Self-driving Uber car kills pedestrian in Tempe, AZ

I didn't say I agreed with the commercial. But the fact that the situation is actually being "marketed" I think is indicative of my points.

 

thanks bob, what does 'over driving the headlights' mean?

 

I thought that the uber car had one of those rotating camera thingys on top, effectively seeing in 360 ?

Isn't the view that we see on the web is just a dash cam view ?

jp

 

Hard to imagine all the tech needed to make this work in the real world. Cameras plus software based object recognition (what get's recognized?) in addition to radar, adaptive lighting, night vision and pre-collision/evasive maneuvers have to be there. Some type of smart sensors on the outside of the vehicle that trigger things other than airbag deployment might also be needed. Do other vehicles like airplanes/helicopters have these technologies? The open road makes it so much more complex.

In the future, if you impact an object (small, med, large) will the vehicle pull over or require an "override" from the operator? Would the car automatically screen capture the incident and flag it, sending it for review? Do you make the car smarter or enhance the human? Will you be allowed to be distracted or "away" while in self-driving mode? It will be interesting to see how this tech develops.

 

You're attitude is exactly why I said this:

Believe it or not, I'm sympathetic to your viewpoint, even if I disagree. Because I love to drive. I enjoy it. As I said before, I'm not in any rush for a world where people drive less, and autonomous vehicles drive more.

But with that unassailable attitude about autonomous vehicles and a zero tolerance for the acceptance of their future, well I respectfully suggest maybe you should recuse yourself from the whole debate. Because autonomous "transportation" is coming, at some rate, in some form.

The extreme attitude does remind me of the reported history the early days of the "Horseless Carriage", when you had people very mistrusting of those "New Fangled Infernal Machines!". "They're Dangerous! They scare the horses! Fluster the women! They should be banned from usage in nearly all environments!

But the automobile wasn't going to be stopped.
And neither do I think....will the technology of more and more computer controlled driving. The only real question is the degree of technology applied, and the rate of acceptance.

 

The automobile is a transportation device; I would never question the need for this device being in my life. What I question is the control of those devices being handed over to (in my 32 years of experience with computers, apps., and security; and my 50 years of driving ALL manner of cars) computers and apps. If you've never had a virus, hacking, or computer crash, then I can understand someone accepting FULL autonomy in cars. The CURRENT unstable, unreliable, vulnerable cyber environment today mandates that careful, wise people stay away from this technology. Cars are fine; like the horse, they have their place. If you don't want to drive, take the bus, Uber, Lyft, or a taxi. And, don't put those damned autonomous things on MY streets!! I don't want to end up like that bicycle lady!! Arrgh!!


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good point about computer software. russians want to hack our elections and power grid, now we'll be handing them all our transportation as well.

 

Nobody wants to end up a struck and killed pedestrian.
I can meet you maybe this far.
I don't think we are going to wake up tomorrow in a world dominated by self driving vehicles. And at this point, I can agree we shouldn't.

But I can't agree with the total black-out of acceptance of the technology or the technologies future.

Whether it's the advancement from the Stone Age, to The Bronze Age, Iron Age....

Technology advances. That it's nature.
Are todays computers and apps invulnerable to failure...of course not. But we are working towards tomorrow.
In my lifetime, I've gone from basically NOT having computers at all...to where we are today. Phones use to be something you pulled out by the cord from the wall. Now they are "smart" and you carry those mini-computers with you wherever you go.

I can't deny testing, development and maybe even a degree of tragic result, because I don't "trust" the technology today. If we do? We never reach tomorrow.

No, autonomous vehicles that run over bicyclists and pedestrians are NOT something anyone, likes, wants or accepts. Nobody wants to design a flawed system or implement a dangerous program.

Like I said in my earlier post however, this specific incident seems to be surrounded by a lot of debate over whether the accident was the failure of the autonomous vehicle or simply a situation where even a human driver would of been extremely challenged to avoid tragedy.
And since autonomous vehicles cannot by definition be human controlled vehicles...getting a definitive answer as to "which" would of been safer in retrospect, I think is nearly impossible.

But maybe I do tend to have more faith in technology. As smart as I may egotistically think I am? I can't add or subtract figures with the speed or accuracy of a calculator NOW available for $1.00 at the local Dollar Store.
Therefore I extrapolate that today, as great a human driver as I may also think I am? Someday, maybe even today, I might not really be as good as the available technology we already have. That may all be debatable. But certainly I can easily imagine a future where there is little question the autonomous vehicle is safer than a human guided vehicle.

And I also know, we don't reach that future without continuing to strive for it, which does mean, I need to keep an open mind and be accepting of the possibility....that someday Nobody at The Wheel, might be Safer than Anybody at The Wheel.

It may sound frightening or ridiculous. But imagine going back to 1976 and trying to explain a "Smart Phone: to anybody.

 

AND, it ain't just the Russians, Mr. Bisco; the Chinese, Iran, Israel, and ISIS are just a few players in the "secret" Cyberwars going on right now. A lot of those guys just don't like us and will do ANYTHING to take us down!

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Technology will advance regardless of my insignificant opinions; what I'm advocating for is a RESPONSIBLE and ethical approach to our scientific progress. There are several technology leaders who say that AI (Artificial Intelligence) could lead to the downfall of our civilization. I think we need to very carefully and methodically study any huge technological change like autonomy before we embark on another Titanic!! (Yeah, the "unsinkable" Titanic, a marvel of the then-current technology)

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Let me go on record as saying I'm entirely against Skynet and will fight with John Connor and the surviving humans.
But...until that day? Artificial Intelligence is a tool created by OUR intelligence. I will not meet it with mistrust or fear.

Upholding standard or ethics and responsibility in it's application and development....who can or should be against that?

 

The ones who'll go into ANY technology regardless of consequences?? The people who can get rich by putting out any kind of new technology. This includes Zuckerberg, his Facebook, and all the big profiteers of modern technology. We still don't know, and may never know the full impact of his greed. See I'm talking about trying to retain some control in our individual lives. These Power Brokers want to leverage technology, supposedly for our BENEFIT, when in truth we pay a very high (and often undefined) price for the supposed benefits they offer. Autonomy in cars is an interesting concept, but it should not be mainstreamed at this time. Driving can be a dangerous activity and accidents will never all be eliminated. I just want to be in charge of driving my own car, and not have a too-little-tested ballistic missile take me out because some assembly line worker, or malfunctioning assembly line robot didn't set up one of the numerous cameras correctly, and Quality Control didn't catch it! Daily, the individual is losing control and value in our more crowded world. I'm just trying to slow down that process, as inconsequential as I might be!

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a good start here would be to pull them all off the road, review the technology, and come up with a good way of keeping the human backup alert and at the ready, when sitting in a car with nothing much to do.
sounds like a tall order, but that's the price of progress.

 

Texting is bad, but she could have been checking test equipment, maybe a display of what the system 'sees', etc. We can't say from this video.

I don't think it would have mattered based from that dash cam video.
[/quote]i can't believe the software isn't sophisticated enough to at least slam on the brakes and swerve at the last millisecond.
these things should be banned from public roadways until they are more fully proven.
[/QUOTE]These subsystems are already installed on hundreds of thousands of cars already. Toyota is getting thumbs up for making them standard on their cars. While I can't say if the modifications for installing the autonomous system disabled, and Bob's info graph doesn't address pedestrian detection, that Volvo has a supeior rating from the IIHS for front collision avoidance.

I'd say this instinct or gut feeling is just the processing of outside info from your senses by the subconscious that your conscious perception felt you didn't need to know about, coupled with past memories and experiences.

An autonomous car will process everything its sensors send it, and those sensors likely work in mediums beyond what a human can detect. Its processing speed needs to be fast enough to handle all that data in a timely manor in order for it operate and react safely to people and objects.

The experiences on one car gets uploaded to rest of the cars in the network. You may know a person might pop out from the blind corner coming up, but I won't necessarily. Once one autonomous car has experienced a person doing that, they all have it.

I agree the government should be more active in this, and that we should be addressing security now, but that will require funding, and where it comes from is a political topic.

That footage is from a basic dash cam. Uber's system uses lidar with a 360 degree viewing angle. I don't know its range.

If set up correctly, the lidar should have seen her. Then the question is if the system recognized her for what she was.

I've had deer come out of the dark like that, and the only reason I did't hit them was because they weren't in my lane.

Individuals' vision ability varies. I worked with a girl that couldn't see different shades of color. I seem to have better night vision than most.

As @bwilson4web points out, there was pools of light and darkness the car was traveling through. Human vision needs time to adjust when moving from light to dark and vise versa.

Driving at a speed in which the driver doesn't have enough time to react once an object is illuminated.

Do you fly? It is one of the safest ways to travel, and part of the reason for that is because of automation. Unfortunely, advances to that, and pilot training, only happened because of an accident. Then many localities only installed guard rails or lighting to dangerous stretched of road after some one died. Early on it was believed that cars running off the road was totally the fault of the driver, and they deserved what they got.

Automation is coming to cars. Many new ones already have it to some degree.

I am for more oversight for these programs, but you have to convince people to pay for that.

Have you disabled all the TSS-P systems on your Prime?

I agree the fault lies somewhere in the car. The sensor angles can be checked, and hopefully a log the system's processing of the environment.

A more attentive driver might have reduced this to a non-fatal collision, but then again, using a car instead of a SUV might have done that. Even when perfected, these systems won't be able to prevent all collisions though.

And then pilots still get distracted while flying on auto-pilot. A couple were fired because they overflew their destination while busy on their laptops.

 

Mr. Trollbait,
"Have you disabled all the TSS-P systems on your Prime?."

I have disabled the lane keeper nonsense as much as possible; I almost never use Cruise Control; I've never used the auto parking, although I did have salespeople demo it twice for me. The back up and side warnings are fine, but they rely on ME to carry out the action. The auto-controlled headlights and wipers are "cute", but I could easily live without them. The auto-dimming inside mirror is useless. The built-in GPS is useless to me. The voice command is great, and I could see folks back East liking the heated steering wheel and seats.
I AM a car enthusiast; I like driving, and when I become too lame to drive, I'll rely on my kids to drive me around, unless I use one of the Uber/Lyft/taxi services. Or I can take the bus for old people! Remember that autonomous car they're touting ain't gonnna(sic) be cheap!

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It means driving so fast that you can't stop if something shows up in the headlights. It most frequently happens when driving in fog, smoke, or sand storms but crappy headlights can do the same.

Bob Wilson

 

If it falls off anyway, does it make much difference? ( I know, that was Ford.)

 

Hey maybe these Ford cars were actually "early release" autonomous cars!!?? Sorry, my mistake!!, Har, har! Autonomy and Quality Control; it ain't gonna happen!

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Well, that Uber you call might not have a driver when the time comes. Then the options for people that can't drive themselves aren't as extensive all across the country. Plus, some simply don't want to give up the freedom of movement having one's own car gives.

No new car is cheap, and many already have most of the equipment and subsystems for self driving already installed. An autonomous car isn't going to add much to cars now; Tesla already puts all the sensors on the cars they build regardless of what the owner ordered. A large price increase will be based on how the company values the software, and possibly for liability shifting to the company.

Along with it probably being impossible to get a human safety driver focused 100% of the time in these test cars, comments to an article pointed out that the city is at least partially at fault here for their median design.

To the left in the above photo, a brick walk way can seen in the median. Not only is that walk way at a point of the street where there is less pavement to cross for a pedestrian, but it is also along a more direct route to a bus station. There are signs, that are likely to be missed in the dark, telling people not to use that walk way, but that isn't enough to allow stupid design.

 

Ah, yes. We say "Drive as fast as you can see."