Mike Ey, Microsoft HoloLens designer, killed in hit and run

http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/suspected-drunk-driver-court-after-allegedly-causi/nkMdH/

by rockdiesel • 11 years ago

320 195 11 years ago

jbhatab• 11 years ago

This is just a tragic. Best wishes to his family and friends.

oflordal• 11 years ago

Säd. Coindidentally the same happened to one of the Oculus founders. http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/01/oculus-vr-co-founder-andrew...

spydum• 11 years ago

that is a sad, super strange coincidence, in a relatively small (but.. growing?) field

Chevalier8• 11 years ago

Not that it's any more or less tragic, but I've always been astonished that Silicon Valley is so car-dependent. We've concentrated the most brilliant minds in the world in this small area... and then force everyone to pilot two-ton bullets to pick up groceries?

Not all workers can demand decent living conditions, but you'd think the competitive draw for workers in Silicon Valley would entice company towns to, I don't know, add segregated bike lanes so programmers' kids can get to school safely. Add public parks and dense housing so you can walk down to the corner coffee store or take your dog for a walk. Ban cars from certain streets to encourage local commerce and nightlife. SOMETHING.

Google's at least trying to improve Mountain View with their new campus (and Apple is very much not trying to improve Cupertino). But what the hell. An international group of wealthy geniuses can't get it together enough to demand marginally walkable lifestyles?

And people wonder why everyone commutes from San Francisco.

RIMR2• 11 years ago

Redmond, Washington isn't in Silicon Valley...

VLM2• 11 years ago

This article is being flooded with weird anti-car hate. Yet, my car is perfectly safe and can only kill someone in a hit and run at 100 MPH if, and only if, I get drunk first.

Given that I don't drink very much and then only at home (a sixer lasts me about a season, sometimes half a year) that means my car is incredibly safe and will almost certainly never kill anyone. Odd how there's no anti-alcohol hate here on HN, yet its the alcohol doing the actual killing.

If you subtract out deaths due to drunkenness, cars kill less people than bathtubs. Perhaps we need a war on bathtubs. Because nothing is ever a drunk's fault.

mahyarm• 11 years ago

It's the USA that is car-default. SF, NYC & Chicago are the exceptions, and they have their own special kind of problems too.

downandout• 11 years ago

You get a job at Google or Facebook in part so that you can buy a nicer "two ton bullet" than you otherwise could. No one wants to walk out of necessity, and that will not change anytime soon.

coffeemug• 11 years ago

Not all workers can demand decent living conditions

You're assuming that car-oriented urban planning is synonymous with poor living conditions, which isn't true. A lot of people (most?) in the U.S. actually prefer it -- for many people the perceived convenience of cars beats public transportation and biking.

jarnix• 11 years ago

"We've concentrated the most brilliant minds in the world in this small area."

Are you serious ?

jgh• 11 years ago

Wasn't the Oculus founder in Orange County when he was hit?

IndianAstronaut• 11 years ago

Honestly, the segway was not a bad idea. Never really caught on, but it was a pretty good solution.

lutorm3• 11 years ago

Not so coincidentally. There are more than 30,000 people killed in traffic every year in the United States, and it's the second leading cause of accidental death, according to: http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_inju...

ObviousScience• 11 years ago

That's roughly 1 in 10,000 people, or ~0.01% of the US population.

aaronem3• 11 years ago

/sɛd/?

rquirk• 11 years ago

Another unfortunate death that this brings to mind is that of Gunpei Yokoi, creator of Nintendo's Virtual Boy. He too was killed after a car hit him.

codemac• 11 years ago

Unfortunate how many humans we have driving cars at various levels of impairment. It's killing so many people.

Drunk driving in suburban areas is rampant and feels almost inherent without real public transportation options at last call. I think most of Seattle's public transit options stop right around midnight.

mrgriscom• 11 years ago

I don't see where in the article it says anyone involved was drinking.

paulrademacher• 11 years ago

On Monday, a judge set bail at $100,000 for Robert Malsch, accused of drinking and of driving more than 100 mph before rear-ending a car and killing the driver inside.

sp3322• 11 years ago

Odd, the photo caption doesn't match the article text. "Robert Malsch, accused of drinking and of driving more than 100 mph" vs "He faces vehicular homicide and felony hit and run charges."

chez17• 11 years ago

It's funny you mention suburban drivers. I have lived and have friends who lived in both suburban and rural areas and I found that without exception rural drivers are far, far, more likely to drive drunk.

sp3322• 11 years ago

Since codemac mentioned public transportation, I think it was a comparison to urban, not rural areas.

johnward2• 11 years ago

There aren't really alternative other options (aside from a DD and or just being responsible). Most rural people can't even get a cab.

jstalin• 11 years ago

Not to minimize drunk driving deaths, but it's hardly "rampant." About 10,000 people are killed each year in drunk driving accidents in the US. 30,000 a year die from falls.

http://responsibility.org/drunk-driving/drunk-driving-fatali... http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_02.pdf

revelation• 11 years ago

Well yes, millions of people die every year from causes we could pretty much summarize as old age. None of this has any meaning if you don't differentiate by age.

Thankfully, the CDC has done that, and here it is in an easy graphic:

http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_deat...

Unintentional injury dominates deaths in ages 1-44, and indeed the biggest killer of people ages 5-24 is traffic:

http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_inju...

munificent• 11 years ago

About 10,000 people are killed each year in drunk driving accidents in the US. 30,000 a year die from falls.

That number is highly biased towards the elderly. "Falls" are basically another kind of "died of old age". If you exclude people over 55, you get about:

- ~6,700 deaths from drunk driving

- 2,459 from falls

If you look at all driving fatalities (because we fleshy humans can be impaired by more than alcohol and often make mistakes), you have

- 25,499 deaths

Cars are deathtraps.

melling3• 11 years ago

A fall is an accidental death. When someone chooses to get behind the wheel of a car after drinking, they are intentionally making a bad choice.

Getting to near zero drunk driver deaths is attainable once we change behavior. That's the acceptable number.

timthorn2• 11 years ago

10000?! The UK, with a population of approximately 1/4 that of the USA and more liberal alcohol laws, had ~260 deaths from drink driving in 2013. Rampant might not be the right word, but something isn't right.

(Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...)

drzaiusapelord• 11 years ago

Cars are pretty safe, but I'm always a little shocked that we don't have governors built into cars with sane limits. How is it even possible to do 100mph and why should that speed be allowed? Cars should top off at 75.

Not to mention, why are cars dumb machines? If someone is going crazy fast in an area where there is no safe way to decelerate, then the car should not allow that speed to be reached. Freeway speeds should not be allowed when you're not on the freeway.

The self-driving car isn't the solution here. Its too sci-fi, too out there, and no one can make it work with snow and rain right now. We middle a practical middle-ware nanny and we need one quick. We need a new Ralph Nader focused on intelligent safety systems and advocating for them to be law. We'll never stop drunks, but we might be able to stop drunks from performing fatal strikes. Its great that they caught the drunk, but that doesn't bring Mike back to life.

Personally, I dont think we're getting to these self-driving cars without these kinds of baby steps. Best to start advocating them now, which will give us public support when fully automated cars are truly here.

sean-duffy• 11 years ago

You've answered your own question. Cars are dumb machines because we don't yet have the technology to judge what is "crazy fast" and make decision about where it should be allowed. Other than the obvious reasons of racing and car enthusiasts, there are legitimate reasons for a car to do 100mph. Often in emergency situations, you need to speed up rather than slow down to prevent an accident. If we start placing limits on people's cars, there will almost certainly be accidents caused by that, because the last thing you want in a situation where you need to react quickly is the car not doing what you want it to.

Chevalier8• 11 years ago

Cars are very UNSAFE, for the record. [1] Self-driving cars will be better... but autonomous cars are SUCH an intellectually lazy progression from the status quo that I hope they won't happen.

Rather than autonomous cars, we should be focusing on Taleb's antifragile solutions like walking and biking. This means the design of dense housing and walkable streets, and the removal of two-ton bullets that massacre children every day.

I grew up in Los Angeles, so I'm aware of how alien the concept is of a walkable city to Californians. It wasn't until I moved to the East Coast and Europe that I realized other people don't need to drive ten miles to see friends or pick up dinner.

If HN types don't recognize and question these car-dependent assumptions, there's no chance the rest of the country will. Nor would most Americans want to address the question. To accurately price vehicle traffic for real infrastructure costs (much less negative externalities or pigovian taxes) would absolutely devastate the value of car-dependent real estate... which is most of the country.

I guess we'll just continue letting children and geniuses be killed. At best, self-driving cars will continue this horrible urban planning and somewhat lower the body count. It's a goddamn shame.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...

cthalupa4• 11 years ago

Cars are pretty safe, but I'm always a little shocked that we don't have governors built into cars with sane limits. How is it even possible to do 100mph and why should that speed be allowed? Cars should top off at 75.

Why is it even possible? Because a car that can't do 100mph is going to have terrible performance 0-75

There's long stretches of highways in rural areas with speed limits higher than 75

Not to mention, why are cars dumb machines? If someone is going crazy fast in an area where there is no safe way to decelerate, then the car should not allow that speed to be reached.

There are sometimes legitimate reasons to be going quickly. I have, at times, needed to have bursts of speed into the 90s to safely get around a drunk driver going 70.

You're now asking for cars to behave unpredictably based on their determination of the road conditions.

And you set the limiter to 75. Now someone is driving 75 in a 25.

Most highway deaths are rural[1] and involve a single car - they veer off of narrow lanes into a ditch or trees, or hit a large animal. The difference in reaction time needed to avoid said animals or other obstructions is not that different from 75mph to 90mph - low visibility is the underlying problem there, not speed.

The idea that we're suddenly safer on roads if we limit speeds is also not necessarily true.

In 2013, German autobahns accounted for 31% of the countries traffic, yet only 13% of the deaths. They had a rate of 1.9 deaths per billion kilometers travelled, while urban roads had 4.7, and rural roads 6.6.

I don't think there's really evidence to support the idea that limiting our cars to lower speeds will be beneficial.

[1] http://www.npr.org/2009/11/29/120716625/the-deadliest-roads-...

grubles• 11 years ago

This probably isn't quite what you're looking for but, Ford MyKey exists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyKey.

gohrt3• 11 years ago

Luxury cars and some other cars have these collision avoidance features.

RIMR2• 11 years ago

If you live in Seattle proper, there are busses that run all night. Most of them will get you within a 20-minute walk of wherever you want to go.

Still, with Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, and 5+ cab companies at your disposal there is no excuse for being drunk behind the wheel.

Before I moved here I was a pretty obsessively responsible driver. Now that I live here, I have to keep my irresponsible drinking in check because I never have a driving obligation to convince me to stay sober...

spike0214• 11 years ago

My thought is that if you have the money to spend on multiple drinks, then you should be able to spend at least one drink's cost on Uber, Lyft, etc.

Crito• 11 years ago

Those buses might get you to within a 20 minute walk of your destination, but depending on when you are departing, you might have to wait up to an hour to catch the bus in the first place.

Seattle's public transit may be better than many American cities, but it still isn't great.

joesmo3• 11 years ago

You make a great point about services like Uber, etc. For this reason alone, I now think cities need to stop with the bans and such. Cabs are not a substitute as no one likes to wait hours or walk miles or both in hope of catching one, a situation that's quite common in places like San Francisco (especially at night) and I imagine, many other cities.

oasisbob• 11 years ago

The odds of Seattle having late night bus service are good, but the goods are ... well:

http://seattletransitblog.com/2014/07/08/metros-night-owl-al...

bztzt• 11 years ago

There used to be a bus route that went from Seattle to Bellevue at 2:15 and 3:30 am, but it got shut down as part of recent budget cuts. :(

techsupporter3• 11 years ago

Ah, the 280. If Bellevue had wanted to keep that route, it could have done exactly what Seattle did: pay for the route. The other owls (82, 83, and 84 within Seattle) were also slated to be cut and Seattle ponied up $500,000 from its coffers to keep them going. Seattle proposed to split the cost with Bellevue and Bellevue declined.

On the other hand, I can kind of see why. According to Metro's statistics, almost all riders on the 280 were using it as a mobile shelter instead of transportation to a specific point. (Judgment on whether that is good or bad is left as an exercise; I personally had no problem with it.)

pbgodwin• 11 years ago

I drove past this accident Saturday morning on my way home from a friends house. It was fresh... maybe ten minutes since the accident happened. It was absolutely awful.

And now it looks like we've lost a brilliant co-worker. Absolutely awful. My thoughts are with his family and loved ones.

namuol• 11 years ago

Fuck. I feel shocked ... sick. I don't know what to say.

I went to RIT with Mike. He was a seriously passionate developer and very clearly destined for great things. Finding out about this here makes me wish I had stayed in touch. This is unreal, and makes zero sense.

Too many emotions that I don't know what to do with, so I'll end my comment there. Just hope the rest of his family and friends are doing okay. RIP, Mike. :(

Edit:

I just want to say a little more about Mike. We were fairly close, but only my first year or two at RIT when we shared a dorm building and met through mutual friends.

Mike and I didn't stay in touch when our housing situations changed, but whenever we ran into each other on campus, we'd catch up, usually talking about what sort of stuff we'd been working on.

He was a bit like Sherlock Holmes. Socially, he seemed to be operating on another plane, and was at most in his element when talking about our craft, or really anything he was passionate about. He was keen to become a master at everything he tried his hand in, and he was deservedly proud of that.

In hindsight, Mike really was more than a peer or an acquaintance -- I looked up to him.

epaladin• 11 years ago

Another RITer- one of my friends is quoted in the article- I don't think I ever knew Mike's name but we were definitely in the same place at the same time quite frequently. Definitely sad.

GauntletWizard2• 11 years ago

I'm in precisely the same boat; I knew the face, not the name, and friends were quoted in the article. I'm really saddened by the loss. He was far too young, and clearly on top of his game. It's a shocking reminder of our own mortality.

yebyen• 11 years ago

I remember Mike. I went to RIT too. We weren't friends but he was friends with a lot of my friends. This is a shock.

itl12• 11 years ago

Very sad story. RIP.

How is it that the driver lived (allegedly doing 100) and even managed to run away from the scene? What vehicle was he in? :/

zo14• 11 years ago

I came here wanting to know the same thing. I'm not exactly clued-up on accidents and cars, etc. But it seems highly odd that one can just die from being rear-ended by a car (even if it's going 100)? The only thing I can think of is that the breaks were on, so his body/head whip lashed forward badly or something.

Anyone have any other theories about this sad event?

cowsandmilk• 11 years ago

You can see it easily from the story. Ey's car spun around the road into a concrete wall. Malsch, the drunk driver, had his car stay on the road, just suffering front end damage from hitting Ey.

In all the videos, Ey's car looks absolutely demolished while Malsch's looks like just a rough accident.

protomyth• 11 years ago

Airbag on frontal and drunks tend to live because they are relaxed.

filmgirlcw• 11 years ago

How awful. My condolences to his family and friends. It's always awful when we lose such great minds in such senseless, preventable ways.

I'm a firm believer that anyone who gets caught driving under the influence should lose their license permanently. You drink and drive? You don't get to drive. Period.

JCook4523• 11 years ago

Stories like these are so tragic. I'm very optimistic about self driving car technology, primarily due to it's ability to reduce these types of unnecessary deaths.

watersb• 11 years ago

Awful tragedy.

I fucking hate cars. I really tried to like them, because they are required for child care in the United States. But I failed.

Haven't driven a car to work since 1997. But I used taxis in 1998. Moved out to a remote area where I could walk to work in 1999. And my miles-driven-per-year remained the same as when I lived in the Bay Area.

Damn. America is big, and relatively sparsely populated.

bovermyer• 11 years ago

And this is why humans should not be allowed to drive cars.

Reliable, safe, self-driving cars can't come soon enough.

My deepest condolences to Mike's family and friends. =(

chadaustin• 11 years ago

I worked with Mike Ey at IMVU for several years. He was the first tech lead for our 3D engine team, and his contributions to the company are innumerable. Moreover, I only now see how much he meant to me. He taught me how to solder, basic electronics, and spun me up on Unity3D. He was always willing to help, and one of the happiest people I've ever met.

The world dimmed a little this weekend. We'll miss you Mike.

jamesbirchler• 11 years ago

I also worked with Mike at IMVU. Mike was a wonderful person all around, and a great technologist to boot. I'm proud to have worked with him.

lawnchair_larry3• 11 years ago

Did he design the hololens, or was he a designer on the hololens team? Not to take away from the tragedy, but spinning it as the former when it's the latter is clickbaity and disrespectful to the deceased.

sergiotapia• 11 years ago

I wanted to know this as well. Here's what I found: http://www.businessinsider.com/mike-ey-microsoft-hololens-de...

Surio• 11 years ago

This is so sad. This is the third time I hear of extremely gifted people that I know of, killed by road accident/hit and run.

Growing up, I used to hear cassettes of Jon Higgins (musician) and was impressed at his dedication to his craft. Upon asking my father, why we didn't have any new cassettes of his, I was told he was killed in a road accident.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_B._Higgins !Gutted!

Then, I was exposed to UNIX, and fell in love with it. Loved the man pages, tried to figure out how the man pages are created, got into the History of it.... and discovered that the original developer of the roff tool, Joe Osanna, was also killed by road accident. !Gutted!

Now, gutted again! :(

I sincerely wish that his family and near and dear ones are provided with the strength to handle this utterly painful situation that they are forced to face, all of a sudden!

cromwellian• 11 years ago

Reminds me of Googler Steve Lacey, killed by a road rage driver (http://www.kirklandreporter.com/news/138605969.html)

When trying to find this story, I googled "employee killed by driver" and it's just a non-stop parade of stories of drunks and ragers killing people.

If you cause an accident either drunk or by rage, you should go to jail, period. The Netherlands has no tolerance for this kind of bullshit. Injure someone while stoned, 3 years jail time. Kill? 6 years or more.

People obsess about self driving cars killing people, and yes, there will be accidents. yes, there's going to be a case of a little girl chasing after a ball into the street who gets run over. Yes, there's going to be cases of a self driving car running over a pedestrian, or turning head on into traffic. I'm almost sure of it.

But these incidents probably will be insignificant compared to 30,000+ people killed per year and even more injured by human drivers. If 100 people lose their lives to software bugs per year in cars (which will improve over time), but 10,000 people lose their lives to human bugs, it will be a vast improvement.

jimmyslim22• 11 years ago

This is where the troublesome nature of humans comes into play. I first want to say that as someone who works in robotics, I want the automation revolution to come as much as the next guy. As a matter of fact, you are probably going to be hard pressed to find a demographic on this site that thinks differently. However, our world is sometimes driven by the vocal minority and in this case it will be the luddites that VEHEMENTLY OPPOSE self-driving cars for short minded purposes.

Growing up in Nebraska and witnessing the reaction to technological influence there was very eye opening in that you realize that the common man/women thinks very much with their emotions and not with logic. You can beat them over the head with facts like this and they will argue for their old ways. They want to be in control of the situation. They want to have the right to drive their car themselves and they certainly don't trust a machine to do it for them. (I guarantee that you will hear arguements like "it's taking away jobs" and "look at this instance where it malfunctioned") this leaves some very tricky features that engineers must work into it. Is there a manual override? Are there regulations on what kind of sensing equipment is on board or is it left to the private company? What is the acceptable error range for a car at the end of the day?

I think we will move into a world dominated by self-driving cars and other tech conviences that make our life easier, but I think it will be slowed down considerably by those who are resistant to change. I think anything that cuts down on instances such as this is a good and much needed thing that cannot get here any faster.

mactitan• 11 years ago

Google drive would solve drunk driving problem but a drunk driver deactivation system could be developed immediately. (I'm sure there would be legal issues to implement it!. And tech issues: ie if passenger drunk dont deactivate)

josefresco• 11 years ago

Random thought... I wonder if the emergency stop systems being implemented in today's cars would help with situations like this. I'm not sure it could stop someone this reckless (100+MPH) but certainly it could have slowed the car before impact.

justageek123• 11 years ago

Let's not forget the responsibility of the bar that continued to serve the drunk coward. My friend found him on FB tagged in the bar just a couple of hours before the accident. His blood alcohol was 3 times the legal limit. I am told, one would be almost comatose and they let him leave.

darklajid2• 11 years ago

The bar isn't responsible.

They don't need to make sure that people don't get drunk. They don't need to supervise people and ask them where they live and how the intend to get home.

There's zero responsibility from my pov. If he wrecked havoc in the bar, attacked people or whatnot, then they have a reason to throw him out. They can always refuse to serve him the xth drink, but that's not responsible, that's mostly "making sure that people don't vomit all over the place".

The single responsibility for drunk drivers lies with the drunk driver. Not the bar, the system, society in general or whatever. Cars are not the problem either. It was one person's act.

(Too harsh? I lost my license for the better part of a year about a decade ago - for crashing my car on the Autobahn returning drunk from a party. Cannot recommend that, it was a highly expensive - in monetary terms, at that time - but luckily otherwise harmless, mightily effective lesson. So when I say that this person was an idiot I state that from the position of having been that sort of idiot in the past)

varelse2• 11 years ago

"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it's enemy action." - Auric Goldfinger

Mike Ey, Microsoft HoloLens designer, killed in hit and run

Related Stories