
It certainly looks bad for Uber - sohkamyung
http://ideas.4brad.com/it-certainly-looks-bad-uber
======
wiradikusuma
From the video, it seems that the woman didn't even look at the street (the
direction where the car came). Actually, she didn't even seem to look at the
street before she crossed.

I do believe that autonomous vehicle should have prevented this kind of
accidents (since they are 100% aware, unlike humans), but why did she act like
that? Is it common there to just cross the road and expect cars to stop?

The reason I ask is culture difference. From my experience, in some countries
(e.g. Indonesia), people cross the road like they have superpowers. They use
their hand to signal the car to stop while taking time to cross. In Malaysia,
even if you pay attention to the road, the drivers _seem_ to want to run over
you when you cross (they go faster).

~~~
rcthompson
I can't speak to Arizona in particular, but in all the parts of the USA I've
been to, the common wisdom has always been to look both ways before crossing
the road no matter what, because regardless of who has the right of way,
there's always the possibility of some idiot, drunk driver, or other hazard
that ignores right of way rules.

~~~
uluyol
Common wisdom isn't necessarily followed. I've see many people cross the
street blind especially on college campuses. Worse, where I currently live
(Ann Arbor) I have seen people do this when they very clearly do not have the
right of way.

~~~
SauciestGNU
Michigan is funny, in that a crosswalk is defined loosely as any portion of a
road with a sidewalk on either side. Pair that with the precedent that
pedestrians always have the right of way and you'll have to come to the
conclusion that, annoying as it might be, the pedestrians crossing roads in
Ann Arbor actually are in the right.

------
imh
> The police may not have a good way to evaluate the vastly superior dynamic
> range of human vision compared to the camera.

The solution is simple and even pointed out later in the article:

> Note that the streetlamps are actually not that far from her crossing point,
> so I think she should have been reasonably illuminated even for non-HDR
> cameras or the human eye, but I would need to go to the site to make a full
> determination of that.

Seems like the question of whether a driver would have seen the pedestrian is
simply solved by going to the site another comparable night and seeing how
visibility is to a human pair of eyes.

~~~
Symbiote
This is what the people who investigate railway accidents in the UK do.

They would go to exactly the site, with an identical car, someone wearing the
woman's clothing (or identical clothing) and an identical bicycle, and reenact
the scene, measuring light levels and so on as the car approaches.

For example, page 23-24 of this report positions a tram at various distances
to check the visibility of the headlights:
[https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/547c8fbfed915...](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/547c8fbfed915d4c10000143/R192013_130926_Bayles_and_Wylies.pdf)

This is much, much more than is done for a road accident, but would seem
entirely proportionate for a robot car accident investigation at this stage.

------
yread
It's fascinating how brigaded the reddit videos thread is

[https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/86756p/police_relea...](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/86756p/police_release_video_of_fatal_uber_autonomous_car/)

Basically all top root comments are saying that it's the pedestrian's fault!
Some math genius even proved how impossible it is to stop.

Especially compared to quite decent ARS article [https://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2018/03/video-uber-drive...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2018/03/video-uber-driver-looks-down-for-seconds-before-fatal-crash/)

------
lmilcin
To all that say it's not the fault of the driver (be it human or computer)
please, remember, that for every collision there is many, many near misses
that were avoided because the driver was paying attention and took necessary
actions to avoid collision regardless of whether he had or had not the right
of way.

The right of way is not a permission to plow into other road users.

What if your kid jumps suddenly on the street, would you be ok if the driver
excercised his right of way?

If AIs are allowed to drive they are expected to perform to avoid collisions
(and especially with slow moving objects like pedestrians). This was supposed
to include devices like lidars which were supposed to perform better than
human driver could hope to do.

The added information and reaction time was supposed to offset relative
dumbness of the driver.

Now we are learning that the car is only operating on what seems a visual
spectrum camera and doesn't seem to be reacting in a simplest situation and
the driver isn't even looking at the road.

So the car was supposed to start breaking IMMEDIATELY the threat is
recognized. I don't see hard braking on the video. I see a human driver taking
her eyes from what seems to be a phone to recognize the situation and NO
DECELERATION THAT WOULD HAVE TO BE IMMEDIATELY EVIDENT.

Shame on you, Uber.

~~~
hyder_m29
Sorry for the off-topic question. I see a lot of people spelling 'breaking'
when it should be 'braking'. Is breaking a good replacement for braking? I am
under the impression that it is not. However, english is not my first
language.

------
vevoo
>Waymo's cars, and a few others use long-range LIDARs able to see 200m or
more...There is a dark irony that this longer range LIDAR is what the Waymo
vs. Uber lawsuit was about<

Prior to the accident, I gave high probabilities that Uber performed a surgery
on their LIDAR systems after the lawsuit, aiming to eliminate anything with
legal implications. If the above comment is true, and uber is not using any
long-range LIDAR, please someone with better knowledge help to stop Uber
testing of an unsafe system.

------
extralego
_> One lesson from this accident might well be to map "illegal, but likely
crossings"_

Good write-up but I don’t understand this part. I would not be comfortable
with these cars making moves based on calculations of the legality of observed
behavior.

EDIT: Nevermind! I thought about it some more and realized they mean mapping
the geographical locations where pedestrians are likely to be crossing the
road. Much more humane than I previously thought! But I remain uneasy about
any system with room to benefit from selective inquiry like such.

~~~
dtech
The meat of the article is about how LIDAR, Radar, or any number of systems
could have detected the pedesetrian/obstacle on the road and should have
stopped the car.

If those worked, considering likely crossing locations in addition to certain
crossing locations like zebra crossings should only improve safety, not be
required for it.

~~~
extralego
Makes total sense! I would just be tempted to apply the extra safety measures
which would be applied to the crossing zones, to every zone.

------
bwang29
Good summary of technical evaluation from equipments. I think the other thread
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16643056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16643056)
delved pretty deep in various subject scenario too. It would be the best for
Uber to release the raw sensor data during the event, and it might be
worthwhile for the community to see exactly what happened.

~~~
dnomad
This blog post, like much of the HN discussion, is full of baseless
speculation. There's really nothing here except "LIDAR should've seen it."
Duh.

The idea that Uber should release more data which won't be analyzed Donnelly
but will only fuel even more speculation doesn't make much sense.

The NTSB is investigating. They are extremely through. Most importantly once
all the data has been carefully analyzed and the failure mode had been
understood the NTSB will be able to devise guidelines and protocols to prevent
it from happening again.

Until then I don't see how all this speculation helps except to fulfill some
sort of misguided anti-Uber fantasy.

~~~
Twisell
If LIDAR can’t do, car shouldn’t speed.

Either way is a fail.

~~~
raverbashing
Car wasn't speeding

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Yes, it was. Posted speed limits are for optimal conditions. Night driving is
not optimal, so if the driver (robot or otherwise) outruns their visibility,
then they're speeding.

~~~
TomMarius
It was going 20 km/h below the speed limit

~~~
umanwizard
Who cares about the posted limit? If you can’t see in front of you well enough
to avoid obstacles in time, you are going too fast by definition.

~~~
TomMarius
The word "speeding" refers to breaking the speed limit[1]. I agree with you
completely, but you can't blame me for using words like they were supposed to.
You might argue that this includes your point, but I've never seen it used
like that.

[1] -
[https://www.thefreedictionary.com/speeding](https://www.thefreedictionary.com/speeding)
\- "The act or instance of operating a motor vehicle or motorboat faster than
allowed by law."

~~~
JustSomeNobody
And by "... allowed by law", they do not mean the posted speed limit. They
mean driving too fast for conditions to allow.

[https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/speeding](https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-
driving/speeding)

> Speed also affects your safety even when you are driving at the speed limit
> but too fast for road conditions, such as during bad weather, when a road is
> under repair, or in an area at night that isn’t well lit.

------
dirtbox
I moved to the US a few years ago and have already lost count of how many
cyclists wearing dark clothing and no lights on poorly lit roads I've nearly
hit at night.

I had to take a cycling proficiency test in the UK, here no one seems to have
a clue, they don't even always ride on the right side of the road.

This woman neglected any due care and her death, while tragic, is entirely her
own fault.

~~~
bryanlarsen
"entirely her own fault"

Why does the entire Internet feel the need to apportion blame in this case?

There are four entities who could have and should have relatively
straightforwardly avoided this death.

1\. The woman shouldn't have crossed the street there and then.

2\. The safety driver shouldn't have been looking at her phone.

3\. Uber's automation should have caused the vehicle to brake much sooner.

4\. That street should have been designed much safer. The design of a lit
crosswalk on the median _encourages_ people to cross there, so much stronger
discouragement is required. Furthermore, a 35mph limit in an area with
pedestrians is going to regularly cause pedestrian fatalities. That's a trade-
off most people seem willing to make, but if you make that trade-off you have
to own it. If the speed limit was 20mph that woman would be alive today.

As far as I can see it, all 4 entities are 100% responsible for the death of
the pedestrian.

None of those 4 entities passed the "reasonable person" test with their
actions, therefore all 4 are fully responsible.

Sure you can argue all you want on whether one entity's misbehaviour is more
egregious than the others. It doesn't matter; all 4 engaged in behaviour that
regularly kills people at a rate much higher than acceptable.

~~~
dirtbox
You can continue to cast the blame for frankly abysmal state of cyclist safety
in this country, meanwhile cyclists die with alarming regularity however many
of those factors are in play.

------
jankotek
Could someone post stats: mileage covered by self driving cars, mileage in bad
weather, accidents per mile....

Also is it true it was going over speed limit? How is that even possible for
self driving car?

~~~
viburnum
There are 12.5 deaths per billion vehicle miles driven. This is the statistic
that self-driving cars have to beat in order to be "safer."

Based on this, Uber has had about 3 million test miles (under mostly safer
than average road conditions, but I'll leave that aside). They're now at 333
deaths per billion miles driven. Gonna have to go a few more days without a
death before they're "safer." (This is not all robot cars, of course, but not
all robot cars are meaningfully the same right now).

[http://www.eschatonblog.com/2018/03/the-faith-is-
strong.html](http://www.eschatonblog.com/2018/03/the-faith-is-strong.html)

------
ojosilva
The good news about self-driving car accidents is that improvements to the
system will be eventually shared by all cars saving many lives.

We can finally say this poor woman did not die in vain, which is a step in the
right direction which may end up making cars safer than airplanes someday.

The only serious mistake (misunderstanding) to come out of this is to believe
the human behind the wheel is at fault. No human being can keep full attention
on a road when a computer is driving the car for you.

~~~
buvanshak
> The good news about self-driving car accidents is that improvements to the
> system will be eventually shared by all cars saving many lives.

If this was true, how come the car was not trained for this pretty
common/typical scenario. Did it take one human life to show that it is
possible that a pedestrian can cross the road in front of the car?

Are the people gone so blind with this obsession with new tech?

~~~
ojosilva
The system is very early stage, I believe there's still a long way to go until
the system is fully trained and has enough redundancy as to remediate for bugs
in one component. I'm pretty sure the engineers foresaw that situation to an
extent and that their design intention is to prevent or avoid running over
pedestrians.

The same happened in aviation throughout the years, until airliners got to a
point where systems just don't fail... Or at least not without other 2 systems
correcting it.

There's human intervention behind every aspect of this accident, and again,
like airliners, there will be many accidents (and hopefully not many deaths)
until engineers can get it right. FAA and other agencies played a crucial role
in exposing and recommending improvements across different manufacturers and
airlines, hopefully government will assume that role here too to ensure
improvements are mandatory before sending prototypes into the road.

~~~
buvanshak
>I believe there's still a long way to go until the system is fully trained
and has enough redundancy as to remediate for bugs in one component...

What sort of tests did these cars undergo before they were put on street? Have
you seen them? Have these cars undergone tests where they are shown to
reliably handle situations such as these? Have you cared to ask? Is there a
legal ground work in place for self driving vehicles?

It seems that none of them is in place and the reasons is that there is a
human being behind the wheels.

The whole "intellectual" technology wiz kids stood by and watched while the
companies such as these weasel their way to doing something like this and no
one cared to fucking ask

"HAVE THE FUCKING THING EVER BEEN TESTED?"

>The same happened in aviation throughout the years, until airliners got to a
point where systems just don't fail... Or at least not without other 2 systems
correcting it.

You can choose not to be in an airliner. But very few can afford not to be on
roads where there will be droves of these kind of vehicles running these kind
of half baked tech...Right now, the only thing that assures me that the
incoming vehicle does not run into me is that the human running it has the
same incentive as myself for preventing it..With this tech that is gone.

------
foobar1962
Based on the video shown there is no way a human driver could have avoided
that collision.

~~~
jon_richards
The video is extremely misleading because the camera is overcompensating for
the bright lights illuminating the road. A human driver could have seen the
person and/or bike from a long way off.

Our eyes are extremely good at adapting to high, non-linear contrast. That's
why "pictures" of total solar eclipses have to be composite images to really
capture what people _see_ when they look at one.

~~~
Pilfer
>A human driver could have seen the person and/or bike from a long way off.

Not true at all, the person was not standing under lit streetlights and was in
the shadows. Humans have problems detecting objects in the shadows, especially
at night.

3M made a video illustrating how difficult it is to see people at night. In
this video, people wearing bright-colored clothing don't even show up until
250 feet away. According to the national safety council, a human driver
traveling at 30mph at night, may take up 500 feet to react to and stop when
there is an object in the road.

I reccomend watching this video as it strongly changed my views about night
driving.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMvM7-9lgeg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMvM7-9lgeg)

~~~
buvanshak
>Not true at all, the person was not standing under lit streetlights and was
in the shadows...

The 'shadow' is appearing completely dark due to the poor dynamic range of the
camera. It won't appear so to a normal human eye..Also, people use high beams
in this situations which enables seeing stuff really far away, which would
also should have saved the day in this case..

~~~
Pilfer
The pedestrian is 1) wearing black 2) not wearing any sort of safety
reflectors 3) crossing in darkness not under street lights. In the safety
video I linked, it's clear that such a pedestrian in the road would be very
tough spot and react to. The safety video says there is a very real possibly
that a human driver would hit such a pedestrian.

Citing the camera's poor dynamic range, does not imply a human in the same
situation would have enough dynamic range to spot a pedestrian in the same
circumstance.

High beams would have saved a life here, however in many situations they are
illegal to use.

