
Uber not criminally liable in fatal 2018 Arizona self-driving crash: prosecutors - areoform
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-crash-autonomous/uber-not-criminally-liable-in-2018-fatal-self-driving-crash-prosecutors-idUSKCN1QM2O8
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gregmac
> Vasquez, the Uber back-up driver, could face charges of vehicular
> manslaughter, according to a police report in June.

> Based on a video taken inside the car, records collected from online
> entertainment streaming service Hulu and other evidence, police said last
> year that Vasquez was looking down and streaming an episode of the
> television show “The Voice” on a phone until about the time of the crash.
> The driver looked up a half-second before hitting Elaine Herzberg, 49, who
> died from her injuries.

Though there's something to be said about watching a video as opposed to
paying attention to the driving, the job of a "back-up driver" seems to be
highly aligned with something akin to a CCTV monitoring job. In that industry,
they recognize a "vigilance decrement" [1] occurs within 15-30 minutes, at
which point a person basically can't effectively continue monitoring. It's
recognized as a best practice to limit the duration anyone is watching a
screen and regularly rotate people's tasks [2].

As the self-driving technology gets better, of course people's trust will go
up and they'll pay less attention. My guess would be the first hour or so
you're in a self-driving car, you will be hyper-vigilant and probably even get
a rush of adrenaline everytime it approaches an intersection or pedestrian or
makes a turn into moving traffic. After a while -- say dozens or hundreds of
hours of no incidents -- of course your vigilance is going to go way down,
while your boredom goes way up. Apparently for some people, eventually to the
point they feel comfortable focusing on something else.

All this to say, it's surprising this doesn't seem to be taken into account --
specifically, what practices did Uber put in place to avoid this known
problem? Did they put a human in an impossible situation, where they expected
someone to sit and do nothing for maybe hundreds of hours and then suddenly
react within a few hundreds of a second when something went wrong?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilance_(psychology)#Vigilan...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilance_\(psychology\)#Vigilance_decrement)

[2] [https://www.securigroup.co.uk/news/understanding-the-
challen...](https://www.securigroup.co.uk/news/understanding-the-challenges-
of-cctv-monitoring)

------
casefields
Leter from attorney here:
[https://docdro.id/eFGP3bb](https://docdro.id/eFGP3bb)

