weaknesses.

You are correct, it's an assessment based on the information presented so far. I can say however, that unless she was shoved in the street, she didn't look both ways before crossing or she would have not stepped in front of a car.

All I'm saying is, there's a lot of corner cases where the vehicle may have failed to see the pedestrian and struck them. Nothing, however, is required for the pedestrian to walk out in front of a vehicle aside from humans being dumbass humans. I personally trust computers more than users (note: I'm a sysad).

 

[KeithP]

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/0...iving-car-likely-not-at-fault-in-fatal-crash/

The chief of the Tempe Police has told the San Francisco Chronicle that Uber is likely not responsible for the Sunday evening crash that killed 49-year-old pedestrian Elaine Herzberg.

“I suspect preliminarily it appears that the Uber would likely not be at fault in this accident," said Chief Sylvia Moir.

Herzberg was "pushing a bicycle laden with plastic shopping bags," according to the Chronicle's Carolyn Said, when she "abruptly walked from a center median into a lane of traffic."

After viewing video captured by the Uber vehicle, Moir concluded that “it’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode (autonomous or human-driven) based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway."

Moir added that "it is dangerous to cross roadways in the evening hour when well-illuminated, managed crosswalks are available."

The police said that the vehicle was traveling 38 miles per hour in a 35 mile-per-hour zone, according to the Chronicle—though a Google Street View shot of the roadway taken last July shows a speed limit of 45 miles per hour along that stretch of road.

Gee, what a shocking turn of events.

-KeithP