Self-Driving Uber Car Kills Arizona Pedestrian

Darcschnider said:
I bet the car data will show it was coming to a stop but could not stop in time to avoid the collision from the J walker :)
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cars stop pretty fast.
Verge said:
In the US you must always yield to pedestrians.

How the heck did you pass your license test?
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yes, but if someone literally jumps out and you hit them, it isn't your fault by default, assuming you did act in a way to try to slow the vehicle.
 
Armenius said:
Fuck Uber, fuck driverless cars, and fuck jaywalkers. Do I have my bases covered?

Watching porn on their iPad, probably.
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I agree lol. I am no fan of driverless cars or electric to begin with. Still think the streets would be safer without a human element behind the wheel. Accident could drop to single digits and people would
Verge said:
In the US you must always yield to pedestrians.

How the heck did you pass your license test?
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Hard to yield if they just blindly walk into the road not paying attention. She wasn't even on the cross walk. I seen a bunch of people walk into on coming traffic with their face glued to their phone.
 
Computer vision and image processing are by no means trivial tasks. Exceptions will always exist, accidents will happen no matter what.

But what was the safety driver doing, hmmm?

I hope they had a dash cam.
 
Driverless cars are not going anywhere. But this could set things back for years. if you own stock in driverless tech, its probably taking a beating.
 
Self driving cars or SUV's make calcalated guesses. So if hiting a person is safer then hitting a car it will hit the person instead. Machines are 1's and 0's.

 
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Why doesn't Uber just test the cars on Wall St.? At least then there would be a fairly vocal "cool" group that doesn't mind the collateral damage.

It might even make them some money.
 
So a distracted pedestrian steps out into the street and everyone is ready to hang Uber/Technology/the Driver ?

When you cross the street, get off your fucking phone, and look both ways. If it was a drunk person, chances are they were walking to their own vehicle. To drive it. Drunk. That could've ended worse.

Need more facts, which will surely come out when whoever decides to sue Uber.
 
JosiahBradley said:
Is it too soon to say told you so? Why the fuck do people have to die before they look at safety in technology.
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Dude, there was a guy inside the car and there isn't nearly enough information to make a snap judgement. What if she wasn't paying attention and literally stepped right into the car? Do we still pull out the pitchforks and go on an anti technology crusade?
 
Verge said:
In the US you must always yield to pedestrians.

How the heck did you pass your license test?
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Arizona: "Vehicles must yield the right-of-way to pedestrians within a crosswalk that are in the same half of the roadway as the vehicle or when a pedestrian is approaching closely enough from the opposite side of the roadway to constitute a danger. Pedestrians may not suddenly leave the curb and enter a crosswalk into the path of a moving vehicle that is so close the vehicle is unable to yield. Pedestrians must yield the right-of-way to vehicles when crossing outside of a marked crosswalk or an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection. Where traffic control devices are in operation, pedestrians may only cross between two adjacent intersections in a marked crosswalk."

The woman was not in a marked cross walk and it was 10PM at night, we don't know how far away the car was when she stepped out in front of it either. If the car (and speed of road) were such that it did not have time to react, the car or driver did not fail, the woman did. If the car and driver had time to see her and slow while in the road there is an issue with the system and the woman still failed.
 
Wolf_Tech said:
Self driving cars or SUV's make calcalated guesses. So if hiting a person is safer then hitting a car it will hit the person instead. Machines are 1's and 0's.

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What is the point of that video? That the (imaginary) machines made the correct call in an (imaginary) situation? Or that Will Smith had loads of charisma, but can't act? :p
 
Wouldn't this be a pretty open and shut case? I mean, it's a car loaded with thousands of dollars worth of sensors and cameras. All of which is stored and saved on the vehicle for future analysis. Download data, review, find out what happened in less than 24 hours.
 
GoodBoy said:
So a distracted pedestrian steps out into the street and everyone is ready to hang Uber/Technology/the Driver ?

When you cross the street, get off your fucking phone, and look both ways. If it was a drunk person, chances are they were walking to their own vehicle. To drive it. Drunk. That could've ended worse.

Need more facts, which will surely come out when whoever decides to sue Uber.
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With that said, as with almost anything robot/autonomous around the "public", the "thing" (which can't be held liable) and its owners/manufacturers are liable. Just the way it has to be. And yes, arguably, there are scenarios that aren't going to be "fair" to the thing or it's owners, but still lawful. Now... if pedestrian right-of-way laws are removed.... things change or, of course, if due to failure to observe the law by the pedestrian... in which case, there won't be a liability issue law wise, just an angry public.

With that said, we don't often enforce pedestrian right of way violations. And a "crack down" on such laws (perhaps via self-driving vehicles accidental deaths) which haven't been broadly enforced will create some confusion and we'll all feel the hard hammer of the law... until the uprising occurs and more protective (and likely "bad") laws are enacted (laws that enforce drunkenness and/or stupidity... or cell phone use).
 
Aix. said:
Appears it was a cyclist: in an area with a bike lane (google map).

Definitely not enough details to say either way at this time but don't let that stop you guys from pushing whatever agenda you've got while the headline has your attention.
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If it was a cyclist then it wouldn't be a pedestrian.
 
Aix. said:
Appears it was a cyclist: in an area with a bike lane (google map).

Definitely not enough details to say either way at this time but don't let that stop you guys from pushing whatever agenda you've got while the headline has your attention.
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ok, even in that article, they say it was a pedestrian, but video focuses on a busted up bike

so.. what really happened?
 
oldmanbal said:
The New York Times wrote this piece as an anti-autonymous vehicle opinion piece rather than a factual story regarding the actual situation noted in the headlines. The only detail we are given to work with is that the pedestrian was out of a crosswalk. For all we know they could have jumped off a bridge and landed in front of a moving car.
Honestly this is some incredibly poor journalism on their part and fails to deliver anything factual other than the premise. Whether they were in a rush to bring this first to light, or just had an agenda to promote, the lack of information is telling.
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And you are surprised by that?
Real journalism has been dying for years, and last year they finished themselves off.
 
Out of 63,000+ pedestrians killed in traffic just in 2017, this year is diffrent because one was assisting the driver when the pedestrian broke the law and the car decided they looked like pavement...

Guess it would have been completely different if it was just an uber driver......not
 
viper1152012 said:
Out of 63,000+ pedestrians killed in traffic just in 2017, this year is diffrent because one was assisting the driver when the pedestrian broke the law and the car decided they looked like pavement...

Guess it would have been completely different if it was just an uber driver......not
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They always look at the negative if they have an agenda. No one wants to talk about the data and crash rates showing how much better they are than most drivers and how many lives they might have saved up to this point, no lets focus on the few times it didn't solve the problem.
 
BlueFireIce said:
They always look at the negative if they have an agenda. No one wants to talk about the data and crash rates showing how much better they are than most drivers and how many lives they might have saved up to this point, no lets focus on the few times it didn't solve the problem.
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Exactly, if there were a person at the wheel he would have not only ran over the woman, but also went back for her family right?

Self Driving FTW!!!
 
I've updated my original post and with a more clear head have to say the following: My problem isn't self driving cars or the technology behind it. I do believe that in many many years we will have better AI, more computer horsepower, and cars capable of autonomous driving. I just don't think we are close enough to be testing these things live like this.
 
Lots of unanswered questions, here are a few:
How far outside the crosswalk was the pedestrian?
Was the pedestrian in the road for a while or step out just as the car came by. (pedestrian has the right of way but right of way doesn't void the laws of physics.)
If the pedestrian was a cyclist, were they on or off the bike?
If cyclist, were they in a bike lane?
If cyclist, did they swerve in front of the car just as it came by?(physics laws again).
If bike involved, did it have proper lighting?
What was the 'safety driver' doing?
Did the car give any "Here you got it" warning to the safety driver?

The results of the investigation should be interesting when they are released.
 
Is this like where Tech has gotten too far ahead of itself or something.
 
JosiahBradley said:
Is it too soon to say told you so? Why the fuck do people have to die before they look at safety in technology.

EDIT: To update my post as a knee jerk reaction due to a local technological failure that killed 6 members of our community. Sometimes tech enhances lives, sometimes it takes it away. Maybe this isn't the car's fault. Will leave original message intact as I don't rewrite history.
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I'm not defending the self driving car or really trying to dispute your comment but ..... sometimes people do stupid shit and even a driver behind the wheel might have roadkilled that woman, just saying.
 
sfsuphysics said:
If it was a cyclist then it wouldn't be a pedestrian.
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Well yeah; kinda points out how poor the originally-linked article was when it appears NYT cropped out the bicycle covered by the local news and then reported it differently. Clearly they weren't really interested in covering the actual story here.
 
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Actually surprised there is a market for it anyways, types that enjoy driving or others that just find it something boring anymore.
 
Dead Parrot said:
Lots of unanswered questions, here are a few:
How far outside the crosswalk was the pedestrian?
Was the pedestrian in the road for a while or step out just as the car came by. (pedestrian has the right of way but right of way doesn't void the laws of physics.)
If the pedestrian was a cyclist, were they on or off the bike?
If cyclist, were they in a bike lane?
If cyclist, did they swerve in front of the car just as it came by?(physics laws again).
If bike involved, did it have proper lighting?
What was the 'safety driver' doing?
Did the car give any "Here you got it" warning to the safety driver?

The results of the investigation should be interesting when they are released.
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So I checked the map, it's a big intersection, park-like one two sides, big buisiness type buildings on the other two sides. Think four lanes, 10 PM on a Sunday night. Should have been a lot of light, enough for a normal pedestrian.

Now I remember some autonomous car champions going on about how all their great sensors would never allow such a thing, they'll never hit anything they shouldn't.

Still, I know better, sometimes you just can't miss, man or machine, wouldn't matter.

There is nothing said about a bike, if there was a bike, the cops would have said there was a bike. Unless the car has camera footage, (it should have camera footage), then they will get a much better idea of what happened.

But man oh man, if they decide it was driver negligence, that safety driver is going to be so fucked. The prosecution will go after him hard because he's the easy target, and Uber will throw him under the bus because it's either that or their tech so...... And the only real way this works out for the driver is if Arizona is getting beat up for allowing such a hand's off approach to this testing. You can bet the family is thinking exactly this, "Why Arizona?, Why us?, Why not let some other State take the risks?"
 
Almost hit a kid on a bike once. He just came out of no where. Scared the shit out of me. But driverless cars suppose to be able to see 360 degrees at the same time.
 
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lcpiper said:
So I checked the map, it's a big intersection, park-like one two sides, big buisiness type buildings on the other two sides. Think four lanes, 10 PM on a Sunday night. Should have been a lot of light, enough for a normal pedestrian.

Now I remember some autonomous car champions going on about how all their great sensors would never allow such a thing, they'll never hit anything they shouldn't.

Still, I know better, sometimes you just can't miss, man or machine, wouldn't matter.

There is nothing said about a bike, if there was a bike, the cops would have said there was a bike. Unless the car has camera footage, (it should have camera footage), then they will get a much better idea of what happened.

But man oh man, if they decide it was driver negligence, that safety driver is going to be so fucked. The prosecution will go after him hard because he's the easy target, and Uber will throw him under the bus because it's either that or their tech so...... And the only real way this works out for the driver is if Arizona is getting beat up for allowing such a hand's off approach to this testing. You can bet the family is thinking exactly this, "Why Arizona?, Why us?, Why not let some other State take the risks?"
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If the driver takes all the blame and goes to jail. Don't think anyone will be a saftey driver anymore. There's just too much money to be saved by having driverless vehicles. The tech isn't going to go away imo.
 
rgMekanic said:
Then perhaps this technology shouldn't be being tested in public yet.
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Can you define a specific level of ability or are you just going to keep shifting the goal posts no matter what they do?

Oh..and congratulations for picking an article that fits your viewpoint on the pricing. With the internet the way it is I can find an article that agrees with anything I think.
 
rgMekanic said:
Exactly, if there were a person at the wheel he would have not only ran over the woman, but also went back for her family right?

Self Driving FTW!!!
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If there was a person at the wheel either a) he would have left the scene or b) would have had only his testimony as evidence of what may have happened.

No way they're going to be able to put in legislation to require dashcams in car, unless said cars are autonomous then it may be a requirement.
 
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