Self-driving Uber car kills pedestrian in Tempe, AZ

that may be, but they should at least be as good as a well functioning human before being allowed on the public roadways.
especially since we now know that the back up driver may be useless.

 

HUMANS aren’t as good as a well functioning humans.

 

this accident reveals some major issues with self driving vehicles and should bring more attention and new light to the issue.
government agencies have been derelict in their duty by allowing the manufacturers to decide if the tech is safe.

 

Boy, if I were Uber, I sure would be WORRIED!! The driver is obviously distracted, the camera doesn't have any peripheral "vision". The car's headlights seem inadequate, but it could also be the camera's inability to pick up enough of the view!!! Terrible example of technology. Poor bicycle lady! Why do innocent people have to die for these EXPERIMENTS to be performed. Yeah she was jaywalking; she still didn't deserve to die. I believe a HUMAN driver could have prevented this accident. We have enough problems on the street without adding these "non-responsible" devices to the mix!! Remember if I rely on my blind-spot monitor, or other safety device, and I hit somebody, I'm still at fault; who's at fault with the autonomous garbage; I don't know!


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AChoiredTaste.com

 

yes, i was concerned with the headlights as well. it almost seems as if the only lighting is from street lights.

 

AND, I don't WANT these bloody things on the road, EVER!!
Not picking on you Mr. Bisco...it's just easier to add this note.
If you want freaking autonomy, ride the freaking bus, sober, drunk, stoned, or asleep; just don't stick me or others who enjoy driving with some claptrap Frankenstein Machine that I'll NEVER trust!

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AChoiredTaste.com

 

Yeah, she wasn’t watching the road as much as she she should have.
It does appear she looked up just before the appearance.
Per the video, the pedestrian really did come out of nowhere. I don’t know if it would have mattered if the driver had her fully attention on the road.
I am curious if the car’s sensors other than visual cameras could ‘see’ the pedestrian earlier.

 

Yeah, I'm with you on the camera; see my post #89.

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I think the problems is " As good as a well functioning human " is a nebulous set of terms to define.
Good? or do we say " As Safe As" ?

I think obviously the goal is and has to be, to make the "self driving" reality as safe as possible. Since automation can by definition never be human driving and vice versa, when and how do we know when we have reached that point where a self driving system is perfectly and in all situations "as good" or "as safe"?

If a self driving vehicle is involved in an accident, retrospectively the question is nearly always going to be, would a human driver been able to avoid the accident. Or did undeniable failure of the system make the accident inevitable given the situation?

And I think in most cases we are not really ever going to be able to "perfectly" answer that question.
The best we can do is continue to build, test, and apply usage of systems that hopefully just keep on improving. And in doing so, build a familiarity and trust with the system and usage of the system that naturally doesn't yet exist today.

The odd thing for me personally, is while I find myself defending autonomous vehicles, I love to drive. I love being the human element behind the wheel of a vehicle.
Even if I could afford it, I wouldn't want a chauffeur.

I'm in no hurry to embrace a world where people no longer drive.

But as we approach a reality that embraces more and more integration and utilization of self driving systems, I don't want to do it with fear.

In many ways, we are already there whether we like it or not.
I would site a recent Nissan Intelligent Mobility commercial, that shows a father in the passenger seat, while a young daughter is obviously learning to drive and nervous.
As the daughter behind the wheel, approaches a construction zone, with imagined "Star Wars" added obstructions, the father tells the daughter to relax, but instead of advice on how to safely "drive", the father tells her to turn on the Nissan Intelligent Mobility features. Which "automatically" aide the young driver through the challenging driving environment. There is actually a scene and moment when the steering wheel is shown moving itself when the girl is distracted momentarily.

My point being, whether we realize it or not, self driving aspects and technology is slowly becoming the accepted norm. We've long had vehicles that could parallel park themselves, apply brakes, and assist in remaining in lane.

Cutting the umbilical cord to the point where the human driver is absent from the equation may not be a point we are at yet. But various degrees of reliance on technology that more and more removes the human driving "skill" element away from driving is already here. And it is embraced and accepted on the basis that it makes US as drivers, passengers and pedestrians safer on the road.

 

Does it, though? I'm willing to bet people in Arizona have been killed by non-autonomous cars in the past week.

We need to wait and see whether this was an accident that happened because it was self-driving car, or not.

 

hmm...that looks more avoidable than I was thinking...
the camera on the vehicle is showing the bike coming out of pitch black, but the human eye can probably see a wider range of contrast and could maybe have seen that person. Sometimes in astronomy the eye is the best for looking at comets and things, because the camera gets washed out by the contrast.

 

Indeed. I assume these cars have multiple sensors: I'd have thought that in an autonomous vehicle, the point of traditional headlights would be to be seen (by pedestrians etc) at least as much as to see. But then, did it have its headlights on? Could that be why the woman walked out in front of it?

I remember a good 15 years ago Mercedes S-classes had infra-red cameras, and I think I remember reading that the collision-avoidance cameras on Subaru Foresters see in far more than just our visible spectrum. So what you can see in that video might not be the whole picture. Was she walking slowly across the other side of the road, or did she run before she came into the picture?

It does seem odd, though, that she was not obscured when coming towards the car from the other side of the road: we couldn't see her, but she must have been on the road. If there were non-visible-spectrum sensors, they should have seen her and should have detected her movements.

 

Yes - I've certainly had crashes that there was no way I could possibly avoid. When I was 17 an old guy in a car pulled out from a petrol station right in front of me: my choices were go straight and hit his car, or go right and hit the bus coming the other way. I hit his car. (Actually, truth be known, I decided to turn left a bit, increasing the damage to his car and reducing the damage to mine and the risk to me.)

And a couple of years ago, someone rear-ended me at a traffic light: there was nothing I could do to avoid that.

But in this case, I don't know if she did "come out of nowhere". On the video, she did, but she must have been on the other side of the road before that.

 

This ArsTechnica.com article is saying what I said about the low light (human eye can see better than the camera)

"While Herzberg is visible for less than two seconds in the camera footage, she might have become visible earlier to a human driver, since human eyes are better at picking out details in low-light situations. Also, the Uber vehicle was presumably equipped with lidar and radar—sensors that work just as well in the dark as they do in broad daylight."

 

I agree the human eye could have seen the pedestrian sooner.
However, I can’t say definitively that any human driver would have seen the pedestrian. A momentary chance to the rear view mirrors at the wrong time would be all it takes.

With that said, another opinion has popped up that lays the full blame on the car.

Experts: Uber self-driving system should have spotted woman

 

I wonder if the Volvo headlights were on "full" or in daylight mode which, at least in the Prius, is less bright. Is the driver responsible for making sure that lights are set for night driving. I really don't see how the pedestrian/cyclist could have missed it, unless she was distracted too...

 

• Using the right hand drains and curve, the arrow shows where the bicyclist was crossing the street.
• Only her shoes were initially visible. Black top and blue jeans are nearly invisible until too late.
• The bicycle needs reflective tape on the tubing . . . all bicycles and motorcycles.
• The lights form islands of light with great darkness between. This is NOT unique to Tempe.
• Over driving the headlights.

• It looks like low beam headlights. Based on ambient, auto-brights should have been on.
• IIHS shows this car has marginal headlights.
• A plugin hybrid, no doubt some will claim it needs a siren.

Bob Wilson