
Former Uber Backup Driver: 'We Saw This Coming' - mgiannopoulos
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/03/former-uber-backup-driver-we-saw-this-coming/556427/
======
twblalock
This isn't just about Uber -- all semi-autonomous cars are going to have this
problem. The people behind the wheel will become distracted, increasingly so
as the technology becomes better and they need to intervene less and less
often. Even people who are trained to pay attention while testing self-driving
cars become distracted, so we can assume the general public will become
distracted too.

The only viable autonomous cars are ones that will never require human
intervention, because humans aren't able to intervene effectively and may make
situations worse as they snap out of a distracted state. But we can't get to
full autonomy without first testing the technology, and no artificial test
conditions could replicate the complexity of the real world. Society will
either learn to accept some avoidable deaths during the testing phase or will
ban the technology. I suspect a few more incidents will result in a ban, and
we will not have fully autonomous cars for a very long time.

~~~
jay_kyburz
> But we can't get to full autonomy without first testing the technology, and
> no artificial test conditions could replicate the complexity of the real
> world.

Actually, I think a test environment could be a lot more complex.

It's mind blowing to me that there doesn't seem to be some big track somewhere
with automated crash test dummies riding their bikes across the street in the
dark. Automated cars running red lights and stop signs. Automated accidents in
front of self driving cars. Automated kids chasing a football across the road.

It's mind blowing to me that governments do not require self driving cars do
well on all these test before they allow the cars on the road. Governments
should prepare these test, and car technology should complete the tests before
they are allowed on the road.

And when a car fails any real world situation, we can step back and create new
tests.

Really: We can test to any complexity we want. A plan lading on the road? A
flood? A heard of sheep or flock of birds? A dust storm or other weather than
might prevent the cars sensors working.

~~~
inverse_pi
There are test tracks. Both Waymo and Uber have publicly said that they have
fake cities to test the code
[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/insid...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/inside-
waymos-secret-testing-and-simulation-facilities/537648/)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/ubers-fake-city-pittsburgh-
se...](http://www.businessinsider.com/ubers-fake-city-pittsburgh-self-driving-
cars-2017-10)

~~~
jay_kyburz
I guess there are no cyclists crossing the road unexpectedly in Ubers fake
city.

Do they have crash test dummy kids running out on the road? To they have road
work with giant potholes?

~~~
mcny
Not that I know too much about machine learning but even in my very limited
experience with homework we came across the problem of over fitting: where our
model fits the noise of the training data too well but will not perform well
against other real world data.

I can't even imagine the amount of data being generated by the fleets at waymo
and others but compared to all the infinite possibilities I must assume their
data set is tiny.

~~~
inverse_pi
I can't imagine test tracks data being in the training set, so overfitting is
irrelevant here.

------
_bxg1
If it'd been a Waymo or Tesla car I'd have been more likely to give some
benefit of the doubt. Driving is hard and most of these systems already make
fewer mistakes than human drivers.

But Uber never has been and never will be trustworthy. It's a toxic
organization that will continue moving fast and breaking things - sometimes
intentionally - until it's stopped by either the market or the government.

~~~
theyinwhy
Interesing to see how little customers can do to stop them. As they are always
in the red they never attracted enough customers for their business case.
Nevertheless they always are able to get fresh money. The customer is
irrelevant and left out of the equation. It is the shareholders that bet on
the future no matter how dire the present is. That really speaks volumes about
how capitalism works and is depressing as there is nothing you can do to
boykott this company.

~~~
perl4ever
Capitalism has resulted in us drowning in capital. This seems to me to be a
statement about its success, not its failure(s). Would the alternative
(scarce, expensive capital) be better?

~~~
theyinwhy
I am pretty sure you are not talking about the majority here when referring to
"us".

------
icc97
"noncompliant actors" is the Uber term for pedestrians in the road.

I understand the computer science concept to abstract the term but when you're
talking to the drivers of the cars this is in retrospect an awful term.

Rather depressingly all I can think of is the ED 2000 from Robocop that shoots
citizens who don't comply.

~~~
maym86
Where did you hear this?

The Caltrain calls incidents where it hits a pedestrian "tresspasser strikes".
Always thought this was awful.

~~~
icc97
From the article:

> In it, they are trained to keep hands hovering near the wheel at all times
> so that they can quickly take control when the car does not safely respond
> to dangerous road conditions or “noncompliant actors,” such as people
> walking in the roadway

------
g09980
In Japanese rail, conductors and drivers periodically point with their hand
[1][2] to indicate awareness of the task. Reading the article, perhaps these
distracted test drivers could use a similar approach.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LmdUz3rOQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LmdUz3rOQU)

~~~
PherricOxide
Huh, I had a bus driver in Seattle (not Japanese) that did something similar.
He would point at and call out all the major intersections, speed limit signs,
etc. I honestly thought it was some kind of neurosis/obsessive compulsive
disorder, but seeing this exact same behavior makes me wonder if he actually
picked it up as a trick to increase is awareness on driving.

~~~
Izkata
This is one of the strategies they use on some of the drivers in the TV show
"Canada's Worst Driver", to get the ones scared of driving to regain control,
convince the distracted ones to watch the road, and teach the ones who don't
know where to look how to look at everything.

(They don't do any pointing though, because that would require taking their
hands off the wheel)

------
intended
Autonomous cars are not coming.

A certain amount of over familiarity with western driving conditions blinds
these attempts to the reality that there are two worlds on the roads - the
legal and socially manufactured layer and reality.

Which is why looking at the _actual_ problem space, like nations where road
rules tend to be ignored, makes it clear that what you actually have to solve
for.

It has been highlighted before - but the autonomous car can only work if the
road itself is active / aware

~~~
sharpercoder
Societies (and therefore roadsystems) will adapt, because speed and safety.
Roads will be changed to cater to the needs of self-driving cars; smart
traffic lights, clear lining, clear signage, less leveled intersections,
dedicated lanes, I can think of dozens more changes which make it easier and
safer and more deterministic for computers to drive cars.

Development of these changes will be spurred once self-driving cars can make
more efficient use of the road; the immense pressure of society to get rid of
traffic jams will make sure of that.

Maybe some nations won't implement these things nationwide with 100% coverage,
but they certainly will implement changes for certain roads. Highway roads
first, then collector roads, and lastly neighborhood roads.

~~~
jlgaddis
In America, at least, many (most?) roads and highways are already neglected
and getting worse. This is, so we hear, due to a lack of money to keep our
roads properly maintained. If we don't have the money to do that, where is the
money to retro-fit every road in the country to accomodate autonomous vehicles
going to come from?

~~~
skellera
It's a good question since most of those cars are electric.

Taxes typically taken in at the gas pump are being skirted around by having
electric cars. Do we just start charging MUCH more for registration?
Especially cause these cars have the potential to operate most of the day
(except when charging) so they will be causing more wear than a normal car.

~~~
nradov
Passenger vehicles (ICE or electric) cause negligible wear on roads. The vast
majority of road wear is caused by heavy trucks and other large vehicles like
buses. There's a non-linear relationship between vehicle weight and road
damage.

~~~
kirubakaran
Proportional to the fourth power, actually

[http://www.pavementinteractive.org/equivalent-single-axle-
lo...](http://www.pavementinteractive.org/equivalent-single-axle-load/)

An 18-wheeler causes 10,000 times the wear of a car, approximately.

------
maym86
If incidents only occur when the driver is distracted then it will always look
like the cause was driver distraction even if they were diligent for 99.99% of
the trip.

There will likely be a bias in the future for incidents like this to show some
level of driver distraction. This makes it easy to blame the driver when the
idea of a human as a supervisor is fundimentaly flawed.

------
collingreene
The two people interviewed were fired for cause from this same program, of
course they will have a negative opinion. One even fired for the same thing
this safety driver failed to do.

>Both Kelley and the former driver in Tempe were dismissed from their jobs
with Uber earlier this year for safety infractions: Kelley said he was let go
after rolling through a stop sign while he was operating the car, which he
disputes; the individual in Tempe said he was dismissed for using his phone
while the vehicle was in motion.

The bit about level 3 considered harmful makes a lot of sense and isn't
something that I would have intuitively thought of

~~~
shanghaiaway
I guess you missed the point of TFA. It is impossible for humans to perform
the tasks these two persons were hired to do. 100% of people who attempt to do
that job will eventually fail, likely sooner rather than later.

~~~
Aspyre
Wrong. At least 95% of the people who made the cut and didn't get fired after
a few weeks handled being the only operator of the vehicle with ease.

~~~
icebraining
And they will continue to handle it with ease right up to the moment when they
hit another cyclist.

What makes you so confident that the mere two years of running the program is
enough to reliably calculate that number, when drivers like the one in the
article managed to last more than a year until they got fired?

------
rmason
It would seem reasonable to me that once someone stepped off the curb that the
human driver should get notified that there was someone in the street on their
left. It would heighten their awareness and make it more likely they'd react
if the car did not. Something as simple as right and left buzzers. Course if
the lidar didn't detect the person at all then Uber's problems are much worse.

~~~
augbog
Heck that sounds pretty useful even for current cars today.

I imagine it isn't cheap though to add and even if it was reasonably priced I
imagine they would make it optional in case people didn't want to add it to
their car price in which case many would simply say "Nah I don't need that.
I'm a great driver!"

~~~
kalleboo
These kinds of things have existed for a while now
[https://newatlas.com/volvo-s60-pedestrian-safety-
system/1358...](https://newatlas.com/volvo-s60-pedestrian-safety-
system/13589/)

------
frankydp
Shouldn't test vehicles have at least the same level of attention monitors as
current auto pilot/assist vehicles do?

For these specific vehicles shouldn't they have some hand placement sensors or
wifi strength detectors or mobile signal detectors or eyeball monitoring at a
minimum?

Or use a custom app to "lock" the phone while driving, exit app and the car
pulls over.

Not that the driver would have prevented this incident, but seems like a
logical requirement.

------
twodave
In my opinion, automation is a way better use case for mass transit than 2-5
passenger consumer vehicles. These companies ought to be focusing on cities
where population is growing but density is low (one example would be
Jacksonville, FL). Start automating buses that run predictable routes and fire
all those city employee bus drivers who are driving up property taxes because
they need a pension.

------
mentos
Seems like they need another system to monitor the backup driver to make sure
their eyes are on the road.

------
JelteF
These people are basically giving driving lessons, just to cars instead of
people. Regular driving instructors can do their job fulltime in a safe way
without getting distracted. They don't control the car most of the time, yet
they still are able to stop it in case of a student error.

So to me the question is: What is making this difference? Is it the level of
training for the instructor? Human interaction? Is it the sign on their car
that shows it's a lesson car to the other drivers? Or is it something else?

PS, this post is based on the way driving lessons happen in the Netherlands.
I'm not sure if it's completely comparable to the US.

~~~
michaelt

      What is making this difference?
    

Driving instructors are constantly graduating their most experienced students
and recruiting zero-experience students.

These zero-experience students need the instructor to intervene from time to
time, thus justifying and reinforcing the instructor's habit of vigilance.

On the other hand, if an autonomous car has one near-accident every 100,000
miles, it's not often enough to maintain and keep strong a habit of vigilance.

~~~
snaily
Though impractical to implement, this is an interesting thought experiment.
What if the autonomous driving system has a "chaos monkey" that required
intervention by the trainer every so often?

Note that we already do this to keep people vigilant in rote tasks, e.g. for
airport x-ray scanner operators or train drivers.

~~~
femto
Self-driving car companies are "newbies" who could learn from railway
companies, which have decades of experience with keeping drivers alert in
vehicles that keep moving without driver action. For example, locomotives have
"dead man" switches to make sure the driver is still on the job. Japanese
drivers are trained to point and vocalise. Why shouldn't the car drivers be
required to call and point out every hazard whilst in autonomous mode?

Maybe part of the problem is that the self-driving companies view their
drivers as temporary measures, so choose to invest their resources into the
machine component rather than the human component?

------
cma
Rather than audit dashcam footage after the fact for infractions related to
attention and phone use, these companies need realtime remote monitoring of
the drivers (and realtime AI driven monitoring for areas without signal and
attention lapses by the remote monitor employees).

~~~
shanghaiaway
Lmao, so now you need two people to drive a car.

~~~
cma
While developing immature technology, yes. Maybe three people total (driver,
and someone monitoring the driver, and someone else monitoring the scene from
a camera up on a small boom pole).

------
mgiannopoulos
What I don’t understand: if Uber was firing people for using their mobiles in
the car, which did they allow them to have a mobile phone while on the job?

~~~
greenyoda
\- News reports have mentioned that Uber was using some of their driverless
cars to pick up passengers, for which the driver would need access to the Uber
app.

\- You want the driver to be able to call 911 if they're involved in an
accident, or are the victim of a crime, or have a medical emergency.

Presumably, they'd only be firing people for using their phones while the car
was driving itself, and they were supposed to be supervising it. It would be
OK to use a phone while the car wasn't moving.

~~~
martinald
It's pretty ironic though that Uber's driver app almost/does require you to
use it in motion though, eg when you are driving and another fare comes up.
Nearly every uber drive I see goes over to the phone and slides to accept the
fare.

