
Police Say Uber Is Likely Not at Fault for Self-Driving Car Fatality in Arizona - tlrobinson
http://fortune.com/2018/03/19/uber-self-driving-car-crash/
======
r_klancer
My takeaway from the comments in this thread: self-driving Ubers don't drive
defensively, almost surely can't "read" pedestrian behavior, and even with
lidar may never have seen Elaine Herzberg. Oh, and they speed.

This sounds like straight out of the "hell" scenario for driverless cars: "we
cannot accept responsibility for what happens to pedestrians and cyclists
foolish enough to stray out of their designated safe zone".

I'm referencing Robin Chase (the Zipcar founder)'s "heaven or hell" framing -
[https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2014/04/will-world-
dr...](https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2014/04/will-world-driverless-
cars-be-heaven-or-hell/8784/)

For a recent, thoughtful talk about the damage self-driving cars might do to
the city if we are not careful, see this Congress for the New Urbanism talk
about "Autonomous Vehicles & The Good City" at
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utnPEbDNbrE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utnPEbDNbrE)

It's also worth mentioning that there's a bill (AV START, or S. 1885) in the
current Senate that would actually preempt local and state regulation of
autonomous car safety, but it has been put on hold.

~~~
ShorsHammer
I don't see why autonomous vehicles are so big. Virtually all travel is one
person, ideally it would be a tiny 4 wheel electric with the sole passenger
highly reclined.

The hangover from internal combustion is real.

~~~
nikanj
The same reason non-autonomous ones are so big. It's a status symbol, plus
there's the arms race of "bigger truck wins in an accident"

~~~
majewsky
> bigger truck wins in an accident

And that's why I go by tram. :)

~~~
ShorsHammer
Jokes aside, it seems foolish to create an entirely new class of vehicle that
drives itself while completely ignoring the physics of big bits of metal.

------
danso
> _According to the Chronicle, the preliminary investigation found the Uber
> car was driving at 38 mph in a 35 mph zone and did not attempt to brake.
> Herzberg is said to have abruptly walked from a center median into a lane
> with traffic. Police believe she may have been homeless._

I know this isn't the most pertinent issue here, but I'm surprised the self-
driving AI is allowed to _speed_ , though with further research, this seems to
be the case with Google/Waymo software too:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28851996](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28851996)

Though in that BBC article (which is from 2014), the stated scenario is when
the self-driving car is surrounded by traffic exceeding the speed limit. It
doesn't sound like this was the case for the Uber vehicle.

~~~
omarforgotpwd
Of course a self driving car should be able to speed. My understanding is that
speed limits are set by measuring the speed people are driving on the road and
then determining a speed at which roughly 15% of the drivers are exceeding
that limit. There is an expectation that people will speed, but by setting the
speed limit a little bit lower almost all traffic will fall under safe bounds.
Driving 38 in a 35 zone is completely reasonable. I probably would have been
going 45 - 50 if the road was empty. If self driving cars aren't allowed to
speed, they're going to be a nightmare for passengers and other drivers.
Obviously different people have different feelings about the issue of
speeding, but personally I lose my mind when I get an Uber driver that's
driving to slow. Try and think about what it would be like if a computer
followed every traffic restriction to the letter of the law rather than
driving like an actual human.

People will vote me down because the idea of a speeding self driving car
sounds scary, but I personally can't wait until the software has advanced to
the state that it can confidently drive 200 mph on the 5 from LA to the Bay
Area. (Presumably they'd have to build a much bigger better 5, with special
lanes dedicated to autonomous vehicles)

~~~
naveen99
What speed would you drive if there was no speed limit ?

~~~
franciscop
What speed would _you_ drive? Would you take close corners at 120km/h? People
(on average) drive at the speed their actually very well tuned survival
instinct tells them to.

~~~
in_cahoots
I don’t think that’s true at all (though I only have my own experience to go
off of). I tend to use the speed limit as a point of reference, and then drive
a little above it. Prior experience has told me that going the speed limit
plus some percentage ‘feels’ safe. If there were no speed limit I’d actually
have to pay more attention to the road and surrounding environment to
determine what a safe speed is. Right now most people’s ‘survival instinct’ is
basically speed limit + some delta in clear conditions. That delta may change
from driver to driver, but in general everyone drives within 10-20% of the
speed limit.

As a fun thought experiment, imagine what would happen if your residential
speed limit were raised from 25mph to 70mph. People may not hit the 70mph
limit, but I can almost guarantee that the average speed would increase
significantly, perhaps even dangerously in some cases. I don’t have much faith
in people’s ability to judge space and speed accurately, particularly when
they aren’t used to doing so. And this includes myself.

~~~
helthanatos
I would like the speed limit on my interstates and highways to go up to
70(they're all straight. 55 is just the only speed limit around here). Driving
at 65-70 feels safe in normal conditions. Driving above 70 feels a bit too
fast. Speed limits should be more variable depending upon car size and braking
power though. I hate having to fear that I might be pulled over for going a
bit above the speed limit when there are so many more threats than just speed.
I don't believe speed limits should be anything more than a suggestion with
dangerous driving being the focus.

~~~
rootusrootus
I find this is extremely dependent on car. I've had cars that felt like you
were about to die at 55 mph, and I've had cars that you couldn't tell you were
going fast until you were _really_ moving. For laughs, as my wife and I were
driving home one afternoon earlier this year on a completely empty stretch of
I-5 south of Portland, I casually accelerated up to about 110 and left it
there for maybe a minute, then eased back down to normal speed as we came up
into traffic. She never even looked up, didn't notice. But then again, we were
in my brand new Camaro SS and I'm not positive it even got over 2000 RPM for
that exercise, so I guess that's not a surprise.

So I guess I'm saying I agree. Speed limits are pretty arbitrary, there are a
lot of things drivers do every day that are far more dangerous than merely
speeding. Closure rate, unsafe passes, tailgating, cutting people off, etc.

/don't get me started about how people drive around you if you're towing a
travel trailer, what the heck is it with people?

------
stefan_
This is just police standard operating procedure. In any kind of manslaughter
where a vehicle is involved, save on paperwork and blame whichever party ended
up dead before the driver has even spoken the words "she came from nowhere".
Here is the police chief spelling it out for Uber:

 _she came from the shadows_

I wonder what that LIDAR thinks about the _shadows_. I mean, this system is in
place because _everybody drives_ and so we've legalized recklessness in the
pursuit of "There but for the grace of god go I" but who benefits if police
declares an AI driver blameless before anyone has even downloaded the
recordings?

~~~
CydeWeys
You aren't kidding about it being standard operating procedure. Almost every
time a pedestrian or cyclist is killed in New York City, the police come out
and blame anyone but the driver. And then video will turn up afterwards
showing that the driver was driving unsafely, and that the fatal accident
could have been avoided. Still, no charges are filed. It's like they have an
allergy to paperwork.

I want to see video of this fatal crash. Nothing else will suffice.

~~~
stefan_
I wasn't saying that in jest or exaggerating for dramatic effect. It's simply
reality that today, unless you are drunk or high, you can kill someone who is
walking in a crosswalk with your vehicle and get away with not even a ticket:

[https://twitter.com/KeeganNYC/status/530515713405231105](https://twitter.com/KeeganNYC/status/530515713405231105)

Afterwards, police will, as in this case, make up a story how "the little kid
broke free from its grandma" and decline to charge.

~~~
tzs
According to the news reports on the case that tweet is about, the police in
fact ticketed the driver. A judge dismissed the tickets later, against the
recommendation of the police.

------
jcranmer
I've been trying to find video evidence of the crash, and have been unable to
do so. The closest I've found is a myriad of news reports showing the stopped
car and police scene.

On reviewing this evidence however, there is one thing that sticks out: the
damage to the car appears to be entirely on the passenger side. If the woman
"darted out from the median," then she managed to clear at least half of the
traffic lane before being struck. That makes it more likely that certain
prompt evasive actions could have prevented the fatality, which does not look
good on Uber's part.

I, for one, am glad that NTSB is looking at the crash.

~~~
astro_robot
Yea, there just seems to be so many things that aren't adding up yet. The news
footage also showed a damaged bicycle but there is not mention of a cyclist in
the article. I hope they release footage soon.

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
There was mention of her walking her bike.

~~~
cjensen
Which means she wasn't moving quickly.

~~~
empressplay
"walking your bike" is just an expression, you can certainly run while
"walking" your bike – especially across a street

~~~
cjensen
Sure, but starting and stopping takes time, which means she did not "suddenly"
run into the street.

------
dang
The massive earlier discussion is
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16619917](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16619917),
but since the current thread is rising we can let it have the next shift on
the front page.

Edit: some people have objected that it's biased to let the discussion shift
to "Police say Uber is likely not at fault" in place of the original report
about the death. That's a fair point, so we've taken the downweight off the
original story.

Just so it's clear: usually what we do when there's a major ongoing story is
let discussion hop from an earlier submission to a later one as significant
new information arises. We link to thread n-1 from thread n, so people who
want to follow back can do so, but the idea is to have only one thread about
the story—the latest one—on the front page at a time.

In this case, though, it's debatable whether "police say" counts as
significant new information. And we don't want to be biased. So we'll restore
the previous thread and err and have two on the front page for a while.

------
blakesterz
> “The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of
> them,” Moir said. “His first alert to the collision was the sound of the
> collision.”

I don't know if that is supposed to make anyone feel better about this, if
anything it makes it seem worse. I thought one of the big benefits of these
systems was they were supposed to be better at exactly these kinds of
situations?

More like "autonomous cars are better than people at stopping in a flash"
rather than "just like people this car didn't stop in a flash".

I'm really not trying to trash these systems, I'm just surprised at this
explanation. Though, I guess based on the other comments now, maybe I
shouldn't be.

~~~
halflings
If somebody jumped in front of the car at the last second, it would be
physically impossible to break in time.

I assume what people mean by "stopping in a flash" is closer to taking the
right actions faster (e.g 40ms vs 800ms) when there's still a chance of
changing the outcome.

~~~
fthssht
800ms is pretty slow for a sober human I think

[https://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/statistics](https://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/statistics)

~~~
Trundle
Isn't that linking to the results of people playing a game where they're
paying attention and looking for something to react to?

------
benwilber0
> According to the Chronicle, the preliminary investigation found the Uber car
> was driving at 38 mph in a 35 mph zone and did not attempt to brake.
> Herzberg is said to have abruptly walked from a center median into a lane
> with traffic.

The autonomous vehicle was speeding and made no attempt to decelerate given
the sudden presence of an obstruction in its path? I would expect some kind of
reaction from the car within seconds, or milliseconds.

~~~
friedman23
3mph above the speed limit

~~~
benwilber0
That is speeding and also the car was inattentive to potential hazards outside
of its vision. Normal human drivers slow down when they see a wild lady on the
median looking like she might dart into the road. Normal people slow down when
there are kids playing with a ball on the sidewalk. Do these cars do that? Do
they even drive the speed limit?

edit: Also accidentally killing someone with your car because of minor
speeding or inattentiveness usually results in a misdemeanor vehicular
manslaughter charge. Who is getting that charge here?

~~~
Consultant32452
If I'm imagining this scenario correctly, I've experienced it tons of times
and never seen traffic slow down. It's a road with a median and a person
attempting to cross the road has temporarily stopped in the median waiting for
a break in traffic so they can cross. Maybe I've just lived in 2 crazy states,
or maybe I'm not imagining this scenario correctly, but I can't recall ever
having seen traffic slow down for this situation.

It's possible to believe that the sensors/AI failed (no braking) while also
acknowledging that the vehicle/driver is not at fault for the death. I suspect
that may ultimately be the case here.

~~~
jcranmer
Traffic might not slow down, but I'd definitely keep an eye out for the person
in the median.

~~~
Consultant32452
True, but you also might not have time to react and hit the brakes if someone
darts out in front of you.

------
TomMckenny
Odd the damage should be on the passenger side if she darted from the center
median.

Odd they see the need to add the conjecture that she may have been homeless.

Curious too is that the center divider where she likely was has has a nice
walkway on it with a street lamp[2]

I'm suddenly quite curious about what is going on.

Accident site:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4369934,-111.9429875,3a,75y,...](https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4369934,-111.9429875,3a,75y,81.51h,84.45t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1scUyILaxFs5z63AL2SupCJw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)
from [https://imgur.com/a/QH98H](https://imgur.com/a/QH98H)

[2]
[https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4366949,-111.9427747,3a,75y,...](https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4366949,-111.9427747,3a,75y,184.83h,75.55t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1swPFHH-
feIAv6b5u-nH58JA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

~~~
oliwarner
You appear to be suggesting that multiple levels of police watched the videos,
GPS tracking, lidar scene, all recorded by the on-board systems and have
deliberately suppressed what really happened. I can believe an Uber employee
being paid to cover this up but whatever your views of the police, I don't
believe they would suppress something that could so obviously be a major
public health issue.

And it's common in police reports to identify the victim and where they're
from. The point about the carrier bags and the homelessness is that they've
been unable to verify her sitation; they're explaining why. Nothing strange
here.

But I guess there's no convincing you without providing you the snuff film of
it all happening.

~~~
TomMckenny
I believe there a multiple layers involved:

a bizarre decisions about median divider design that attracts jay walking.

a governor with a stake in this subject.

an inexplicable disinterest in even minimal government oversight of the tests.

a company with a history of bad behavior.

a possibly reckless race to get a new technology market where trade secrets
outweigh sharing safety results.

Clearly the data was not closely reviewed before issuing the statement. But I
doubt the data retrieval is done by a police officer. More likely by an Uber
employee; yet another potential issue.

The police report could easily be perfectly normal. Or perhaps there was call
from the Governor. Or perhaps the police saw the data Uber wanted them to see.
Perhaps the city doesn't want to be sued about it's median divider. I honestly
have no idea what is going in in such a complex and invisible system but I
sure am curious.

~~~
oliwarner
I'm in the weird situation where I have to say that it looks like you might
have been right, but for the wrong reasons.

My point was that it would have been stupid to attempt to cover anything up.
This was never going to go like a normal car accident. Every layer of local
law and order would have seen it, the governor would have seen it, Uber
employees ( _people_ , not an amorphous evil blob) and then the public would
have eventually seen it. Hiding _anything_ would have been a PR disaster,
perhaps with criminal after-effects, and there were too many _people_ —whose
own safety depends on this— for a cover-up to work.

So it's even more ridiculous now that I've seen the video that shows an event
that an able human _would_ have spotted, braked and swerved that this Uber did
not. Just using light, this should have been a near miss. But these vehicles
supposedly have multiple sorts of radar-type equipment, don't they? They
should have seen this well ahead of what a human could.

But yes, now there also needs to be a very serious investigation into the
events that lead to the statement saying it was the pedestrians fault, or
unavoidable.

------
DoreenMichele
I didn't notice it mentioned in this piece, but a different article on HN is
suggesting she may have been homeless and was crossing where there was no
crosswalk.

Homeless individuals frequently sleep under bridges, on the sides of off ramps
and other infrastructure near highways. They are often walking where no
pedestrian should be at all.

I would like to see the affordable housing crisis solved. Currently, there are
only 30 affordable homes on the West Coast for every 100 poor families.* But
it is entirely possible she did basically walk out in front of the car at a
place where a driver had no reason to expect to see a pedestrian.

It would be nice if people would wait to see what evidence comes forth rather
than jumping to conclusions about police conspiracies to hand wave away blame.

* [https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-pove...](https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-poverty-west-coast-no-30-affordable-homes/)

~~~
KKKKkkkk1
It's like a story out of a dystopian sci-fi novel. A society that can make
self-driving cars but cannot solve homelessness.

~~~
DoreenMichele
America seems to be poisoned by some poor mental models. People seem to see no
real connection between homelessness and the lack of affordable housing.
People also tell me there is no money in solving homelessness, which tells me
how messed up our mental models are.

------
rayiner
The point about the woman being homeless made something click for me. If you
drive in DC, you’ll see panhandlers and people who are very erratic. You have
to concentrate on their body language to anticipate whether they’re about to
leap into traffic. You often slow down because you’re not sure what they’re
going to do. How does a self-driving car do that?

It’s quite possible that a human driver going 38 wouldn’t have been able to
stop in time. But could a human driver been going 25 because they saw someone
acting erratically on the median?

------
akamaka
I don’t think that the opinion of the police is at all relevant here, since
they have no tools for investigating how self-driving cars react in accidents.

The sensors and reaction time of a self-driving car are entirely different
from a human, so it’s possible that a crash for which a human is not at fault
could be averted by properly programmed self-driving car software.

~~~
cloakandswagger
You don't think the opinion of the police is relevant in a homicide? The
opinion of people who have investigated hundreds if not thousands of similar
accidents?

Who meets your criteria for expertise on saying whether the car could have
stopped or not? Uber?

~~~
goshx
If there is data to be reviewed, that’s your best bet against someone who was
not even there.

~~~
cloakandswagger
There is data...in the form of a video _taken by the car that hit her_. You
don't need a team of PhDs to watch it and make a judgment call.

~~~
telchar
What about the other sensor data? Did the police watch the LIDAR pointclouds
and the RADAR maps too? Or are they basing their judgement on only one sense
input? Seems to be the latter which means they're spouting off without knowing
what they're talking about.

------
prawn
_Pushing a bicycle laden with plastic shopping bags, a woman abruptly walked
from a center median into a lane of traffic and was struck by a self-driving
Uber operating in autonomous mode._

 _From viewing the videos, “it’s very clear it would have been difficult to
avoid this collision in any kind of mode (autonomous or human-driven) based on
how she came from the shadows right into the roadway,” Moir said._

The "driver" (more like attendant) had no warning until the sound of impact.
The vehicle was doing 38 in a 35 zone which I would've thought was odd - would
the vehicles be programmed to push the limit a little as most other drivers
often do?

Edit: Ignore last comment. Some have suggested the limit was actually 45 mph
per signage.

~~~
avs733
Apparently my stored links on this topic are dead but two worhtwhile pieces of
information on that point

1) drivers who consistently drive below the _average_ speed of other drivers
on a road (i.e., who religiously drive the speed limit) are more likely to be
involved in crashes

2) More accidents are caused by speed differential than by speed by itself.

~~~
oska
Your assertion (true or not) is irrelevant to this case. This was a car
impacting a pedestrian, not another car on the road. In any impact between a
car and a pedestrian the speed of the car is critical in determining whether
the pedestrian will be killed.

~~~
avs733
I didn't mean to suggest that it was relevant in this case. I was merely
providing some context for the parent post's observation about an automous car
exceeding the speed limit

------
danso
FWIW, this seems to be where the accident took place, based on news photos:

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/N+Mill+Ave+%26+E+Curry+Rd,...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/N+Mill+Ave+%26+E+Curry+Rd,+Tempe,+AZ+85281/@33.4362167,-111.9423812,3a,75y,329.34h,83.56t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sPpo9rKyKSc6nzIT_nkVAyQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x872b0931b4d9dd05:0x5d55a20356caaf8!8m2!3d33.4377022!4d-111.9433046)

It's not completely unlighted, though I'm not sure that's supposed to matter
given the AV's sensors? Even if Uber nor the human driver is not legally at
fault, I'd still be interested in knowing of Uber's LIDAR and other sensors
even detected the woman, and whether it's part of the algorithm to be cautious
when someone is that close to the roadway at night?

Can the AV's sensors even tell the difference between a person slowly
loitering on a median vs stationary lightpoles and (slightly swaying)
vegetation? I suppose you don't want the AV slowing down just every time it
senses a solid object near the roadway, but does it make different decisions
if a stationary object happens to be a human vs light post?

edit: the article doesn't say what lane the Uber vehicle was in. Since the
victim was walking down the median and yet managed to abruptly surprise the
AV, then we can assume it was in the left lane? But don't most human drivers,
on an otherwise empty road, move toward the far lane to avoid driving at full
speed next to someone who is walking their bike near the road? I do that for
bicyclists even when they have their own bike lane (never know when someone
can abruptly fall). I would especially do that at the sight of someone walking
their bike "laden with plastic shopping bags" late at night down a center
median, because that is such an unusual situation.

~~~
corny
There's a paved area in the median that seems pretty useless since there's no
sidewalk or crosswalk that connects to the median at that point:

[https://goo.gl/maps/9WKX2DYEN862](https://goo.gl/maps/9WKX2DYEN862)

If the Uber car was about to turn left at the upcoming intersection it might
have been getting into the leftmost turning lane at the point of impact. The
pedestrian would have been obscured by a slight curve in the road, vegetation,
a road sign, and their bicycle.

~~~
danso
Yeah, I saw that too. It's such a weird construct since, as you say, there is
no legal way for someone to follow the median paths and cross either of the
streets. In fact, how are pedestrians supposed to get on the median in the
first place (legally, I mean)?

From the New Times:

[http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/medical-cannabis-
extract...](http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/medical-cannabis-extracts-
legal-in-arizona-or-not-10232352)

> _That spot is east of the second, western-side Mill Avenue bridge that is
> restricted to southbound traffic, and east of the Marquee Theatre and a
> parking lot for the Tempe Town Lake. It can be a popular area for
> pedestrians, especially concertgoers, joggers, and lake visitors. Mid-street
> crossing is common there, and a walkway in the median between the two one-
> way roads across the two bridges probably encourages the practice._

~~~
orangecat
_In fact, how are pedestrians supposed to get on the median in the first place
(legally, I mean)?_

There are even "no crossing" signs where the paths meet the road. Apparently
you're supposed to go to the crosswalk, cross to the median, then navigate
down a thin strip which contains a bush that you have to step over and a bunch
of loose rocks that you could easily trip on. WTF.

------
brian-armstrong
So here's one thing about this incident where humans do have a system for this
already.

People are very good at reading body language. It's possible to gather
someone's likely intentions (wrt moving) in a near instant. A defensive driver
will see body language that _could_ dart out into the street and slow down,
just in case, and give more attention to the person. We are really good at
this.

I know you can say it was dark and therefore maybe harder to see this, but a
self-driving car shouldn't take its eyes off anything anyway, so that seems
irrelevant. Unless it's almost pitch black, people can read this sort of
information.

So what gives? Uber's self-driving system clearly lacks the full suite of
decisions made by human drivers. This makes me skeptical that their cars can
be significantly safer than human drivers.

~~~
shkkmo
The chief of police says: "“It’s very clear it would have been difficult to
avoid this collision in any kind of mode [autonomous or human-driven] based on
how she came from the shadows right into the roadway,”"

I'm curious what you know that he doesn't.

~~~
hnaccy
It's cliche in America to absolve drivers of any culpability when killing
pedestrians and cyclists let alone a case involving a local government that
was actively courting a known unethical company.

Until they release footage I'll be taking anything from Uber and Tempe
officials with a grain of salt, they'll spin this as hard they can.

P.S. I'm surprised he used the word shadows considering the car was equipped
with a fancy lidar unit.

------
Karrot_Kream
If we're not holding autonomous drivers to a higher standard than human
drivers, I'm not convinced on the long term benefit of this technology.

~~~
noobermin
This is a very important point. I made this point above. Someone already
mentioned the car was speeding 3 mph above the speed limit and defending it
because...you do it?

If our we allow autonomous cars to be as reckless and dangerous as human
drivers (which is _already_ dangerous enough to make it one of the top killers
in this country) then what is the point of AV's anyway?

~~~
asteli
Driving no faster than the speed limit under any circumstances _causes_ safety
issues. You get a continuous stream of cars cutting in front, some of them
irate about having to accommodate the SDV's law-abiding nature. I'm relatively
sure you can replicate this effect easily in most American metropolitan
regions.

------
oska
I think it's worth referencing Sweden's Vision Zero [1] here, a project which
aims to reduce all fatalities from automobiles to zero.

They have a system of maximum traffic speeds for different zones depending on
what impact risks there are in those zones. For the zone where there are
possible conflicts between pedestrians and cars the maximum speed is 19mph.
The rationale for this is that below that speed the risk of a fatality from an
impact between a car and a pedestrian is low but above that speed the risk of
fatality rises very quickly.

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

~~~
joquarky
I wonder if it is not a coincidence that the speed at which it starts to
become fatal is around the maximum speed that humans can run.

------
hnaccy
>speeding

>didn't engage breaks

Definitely gives me confidence in self-driving cars, at least she "may have
been homeless" so I can sleep easy tonight. Thanks Uber and Tempe!

~~~
Steeeve
>speeding

>didn't engage breaks

>not ubers fault

one of these things is not like the other.

The basic expectation is that if people are on the edge of a roadway you slow
down and pay more attention. What exactly was the person in the drivers seat
doing?

~~~
userbinator
_What exactly was the person in the drivers seat doing?_

Nothing, because the car was clearly supposed to be driving itself.

~~~
IncRnd
The car didn't have a driver's license. The driver did, regardless of the
amount of assistance provided by the car. What is troubling is that the breaks
were never applied.

~~~
dingo_bat
It's not that simple, I believe. Many governments have issues special
registrations to self-driving cars, which waive off the requirement of an
active driver to some extent. In that sense, the car actually has a "license"
while the person sitting in the "driver's" seat is more of an attendant.

~~~
IncRnd
That's a very good point. Thank you for pointing that out. AZ does allow self-
driving cars without drivers, as long as they follow the traditional laws and
rules of the road.

I would argue that in this particular case, from the information that has been
released, the car may have followed the laws of the road but it didn't appear
to follow the traditional defensive driving rules of the road that parents
teach their children, such as, "see that person with the bike standing on the
median? Be careful. Don't hit them."

------
lhuser123
Years of driving a big truck have taught me to take irrational behavior very
seriously. And sometimes you can only anticipate that by looking at people’s
faces, reactions, past behaviors, thinks like that. I wonder how do you teach
that to AI.

------
bb88
What bothers me is that there was no braking happening, and maybe even
apparently no notification to the car that it hit something.

------
pfarnsworth
Extremely tragic that this happened but I’ve heard of many cases where
homeless people, generally mentally ill, will run into traffic.

My friend almost lost his life in SF a few years ago when a homeless person
ran in front of him as he was riding his motorcycle. My friend hit the
homeless person and went flying off his motorcycle and broke his arm and
pelvis. The homeless person ran off (not literally but they couldn’t find
him).

------
noonespecial
At some level, at some time, we're going to have to come to terms with the
fact that these machines can be dangerous in certain ways. Probably ways that
are slightly different than human controlled machines. Maybe safer on the
whole. But certainly different.

Cars have been a menace for a century. We accept and adapt.

------
btrettel
Are there plans for a beacon one could place on themself to make self driving
cars recognize them better? Could be a light, a radio, or something else.

Perhaps there's a slippery slope before such things are required by law, but I
am interested.

------
vidanay
>"...the incident occurred roughly 100 years from a crosswalk."

How slow are Uber's cars driving?

------
cmurf
I think driving 10-20% slower than the posted speed limit at night is
completely sane. In Colorado we have some rural highways that are double
posted with lower speed limits at night. If AI cannot make identical collision
avoidance guarantees at night and during the day, then it should be law that
they self limit their speed below the posted speed limit until there is
separation parity.

------
nerpderp83
> Police believe she may have been homeless.

Move along folks, Arizona cops said Uber and the victims story matches, victim
isn't gonna sue, case closed.

------
maxander
There's going to be a bunch of these "OMG a robot car hit someone!!!" stories
that then morph into "the robot actually had nothing to do with it." Perhaps
it will finally cue people in to how intrinsically dangerous cars are.

I mean, even if autonomous cars are x100 times safer to be around than human-
driven cars, they're still _orders of magnitude_ more of a risk factor for
ordinary (U.S.) citizens than say, terrorists, or sharks.

~~~
akira2501
> Perhaps it will finally cue people in to how intrinsically dangerous cars
> are.

Until you consider the _billions_ of miles that cars in the US drive every
month. Cars are exceptionally safe, and they're getting better every year..
because we keep driving _more_ miles year after year, yet fatalities continue
to drop.

Also, how do you interpret facts like: California has 30% more people living
in it than Texas, yet TX has a _greater_ number of roadway fatalities than CA?

> they're still orders of magnitude more of a risk factor for ordinary

The problem is: you absolutely cannot view vehicles as a _single_ risk factor.
Thus, any comparison between human drivers and AI drivers on these terms is
flawed from the outset.

~~~
caconym_
Cars are a leading cause of death in the US, especially among young people.
That's a fact worth taking notice of, regardless of how many miles are driven
or whatever else.

Yes, it's great that fatalaties are trending downwards.

~~~
petre
So cap the power, weight and speed of cars young people are allowed to drive.
In the US you can only vote at 21, but you can join the army and kill people
if you're 18 and in most states drive powerful cars at 16 (although subject to
some conditions such as a curfew and limits on the number of underage
passengers present in the vehicle). In most European countries one can only
drive heavy quadricycles (<=450 kg curb weight, <=15kW, <=45 km/h by
construction) at 16 years of age.

Same for autonomous vehicles: until the NTSB or whatever federal or state
agency is responsible decides which tech is mature enough and issues licenses
for a given AV system. A person has to have a driver's license, however AV
systems do not. Why not certify which of them are able to operate heavier/more
powerful/faster vehicles without human intervention (meaning they'd slow down
to a stop when the driver would take his/her hands off the wheel).

------
ConcernedCoder
I only have one question: Why didn't the software controlling the vehicle
detect the pedestrian and attempt to brake or avoid collision?

------
omegaworks
>Police believe she may have been homeless.

Police: "don't worry, she was an undesirable."

Next, let's watch them publicly leak her criminal background.

~~~
Alex3917
They already did, she was in prison for a year on charges relating to the
'dangerous' drug marijuana.

I called almost verbatim what the chief of police actually said in the other
thread and had my comment downvoted and flagged for it.

~~~
dang
If you mean
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16620402](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16620402),
it's unclear what it means and how you meant it. I'm sure many readers took it
literally.

~~~
Alex3917
I mean I did mean it literally as a factual legal statement, not as a
normative statement on how society should work.

~~~
dang
Right—that was unclear, though, and if some readers took it as an endorsement
I'm sure you can understand why they'd flag it.

------
rdlecler1
It’s interesting that so many people in the earlier post first reporting on
this topic were very quick to rush to judgement.

------
hndamien
Maybe we could put bumpers on these cars until they are official? They don't
need to look cool right now.

------
SemiTom
Car forensics will be interesting. There will be data collected
minutes/seconds before [https://semiengineering.com/anatomy-of-an-autonomous-
vehicle...](https://semiengineering.com/anatomy-of-an-autonomous-vehicle-
crash/)

------
pauldprice
“The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them,”
Moir said. “His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision.”

Notice how the chief of police refers to the human and AI as "they".

------
candiodari
Once again Futurama predicted the future entirely correctly:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qBlPa-9v_M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qBlPa-9v_M)

------
whiddershins
Looking at the google street view I am astonished someone thought it was a
good idea to allow a bunch of random plants to grow in the median.

It makes visibility insanely complicated, especially at night.

~~~
DanBC
You're just saying the driver is even more to blame - going faster than the
speed limit even though visibility is reduced should increase, not decrease,
culpability.

------
jdc
Surely there's a blackbox somewhere that could clear this all up.

------
alexandercrohde
I don't want to hear any officer's opinion on this until the video and radar
is publicly released. It's unclear on what evidence the officer bases this
account of events.

~~~
jdoliner
Second paragraph:

> Chief of Police Sylvia Moir told the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday that
> video footage taken from cameras equipped to the autonomous Volvo SUV
> potentially shift the blame to the victim herself, 49-year-old Elaine
> Herzberg, rather than the vehicle.

How is that unclear?

~~~
francisofascii
Well, was she already walking in road where the car should have had time to
stop or did she walk in front of the vehicle at the last second? Did the car
make an effort to evade?

~~~
brokenmachine
Who knows? But one thing we can be sure of is that the video nobody has seen
will potentially shift the blame to the homeless lady.

------
olivermarks
'the incident occurred roughly 100 years from a crosswalk' \- deep space?

~~~
ajeet_dhaliwal
Yeah saw that, rather than missing the word light, it’s probably yards. Based
on what’s reported (not suggesting it’s true or the full story) she basically
jumped out in front in which case this indeed would have been hard to avoid.

~~~
portofcall
Given that the car apparently didn’t even start to brake, maybe she was moving
at light speed?

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/19/17140936/uber-self-
drivin...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/19/17140936/uber-self-driving-
crash-death-homeless-arizona)

The LIDAR probably couldn’t see with all the shadows, or maybe she teleported,
literally “coming from nowhere.” I sure hope if I’m killed the filth blame it
on me in less than 24 hours.

------
rdiddly
Just to continue my line of unpopular opinions about this: whoever chooses to
put a car on the road instead of traveling in a way that hurts others less
(walking, transit, bike), is responsible at least in part for any damage,
injury or death, just by being there. How many people die by wandering out in
front of somebody else walking along? Nobody even has to call a cop, much less
determine whose fault it was, because _nothing happens._

~~~
aetherson
Do you also believe that long haul trains are inherently immoral, given that
they are more likely to cause bystander injuries/death than airplanes?

~~~
rdiddly
Who said anything about morality? I'm talking about responsibility. Nice
attempt to misrepresent my viewpoint. I call foul. Responsibility lies with
you, friend, not the machine. Besides, how many trains and planes do you pilot
daily? Also a train, unlike a car, is not a frivolous convenience operated by
a privileged individual who has several other less-objectionable choices
available for the purpose. And ironically if everybody got out of cars and
onto trains they would actually be cutting the danger to others by a large
factor.

------
mnm1
Uber's autonomous cars speed? Why?

------
chapill
The car was speeding,

"the Uber car was driving at 38 mph in a 35 mph zone"

End of story. Uber is at fault.

------
swang
okay i haven't been following this deeply, but the person hit was a cyclist
right? not a pedestrian.

if so. how does a self-driving car not identify a bicyclist? how does a bike
come out from the shadows and "surprise" a self-driving car?

~~~
dllthomas
There's been conflicting reporting, but from what I've seen it was a person
walking a bike.

------
kevin_thibedeau
So fucking predictable.

~~~
Mtinie
I’m often cynical, but I have to ask...what makes this “predictable” to you?

Are you commenting on the evolving narrative which shifts the responsibility
from a vehicle-initiated accident to Elaine Herzberg’s actions, or are you
decrying something else?

------
trothamel
When it comes to traffic, there's the concept of the right-of-way. I don't
know about the rules in Tempe, but here's an excerpt from the rules in New
York.

> (a) Every pedestrian crossing a roadway at any point other than within a
> marked crosswalk or within an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection shall
> yield the right of way to all vehicles upon the roadway.

And that kind of makes sense, because if pedestrians were able to cross
wherever they chose, it would become difficulty for vehicles to move down a
road with a stable velocity. (Increasing emissions, etc.)

~~~
IncRnd
Legally, the driver may not have been at fault. Even so, I was taught as a
child learning to drive that when I see a person in the median, watch them.
They may walk out in front of you. They might even fall into the road.

So, be prepared maybe even by changing lanes before that point in order to get
out of harm's way. Apparently, this driver wasn't watching, choosing to let
the car drive itself.

~~~
brokenmachine
_> Apparently, this driver wasn't watching, choosing to let the car drive
itself._

And here I was, stupidly thinking that was the whole point of a self-driving
car...

What's the benefit of a self-driving car that can't be trusted to drive itself
again?

~~~
IncRnd
There are plenty of benefits, but you can also ask the dead person in AZ about
the downside of defending a product that isn't ready. A self-driving car that
drives itself without the most basic of defensive driving habits simply isn't
ready. Ask yourself, why do the reports show that brakes weren't applied?

