Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-20/video-shows-woman-stepped-suddenly-in-front-of-self-driving-uber

by samcampbell • 8 years ago

262 358 8 years ago

"The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them," Moir said, referring to the back-up driver who was behind the wheel but not operating the vehicle. "His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision."

alistproducer22• 8 years ago

Call me crazy but isn't a big part of the promise of these systems supposed to be they see things humans wouldn't or couldn't? If they're just as surprised as the human behind the wheel, that feels like a problem.

samcampbell2• 8 years ago

Agreed! This seems like an instance where even if the car knew it needed to stop, it couldn't do so in time.

Maybestring2• 8 years ago

Every millisecond of braking reduces the severity of the collision.

danso21• 8 years ago

Yes, to me, this is the most relevant part of the posted article:

“It’s possible that Uber’s automated driving system did not detect the pedestrian, did not classify her as a pedestrian, or did not predict her departure from the median,” Smith said in an email. “I don’t know whether these steps occurred too late to prevent or lessen the collision or whether they never occurred at all, but the lack of braking or swerving whatsoever is alarming and suggests that the system never anticipated the collision.”

We can accept that by the time the Uber AV "saw" the victim, it was too late to brake. But that doesn't mean we can't ask questions about what the AI actually saw and classified. And even if it was a "sudden" event for humans, was it "sudden" relative to computer reaction time? How fast did the victim move into the road that the Uber AV couldn't even brake?

Taniwha2• 8 years ago

it could be that they never saw someone pushing a bike across a road in tests before, maybe it confused that with someone riding on the road at a different angle

BurningFrog2• 8 years ago

The most relevant part is from someone with zero knowledge of what happened?

branchan3• 8 years ago

If the autonomous vehicle performed just as well as the human did (meaning a human would've hit her also), then yes although it can be improved, I don't see how it is a problem.

alistproducer22• 8 years ago

If they are just robot versions of humans then I would argue they are far too underdeveloped to be on real roads with real people.

dzdt2• 8 years ago

Yes, the report you'd hope to be hearing from Uber is along the lines of "0.2 seconds after the pedestrian entered the travel lane the automated system identified her as a hazard and initiated an avoidance maneuver. Despite braking and beginning to swerve away, the car impacted the pedestrian 1.2 seconds later." Thats the promise the automated vehicle people are selling. But in this case it seems the car was clueless.

Jackalopiate• 8 years ago

As was the driver, mind you

TillE• 8 years ago

I'm really skeptical about swerving as an evasive maneuver. It's complicated to get that right. But yes, if it didn't at least slam the brakes then something went badly wrong.

Maybe you can't prevent an accident, but you can at least reduce momentum and demonstrate that your system was working correctly.

PunchTornado• 8 years ago

Why didn't the human hit the brake? I don't understand how this is even news to be honest. There was a human in the driving seat and he failed to stop just like the computer.

gmueckl• 8 years ago

You can (and should!) brake and swerve at the same time. Unless you are driving an oldtimer, the car is capable of doing that.

In my driving lessons I got told to swerve for humans. Pedestrians and cyclists are the least protected participants in traffic. If you swerve and hit another car, the resulting crash will cause a lot of damage, but injuries to humans will likely be much less severe, if they even happen.

Animals, especially small ones are a different matter. Using the same argument, it is better to risk hitting the animal than risking sverving into other traffic.

rconti4• 8 years ago

Swerving is a better way to avoid a collision, but braking would have at least reduced the severity.

Of course, this all presumes you can quickly analyze the situation and conclude that it is safe to swerve (which, in theory, the computer can do far faster than a human can).

branchan3• 8 years ago

If the woman suddenly walked in front of the car at the last minute, I don't see how the situation could have been avoided, no matter how fast a computer is able to process the information from the sensors.

There was also a driver behind the wheel, so it would suggest that humans are just as clueless.

setr• 8 years ago

But, ideally, the machinery should be much, much faster at becoming less clueless than the human driver; as the parent said, the ideal is that it should successfully identify, and fail to resolve, the impossible situation.

It should not have no awareness it's in an impossible situation (because that implies it will have no awareness is similar, possible, situations)

Someone• 8 years ago

”If the woman suddenly walked in front of the car at the last minute, I don't see how the situation could have been avoided”

Likely, but not necessarily. Depending (hugely!) on what actually happened, it might be that the car should have started slowing down before the woman changed course.

As an extreme example, if you’re driving at 50 mph and come up behind a kid cycling at the side of the road with a foot separation between the extrapolated trajectories of the bike and your car, should it be OK to continue your course at full speed, or should drivers take into account that kids are kids, and may move erratically?

Also (again purely hypothetical), if the car had already had several similar events on that road that resulted in near misses, should it have slowed down before it even entered the street, knowing the road segment to be particularly dangerous?

I think human drivers, even though they are horrible at attending to the road for extended periods, get into accidents relatively rarely because they know when they really need to pay attention.

Finally, I do not rule out that that “driver behind the wheel” reacted slower than would have happened if (s)he was actually driving the car.

Disclaimer: I’m a layman, and haven’t seen the video ⇒ Let’s wait and see what the NTSB will say about this.

CodeWriter23• 8 years ago

I think the parent commenter to your comment was alluding to this kind of stuff, a lack of depth in fallback strategies and systems trained to focus on objects in motion over stationary ones.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/uber-...

sjg007• 8 years ago

If I was driving a car and saw the pedestrian ahead of time walking or trying to cross I would have slowed down and changed lanes away fro them or at least moved far right if safe. Same thing when you pass bicycles. Change lanes away if possible or at the very least give more buffer. You can never tell what someone may do so you should anticipate the unexpected.

vamin• 8 years ago

The woman cannot go from being "not in path" to "in path" instantaneously unless you believe in teleportation. Supposing the woman got about 1 foot into the path of the car before being struck, the car would have had a minimum of 1 ft / <woman's speed in ft/s> seconds to react, assuming total blindness until the woman was "in path" (I can't think of a real world scenario where this assumption would be strictly true). Suppose a speed of 12 ft/s (~8mph), the car would have had a minimum of 8/100ths of a second to react. Supposing 3 ft of visibility before in path (about the distance from edge of car to lane), the car would have a minimum of ~1/3 second to react. That's assuming the woman was biking along at a good clip already, which is unlikely given that she was crossing a road. So, in all likelihood, the car had over 1/3 of a second to do something. That's just above the typical reaction time of a human (~1/4 second), but I don't think it's an unreasonable expectation for an autonomous vehicle.

bitcurious• 8 years ago

An accident might have been unavoidable, but fatality is the big question. The risk of pedestrian fatality jumps by ~4x between 30mph and 40mph.[0] So the question is - did the car start breaking as soon as possible?

As an aside, that statistic is why I never speed in pedestrian zones.

https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_...

hndamien4• 8 years ago

The fact that in most cases the human has to do nothing means that it is unlikely that the human is anywhere close to being as vigilante as an actual human driver. The fact that the human is clueless isn't surprising at all. In fact this is the real danger with systems like Tesla's autopilot. You still ned to be vigilante, but you are so bored that it is hard to be.

The safety humans here might as well be hood ornaments.

ubernostrum• 8 years ago

If the woman suddenly walked in front of the car at the last minute, I don't see how the situation could have been avoided

From /r/roadcam yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYvKPMaz9rI

Human driver avoided hitting the pedestrian. There are lots of videos of human drivers successfully not hitting people who "suddenly" pop out "at the last minute". Self-driving cars should be able to match that. If they can't, they don't belong on public roads yet.

yndoendo• 8 years ago

Not in the field but I am assuming that the AI/ML cannot handle the ability to see possible road hazards with in the human peripheral vision area

Such as a kid attempting to chase down a ball that is rolling towards the road (object vector path collision), specially with the ball and or kid suddenly hidden from view because of a parked car (real environment vs visual environment). Or a group playing basketball in a driveway. Both where slowing down is always the safer bet.

BurningFrog2• 8 years ago

Sure, but I don't think you can expect that kind of information the next day or even the next month.

Someone is dead and there may well be one or more trials as a result. Facts will take a s long as they take to surface.

xbeta• 8 years ago

Even the reaction is within 0.1s for the machine, you cannot brake and stop immediately. This is physics, and a mechanical problems.

Please remove the software mindset when looking into this.

sgustard2• 8 years ago

The car can begin to brake right away, and must certainly be expected to have a faster reaction time than a human. Whether it started to brake seems like the most important question here.

DanBC2• 8 years ago

"It’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode,”

But it's made harder if you're speeding.

GhostVII• 8 years ago

It was going 3mph over the speed limit, a perfectly reasonable speed that is still probably lower than almost everyone else on the road.

danso21• 8 years ago

There was no one else on the road (or, reports haven't mentioned other traffic being a factor).

rhacker3• 8 years ago

That actually really sucks to hear, I was hoping that SDVs would adhere and never break the speed limit. 3 MPH at the forces we're talking about can actually make a difference in life or death.

retsibsi2• 8 years ago

Serious question: how are speed limits enforced (or not) in the USA? From what I read on the internet, it seems like they are 90% unenforced, 10% arbitrarily enforced by cops who choose who they want to pull over from the masses who are routinely speeding.

If they are mostly unenforced, how does the system work? Does everyone implicitly add 20% to the posted limit, or do they just go whatever speed feels right to them given the road and the conditions?

(In my part of Australia, speeding is fairly common, but not speed limits are not a joke. You can expect most people to stick within ~5km/h of the limit, and if you choose not to then there's a real chance you'll get done by a hidden camera. The idea of everyone ignoring the limits sounds terrible: of course they are a bit arbitrary, but that's unavoidable for any unambiguous law, and the alternatives of arbitrary enforcement or no enforcement seem much worse.)

prawn5• 8 years ago

The sign (from Streetview imagery in July 2017) shows 45mph.

eindiran• 8 years ago

FTA: "Nearby signs show the speed limit was either 35 or 40 mph, though the 40 mph sign was closest to the accident site."

Unlike earlier articles, this seems to imply that the SDV was not speeding.

tzs2• 8 years ago

If the reported speed of 38 mph is correct it does not appear to have been speeding, unless most of the reports have the location wrong, or the speed limit has changed in the last 9 months.

The nearest sign on the road it was on, for the direction it was traveling according to most reports, that it would have passed says that the speed limit is 45 mph [1]. That image is from July 2017.

For the other direction it is 35 mph [2].

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4350531,-111.941492,3a,75y,3...

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4371031,-111.9433154,3a,75y,...

mindslight2• 8 years ago

If the reported location of not-Seattle is correct, then 38 in a 35 isn't speeding.

(disclaimer: I don't want to be defending Uber, I just don't see the need for the red herring)

AngeloAnolin• 8 years ago

Went to the link hoping to see a video, but I guess, pending all other investigations, that video would not be released.

ggg9990• 8 years ago

Whether the video will be released may also depend on her family’s wishes.

GoToRO• 8 years ago

Are these systems designed to honk?

CobrastanJorji2• 8 years ago

Per this old article from 2016, yes: https://medium.com/waymo/sounds-of-the-self-driving-car-c26f...

dkonofalski• 8 years ago

Clarification - the article you posted is about the Waymo technology, not the Uber technology. It's possible that Uber does not use those capabilities.

Zitrax• 8 years ago

The culture of using the horn differs a lot between countries. Would they use locale aware honk schemes?

And similarly are self driving cars listening? Will they detect emergency vehicles by the sirens, or even listen to other cars honking at them?

sudeepj• 8 years ago

I cannot imagine the detailed logging the engineers might have to do in such a system. When I code I wonder sometimes if I am logging unnecessary events at info level.

This led to one more question. Do driverless cars have (or will have) a black box like that of aeroplane?

subie• 8 years ago

Do driverless cars have (or will have) a black box like that of aeroplane?

I believe most modern cars already have this.

derefr2• 8 years ago

Yes; in fact, cars have had this technology since before there was flash memory or GPS or (good) accelerometers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_data_recorder s were originally designed to record the instantaneous mechanical state of the car (e.g. whether seatbelts were buckled, to what degree the accelerator was depressed, etc.) during a crash, for insurance purposes.

Fricken• 8 years ago

Test vehicles collect all the data. I think it was Cruise that mentioned they collect about 4 terabytes per day per vehicle. It likely isn't much different for Uber.

yazaddaruvala• 8 years ago

What we really need is for all of the logs from a company like Uber or Google to get streamed to some third party.

All of the logs are encrypted (with different keys), and only when an issue occurs, the company who owns the data gives the key for that particular car at that particular hour for decryption. Basically a data-escrow.

This way we know the logs are not being tampered with, and we keep the data hidden from the third party.

notatoad2• 8 years ago

These are test vehicles. If you don't let the engineers have access to the results of their testing except in the event of an accident, then we will never have autonomous cars.

Of course, maybe thats what you're arguing for. But either way, I think it's a bad idea.

robotbikes• 8 years ago

I haven't seen anyone post this yet but I highly suspect the fact that she was pushing a bicycle impacted the machine learning driven AIs ability to determine she was a pedestrian. This reminds me of the kangaroos messing up the AV programs being tested in Australia. A human paying attention may have been wary of a person pushing a bike in the shadows but for all we know the algorithm thought that she was a bush or something because her profile was impacted by the bike. There is a lot to speculate about but machine learning isn't as smart as we humans tend to believe it is and nowhere does it yet approach the form of general intelligence required to respond appropriately to all of it's inputs the way a human paying attention could.

lulmerchant• 8 years ago

I don't understand this line of reasoning at all, but it's getting repeated a lot on HN. Is the AI expected to hit cyclists, but not pedestrians? Shouldn't it consider any moving object to be a hazard?

Roodgorf• 8 years ago

It may not have had good enough information to tell that she was a cyclist at all, and instead interpreted her to be something static/non-human altogether (in parent's example, a bush). Of course, without seeing the data its sensors gathered, and what that data registered as, it's all speculation. The problem is with misidentification, not bad priorities.

CobrastanJorji2• 8 years ago

Weird scenarios that can't be predicted are important to consider. Waymo presentations like talking about a situation they ran into where the car needed to stop because it encountered an old woman in a wheelchair with a broom chasing a turkey. As I understand it, most of these companies sensibly say "unknown weird thing in/near road means stop the car."

ooo, there's video of the turkey wheelchair broom chase: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/video/2017/mar/16/goo...

s73v3r_3• 8 years ago

A person pushing a bike is far, far from a "weird scenario", though.

probably_wrong• 8 years ago

As I understand it, most of these companies sensibly say "unknown weird thing in/near road means stop the car."

That's not entirely true. A Tesla, for instance, won't stop if it detects a stationary object on the highway, assuming it's a false positives of the algorithm.

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar

jd75• 8 years ago

Given that another comment says she "suddenly" crossed three lanes of traffic and was on the far side of the car when she was hit, my suspicion is that the car thought she was riding the bike. Of course all of us computers know that bikes always go over 5 mph so surely she'd make it across. Why brake?

I want safe self-driving cars, when they are safe. But Uber's clearly-established cavalier attitude toward human beings apparently can't be trusted with self-driving cars. I'm disappointed that politicians thought they could.

ClassyJacket• 8 years ago

I don't see how this is relevant. The car should avoid hitting ANYTHING. It shouldn't have to recognise what the object is if it's in the path of the car.

preparat• 8 years ago

Could people start wearing small transmitters that nearby autonomous vehicles can read?

etrautmann• 8 years ago

Please no. You should not be required to carry a beacon in order to be safe walking around a city or crossing a street.

Para2016• 8 years ago

People are supposed to wear bright clothing when walking at night or biking. Maybe we can have an optional beacon..

asdsa53253• 8 years ago

The woman who was hit ran across the road. It's easy to be safe: don't do that.

cdolan• 8 years ago

A technology/IoT solution to a problem that should never exist in the first place, brilliant!

Sargos2• 8 years ago

This is about as feasible as putting smart chips in all roads so that cars know where the lanes are.

mschuster913• 8 years ago

This is about as feasible as putting smart chips in all roads so that cars know where the lanes are.

Lanes are marked, usually. So why not embed something like an UV/IR-only color pigment in the lanes? Invisible so it doesn't affect human drivers but can easily be picked up by cameras.

stordoff3• 8 years ago

Roads are generally marked, and often have elements embedded in the surface (e.g. [1]). As self-driving cars become more prevalent, I don't see why you wouldn't adjust new/replaced markings to be something more readable by those vehicles. It obviously can't be the only signal used (because it's infeasible to change everything immediately, not all roads are marked, and wear/damage may make them unusable) but it may help improve reliability/accuracy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_eye_(road)

Slartie• 8 years ago

I like that idea! Gonna buy a bunch of those, amplify their signal and spread them throughout the city I live in. That will ensure that there's not going to be a single crappy autonomous car being beta-tested in my vicinity!

Another idea would be to just throw them right in front of an autonomous vehicle at full speed. Let's test those brakes!

(sorry, but the original idea is just so ridiculous that I am incapable of responding in a non-sarcastic way to this...)

tintor4• 8 years ago

Such devices exist and they are LED lights that pedestrians and bicyclists already use.

jakeogh• 8 years ago

That was easy to see coming... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16620315

cesarb3• 8 years ago

Better than a transmitter would be a passive retroreflector. I believe these are even already available on the market.

bobf• 8 years ago

I imagine phones will serve that role eventually. GPS chip accuracy is improving constantly and could be accurate to within a foot in some phones in the next year [1]. Google Maps / Waze already do something similar with predicting traffic times based on phone data (and other sources). GPS accuracy currently may make an individual's location slightly harder, but path prediction may help. (And, of course there are privacy concerns to consider.)

[1] https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/25/16362296/g...

cimmanom2• 8 years ago

So if you're homeless and can't afford a phone or if you forgot yours at home or if you got pickpocketed... you can expect to get hit by a self driving car?

stordoff3• 8 years ago

That sounds like something that will immediately be abused for tracking people, and an over-reliance on it may make it more dangerous for people not carrying one (don't want to, can't afford, signal blocked by item/clothing, simply forget etc.).

danso21• 8 years ago

The NYT just published a graphic that purports to show the location of the vehicle and the victim: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/20/us/self-drivi...

This is the first report I've seen that indicates the Uber AV was in the right lane. Remember that the victim was crossing from left to right, and that all of the visible damage on the AV is on the right-side bumper. It's very hard to imagine a scenario in which a 49-year-old woman walking her bike manages to cross 3 lanes of traffic so quickly that the Uber AV, moving at 40 mph, had no time to react, in a location with good street lighting and with clear weather. I would think most humans would be able to at least hit the brakes, if not completely avoid a collision.

lolc3• 8 years ago

If this was indeed the overall scenario, there are few factors I could think of that would excuse a human driver here:

1. Another car was in the lane left of the fatal car, blocking its view of the pedestrian. 2. The pedestrian fell back after reaching the curb.

But it looks like both the artificial and the human driver were asleep.

bbarn• 8 years ago

1. Wouldn't the pedestrian have to walk through said car then? 2. Quite plausible, especially trying to heft what looks like a pretty heavy loaded bike onto a curb.

stefan_2• 8 years ago

Not just crossing all those lanes, since the damage is to the right side, she crossed in front of the vehicle. And yet it never braked.

That's a failure on every level, from prediction to just sheer radar obstacle detection. You don't hit things right in front of you, mid-class vehicles you can buy today already have sensors to emergency brake when the driver won't but an obstruction is ahead.

fabian2k• 8 years ago

If the car was really in the right lane, I don't think an autonomous vehicle has any excuse for not reacting in this situation. A real person might not see the crossing pedestrian in bad light, but a self-driving car should have plenty of sensors capable of detecting a pedestrian crossing three lanes until they're actually in the fourth lane where the car was driving.

mirimir6• 8 years ago

Right, so now she's crossing three lanes. So that's about 9 meters. At 1-3 meters per second for her, and 17 meters/second for the Uber SUV, it should have seen her 3-9 seconds (50-150 meters) before impact.

That's a pretty clear fail.

I wonder what the Uber's field of view is. At what distance should it have detected stuff about 9 meters off track?

But she did likely walk out from landscaping. So perhaps she initially "looked" like waving branches or whatever. And there must be some mechanism to suppress such false positives, or vehicles would brake when it's windy.

danso21• 8 years ago

That's a pretty clear fail.

And yet the police were so quick to say that camera footage indicates that Uber was likely not at fault. It was so quick that it makes me inclined to think it's pretty obvious. However, after the SF Chronicle published its exclusive interview with the Tempe's chief of police, the Tempe Police PR person had to issue a statement that, "Tempe Police Department does not determine fault in vehicular collisions."

I'm not one to believe in conspiracies or to automatically suspect shadowy influence, so I want to believe that the the camera footage seems to argue that this was an unavoidable accident. But the evidence released so far argues against that, regardless of whether the victim's crossing was illegal or not. And why are the police making a judgment on this so soon in the first place, especially when the decision will be made by county law officials, and ostensibly after referring to Uber's full suite of sensor data?

https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/20/uber-fault-pedestrian-fa...

agumonkey• 8 years ago

My uncle bought a car with some proximity sensor, basic thing for walls during parking. He, like many, was annoyed at the regular bips etc.

I'm sure a system that warns more for the sake of cautiousness would be rejected by people.

lhorie2• 8 years ago

Elaine Herzberg was struck while walking her bike across the street somewhere in this area

How do I know this graphic isn't entirely speculative?

danso21• 8 years ago

I think that's a fair question, and that includes the text that says "Body seen in this area". I had tweeted at the author about it but hadn't gotten a reply (note: this may be because they don't see/reply to tweets from nobodies like me).

The distances, as depicted, are a little strange. If Uber AV hit the victim at 40mph, you would expect her body to be seen farther away from where it says "Body seen in this area".

It is incontestable that the Uber hit her on its right-front side. Here's a clear picture recently tweeted by NTSB: https://twitter.com/NTSB_Newsroom/status/976215176323194880

IncRnd4• 8 years ago

From the article:

“It’s possible that Uber’s automated driving system did not detect the pedestrian, did not classify her as a pedestrian, or did not predict her departure from the median,” Smith said in an email. “I don’t know whether these steps occurred too late to prevent or lessen the collision or whether they never occurred at all, but the lack of braking or swerving whatsoever is alarming and suggests that the system never anticipated the collision.”

dmoy• 8 years ago

Remember that the victim was crossing from left to right

I don't remember reading this, where was that reported? (Most of the blurbs I read were pretty scarce on the details...)

Fr0styMatt88• 8 years ago

The question that comes to my mind then is.... why didn't the human driver that was sitting behind the wheel react?

Could this be a demonstration of what people talk about with regards to partial autonomy being a detriment to human attention?

userbinator• 8 years ago

Could this be a demonstration of what people talk about with regards to partial autonomy being a detriment to human attention?

Definitely. By the time the human realises something is wrong and has to take control, it's already too late.

Incidentally, this is also why autopilots in planes have been more successful --- when something goes wrong high up in the sky, there's still relatively much time to assess the situation and react. With cars, even if the car suddenly told the driver to take over, the driver would essentially have to already be fully attentive to the situation in order to make a decision in time. It's the difference between seconds to a minute in a plane vs. fractions of a second in a car.

eddieplan9• 8 years ago

Please stop spreading rumors and speculations. The graphic is an illustration and does not necessarily place the car in the actual lane. It clearly contradicts with the police chief’s statement that the victim walks right into traffic from center medium. It even contradicts with the left arrow pointing to the impact location in the same picture.

danso21• 8 years ago

Please don't accuse me or other commenters of spreading "rumors and speculations", without evidence or logical arguments.

I didn't state a bunch of claims, I linked to a NYT published article. If it turns out that the NYT depicted the incorrect lane, then I expect we'll see a correction. But they published this graphic staked on their reputation for accuracy, not on just "rumors".

Moreover, it does not contradict what the police chief said; here is her initial and only interview:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Exclusive-Tempe...

Pushing a bicycle laden with plastic shopping bags, a woman abruptly walked from a center median into a lane of traffic and was struck by a self-driving Uber operating in autonomous mode.
“The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them,” said Sylvia Moir, police chief in Tempe, Ariz., the location for the first pedestrian fatality involving a self-driving car. “His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision.”*

The police chief also said a number of things that have subsequently been changed. In the Chronicle article, she's reported to have said that the Uber was driving 38 in a 35mph zone. The NYT graphic and other stories from today have said it was a 45mph zone.

IanDrake• 8 years ago

The NYT graphic shows an empty road. Do we know that to be the case?

Is it possible the road had other vehicles blocking the view?

danso21• 8 years ago

The OP article (from bloomberg, not nytimes) says that the woman moved from the median into traffic:

The Uber had a forward-facing video recorder, which showed the woman was walking a bike at about 10 p.m. and moved into traffic from a dark center median. "It’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode,” Sylvia Moir, the police chief in Tempe, Arizona, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

xbmcuser• 8 years ago

The police are comparing what would have happened if the driver was human. But Ai cars are supposed to have larger range of view. I personally feel waymo car would have probably noted and avoided the woman. And with lidar it's being dark is actually no excuse as it wouldn't matter.

bmelton• 8 years ago

I mean, there was a human in the car too, and the human's statement was that the first sign that there might be a collision was after the collision occurred.

rconti4• 8 years ago

I'm pretty amazed the SDV didn't "see" her, and yet the photograph shows the SDV and the bicycle in the same frame. I mean, yes, I'm sure it can stop from 38mph in, say, 60 feet under perfect conditions, but there's no way a human reacted to the collision and slammed on the brakes or hit an emergency stop button quickly enough to bring it to a stop with the bike in frame like that. I wonder if the vehicle is programmed to do a full panic stop on collision -- which, in and of itself seems a bit dicey, in terms of determining when to slam on the brakes (bird strike? dog? deer?)

danso21• 8 years ago

edit: I agree with other commenters that the NYT's labeling is a little too vague. My assumption is that the NYT wouldn't arbitrarily show the Uber vehicle in the far-right lane unless there was some factual basis. If it turns out the NYT did make an arbitrary choice, and Uber AV was actually in the left lane, then NYT needs to be called out to make a correction.

Frustratingly, so many stories make no mention of the lane. This is the only one I've found so far, and it's from the local news-weekly:

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/federal-agencies-investi...

The Volvo was in the lane nearest the curb, about 100 yards south of Curry Road, and going about 40 mph at the time of the collision. Initial evidence shows the vehicle didn't brake "significantly" before the impact.

My assumption is that the writer thinks "lane nearest the curb" is unambiguous to the average reader, which would mean the right-most lane. Because...why would average reader (who isn't looking at the accident scene right now) assume that the left-most lane on any road is "nearest the curb"?

However, from Street View, we see that there are curbs on both sides of the street -- i.e. the median itself has a curb: https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4368426,-111.9428855,3a,75y,...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

mirimir6• 8 years ago

Good find.

And if the Uber had changed lanes quickly, to avoid hitting the woman, the backup driver would presumably have mentioned it.

YawningAngel• 8 years ago

Err, what? I don't follow at all. Don't roads have curbs on both sides?

tzs2• 8 years ago

It's very hard to imagine a scenario in which a 49-year-old woman walking her bike manages to cross 3 lanes of traffic so quickly that the Uber AV, moving at 40 mph, had no time to react [...]

(Pure speculation follows)

I wonder if it possible that the problem is that she was moving too slowly for it, not too quickly?

If for some reason it could not get a good read on the component of her velocity parallel to the lane, it might mistake her for another vehicle moving at similar speed to the Uber, and then see her transverse velocity component as being due to normal drift within the lane. It would read the situation as a normal passing situation, not someone about to enter its lane.

Lazare• 8 years ago

The NYT just published a graphic that purports to show the location of the vehicle and the victim:

It has a vague location for where the victim's body ended up, yes, but I don't interpret that graphic as purporting to show the actual location of the vehicle or victim at the time of the trash.

This is the first report I've seen that indicates the Uber AV was in the right lane.

I'm not sure I'd go that far. I think the arrow represents the direction of travel, but I would assume they just placed it near the body, and aren't explicitly trying to suggest which lane the car was in. And the notation "somewhere in this area", in my eyes, confirms this.

Further, if they do know which lane it was in, that would be an excellent bit of investigative journalism that no one else has reported, and you'd expect it to be in the story, if not the actual lead. It's not, so...

giarc• 8 years ago

Maybe she stepped back into traffic after crossing? Perhaps the car thought she would be on the sidewalk by the time it arrived at that position but she stepped back or fell back into the lane.

dsacco2• 8 years ago

The NYT just published a graphic that purports to show the location of the vehicle and the victim:

Emphasis on ”purports”. The NYT graphic doesn’t indicate the vehicle was in the right lane, nor does it indicate a precise location for Elaine. I don’t think you have bad intentions here, but extrapolating a hypothesis from this graphic seems unfounded.

There isn’t enough information to go on to develop reasonable hypotheses from any angle, unfortunately. The investigation needs to complete and footage needs to be released.

mizay72• 8 years ago

I think the police are incorrect in saying that the woman walked out the median. If you look at the photo (in the NYT) with the bike and car, its shows (and is captioned as) the car damaged on the right side and the bike is on side walk. It seems most likely that the woman stepped out from behind the trees on the right side of the street.

If people are actually correct about the median thing then I cant imagine how this is not a colossal failure of software. But again it makes way more sense that she walked out from the right side of the road.

mizay72• 8 years ago

well now the video was released. she was walking from the median. So yes, that seems like a colossal failure of the system.

Zanni• 8 years ago

It's not hard to imagine at all. Did you watch the embedded video? The pedestrian is almost invisible. On my first viewing I didn't see her at all. On repeat viewing, and with foreknowledge, I could just make out her sneaker by reflected light, and her torso in silhouette. She has no reflective gear on her body or her bicycle, and the street lighting is nonexistent where she chose to cross (between street lights, and not on a marked crosswalk or corner). I'm pretty sure I would have hit this woman under these conditions, as horrifying as that is.

DanBC2• 8 years ago

There's no blame for the car driving above the speed limit even though the driver is unable to see the risks ahead?

deft• 8 years ago

Great that all these articles are coming out defending Uber. Even if (it wasn't) her own fault, these make it sound like "well I mean she was stupid and therefore deserved it".

gnicholas2• 8 years ago

The driver, Rafael Vasquez, 44, served time in prison for armed robbery and other charges in the early 2000s, according to Arizona prison and Maricopa County Superior Court records. Uber declined to comment on Vasquez’s criminal record.

I didn't realize that people with criminal records like this could become Uber drivers. That is, these types of crimes are relevant to working as an Uber driver—more than things like tax fraud or failure to pay child support.

mschuster913• 8 years ago

I didn't realize that people with criminal records like this could become Uber drivers.

In a civilized society people should be able to get jobs when they get out of prison. It's called "time served" for a reason. Everything other is just paving the path to recidivism - when people can't make a living because no one will hire ex-cons, they don't have any other way of literally staying alive than living as hobos or breaking the law.

The attitude in your comment is imho perfectly representing why the US has such problems with career criminals.

The only class of people where even after time served there should be safeguards are when there's a psychological reason that actually makes people dangerous, like pedophilia.

lsaferite2• 8 years ago

My understanding is that in Europe a criminal record is hidden from all but LEOs after 7 years as well.

dahdum2• 8 years ago

I agree they should be able to get jobs, but not any job. I don't believe those convicted of murder, kidnapping, and other seriously violent crimes should be allowed to drive potentially vulnerable passengers.

gnicholas2• 8 years ago

The attitude in your comment is imho perfectly representing why the US has such problems with career criminals.

Apparently Lyft shares the attitude you describe, but Uber does not.

https://www.thezebra.com/insurance-news/5215/criminal-backgr...

Note that I was merely showing surprise that this was allowed, not passing judgment. I had heard of cases (see above link) where people were denied because of prior misdemeanor convictions, which is why I was surprised.

dahdum2• 8 years ago

Wow...I didn't know Uber allows violent felony convictions, but looks like they ignore any convictions more than 7 years old. Including murder.

Colorado fined them $8.9M last year for violating background check laws.

https://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/20/uber-colorado-fine/

"The PUC said the drivers should have been disqualified. They had issues ranging from felony convictions to driving under the influence and reckless driving. In some cases, drivers were working with revoked, suspended or canceled licenses, the state said. A similar investigation of smaller competitor Lyft found no violations."

UncleEntity• 8 years ago

In Arizona a few years back they make drug testing mandatory for Taxi/Livery/&etc drivers so I looked up the law after the owner of the company told us "look, the law says I have to drug test you guys but it doesn't say you have to pass so just bring it in and I won't even look at the results."

Nothing disqualifies you as long as they have documentation of a background check and drug test -- axe-murdering crack head with a penchant for buggering small animals, perfectly legal.

The governor got some flack for that one...

drcross• 8 years ago

At the risk of sounding macabre, the engineers will be pouring over thousands of lines of logs and if Uber self driving cars ever do survive to make it onto the roads again, the circumstance of woman's death and the after analysis will mean it will never ever happen again. I expect that during the coming years we will analyse car crashes with the same scrutiny as airplane crashes with the hope to solve every single edge case. RIP.

chii• 8 years ago

having cars follow the same level of investigation as a plane crash is probably the best thing to happen.

aetherson• 8 years ago

That's a very optimistic view of what will happen -- or I suppose a pessimistic one. I agree that there will be a lot of scrutiny of the logs, but unless they identify an actual bug ("Oh shit, we had a buffer overrun right here!") it's not necessarily going to be possible to preclude this or something very similar from happening again.

The driving of an autonomous vehicle is an emergent event of large numbers of complicated and in some cases opaque subsystems. Changing the interactions of these subsystems in a narrow way to preclude this particular kind of event is not necessarily something they'll be able to figure out a way to do without causing more problems.

dmix3• 8 years ago

But it's still optimistic compared to todays current status quo. We now have a system we can optimize and build into to make our best effort to prevent in future events.

Which is how it similar to airplane crashes, as it's a heavily automated and centralized system (ie, humans are far less a factor in the event than cars, which can't be optimized nearly as easily).

While cars have had improvements in safety via vehicle design, and popular culture, road signs, traffic laws, etc can influence human behaviour to drive differently, I don't think there has ever been a better time to reduce these events if not everytime, then at least far less often than the current standard.

Which is what is so often missing in these conversations: a rational baseline and a clear reliable process that we will now be in a better position going forward for this not to happen again (assuming the right processes are in place, which they may very well not be in this case).

nikofeyn2• 8 years ago

what you have described is an impossibility. what makes you think uber or waymo or anyone can suddenly make a perfect self-driving system?

jaweb• 8 years ago

It's interesting how high profile this post-crash analysis is - name another time you read so much commentary about the details that caused a car crash?

It seems to me that this is exposing a few gaps in how we think about driverless cars currently:

  - A framework for how cars should be making "moral" decisions (the trolley problem [0])
  - A defined process for post car crash investigations - akin to the process in air crashes

Will be interesting to see if these emerge soon (or are emerging and I have missed)

[0] https://qz.com/1204395/self-driving-cars-trolley-problem-phi...

sdrothrock2• 8 years ago

name another time you read so much commentary about the details that caused a car crash?

Doesn't this happen every time a Tesla is involved, too? I think this might be so high-profile because it's the first automated vehicle incident (that I'm aware of) that involves a pedestrian.

I know that one of the Tesla incidents resulted in the driver's death, but that was clearly user error. IIRC Tesla was very quick to release the data on the incident as well, so it was pretty clear versus this situation, which is mostly people guessing.

hughes• 8 years ago

I really don't see how the trolley problem is relevant to this situation. The car didn't decide that killing a person was better than some less-moral alternative.

c22• 8 years ago

I think that's why it's relevant. It's likely the system can't make such a decision because its developers wanted to avoid having to deal with that can of worms. If this is the case the car may have insufficient options available to it in this type of situation. With a working "trolley function" it's possible the system could have noticed the obstacle then done some "moral math" with the chances the obstacle is a pedestrian and the odds of survival for the car's occupant(s) then chosen to drive off the road and crash into a ditch. Without this feature it's likely the system's only recourse is to stop and ask for help, which it may not have time to do.

ksk2• 8 years ago

Self-driving cars are still a fantasy. I don't want the AI to be comparable to an average driver (who collectively get into 6 million accidents) . I want the AI to meet/exceed the skills of the best driver. There is no way anyone would trust an "average" driver to pickup their kids, more than themselves.

derefr2• 8 years ago

There is no way anyone would trust an "average" driver to pickup their kids, more than themselves.

I mean, most parents will—at some point—trust their teenage children to pick up their younger siblings. And teenagers are decidedly below-average drivers.

asdsa53253• 8 years ago

Self-driving car companies have no intention of building an average system.

rconti4• 8 years ago

I've been in plenty of cars driven by Uber/Lyft/Taxi drivers not to mention coworkers/friends/family who were decidedly below-average.

ksk2• 8 years ago

Well, I want my computer to be able to do perfect math, without mistakes too. Its one of the reasons people use computers to begin with !

notatoad2• 8 years ago

The average driver is pretty terrible though. Average is a pretty low bar to clear, and I think there's a decent argument to be made that waymo's disengagement numbers are already better than an average driver.

ACow_Adonis• 8 years ago

Well...except everyone who trusts anyone to pick up their kids.

On average...

Unless they're picking up their kids from lake wobegong elementary or something...

dragonwriter2• 8 years ago

It's possible (though unlikely) for everyone who picks up kids on behalf of parents to be an above-average driver, since the people doing that are a small share of all drivers.

nikofeyn2• 8 years ago

to my knowledge, no company is even close to even an average driver.

dwighttk2• 8 years ago

It is astonishing how many conflicting bits of information are slowly trickling out about this person's death.

phkahler2• 8 years ago

Especially when there is video of it. Please tell me there is dashcam footage, since that's the first thing that should be available as evidence with a self-driving car.

netsharc2• 8 years ago

Well, considering the whole thing is in a test phase, they must have a recording of all the sensor data, including what the cameras saw.

skybrian• 8 years ago

It seems pretty common after a newsworthy crash for there to be a lot of uninformed speculation.

Investigations take time. Just like with airplane crashes, it's probably best to ignore everything about this incident until we see the results of the investigation.

daodedickinson2• 8 years ago

If this car hit a woman coming from so far on the other side of the street, how are they going to deal with suicides? A coworker was driving home once when a man jumped out in front of her van and she barely stopped in time. He started whomping on her driver's side window screaming "Why didn't you hit me?!?!" again and again. She quickly got away and tried to come up with an explanation for her kids and called 911.

DoreenMichele2• 8 years ago

I don't think we can really know whether or not this incident was a suicide.

dmix3• 8 years ago

The fact the woman was pushing a bike with tons of plastic bags late a night makes me think it wasn't. It sounds to me like a homeless person jaywalking in a dangerous fashion.

tintor4• 8 years ago

Did Uber release sensor data from the vehicle?

phkahler2• 8 years ago

My guess is that they won't release video footage out of respect for the victim and her family. That's mostly an excuse on their part though.

marcc• 8 years ago

I don't think that respect for the victim and her family is an excuse to not release video footage. It's a valid reason to hesitate releasing actual video footage of a such a terrible event.

Sensor data is different. If Uber wants to help the story that self-driving cars are safer, then they should release sensor data to help substantiate any claims they may make in the future about what the car did and did not do.

oh_sigh2• 8 years ago

You could release everything up until the moment of impact.

corny• 8 years ago

I wonder if test drivers should also be video monitored to record their alertness? It's quite a responsibility.

mindslight2• 8 years ago

What exactly is the point of reposting yesterday's unsubstantiated press release? The video can't "show" anything if the video is unavailable!

flagged.

ThrustVectoring3• 8 years ago

There's at least two other trends that are, IMO, more to blame. SUVs in general for one, and the proliferation of particular mixed-use road antipattern.

SUVs is an easy one. When an SUV hits a bicyclist, motorcyclist, or pedestrian, the unfortunate person tends to go through rather than the over they'd be subjected to by a sedan. Motorcycle accident stats bear this out - the overall accident rate has gone down as people have started riding safer, but the fatality rate has gone up as SUVs have taken over market share.

The roads this is a bit more complicated, but basically roads need to either be slow enough to safely share space (25mph or below), separated out so that only cars can use it (freeways), or kill an alarming number of pedestrians and bicyclists. Four lanes and a 35 MPH speed limit with infrequent crossings is pretty much going to have a body count.

I'm not trying to excuse Uber here, just trying to maybe convince urban planners to stop building things that convince people to try to cross four lanes of traffic going 35 MPH.

awakeasleep• 8 years ago

I'm a dreamer, but I'm dreaming self driving cars or even just sensors on normal cars are able to record the data and make this kind of thing indisputable.

Then maybe we'll have corporate pressure aligned with social pressure to change the laws and move traffic patterns beyond what random luck has 'evolved' to safe and sensible defaults.

Piskvorrr2• 8 years ago

Well...there's supposed to be a video. The police claims to have seen it, so at least NTSB should have it.

The proliferation of dashcams makes your dream far more likely.

swyx• 8 years ago

how are SUVs even remotely related here? makes the rest of your argument difficult to take seriously

ThrustVectoring3• 8 years ago

The self-driving car involved in the accident is a SUV.

sagarm• 8 years ago

Because when an SUV hits someone, they get pushed under the wheels. When a sedan hits someone, they get pushed over the hood.

This is because a person's certain of gravity is above where a sedan's front would hit them.

freehunter2• 8 years ago

Why do people blame SUVs when pickup trucks are some of the the highest selling vehicles in America and vans/minivans have existed since forever and are still popular? And they’re both the same size as SUVs?

ThrustVectoring3• 8 years ago

If you have five children, you're likely buying a car with seven seats. If you regularly transport thousands of pounds of stuff, you're getting a pickup truck. SUVs, on the other hand, often get purchased in lieu of a sedan; pickup trucks and minivans have use-value that often justify their place on the road.

tripzilch• 8 years ago

I think it's also social pressure to some extent. In the US, cars appear to be on average about 1.5x the size (in all dimensions) of cars in Europe. If you see one on the streets in Europe between other cars it often looks comically huge. I assume that if you drive a regularly sized car in the US (or a smaller one like a Toyota Aigo), it looks comically tiny between the rest of the giant traffic.

dclowd9901• 8 years ago

If this piece of road is the one I’m thinking of, there’s nary a crossing area for at least a mile. Phoenix isn’t known for walkability, and this isn’t downtown Tempe.

Piskvorrr2• 8 years ago

Seems to be a bit down this road (location chosen because of the speed limit sign): https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4350531,-111.941492,3a,75y,3...

phyzome4• 8 years ago

We only have the word of the Arizona police on the veracity of the headline. Not exactly a stellar source.

bfuller• 8 years ago

And the human being behind the wheel, who I also have a problem trusting

eecsninja• 8 years ago

I'll just leave this here. Arizona pedestrian deaths increased 9% in 2017.

https://www.12news.com/article/news/local/arizona/arizona-pe...

alexandercrohde• 8 years ago

This title should read "Tempe Police Chief alleges/interprets video shows woman stepped out suddenly in front of self-driving uber"

notananthem• 8 years ago

Sorry for the dumb question, but is there already any conclusion on how driverless cars will be handled for accidents, collisions, fatalities, etc?

In the short term it sounds like poor Vasquez is boned as the driver considering the media is profiling his previous conviction. There's no profiling a "driverless car" though, how inherently risky it can be.

I'm all for the future and driverless cars I've just always thought this was an idiotic idea that will turn people into Idiocracy characters.

This woman was killed by a very expensive robotic car with a human being that could have prevented it, but wasn't permitted to, because the future of driverless cars is being tested.

rhacker3• 8 years ago

I found a few things interesting when I add them up:

1. She was walking from left to right.

2. The dent was on the right side of the car

She probably knew she was going to be hit if she sped up like that, AND... it was probably more than .2 seconds of total visibility to the SDV.

jdavis7033• 8 years ago

When I was getting my learners permit I was practicing on a curvy mountain road. I saw a person with a camera phone on the "drop off" side of the road, taking a picture of from what my angle would've been a boring cliff face. But I knew that a camera phone photographer was probably actually photographing a human, who would likely be on the other side of the blind corner. So I slowed down, despite my instructor chastising me for doing so. When we came around and there was a person in the road she asked, "How did you know?" If a self driving vehicle can't make predictions about "irrational" pedestrian behaviour like this and slow down it shouldn't be on the road.

cle• 8 years ago

Should your driving instructor also not be on the road?

hndamien4• 8 years ago

Maybe shouldn't be a driving instructor.

jdavis7033• 8 years ago

Probably not. But I also failed my first driving test for going to slow (I was within the minimum and maximum speed range, but new drivers going slow I guess is a sign of an unconfident driver).

LethargicStud• 8 years ago

The self driving accidents might be the easiest for humans to avoid, but if accident rates are lower for self-driving cars, it's still worth it. Let's look at overall numbers and severity, not how avoidable it would be for a human.

zamalek2• 8 years ago

I am a massive proponent of self-driving vehicles for exactly the same reasons you indicated. However, I do a huge reservation: this tech can only peak if it is the only thing on the road.

My outlook on the transition period is not very optimistic. Humans are good at anticipating crazy behavior. Fatalities increasing (before they eventually decrease) is currently just as likely as the promised miracle in my mind - we don't have enough data to sway my mind either direction just yet.

ajross2• 8 years ago

Your own story disproves your conclusion. Your driving instructor, like many (many) other drivers, didn't make the infererence that you did. People don't drive well. Cars are dangerous.

The criterion (really the only criterion) for whether or not automatic vehicles "should be on the road" is whether or not they are safer than the alternative. And that certainly doesn't include "being as good a driver as jdavis703 was in this particular anecdote".

ttctciyf2• 8 years ago

The instructor, though, wasn't the one driving.

Being engaged in a particular role relative to a situation can (I believe) alter one's capacity to perceive and respond to it.

This isn't to say that for definite the instructor would have had the insight described in the parent post, but it is to say that you can't rule this out just based on the information that as a passenger they didn't have the insight.

slx26• 8 years ago

I wouldn't particularly blame your instructor, a lot of people would have reacted the same way, which to me proves that it's not just AI, it's the roads and the driving that are unsafe. As pedestrians, we learn what's dangerous and what we can't do, and as drivers, we assume pedestrians behavior from our own knowledge. But both AI and humans are subject to occasional 'irrational behavior'. Humans are not safe either in that situation. Even if in some cases a human might have advantage over AI, AI has many other advantages over humans. It would be a big mistake to reject AI just because there are situations where its performance can be inferior to some humans.

I agree there's still a lot of work to be done, but my point is that the problem is the driving system itself, and a lot of people dies because of it. AI can't directly change that, but if it can still do better than humans (in a few years), then it's worth it.

05• 8 years ago

A proper (e.g. non-Uber) self driving car would never take a blind corner at a speed that doesn't allow it to come to a complete stop before it reaches its vision range.

paul79862• 8 years ago

Oh it's her fault she was jay walking and the robots now take precedence. No need to ticket jay walkers! Uber's fleet will take care of these law breakers!

Ridiculous and this company after all it's done is still around and now it's killing people!

akkat3• 8 years ago

I assure you that if you jump in front of a moving train you will be killed. How is this different?

princeb• 8 years ago

cars are not trains, for one.

road usage is shared among cars, motorcycles and scooters, trucks, pedestrians, bicycles, mobility scooters, and other things.

cesarb3• 8 years ago

The main difference is that a train, even under emergency braking, can't stop quickly, and it also can't swerve to avoid an obstacle. If you jump in front of a moving train, even if the train driver could see you before you jumped and could predict you would jump, you will get hit.

petee2• 8 years ago

it'll be a matter of time before autonomous manufactures push to outlaw pedestrians and bicyclists from roadways as a 'safety measure'

YeGoblynQueenne• 8 years ago

Bloomberg title:

> Uber Victim Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Car

First line of the first paragraph in the article (my underlining):

> Police say a video from the Uber self-driving car that struck and killed a woman on Sunday shows her moving in front of it suddenly

And the title on this thread:

> Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

Both titles are very misleading. The Bloomberg title because it doesn't clarify it's repeating a police statement, the HN title because it makes it look like the relevant video is in the article, or at least that someone from Bloomberg has seen it, neither of which is the case.

dsacco2• 8 years ago

Yes, this is a serious abuse of headline on both counts. Mods, can we change the title on HN? It’s a significant misrepresentation as it stands.

KC8ZKF• 8 years ago

Yes. Maybe it's time we quit obsessing over headlines, and realized that actually reading the article might be necessary.

sxyuan• 8 years ago

I was confused when I clicked on the article and could not find a video. The title is misleading, and while it would be nice if we always had the time to carefully read every article we come across, the reality is that I (and probably many others here) will skim through multiple titles and only click on the most interesting ones. Something as definitive as "Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly..." can easily leave a false impression in people's minds.

enraged_camel• 8 years ago

Maybe you are unemployed or something and have tons of free time, but the rest of us are too busy to read every single article that arrives at the front page. That is why headlines should be accurate summaries or descriptions of the submissions.

oasisbob• 8 years ago

The article credits three journalists in the byline, with four other individuals credited as contributors.

Given that this was published a day after the SF Chronicle piece, I think there's a good chance the article has deeper sourcing or corroboration, and that the headline is deliberate.

sgustard2• 8 years ago

Did the car stop itself after the accident? Are autonomous cars programmed with a "we've just hit something, stop and pull over" mode? Which sensors on the car even know if it has hit something?

blendo• 8 years ago

A 4000 lb SUV, traveling nearly 40mph, at night, on a 4 lane divided highway, hits a pedestrian walking a bike.

The kinetic energy mismatch is the real problem, and at the very least, these companies should be testing at only 20-25mph, with _much_ lighter vehicles.

We'll have to wait for the NTSB to check in, but I'd be surprised if Uber isn't shut down(at least in Tempe) for a good long while.

turtlebits• 8 years ago

Agreed. While I can understand it's much easier to strap sensors/equipment on a already available car, it makes more sense to me from a safety point of view to test with some lightweight shell of a vehicle to cause the least damage to other entities.

DonHopkins• 8 years ago

To Uber's credit, it was working as designed, because the pedestrian had just hailed a Lyft.

KKKKkkkk1• 8 years ago

Some of the commenters here think they can do a better job reconstructing the incident from newspaper cartoons than actual investigators who are working at the scene. You guys can just as well make up a story in which a murderous Uber robot chased a pedestrian off of the sidewalk and onto the road and then intentionally ran her over.

falcolas• 8 years ago

Why are we resorting to reconstructing a scene when Uber's Robot caught the whole thing on camera and LIDAR? The police statement seems quite premature, especially when the NTSB is running an investigation into the accident.

ekovarski• 8 years ago

+1; Time will tell what happened as there should be enough data onboard. These systems are essentially in training mode and new scenarios will need to be accounted for.

I am curious as to why the driver didn't react. I wonder if the system keeps track of the driver as well as I would imagine it has to be mind numbing to sit behind a wheel for hours on end and not do anything... So in this situation, how attentive and alert was really the driver who is supposed to be the fail safe mechanism.

coding1232• 8 years ago

I think part of the problem is that almost all of the news articles have painted a picture of the fault being the biker. And there seems to be no one defending her and its ridiculous that the news articles are already one-sided here considering that this is a brand-spanking new type of thing that has happened on this planet.

That being said, I'm totally open to this being the fault of either Uber or the woman, but there are too many questions in my head that suggest it was the fault of the woman.

Are we saying that at this point we're going to let the initial police statement win because they are "experts" at driving. Are they also expects at the software in SDVs? I think at this point we shouldn't assume either story - but at the same time we can't let either Uber, the police, governments cover this story up for the sake of money and politics.

I think there are some pretty massive implications that should come from this - even if a human driver may have very well killed this person too (which I don't personally believe) don't we need to take a minute and ask a few questions about why the vehicle reportedly didn't even slow down after the hit? Why the dent is on the RIGHT hand side of the car (.2 seconds seems false)? Would a human that was driving slowed a lot earlier - was the pedestrian/biker expecting the car to slow because she clearly had a hand signal up - seeing a fake driver in the car?

There are too many questions and I hope that this specific story is treated with the utmost careful consideration. I for one can't seem to let it go in my head.

Someone died and it very well could have been because of our collective ego that we can accomplish this (SDVs) at this point in our history. We'll never hear from this woman again.

paul79862• 8 years ago

Uber is damaged goods!

What's next their going to kill a bunch of kids trying to help their blind friend out of the street? I mean the headlines this company writes!

jaclaz3• 8 years ago

As a side note, I find - as always - this part disturbing:

The driver, Rafael Vasquez, 44, served time in prison for armed robbery and other charges in the early 2000s, according to Arizona prison and Maricopa County Superior Court records.

He served time in prison for armed robbery more than 15 years ago, what kind of relevance would have this?

Presumably he has a valid driving license issued by the State, and was not under the effect of alcohol or drugs.

Having committed armed robbery has seemingly no connection (I mean it isn't like he was condemned for having killed someone while driving a car or something like that), and even if that was the case some State must have issued (or renewed) his driving license, meaning that he was legally authorized to drive the car.

lancepioch• 8 years ago

In the US, once you commit a crime, it'll follow you for the rest of your life, even after you paid your time and money.

jaclaz3• 8 years ago

In the US, once you commit a crime, it'll follow you for the rest of your life, even after you paid your time and money.

I know, and understand how this (right or wrong as it might be[1]) could be of use for the police or for the judiciary system, what I am highlighting is just how gratuitious it is on a piece of news.

[1] this is a (lesser known) writing by G.K Chesterton: "The perpetuation of punishment" (page 504 of "On Lying in Bed and Other Essays") circa 1907 https://books.google.it/books?id=QtWvMclbR9YC&pg=PA504

adrianmonk• 8 years ago

I imagine they're trying to imply that someone who was convicted of a serious crime could still be an unreliable, irresponsible, or untrustworthy person.

It's another question whether it's fair to assume that. I don't think it is, though personally I think it's reasonable to take the information into account as long as you restrain yourself from jumping to any conclusions.

jaclaz3• 8 years ago

I imagine they're trying to imply that someone who was convicted of a serious crime could still be an unreliable, irresponsible, or untrustworthy person.

Sure, the whole point being that it is meaningless and IMHO disturbing to imply that.

Not that I am familiar with bank robbers, and of course have no idea on the specific crime for which the driver was earlier condemned, but I believe that bank robbers need to be actually rather punctual, have planning capabilities and usually be exceptionally good drivers, at least this is what Hollywood usually shows us.

I don't think it is, though personally I think it's reasonable to take the information into account as long as you restrain yourself from jumping to any conclusions.

I wonder how you take that into account without making any conclusion or however influence your opinion, this kind of info is IMHO either relevant or not (gratuitious).

It is a car accident, where the automatic means failed and the driver supposed to take commands in case of failure of the automated system didn't or couldn't, the criminal past of the guy has no relevance, it is more likely that the whole thing happened too fast, or that he was distracted, and unless and until it is established that the accident was caused voluntarily or by "voluntary inaction".

What if the driver was differently "marked" by society?

Like - say - known to belong to the Communist Party or to the Neo Nazi's?

Or if he was mentioned as being (choose one) gay, transgender, black, latino, illegally immigrated?

What kind of added info is that in the context of a car accident?

stillsut• 8 years ago

Was the car electric? I've had a close call with a silent electric car which would have been my fault. The scenario goes like this: I'm saying goodbye to Joe and about to cross the street and notice there is no traffic around. I realize as I'm about to leave Joe, I forgot to mention something, so I turn back to him and say "By the way, blah blah", and with that, I then step off the curb onto the street without checking for oncoming traffic again, probably thinking about some chore I have to get done when I get home. If I heard cars, I would instinctually check again, but the silent electric mode does not allow for this.

I'd be interested in any studies about this: how much more often do pedestrian-at-fault collisions occur in silent electric mode?

wonton2• 8 years ago

I cannot understand how this could be the womans fault? Is it because of the rules of jaywalking in USA? Where I am from it is always considered the drivers fault, even if a pedestrian literally throws themselves in front of the car. Simply because the car can kill a pedestrian and not the other way around. The way I see it the uber vehicle should have slowed down to a speed at which it would have been able to react to these kind of abrupt motions. This should be cracked down hard on, not making it illegal for self driving car but the fine should be high. I dont like the thought of a self deiving car company becoming «too big to fail» and getting excused for killing pedestrians that dont understand how self driving cars work.

Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

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