Uber Troubles For Uber

[LordFerret]

8 hours ago, tater said:

A reality check:

The woman was walking a bike across the street at 10 pm, outside of a crosswalk. She walked from shadow directly in front of the moving car, and a human driver would not have seen her, either.

Not necessarily so. That would be better stated "a human driver might not have seen her either". And, here in my state where such type of accidents are not uncommon (>30% of total traffic fatalities), the driver is held responsible...

Quote

d. In the event of a collision between a vehicle and a pedestrian within a marked crosswalk, or at an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection, there shall be a permissive inference that the driver did not exercise due care for the safety of the pedestrian.

- http://codes.findlaw.com/nj/title-39-motor-vehicles-and-traffic-regulation/nj-st-sect-39-4-36.html

 

 

6 hours ago, tater said:

I drive many thousands of miles a year, and pass cops at a few mph above the limit routinely, as does literally everyone else.

The safest speed is actually above ambient traffic speed (the so called “Solomon curve.”

View held by most I know is +5mph over whatever the posted limit is. Or, by some I know, +5mph over whatever the 'pack' is doing. Only thing about this is that everyone does this. Because of this, the GSP, which I previously mentioned, is like driving at Daytona... and during 'rush hour', includes drafting with cars typically a mere 2 to 3 lengths behind each other while traveling at 80mph. This is why we scream at NY drivers... they can't handle it.

 

 

6 hours ago, YNM said:

'stopping distances'

General rule of thumb most around here use is: 1 car length (approx. avg. = 15ft) for every 10mph. Following that 'formula', you'll always leave yourself stopping room (thinking time included). This is for fair weather driving however, and good sense should tell one to increase that for rain, and increase it even more for snow/ice, and to reduce speed as well.

Another fair rule is to use a fixed point on the road, where you should pass that point no less than 2 seconds after the vehicle in front of you - good at any speed.

 

 

So you and I know of these things, and we're conscience of it while we drive, ever vigilant in our self-preservation and passenger safety. Will the AI be?

 

 

Heh... and I just now saw on the news, Tempe police dept. relase of Uber in-car video. Monitor-driver looking down at his (her?) cellphone.

[YNM]

5 hours ago, tater said:

Note that for in-town speeds, driverless cars will vastly improve this, since the thinking time goes from seconds to milliseconds, and at lower speeds, reaction time dominates.

Well, apparently not quite in the darkness and behind the bushes...

There is also the question of why did the AI car hasn't thought of swerving. I'm pretty sure that for this kind of RTA you'd see one party trying to swerve.

20 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

General rule of thumb most around here use is: 1 car length (approx. avg. = 15ft) for every 10mph. Following that 'formula', you'll always leave yourself stopping room (thinking time included). This is for fair weather driving however, and good sense should tell one to increase that for rain, and increase it even more for snow/ice, and to reduce speed as well.

Another fair rule is to use a fixed point on the road, where you should pass that point no less than 2 seconds after the vehicle in front of you - good at any speed.

Still appears to be rather inadequate.

If anything, human drivers is quite likely to swerve during emergency braking - I'm not sure but I've often told that ABS improves conditions by both avoiding skidding and keeping it possible for you to actively avoiding the obstacle.

26 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

So you and I know of these things, and we're conscience of it while we drive, ever vigilant in our self-preservation and passenger safety. Will the AI be?

Well, now that the programmers are aware of it...

Just a slight notion to how far is it until you can get something that only presents .006% chance of death annually.

28 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

Heh... and I just now saw on the news, Tempe police dept. relase of Uber in-car video. Monitor-driver looking down at his (her?) cellphone.

This will be interesting 

 

Spoiler

Slight off-topic : So far I don't quite like Uber. Their company policies seems to be at odds to most regulations somehow. I'm also aware that they have a lot of money in their banks, and they're pumping it out just to lower prices and keeping a bit of distance ahead.

 

[tater]

1 minute ago, YNM said:

Well, apparently not quite in the darkness and behind the bushes...

There is also the question of why did the AI car hasn't thought of swerving. I'm pretty sure that for this kind of RTA you'd see one party trying to swerve.

Some have lidar. We don't yet know the specifics of when the woman stepped out. I hit a deer a couple years ago, just before the turn to my street (so I was barely moving). It literally leapt in front of my car, and I hit her with the left headlight. She got up and ran off. I have to replace a cracked headlight ($800!).

34 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

Not necessarily so. That would be better stated "a human driver might not have seen her either". And, here in my state where such type of accidents are not uncommon (>30% of total traffic fatalities), the driver is held responsible...

Quote

d. In the event of a collision between a vehicle and a pedestrian within a marked crosswalk, or at an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection, there shall be a permissive inference that the driver did not exercise due care for the safety of the pedestrian.

- http://codes.findlaw.com/nj/title-39-motor-vehicles-and-traffic-regulation/nj-st-sect-39-4-36.html

 

My quote was what the Tempe police have said, and she was outside any crosswalk.

[YNM]

7 minutes ago, tater said:

I hit a deer a couple years ago, just before the turn to my street (so I was barely moving). It literally leapt in front of my car, and I hit her with the left headlight. She got up and ran off. I have to replace a cracked headlight ($800!).

Why it's important to go a little bit slower !

 

7 minutes ago, tater said:

... and she was outside any crosswalk.

I call bad design - why would you leave an essentially pedestrian paths in a place that :

a. You don't want pedestrians on it,

b. Pedestrians can see it and

c. It seems doable to be there ?

A tiny notice board is essentially useless.

Edited March 22, 2018 by YNM

[LordFerret]

9 minutes ago, YNM said:

I'm not sure but I've often told that ABS improves conditions by both avoiding skidding and keeping it possible for you to actively avoiding the obstacle.

This actually is true. I have ABS, and it's quite helpful when in emergency braking situations... also good on wet or icy/snowy roads, maintains optimum friction during braking. I come from a time before ABS though, and even without it was trained to brake properly in emergency situations; When I was in the military, we received the same driver training as was given the state police, called a 'high speed evasive action driving' course. While it taught me a lot, it was also quite fun.

 

14 minutes ago, tater said:

My quote was what the Tempe police have said, and she was outside any crosswalk.

Granted. This, however, is the very serious point of this issue... the Uber's AI's ability to 'think' outside that roadway box. Driving is more than staying between the lines and paying attention to crosswalk markers and stop lines and road navigation signs. So far, IMO, AI is failing.

I'll have to go look and find the article, but it was just announced this past week that some company (Amazon? Walmart?) is about to unleash a fleet of self-driving 18-wheel tractor-trailer trucks on the highways. Wonderful.

[YNM]

12 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

I'll have to go look and find the article, but it was just announced this past week that some company (Amazon? Walmart?) is about to unleash a fleet of self-driving 18-wheel tractor-trailer trucks on the highways. Wonderful.

Good lord. I hope they have an awful lot of money and empathy.

Edited March 22, 2018 by YNM

[DAL59]

[tater]

It's not bad design, it's next to a highway overpass. The cops said a person would have hit her, too. For all we know it was intentional on her part.

As for the deer, had I been going faster, the only difference would have been a more obviously dead deer (she might have had internal injuries, being hit by a slow land rover is still an unhappy event), and I might have passed my insurance deducible by more.

I could drive at a walking pace, and I' be 100% safe from crashes caused by me. That's not going to happen.

[kerbiloid]

4 hours ago, LordFerret said:

some company (Amazon? Walmart?) is about to unleash a fleet of self-driving 18-wheel tractor-trailer trucks on the highways.

So, the drivers will just get into their familiar environment since 2002.

Everything, except the player's truck, is being driven by the game AI.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18_Wheels_of_Steel

Edited March 22, 2018 by kerbiloid

[LordFerret]

I didn't find the article (because I didn't go back and look hard)... but, I did find the announcement from the other day about the truck idea being put on hold... and it was Uber.

https://www.trucks.com/2018/03/20/uber-self-driving-truck-autonomous-fatality/

[LordFerret]

25 minutes ago, tater said:

The cops said a person would have hit her, too. For all we know it was intentional on her part.

I thought the suicide idea was ruled out already? That's the gist I got from the news.

I don't care who says so, you can't make a claim like that. The cop wasn't there, the monitor driver was playing with his/her phone, only the woman knows the deal - and she's gone. If you watch enough car crash videos on YouTube (which I do), you'll see enough examples of last second evasions you'd not think possible... like kids running out from between cars. My bet is that this didn't have to happen... speaking strictly on the human side... on the machine side, meh. If you're truly paying attention, you're watching down the road and not just in front of you, such defensive driving can make a big difference. I don't need to be telling you this however, because I know you already know.

 

@DAL59
That last comic is disturbing. It's also what's indicative of what is today and how people today view such things... even relating to their own personal safety! Scary!

[YNM]

1 hour ago, tater said:

It's not bad design, it's next to a highway overpass.

Why would the design of a pedestrian path has anything and everything to do with a motorway next to it ?

 

It is bad design. Tempe needs to fix it. As well as they super-scary, cheap-paint-job, wrong-way-around "bike paths". I'm surprised no-one's been killed on it TBH.

If anything, given the woman did walk a bike with her, it should be counted under "cyclist death".

Edited March 22, 2018 by YNM

[tater]

I was suggesting it wasn't impossible. I just saw the video from the car. You're right, accidental. Still, she literally crossed several feet into a deep shadow, and just a bit to her right, the street was completely illuminated. There's at most 2 seconds between her being visible, and being hit.

[YNM]

I've seen the footage. (where I watched it from)

Assuming that the video rate hasn't been changed :

At 0:07 the woman entered the 1st (rightmost) lane.

At 0:08 the women is right in the middle of the 1st lane.

That gives a back-of-the-napkin figure of 1 second for half a lane.

There were more or less 3.5 lanes (2 main lanes, 1 turning lanes widening, 1 bike path around 0.5 lanes) where the woman crossed.

The woman were hit as it exited the first lane, giving a minimum distance covered of 2.75 lanes.

That means the woman has been on the road pavement proper for about 5.5 seconds.

At constant 38 mph, the car were 93 metres back when the woman started to cross. That is more than enough distance to be aware of what's going on if lighting wasn't a problem.

Let' be honest, America - you have a problem.

[tater]

2 minutes ago, YNM said:

Why would the design of a pedestrian path has anything and everything to do with a motorway next to it ?

She's not on a pedestrian path, the crosswalk is north of where she was hit.

That "X" in the landscaping certainly makes no sense at all.

That said, she must not have been looking towards oncoming traffic, the car that hit her was the only car going in that direction for a long way. The interior view (looking past the "driver" out the back window) shows no vehicles at all behind. Bizarre choice to cross with a car coming, and a gap behind. You can't expect a car (any driver at all) to see, and avoid a collision with someone crossing a road randomly in pitch black, with no lights, reflective clothing, etc.

That area of town doesn't really look like anyplace you'd expect a cyclist in the middle of the night, either. My closest main street is in fact the bicycle route of choice in the city (skirts along the mountains for a pretty ride, with nice, wide bike lanes). I see bikes at night, and almost all have lights these days (the pulsing type).

We can argue if it was remotely possible to avoid the crash, but the fault is entirely that of the woman crossing inappropriately, and utterly inattentively. The view down the road is pretty clear for at least 100m (I just measured it on google earth).

2 minutes ago, YNM said:

Let' be honest, America - you have a problem.

No. Get over yourself. This woman had a problem. Go to street view. The overpass is about 93 meters from the drainage drain she crosses by. The view is clear past that, and the Uber is in the right lane (easiest to spot given the slight right curve from her POV. Her choice to cross was idiotic. People get hit at level crossings for trains, too. They're also idiots.

[YNM]

1 hour ago, tater said:

That "X" in the landscaping certainly makes no sense at all.

And that is bad design.

1 hour ago, tater said:

We can argue if it was remotely possible to avoid the crash, but the fault is entirely that of the woman crossing inappropriately, and utterly inattentively. The view down the road is pretty clear for at least 100m (I just measured it on google earth).

The woman started to cross when the car is more than that distance down the road. If that was in broad daylight everyone would see everything.

Also, a slack of only 3 mph is more than enough to convert the horrendous crash into a near miss - not good, sure, but not fatal either.

You guys are having the problems.

Edited March 22, 2018 by YNM

[tater]

Just now, YNM said:

And that is bad design.

The woman strated to cross when the car is more than that distance down the road. If that was in broad daylight everyone would see everything.

Also, a slack of only 3 mph is more than enough to convert the horrendous crash into a near miss - not good, sure, but not fatal either.

You guys are having the problems.

Because pedestrian crashes are not a thing on Java? Or anywhere else? Cars, bikes, and people need to follow rules for their own safety. Pedestrians often have the right of way, but they also need to be sensible. Crossing at a blind corner, for example, is stupid.

If you cannot be certain you will make it---you are crossing in the wrong place, PERIOD. It should never be close enough that a few mph matters. Wehn in doubt, the squishy bit is smart to let the cars go by. Even riding in bike lanes, I assume every car is actively trying to kill me at all times, and ride accordingly.

[YNM]

12 minutes ago, tater said:

Because pedestrian crashes are not a thing on Java? Or anywhere else?

Are we tolerating deaths now ? Is this true that a death of thousands means a lot less than a single death ?

It is a thing down here. Even more horrendous, actually. The prevalence of high-speed motorcyclist (usually the young ones and the women) and general lack of enforcement makes for a very "liberal" road environment.

But our speeds are definitely lower, at least by the book - even the highest you can get on a long-distance tollroad is only 60 mph (100 kmh), and city roads are limited to 25 mph (40 kmh). This doesn't stop someone from speeding down the road at 100 mph though, if they have cars capable of such - most trucks are even not capable of sustaining 35 mph (60 kmh).

But, back to America.

12 minutes ago, tater said:

When in doubt, the squishy bit is smart to let the cars go by.

What a drawback.

Edited March 22, 2018 by YNM

[micha]

That video is rather misleading - visible light cameras are notoriously bad for distinguishing light from dark; a human drivers' eyes would perform significantly better in that situation.  That being said; _IS_ that car being navigated by those cameras (in which case there's a huge case to be made to the manufacturers for using insufficient sensors). For night-time driving, it -SHOULD- have IR or LIDAR or similar. The potential for driverless cars to have significantly better sensory input than a human is immense. 360deg vision not obstructed by the cabin with multiple different viewpoints.

From a software perspective, a driverless car should use significantly different algorithms depending on whether it's driving in heavy traffic (ie, following other vehicles) or whether it's on a near-empty road by itself.  The latter has significantly higher potential for non-traffic incidents and such the car should monitor a much wider arc and distance ahead for anything which moves.

@YNM: I can understand some of your viewpoints about reducing the dangers of mixing vehicular traffic with pedestrian traffic, but what may seem doable in a high-density low-distance environment is infeasible in a low-density high-distance one.  You can almost always engineer something to be better or safer, but until we live in a post-scarcity world, cost is (unfortunately) always going to be the major factor (funnily enough, only when us mortals are involved; never seems to be an issue when our ruling classes or their immediate sycophants are involved) in any improvement works.

As to @LordFerret's  original posting (ie, Mathematics becoming sentient) - I think it would make more sense to compare it to DNA.  That is, it'll be at the core of AI and ultimately driving its shape and behaviours, but it won't be sentient in and of itself.

Edited March 22, 2018 by micha
Fix to tag the correct ferret

[YNM]

4 minutes ago, micha said:

but what may seem doable in a high-density low-distance environment is infeasible in a low-density high-distance one. 

I don't ask you to build an arcology.

All I'm asking you guys is to

- Redesign the cycle path with barries between the cycle path and the road (or where car parking are allowed, make the cyle path behind the parking cars),

- Close down sites where "illegal crossing" might be a recurring theme, or put better scrutiny on it.

That's it.

[kerbiloid]

44 minutes ago, tater said:

crashes are not a thing on Java?

As they said after DARPA Grand Challenge 2004 robocars competition, when a Java-coded robocar Tommy smashed into a wall at 70 mph without braking: "Java doesn't slow".

P.S.
Oops, got it. You mean island, not programming language.

Edited March 22, 2018 by kerbiloid

[micha]

40 minutes ago, YNM said:

I don't ask you to build an arcology.

All I'm asking you guys is to

- Redesign the cycle path with barries between the cycle path and the road (or where car parking are allowed, make the cyle path behind the parking cars),

- Close down sites where "illegal crossing" might be a recurring theme, or put better scrutiny on it.

That's it.

I'm not "you guys" (never lived in America), and all I'm saying is that it may be possible to fix a couple of thousand miles of such things, not a couple of million miles (yes, the US has over 4 million miles of road infrastructure - I just looked it up) of such things.  Areas which have a high number of incidents DEFINITELY get looked at and fixed. Areas which have had ONE FATALITY also get investigated. Areas which may be "unsafe" but have had no incidents funnily enough don't get looked at.  (At least, this is true for Australia).

You really expect the population to pay for hundreds of thousands of miles of road safety equipment (which will require periodic inspection and maintenance) for the 1 (* number pulled out of my cheeks) bicycles and 100 (* number also pulled out of my cheeks) cars which use those isolated stretches annually, just to avoid the potential of that one careless biker and driver coming together?

As I said, it's a question of distance and population density. You can't use the same rules everywhere.

 

[YNM]

9 minutes ago, micha said:

... All I'm saying is that it may be possible to fix a couple of thousand miles of such things, not a couple of million miles (yes, the US has over 4 million miles of road infrastructure - I just looked it up) of such things. ...

So, you can put a price on a single life then.

Good to know.

 

 

That aside, perhaps a good start could somehow be reducing the length of roads ?

And getting designs for new roads right.

Edited March 22, 2018 by YNM

[micha]

13 minutes ago, YNM said:

So, you can put a price on a single life then.

Good to know.

*I* can't. Society does. Always has, and, for the foreseeable future, will continue to. At least modern society places quite a high value on life. 

And how about if you value your life so much YOU take some responsibility for your own actions too and don't just rely on society/engineering to wrap you in a safe little cocoon?

Someone crossing a road in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere in front of an oncoming car is asking for trouble. (Deserted roads are the #1 spot for drivers losing concentration).

13 minutes ago, YNM said:

That aside, perhaps a good start could somehow be reducing the length of roads ?

And getting designs for new roads right.

So tell me how people will get from A to B in Australia across thousands of miles of nearly *nothing*? In the still-slightly-civilised areas you'll get a petrol station and pub every couple hundred miles. In the Outback, you get what you bring.

Reduce the lengths of roads? How about shrinking the planet then, Mr Wiseguy?  Or stopping people from going places? We don't all live on a small island with a high population density (UK, Java?). Even in the UK there's plenty of areas which aren't built up enough for comprehensive public transport. In London itself it makes very little sense to own your own a vehicle and use it (people still do and I'm generally against it). In Australia in most areas it makes little sense for public transport because the population density is just too low to support it - even around cities the suburbs are too spread out and too thinly populated to cover so people have to use personal transport at least in order to GET to public transport.

I'm outta this conversation, yes, I'm all for public transport and alternatives to roads and personal vehicles, but there's also practicalities involved and you're being militant about your views without considering when and where they can be applied.

 

[Shpaget]

The video from the car's onboard camera has been released, so we have a few more details.

My take is that a human would quite possibly not be able to see the woman since there are shadows and light areas, but an autonomous car equipped with LIDAR and RADAR should have seen her. RADAR and LIDAR don't care about shadows, so there is something wrong with the equipment.

That being said it is clear that the driver was not paying attention (looking down, likely at his phone).

So, while I would definitely put blame on the woman for crossing the four lane road without letting the car with big bright headlights pass, I would still like to know why the car hasn't seen her. It should have been able to, and should have been able to avoid her. The road looks to be fairly empty and apparently there was enough room to swerve.

https://twitter.com/TempePolice/status/976585098542833664