robertorolfo

Um, what evidence? As far as I know, none of us have seen the video. The claim that she suddenly moved out in front of the vehicle, before any human or machine could possibly react, sure is convenient though, right?

I mean, we do know that these systems have a history of struggling to identify cyclists, so is it really so implausible that a person pushing a bike could have caused confusion for the AI? That is was something the AI hadn't experienced before (we don't know how she was walking the bike. Was it next to her, slightly behind her, in front of her...)?

If the outstanding citizen (yes, sarcasm) monitoring the vehicle wasn't being ultra attentive, even a half second delay in reaction could account for precious feet of stopping distance.

Look, I'm not really on one side or the other here. But I think a few of you are a little to eager to embrace our robot overlords and the frankly ridiculous culture coming out of Silicon Valley. Also, Uber (and I know they aren't the only company testing this stuff), are a reprehensible company. No, not because of that nonsense with the bros running the place, but because they were happy to build a business model based on destroying unions/regulations the world over.

MidSouthBiker

Man, how this place has become quite toxic!

Rollfast

Spokes. I'll bet spokes drive AI cars crazy.

Rollfast

Like I said in the other thread, SPOKES. Spokes must drive AI cars crazy with the narrowness and multiple reflections as the wheels turn.

My best educated guess.

tyrion

False equivalence.

Kontact

It is and has always been an emerging story, despite the fact that you started the thread by implying there will be a cover up. And then your next post was insulting anyone who doesn't see things your way.

Are you always an insulting conspiracy theorist, or just with some topics?

02Giant 

Along that line of thinking...A wind turbine slowly turning, that appears to be on the crest of a hill because of it's size.

jon c. 

It seems fairly evident that a pedestrian crossed illegally in front of oncoming traffic and was struck and killed. Is there any reason to believe otherwise?

There isn't generally a history of police issuing citations in such cases. The addition of inflammatory rhetoric doesn't alter that reality.

KD5NRH

Not at all; if it will just drive erratically at about 4 times the posted limit, the human will remain quite attentive.

Rollfast

Spokes.

KD5NRH

They keep saying she "came from nowhere out of the shadows," so unless the driver was wearing night vision goggles, (with the interdimensional portal filter allowing them to see into the magical nowhere the police chief believes cyclists and pedestrians frequently emerge from) there was no way to see her with human eyesight. That doesn't excuse the AV when one of its big selling points is supposed to be all the non-visible-light-based sensors detecting things we can't see.

CliffordK

Lots of questions.

Who's at fault. Who's not at fault? Percentage of fault?

Would a human driver have been better or worse?

The focus, however, shouldn't be as much on fault, but rather on how to make the next generation autonomous cars better.

Say one concludes that 9 out of 10 human drivers would have slammed into the woman. Then one should focus at that other 1 out of 10 drivers that would have avoided the accident. What would the theoretical 1 out of 10 drivers have done differently?

What if the drivers were given military grade night vision and a fighter jet heads-up display... would they have been able to avoid the accident? Or perhaps gotten too confused by the flashing lights on the display ...

Nonetheless, computer vision is a complex task. 1980's or 1990's software likely would have had troubles seeing the side of a building. But, what about 2020 or 2030 software? We need to use this unfortunate accident as a learning experience for the future generations of software.

The FAA treats every airplane crash seriously... so we can get better. NHTSA needs to do the same thing.

prathmann

The primary way that the safety of air travel has improved is that the NTSB does a thorough investigation into the causes and potential remedies of every airplane crash. That's exactly what's already underway in the aftermath of this AV crash in Tempe:
https://www.abc15.com/news/region-so...f-driving-uber

I-Like-To-Bike

I started this thread? News to me, as well as your numerous strawman arguments knocking down "implied" cover ups and conspiracies. No, I take that back, your resort to straw man arguments is not news to me.

Kontact

For those who are having trouble with comprehension, I was referring toe I Like To Bike's first post in the thread.


But please, keep being insulting.

I-Like-To-Bike

From the cited article: Which brings into question, again, the Tempe police chief's undue and unseemly haste in providing her probable cause exoneration exclusive to the SF chronicle before the victim is even cold in the ground.

CliffordK

They apparently have observed videos which haven't been made public. And if it was 100% human driven, there probably wouldn't have been charges either based on the "evidence" that they apparently viewed.

However, we're in a new era where the car won't be just recording a video straight ahead, but will have perhaps 1GB of relevant data to the single incident.

Hopefully the emphasis won't be on as much fault as improvement... although Uber does need to assure us that their vehicles are at least as safe as cars being driven by 16 yr olds.

Kontact

But if it was a hasty indictment, you would have been happy with that and praising the chief's actions for sharing timely information.

Siu Blue Wind

Kontact and ILTB stop.

noisebeam

There certainly wouldn't be unless the car driver was intoxicated. The investigation would be over by now and few would have ever heard about any of it. A pedestrian is killed every other day, sometimes every day in AZ. It has the highest pedestrian fatality rate in the US.

unterhausen

that's a pretty low standard though, nobody gets anything more than a slap on the wrist for killing someone with their car if they stay at the scene and aren't intoxicated.

tyrion

If they didn't do anything wrong, they shouldn't even get a slap on the wrist.

CB HI

Interesting that you say you have done multiple aircraft mishaps, but you clearly fail to understand why the military calls them mishaps rather than accidents.

I-Like-To-Bike

Assuming that this photo from the NYT accurately represents the path/locations of AV and the victim at the time of the accident, can someone explain how the victim walking a bicycle came out of nowhere to suddenly and without warning appear in front of a vehicle traveling at about 38MPH on the right side of this wide road, damaging the car on its right front side? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...an-killed.html

KD5NRH

Magic. Especially considering that this middle-aged woman, walking a bicycle, would have had to cross roughly 40' of road (two turn lanes, the left through lane and part of the right through lane) with no view obstructions to even get to the left side of the car. That's about 6-8 seconds at a normal walking pace. To do it in under two seconds would be Olympic level sprinting, and that's still an eternity for a computer to react.