
Self-Driving Car Makers Prepare to Blame “Jaywalkers” - ingve
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/08/17/if-self-driving-cars-cant-detect-jaywalkers-they-shouldnt-be-on-the-roads/
======
maxxxxx
The car lobby already created "jaywalking"
[https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-
history](https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history) . Let's
hope we don't end up with an even more pedestrian hostile world than what we
have already.

~~~
strathmeyer
Part of living in a city is going to have to be to learn to not walk in front
of vehicles.

~~~
dixie_land
Having lived in NYC briefly I learned the exact opposite.

Also I was taught to hold up a particular finger while crossing a redlight as
a courtesy to the drivers.

~~~
y2bd
I visited NYC two months ago for the first time—as someone who doesn’t drive
it was _incredible_ how pedestrian-driven the streets were. Cars would stop
for me even when it was clearly their light.

~~~
chatmasta
Did you expect them to run you over instead?

~~~
SamReidHughes
That's what they'd do in suburban Philly.

------
j88439h84
This article says filed under "promoted". Does that mean some external entity
paid for it? Who wants to promote this?

~~~
rhencke
It's likely just the mechanism used for selecting what stores are featured on
the front page of the site.

Note that every story directly featured on
[https://www.streetsblog.org/](https://www.streetsblog.org/) is filed under
"promoted".

------
21
In many European cities it's quite common for pedestrians to pass on red
(which is considered more of a warning), even in front of cop cars. I've also
seen cops on foot cross the street on red.

And I've seen quite a number cross the street randomly among traffic, some of
them barely able to move (old, ...)

~~~
jobigoud
In France if there is a collision between a car and a pedestrian the car is
always at fault unless it can be proved the pedestrian was committing suicide.

~~~
ek5Jf
In the UK pedestrians have right of way.

If one deliberately jumps out on you it's obviously the pedestrians fault if
you hit them. However if someone is already crossing the road you slow down
and let them cross, it takes a few seconds out of a journey and you only need
to break gently or just back off the accelerator.

Australia seems a different attitude. Crossing the road, they'll point the car
straight at you and accelerate for being on the road, even if there's a queue
of traffic a few meters ahead they are not going to get through.

------
elmerfud
While I appreciate how the article brings up the history of the use of roads,
times do change. Despite their dire last sentence, humans have always altered
their behavior for the sake of their created machines. This is a trade-off
with progress. This is why we have rules to allow shared use of the road.

Automated cars are simply a new addition to this. Travel to countries where
there are no enforced road rules and see how efficiently traffic flows. It's
horrible. The idea that we don't want to change behaviors for new tools is
silly. If that's really their assertion, they need to stop posting in the
internet and only share their news in the public square, that they walked too.

~~~
chopin
It is not a change in behaviour what is sought but a change in accountability.
Even today you are expected to behave predictable. However it is not
punishable by death today. Here in Germany you are always civilly accountable
to a great deal when colliding with a weaker obstacle because the mere
existence of a car puts a greater risk on pedestrians.

~~~
google_censors
Here in the US negligence is the biggest factor in accountability. In most
cases if the driver wasn't negligent but the pedestrian was (by illegally
jaywalking), then there's no criminal or civil consequences.

------
a3n
My ignorant understanding is that pedestrians have the right-of-way, even mid-
block.

~~~
repsilat
It varies by jurisdiction. TFA says,

> _Ng’s quote itself suggests he doesn’t understand crosswalk laws. Every
> intersection is technically an unmarked crosswalk_

And that's only true in some places too. Laws vary from place to place:

>> _Nine states and the District of Columbia require motorists to stop when
approaching a pedestrian in an uncontrolled crosswalk._ *

[http://www.ncsl.org/research/transportation/pedestrian-
cross...](http://www.ncsl.org/research/transportation/pedestrian-
crossing-50-state-summary.aspx)

Laws can also be changed, and laws are not synonymous with norms.

~~~
masonic
"Crossing at an uncontrolled crosswalk" is specifically _not_ jaywalking, it
simply means that it has no traffic control mechanism (e.g. a traffic light
activateable by a pedestrian).

------
snarfybarfy
It also seems they incorporate the 'if a situation is unclear, stick to the
speed limit' heuristic that many human drivers also use.

The car did not brake because it detected a 'false positive'??!

 _The Uber Volvo SUV that hit her as she walked her bike in a pedestrian-heavy
area had a hard time identifying her, plus the car was programmed not to brake
if it believed it had detected “false positive.”_

------
mtgx
> “What we tell people is, ‘Please be lawful and please be considerate,’”
> Andrew Ng, a machine learning researcher whose venture fund invests in
> driverless startups, told Bloomberg.

This is like web developers criticizing users for using their website "wrong".
Unless Andrew Ng has found a way to eliminate all crime on Earth, then I sure
hope the startups he's investing in don't actually count on "people being
lawful", and they _make sure_ their cars are safe even when people aren't
lawful.

~~~
jobigoud
Jaywalking is not illegal in most places. Relying on this would severely
restrict the market of autonomous cars.

~~~
repsilat
Mm. Also: it seems just as easy to me for self-driving cars to have exactly
the opposite effect on how we view jaywalking -- if the cars are more
attentive and more careful than human drivers (or if they _will_ be), then
jaywalking could become significantly safer.

Maybe you would discourage it to keep traffic flowing, and I can see how the
people writing the software want to make their own lives easier, but as their
software gets better it might not be so necessary.

(Cynically, changing pedestrian norms to make the driving task more difficult
could also make life better not just for pedestrians but for a company with a
technology head-start like Waymo. And it might make driving yourself around
more annoying too, which could be good for them.)

------
chrismcb
The problem with this is that jaywalkers aren't the only things that could be
in the road. There are animals, things falling it of other vehicles,
construction debris and so on... Yeah it would be cool if people didn't walk
in front of a car. It would be even cooler if the car could not hit things.
Like that is the whole point of self driving cars, to drive better than humans
can.

------
helthanatos
[http://moralmachine.mit.edu](http://moralmachine.mit.edu) The general law is
that people always have the right of way unless it's unavoidable. It's
important that self driving cars do their best to not kill people and follow
the law. Though, I don't think all these 'kinks' will be out for another 10
years.

------
jmpman
The last person who jaywalked in front of me was 9 years old. I doubt society
is going to accept autonomous cars taking out elementary students on their way
to school.

------
rhinoceraptor
Why don't we just make walking illegal already since that's what these people
want?

------
google_censors
This prompted me to look up US pedestrian deaths. Some interesting numbers:

"According to the GHSA report, 74 percent of pedestrian fatalities happen at
night, and 72 percent of those killed were not crossing at intersections."

"The GHSA report indicated that 15 percent of pedestrians killed each year are
hit by a drunk driver, while 34 percent of pedestrians killed are legally
drunk themselves."

I'd say we should put in more crosswalks and add lights and reflectors, but
I've almost been hit twice by cellphone-distracted drivers in one like that in
my neighborhood.

[https://www.npr.org/2017/03/30/522085503/2016-saw-a-
record-i...](https://www.npr.org/2017/03/30/522085503/2016-saw-a-record-
increase-in-pedestrian-deaths)

