Self-driving Uber car killed a pedestrian

[Wolf359]

Originally Posted By: Garak
Originally Posted By: Dallas69
I don't understand the need for self driving cars.
Will someone explain please?

You and I may be old school, but whether we like it or not, there is a purpose. Young people, for starters, aren't getting licensed like they used to. Secondly, self driving cars, if done correctly, certainly will be safer. At the very least, computers are easier to teach than people.

Now, do I want self driving cars? Please, wait until I'm dead, thanks. Then again, my maternal grandfather never owned an internal combustion engine of any sort in his life, and he farmed. He probably thought the same thing about the car.


Well people get old too. I had an older friend that I used to out to lunch once in a while. He still drove in his 80's but after a while I decided to just drive as he drove too slow for me and it drove me crazy, like 20 in the city when it's supposed to be 30. I think he probably should have stopped at that point, but he never did. Once you get old and your skills decline, then you can still be independent with an autonomous vehicle.

 

[Shannow]

Originally Posted By: sleddriver
1. Watched the video however cameras don't see like humans do.
2. One sec she's not there, next sec she is...right in front.
3. Suicide by car?


She's already crossed an entire lane, which the self driving car SHOULD have picked up, as it's surely got the ability to pick up someone pulling in unexpectedly.

The system(s) on that vehicle are either totally sub par, or not functioning at the time.

As to suicide by car, the limited number that I've heard of, they normally crouch near parked cars, or bushes, then throw themselves out...one guy made sure that he got under the rear wheels of a semi trailer as it rounded at traffic lights.

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Well people get old too. I had an older friend that I used to out to lunch once in a while. He still drove in his 80's but after a while I decided to just drive as he drove too slow for me and it drove me crazy, like 20 in the city when it's supposed to be 30.

Yes, that too. When I was a kid on the farm, an old neighbour used to drive on the highway, in some fairly ancient car, and he was in his 90s, and wouldn't go over 30 mph in the 65 mph zone. We weren't even metric at the time.

 

[PeterPolyol]

Originally Posted By: Dallas69
I don't understand the need for self driving cars.
Will someone explain please?

It's one of those things, why do we need intensively data-gathering cell phones with 80MP front and back night-vision cameras that can respond to minute face movements? Why is consumer-product-level biometrics in general such a huge thing now?
Industry lusts after bad science-fictioney ideas- any means to consolidate power and control whilst pushing their dehumanizing agenda.

 

[sleddriver]

Originally Posted By: Shannow
Originally Posted By: sleddriver
1. Watched the video however cameras don't see like humans do.
2. One sec she's not there, next sec she is...right in front.
3. Suicide by car?


She's already crossed an entire lane, which the self driving car SHOULD have picked up, as it's surely got the ability to pick up someone pulling in unexpectedly.

The system(s) on that vehicle are either totally sub par, or not functioning at the time.
We agree she indeed had already made it across an entire lane. My point #2 was that the headlights picked up nothing until she was nearly in front. Very poor headlight design. Further, the anti-collision system should have picked her up in complete darkness. It failed. She died as a result.

Volvo should be royally embarrassed to allow such a system on one of their 'safe' vehicles, much less release it as 'safe' to be driven on a public road. That's nuts. They just earned themselves a lawsuit.

 

[Snoman002]

Originally Posted By: fdcg27
Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Originally Posted By: fdcg27
Not going to comment on your driving acumen, since I haven't seen it, nor should you comment on mine.
You also miss the point in that clear blue skies aren't where a decent driver will exceed the abilities of an autonomous system, it's rather in treacherous conditions that a real human driver will prove more adept and more capable. Cruising down a moderately congested highway on a clear above freezing roadway, an autonomous vehicle would probably be great and no more boring than driving the car. Coat that roadway with snow and ice and the autonomous vehicle becomes a potential death trap while the decent and experienced driver can handle the conditions with aplomb.
If you'd feel personally safer in a fully autonomous car, then by all means buy one should one become available within your lifetime.


I think you're still missing the point. I'm in complete agreement with you there so far. It's just that when the humans are impaired, the machines will not be. Though I suppose there will be the case where the OS crashes. Flying was pretty dangerous when it started out, but lately it's been getting safer and safer. It'll be the same with any other technology, it gets better with time. Also the danger seems to be in being a pedestrian so it's more dangerous to be outside an autonomous vehicle now than inside it. If you don't consider Tesla an autonomous vehicle, then so far there have been 0 driver deaths in testing so far. I'm sure the injury numbers are much better too.

It'll be great when they're on the road, less crazy drivers out there and I'm sure it'll be easy to cut them off...


You'd have had to have made something close to a valid point for me to have missed it.
You didn't.
Your bringing aviation into the thread betrays a complete lack of understanding of how aircraft are operated.
Suffice it to say that the dramatic reduction in airliner hull loses over the past fifty years has nothing to do with autonomous systems and everything to do with better standardization of operating procedures as well as better cockpit resource management.


"Suffice to say", is it not you that are saying it? Any sort of hard evidence to back that up or are you expecting us to rely on your statement of fact to take it as one?
And just to be clear as automation comes in all forms, your statement is that the difference in safety of cable driven aircraft and modern electronic aircraft has nothing to do with electronic systems and controls, and entirely to do with operating procedures and cockpit resource management. You are in essence saying there is zero safety improvements in modern aircraft when compared to say a DC9 that are not attributable to said operating procedures and better cockpit resource management.

I find it quite ignorant to believe that a human is better in poor road conditions than a computer. I have yet to meet a person who could see in the dark, pick up infrared emissions, or even calculate the intercept position of 2 objects at the same time, let alone 10, 20, or more. Can you tell me of a person who can both allocate visual ling of sight and mental processing for three potential intercepting objects concurrently?

Worse, your from Ohio and you fail to realize the absolute stupidity that happens around here when as little as an inch of snow falls. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the eating is a litany of accidents at the most minor of poor conditions.

 

[Wolf359]

Originally Posted By: sleddriver
Volvo should be royally embarrassed to allow such a system on one of their 'safe' vehicles, much less release it as 'safe' to be driven on a public road. That's nuts. They just earned themselves a lawsuit.


When auto makers are talking about "safe" they mean safe for the driver. The driver was pretty safe, no injuries to the driver. It's the driver that buys the car. The manufacturers don't have to care that much for the pedestrians, they're not the ones paying for the car. In China it's famously rumored that you're better off killing a pedestrian than injuring them because the payments for death is lower than that for injury. Not true, but it gets a lot of press.

 

[sleddriver]

Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Originally Posted By: sleddriver
Volvo should be royally embarrassed to allow such a system on one of their 'safe' vehicles, much less release it as 'safe' to be driven on a public road. That's nuts. They just earned themselves a lawsuit.

When auto makers are talking about "safe" they mean safe for the driver. The driver was pretty safe, no injuries to the driver. It's the driver that buys the car. The manufacturers don't have to care that much for the pedestrians, they're not the ones paying for the car. In China it's famously rumored that you're better off killing a pedestrian than injuring them because the payments for death is lower than that for injury. Not true, but it gets a lot of press.
This is a different case however as this vehicle is now able (supposedly) to avoid collisions with no to little 'driver' (human) intervention.

In this domain, manufacturers will indeed have to care plenty for pedestrians as drivers will no longer be totally responsible nor liable.

Think about it....

In this instance, the concern for safety has to be turned outward as well. The self-driving tech was incorporated into this Volvo and as such, had their stamp of approval. Having it not brake nor even respond to a human approaching from a perpendicular direction is a big fail.

 

[PeterPolyol]

Originally Posted By: Snoman002
I find it quite ignorant to believe that a human is better in poor road conditions than a computer.

I find this not only ironic but offensive as well. When one has to witness someone, presumably human, arguing against their own species' cognitive abilities on behalf of cave-man implementations of automation (from human consciousness btw) is beyond any reasonable understanding. AI isn't even intelligence, it's an artificial , vague semblance of it.

Robots are not sentient or creative and are entirely insensible (meaning while they have sensory inputs, they cannot make any coherent use of it beyond the rules of previously human-authored code). No amount of fuzzy logic can give a robot sense. Robots follow rules, they cannot think.

eg. In an avoidance move, a human could make a far better decision on where to put the vehicle than a robot, especially if that human is aware of potential risks (go into a fedex truck or a loaded school bus?) or local/geological features of the road (head into the guardrail or off that cliff? crash into that school or that empty building for lease?)- there is no replacement for a lifetime of conscious experiences to refer back to, is there?

 

[PeterPolyol]

Heck auto-braking driver assists and automated driving vehicles don't even swerve for avoidance, they just brake in a straight line and hope for the best, like idiots.

 

[fdcg27]

My statement with regard to airliner hull losses is accurate and this is well known in the industry.
Hull loss rates fell sharply long before automation became a part of every modern design.
There was a time when the skies almost rained jetliners, but this came to an abrupt end more than forty years ago when operators began to impose and enforce rigorous operating procedures and better use of the two or three pilots found in every cockpit, including giving the guy in the right seat veto authority if he thought that the captain was going to embark upon an unsafe course of action. Hull losses dropped remarkably using the same equipment that had been regularly painting the ground with the tortured remains of airliners and their passengers.
There have also been instances where the automation led the crew down a garden path to disaster.
Take two fairly recent accidents.
In the first, the crew relied upon the envelope protection they thought they had and never realized that they were no longer in that mode even as their airliner full of sleeping passengers fell to the Atlantic in a full stall. It shouldn't be necessary to note that all aboard, crew and passengers alike were lost.
In the second, the pilot flying thought that he had the aircraft's automation configured to allow a safe rate of descent with power added as needed.
He thought wrong and the check airman flying with him failed to take timely action for whatever reason. In this case, everyone made it off the aircraft with a couple of people killed by first responding equipment on the ground. The aircraft itself burned out on the ground.
In both cases, there was a failure of the man/machine interface and the men involved had no idea that they had acted outside the envelope of machine protection they thought they had. Had there been no such expectation that the machines knew best, neither accident would have occurred since the men flying would have been reliant upon other means of maintaining control of the airliners entrusted to them and would have had no expectation that the automation was their savior.
WRT poor weather conditions, a human driver with moderate skill who grew up in areas subject to potentially bad winter weather stands a good chance of recovering successfully from an unanticipated black ice encounter. I have. Autonomous systems probably don't.
WRT my being an Ohio native (I think you meant to write "you're" rather than "your"), I'd expect anyone who grew up here to understand winter driving and the potential pitfalls. I don't think that an autonomous vehicle would somehow magically become a Canadian Winter Rally champ in these conditions. Autonomous systems seem mainly geared to normal road surface friction and not ice rink friction levels. An additional factor in winter accidents here in Ohio and everywhere else is that many people start the winter on worn or otherwise unsuitable tires and no amount of automation will help with that.
WRT the magical abilities of autonomous systems to see, they lack the greatest resource that human eyes and mind have in processing visual cues, and those are peripheral vision and the mind/eye interface's attraction to movement. A human driver would have detected the movements of this woman long before she became a potential target and the driver would have reacted accordingly.
Finally, your brain and mine have a processing ability far beyond any computer or network. We can think and act intuitively based upon learned experience while even the best AI systems lack this intuitive ability, or can only emulate it crudely.
AI systems don't appear to be any more intellectually able than the average dog or the average two year old human and are more likely less so.

 

[oil_film_movies]

The LA Times is now reporting:

"Meanwhile, a top executive for the maker of sensors used on the self-driving Uber vehicle said she was "baffled" as to why the tech-outfitted vehicle failed to recognize a pedestrian crossing the street and hit the brakes.

Marta Thoma Hall, president of Velodyne Lidar Inc., maker of the special laser radar that helps an autonomous car "see" its surroundings, said the company doesn't believe its technology failed. But she's surprised the car didn't detect Herzberg.

"Certainly, our Lidar is capable of clearly imaging Elaine and her bicycle in this situation," Thoma Hall wrote in an email. "However, our Lidar doesn't make the decision to put on the brakes or get out of her way.

"In addition to Lidar, autonomous systems typically have several sensors, including camera and radar to make decisions," she wrote. "We don't know what sensors were on the Uber car that evening, if they were working, or how they were being used."

 

[thescreensavers]

Something interesting to note, the area isnt as dark as the video shows. Human eye could have seen the pedestrian based on this pic. '

(not my pic)

 

[KrisZ]

That video could've been made to look darker. It was released with a purpose to make it look like it was an impossible situation to avoid. Most fell for it.

 

[oil_film_movies]

Remember these self-driving cars are equipped with sensors that don't solely depend on visual spectrum light we see with. Radar, sonar, infrared light. This provides some functional redundancy.

Then, this raw detection must be acted upon by a computer thats not stalling or glitching !!!!

The real-time operating system must then guarantee quick responses, using quality software that works reliably (algorithms and good implementation).
Just like airplanes must have now.

 

[Shannow]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2...t-swerve-report

Quote:
Although the car’s sensors detected Herzberg, its software which decides how it should react was tuned too far in favour of ignoring objects in its path which might be “false positives” (such as plastic bags), according to a report from the Information. This meant the modified Volvo XC90 did not react fast enough.

The report also said the human safety driver was not paying close enough attention to intervene before the vehicle struck the pedestrian.


OK, a programmer killed a pedestrian while making choices from a desk...lets see where to from here.

(Again, blaming an operator who has purposely been back shelved from the second by second information processing and didn't catch up is not the issue).

 

[ZeeOSix]

Major screw up with the programming logic that was too dumbed down to distinguish a plastic bag from someone walking a bicycle across the road. Wow ...

 

[Shannow]

A guy on Linkedin explained it that the dumbing down occurred as it was supposed to be a "pedestrian free" freeway.

Can't say one way or the other...but that's where humans "Shine" for want of a better word, in identifying the non routine, and paying attention to the differences, not actively ignoring stuff.

The information that I've read on self learning cars, where the cars aren't "programmed" by a guy at a desk thinking up scenarios, but by machine learning indicate that this is the way of the future. Unfortunately machine learning means that we'll never know what the programme actually is, just that we've got the latest version of it.

 

[Rmay635703]

Couldn’t have said it better myself fdcg

There is a large financial interest that is pushing self driving tech at all costs
That will drive these onto the roads ready or not over the next 5 years.
Even though we are likely 20 years away from approaching reasonable confidence that the systems can be safe even in rather benign situations like the one in the video.

and the narrative amongst even very intelligent people is that you can’t blame the self driving car
The tech is infallible and knows better than you.

Almost like evangelism.
Stating concerns about the SAE standard governing them or about the cars themselves is sac religious in many circles.

I am uncertain why a large chunk of our society views these as infallible and think such a huge need exists
But the attitude I get from other channels is that it’s not the cars fault rather we just need to remove human controlled devices (like bicycles) off the road and everything’s fine.

I find this trend confusing at best.

We as yet can’t properly vet and test self driving tech (the SAE standard seems incomplete)
We have inadequate legal framework for it
Self driving tech is all but useless in poor conditions and poor weather
Self driving tech in “rural” situations such as irregular gravel or dirt roads or even going into a yard or driveway is useless
Self driving tech tends to “not play nice” and behave irrationally when among humans and human operated cars (unnecessary stops, swerves and other odd behavior in normal situations)
And I could go on

We’re many years away but am throwing very crude systems on the road anyway.


The sad part is a small sub $5 component installed to a car can stop cell phone distractions but we rather have an increased death rate rather than stop a citizen from his right to get Facebook updates while driving

 

[59Rod]

That employee should have been fired long ago. Does not Uber watch the interior camera and could see that this fat lazy employee is texting during work? I know many security guards have been fired because the boss sees on CCTV that they are texting during their shift.

That employee driver deserves to be charged with culpible negligence because we can easily make a case that if they had been alert that they could have swerved the car and there is a chance the pedestrian would have sustained less extreme injury.

After these self driving cars are mainstream think of all the human jobs that will be lost forever:

Taxi Drivers
Uber Drivers
Pizza boys
Fed Ex / Ups drivers
USPS Mailmen
Truckers
School Bus drivers
Greyhound drivers
City Bus drivers
Ice Cream Truck drivers

Thats alot of jobs. I wonder what those people will do for work.

Also why are they using giant, gas-guzzling SUVs if the system is still being beta tested? If it had been a little smart car or small sub-compact maybe the woman would not have been killed to death by a 4 ton tank