I don't understand why authorities allow self-driving cars to beta test out in public. I thought waymo was the best with something like millions of hours on the road but when they started accepting passengers, it failed to proceed past a traffic cone:
They weren't just given permission I'm sure. A lot of development happened on closed off circuits, and only after those passed could they file a request.
And if that request included "All tests will be done under supervision of a driver that will intervene in case of issues", then... why not?
Plus, if California didn't approve it, these big companies would move their operations to a state that did approve it.
Why not? Because humans are bad at babysitting computers and get bored while the system is working properly. If there's an emergency then a distracted human will have a long reaction time.
It's the opposite of a safety system like ABS that monitors brakes and wheels at all times and kicks in immediately if a human does something stupid.
The video quality makes it seem like even at full attention you would see it too late, but most eyes see a lot better than that.
Ofc the driver here is paying near 0 attention.
As others have said, the camera brightness can be altered, just like turning the brightness up on a tv.
What seems odd to me, is the lady pushing her bike across the road, takes over 2seconds from when the lights first illuminate her shoes, to the point she turns her head to face the car.
Dont know if alcohol et al was a factor, but in some incidences the UK police would have possibly have labelled this as "death by misadventure" or something to that effect. She just doesnt react.
Either way I wouldnt have been on my phone like the driver was, I've had a person release an animal in front of me at night from a central reservation of a dual carriageway with me nearest the armco barriers. The two cars behind me which I had previously overtaking that were now blocking the road slowing up the traffic also alerted me to something being up before I saw the block in the central reservation crouched down.
I thought it was odd to see someone crouched down and then I saw the what looked like a munctjac deer being released so I wasnt going to hang around for what seemed like a life threatening trap which could have been security services.
And I say that because I met Parker, Evans, and Rimmington, Parker in one walking location years ago and then Evans and Rimmingtom together whilst out hill walking in another location. Their driver who dropped them off from a black ford galaxy or vw sharon type vehicle kind of alerted me to something being up as I watched them from a distance.
She absolutely does seem to come out of nowhere as she is crossing in the shadow of a bridge. But I do recall a previous incident where someone had gone to the site of a similar night time accident and showed how visibility was MUCH better than the car camera suggested - car camera seemed very darkened. I wonder was it similar here?
EDIT: May actually have been this very accident - I can't find the link though
> even at full attention you would see it too late
You mentioned that people see better than cameras in scenarios like this, but I think there's a broader point to be made: Do not over-drive your headlights. If a driver cannot stop within the distance they can see ahead, they are objectively going too fast.
When you get in a car, a shift in your mindset happens, you become a driving machine. You are controlling the car and can feel the inertia and have situational awareness. Sit someone at a computer to just watch what amounts to an IP cam stream out the front windshield of the car, they're not going to have any reasonable amount of reaction time. Add latency to it, theres no way this could've been stopped by an emergency operator. This "we have backup drivers just in case" is a load of bullshit so these companies can cover their ass.
They removed safety features that could have prevented this from the car so they could cram more gadgets in. Their software didn't detect pedestrians unless there was a crosswalk. This machine had no business being on the road, the people that made the decision to do it anyway knew it would kill people, did a cost benefit analysis and a risk assessment, determined that the number of people it would kill was acceptable and continued on. They put people at keyboards as fall guys. 1000%, the executives and managers who green lit this should he in prison for it right now.
Let's not forget a few more contributing factors to the accident.
The road in question is more or less a highway, and a car in the Uber's position would've just come off the bridge, traveling at least 35mph, and have also passed under the very busy freeway above it. It's a bustling interchange, but it was still late on a dark, balmy Sunday night. It's basically not possible to properly illuminate the whole road in this stretch.
To the west of the road is a medium-sized, popular concert venue, where alcohol is served at shows. To the east of the road is a small but popular city park, which does not have many amenities, and it would've been closed or close to closing at this time of night.
Herzberg was found to be high on crystal meth and marijuana at the time of death. She had a criminal record and had previously been incarcerated for drug-related offenses.
Herzberg had improperly laden her bicycle with many shopping bags. It was not a vehicle at this point, but more like an unstable shopping cart. Did it have lights? This is not mentioned in the report.
There was a crosswalk available, several yards up the road. The crosswalk at the intersection is well-illuminated, and there is a traffic signal. The Uber vehicle would have been subject to any red light or pedestrian right-of-way at this point.
Herzberg was well-committed to crossing the street and it is said she had already crossed two lanes. Perhaps those are the southbound lanes: Mill Avenue is at least 4 lanes wide at the accident site, and there is also a separate right-turn lane at Curry Road.
Therefore, Herzberg should have been able to see a well-illuminated Uber vehicle with headlights on, but Herzberg was under the influence, and perhaps also under the impression that a driver would yield or stop upon noticing such a pedestrian.
Now the liability in a car vs. pedestrian accident will fall on the vehicle by default, but of course it doesn't hurt us to walk in a crosswalk and obey traffic signals, in order to preserve the innocence and be indemnified against any accusation of negligence, should an accident happen to us.
A very tragic situation, and Herzberg's Facebook page is in a memorialized state, for anyone who wishes to get to know her a little bit better, it's all still there for us to see.
Those things don't really help that (a) the human driver wasn't paying sufficient attention (the limitations of human minds are of course one of the very reasons in favour of developing self-driving cars, but in this case the human was streaming a TV show instead of doing the job); nor (b) that the AI saw the victim (the sensor suite supposedly included LIDAR and radar which could spot the victim even if the lightning conditions had been worse) but kept reclassifying them as different objects and didn't have object persistence between reclassification and therefore didn't do good path prediction until too late.
Also the automated emergency braking system was disabled at the time.
>Herzberg was found to be high on crystal meth and marijuana
she could have been an African Elephant for all law cares, dont try victim blaming in a case of car plowing thru pedestrian without even trying to use brakes.
> dont try victim blaming in a case of car plowing thru pedestrian without even trying to use brakes
But also don't make martyrs out of victims. If I were to get drunk/drugged, and decided to walk into a dangerous neighborhood, at night, and someone stabs me, I am the victim, I am in the right, and I am also an idiot for deliberately putting myself in a very dangerous situation.
We should support victims, but we shouldn't normalize or overlook self-destructive behaviors. Both driver and victim were wrong, and fortunately the driver pleaded guilty, because he was much more in the wrong.
Having seen the video I struggle to think if I could have stopped in time. The pedestrian was practically invisible and ironically is trust a car with LIDAR better to stop in time.
Question, does anyone know why the lights seem so dim?
I would hope that if you were driving with only a tiny, low dynamic range, compressed video stream as your source of information you would be driving much slower than that.
There is a nearby overpass with a full-fledged freeway on it, and there are also trees. This was not at an intersection, and as I said elsethread, it is very difficult to properly illuminate this section of road.
> The March 2018 crash, the first case of a pedestrian being killed by a self-driving car in the United States, shocked Uber into pausing testing on automated vehicles
Why would this entirely predictable occurrence during a self-driving testing program have shocked Uber?
3 years probation for a set of actions that resulted in a loss of life.
I'm always aghast at this, we call things that happen on the road "accidents" as if it's "oops, I killed you, sorry". The language of reporting isn't on the drivers "car killed pedestrian", rather than "driver killed pedestrian".
Virtually no-one who owned the set of decisions that led to those deaths face any consequence of any kind... for ending someone's life.
When the article says "Getting behind the wheel of a car is a serious responsibility"... there are no real consequences for the individuals involved for their choices, and choices should have consequences.
Driving too fast in rural areas, not paying attention, not keeping your car in good repair, being under the influence... these are all choices, and choices should have consequences.
The consequences should be significant enough that they disincentivise that behaviour in everyone else, which means never being able to drive again, jail time, significant and meaningful financial penalties (with a large portion paid to the victims family).
3y probation, as an outlier exceptional example of consequences, shows the priority is on vehicle use rather than people's lives.
I'm not sure whether this was your point, but USA population is just under 5 times the UK population, but that US road deaths figure is more than 25 times the UK one.
Of course, the nature of UK city centres and geographic size means that there is bound to be more travelling by car in the US in the first place. But at least part of the difference has to be a different emphasis on road safety in the UK compared to the US.
> USA population is just under 5 times the UK population, but that US road deaths figure is more than 25 times the UK one.
An ambulance in the UK is never more than 8 minutes away from you, an ambulance in the US can be miles from you.
So when looking at the deaths metric, yes the US looks bad, but sometimes, you might be kept alive in the most horrific condition here in the UK.
I've asked around the ambulance service to see if they have anything to identify the person and then decide if it would be nicer to be swiftly put out of my misery, sadly nothing exists. The default position to keep people alive hell or high water is order of the day!
That's psychological torture the British govt is carrying out on me and there aint no law for that!
I have certain metrics, that if they occurred, I'd like to be euthanised on the spot, but the govt via the NHS and ambulance service wants to carry on experimenting with me and millions more, like a preface to the story and film Terminator.
When I watch Andy Murray walking onto centre court at Wimbledon lawn tennis club, I have the theme tune to Terminator[1] playing in my head, because I know he has an artificial hip. I also know how to avoid those and it costs less, than the GDP inducing cost of artificial joints.
Still I'm sure the surgical process will be streamlined into a factory process and possibly even automated for the battle field to get those little soldiers back up and fighting fit as quickly as possible in the future.
So is it any wonder Motability is the largest fleet provider in Europe, the largest buyer of cars in the UK, buying 10% of all cars on the road.[2]
If they disappeared, do you think the country would hit all its transport targets for pollution and numbers on the road?
Surprising how the taxpayer is used to fund its own problems dont you think?
Do you think the British govt via Motability is lowering the bar for self driving cars here in the UK?
I think youre drawing the conclusions you want from the scenario. The truth is that Uber removed safety features from the car that could've stopped this and the car only recognized pedestrians if there was a crosswalk. If you ask me this is not the woman's fault, they're framing it like she was "at the wheel" because they want to shirk responsibility, and probably paying good PR money to these news rags to keep the narrative going too. Uber did this, they knowingly put an unsafe machine on the road and it killed someone. They put someone at a computer in a call center as a fall guy and it worked.
I didn't draw conclusions about this specific instance.
Consequences should exist, and should be a deterrence against unsafe behaviour no matter the party. Consequences for corporations should be more significant than for individuals IMHO.
If Uber contributed to this in their training of their safety driver, the equipment in use, disabling built-in safety features, and so forth... then they should have penalties severe enough to adjust their behaviour too.
My thinking is that the more vulnerable a road user, the greater the ownership is on the less vulnerable, meaning the greater the consequences of their choices.
What I didn't do is limit "their" to just a driver / safety driver.
Generally I agree with you, drivers get away with murder too easily, however in this case this woman's crime was not paying attention in a self driving car. What if instead she had been paying attention but applied the brakes too late, but it wasn't enough? What if she was paying attention but was confused by instructions from her employer to let the AI do its job? What if she had been in the same situation before but the car had previously stopped in exactly the same circumstances?
Even engineers become confused by LLM and think that it's so quirky that ChatGPT "hallucinates" when that's the nature of the technology. So how would you expect a layperson to actually know when they should apply the brake pedal in a moving vehicle that's supposed to drive itself (maybe)?
This is a bit more complicated than driving drunk and I'm fairly certain that the company responsible for the death did not seek a safety expert to copilot the vehicle, but rather any warm body willing to take an easy dead-end job.
> This is a bit more complicated than driving drunk
I'd argue no, manganese needs to be quantified in the blood stream when drunk driving imo, the state doesnt do that, but might if the doctor is called to take a blood sample having refused a breath test at the road side and/or in the police station.
Manganese has a half life of 10seconds in the blood stream, and alcohol is very good at releasing it into the blood stream for elimination and thus deficiency. When is a drunk person or a baby or toddler, not suffering from manganism which can be likened to Parkinsons?
Plus there are some gut bacteria which will produce ethanol from sugars, which is why some people always blow positive for drink driving even when they have not been drinking.
Simply measuring alcohol is not enough, and if you happen to be able to blow you own trumpet, then many musicians will know that they can do a rebreathing trick, which means they will never fail a breath test, even if they fall out of the vehicle!
"consequences" do not solve the problem because people cannot self-evaluate their driving skills and general attention level.
In US getting a driving license is shockingly easy and cars are huge and inherently dangerous.
On the other hand, what's the point in locking up someone who (a) statistically will never do it again and (b) never intended or foresaw that this would happen?
I don't see what making the woman do hard time for 10 years would accomplish.
People kill each other with vehicles all the time, because apes that attempt to drive 2-ton metal canisters at 100 kph around other apes doing the same, and some apes on bicycles or walking by, will inevitably do something catastrophic.
I don't really blame the apes at the wheel, since they're trapped in a system that is much larger than them.
After a year or two of intentional driving experience leading to muscle memory, ape brains are wired to fall into comfortable inattention in these scenarios.
What can you do, other than give up driving and give up walking where cars go? We weren't designed to do this safely.
Better mounting gear and power options for the sensors? I'm not really sure. Also, cars in general might have less drop-in replacement options than SUVs in the US, and even if their platform stopped being made there's probably a bunch of used SUVs they could use. Ford stopped selling cars in the US as well, right?
Readit News
https://youtu.be/zdKCQKBvH-A?t=742
I wouldn't trust any of the others like Tesla and Uber that think self-driving is easy. And Tesla with their cost-saving no LIDAR nonsense.
These companies should be fined hefty amounts and barred from testing out in public.
And if that request included "All tests will be done under supervision of a driver that will intervene in case of issues", then... why not?
Plus, if California didn't approve it, these big companies would move their operations to a state that did approve it.
It's the opposite of a safety system like ABS that monitors brakes and wheels at all times and kicks in immediately if a human does something stupid.
Dead Comment
What seems odd to me, is the lady pushing her bike across the road, takes over 2seconds from when the lights first illuminate her shoes, to the point she turns her head to face the car.
Dont know if alcohol et al was a factor, but in some incidences the UK police would have possibly have labelled this as "death by misadventure" or something to that effect. She just doesnt react.
Either way I wouldnt have been on my phone like the driver was, I've had a person release an animal in front of me at night from a central reservation of a dual carriageway with me nearest the armco barriers. The two cars behind me which I had previously overtaking that were now blocking the road slowing up the traffic also alerted me to something being up before I saw the block in the central reservation crouched down.
I thought it was odd to see someone crouched down and then I saw the what looked like a munctjac deer being released so I wasnt going to hang around for what seemed like a life threatening trap which could have been security services.
And I say that because I met Parker, Evans, and Rimmington, Parker in one walking location years ago and then Evans and Rimmingtom together whilst out hill walking in another location. Their driver who dropped them off from a black ford galaxy or vw sharon type vehicle kind of alerted me to something being up as I watched them from a distance.
EDIT: May actually have been this very accident - I can't find the link though
You mentioned that people see better than cameras in scenarios like this, but I think there's a broader point to be made: Do not over-drive your headlights. If a driver cannot stop within the distance they can see ahead, they are objectively going too fast.
Those who authorised testing this on public roads should also go to jail.
They removed safety features that could have prevented this from the car so they could cram more gadgets in. Their software didn't detect pedestrians unless there was a crosswalk. This machine had no business being on the road, the people that made the decision to do it anyway knew it would kill people, did a cost benefit analysis and a risk assessment, determined that the number of people it would kill was acceptable and continued on. They put people at keyboards as fall guys. 1000%, the executives and managers who green lit this should he in prison for it right now.
The road in question is more or less a highway, and a car in the Uber's position would've just come off the bridge, traveling at least 35mph, and have also passed under the very busy freeway above it. It's a bustling interchange, but it was still late on a dark, balmy Sunday night. It's basically not possible to properly illuminate the whole road in this stretch.
To the west of the road is a medium-sized, popular concert venue, where alcohol is served at shows. To the east of the road is a small but popular city park, which does not have many amenities, and it would've been closed or close to closing at this time of night.
Herzberg was found to be high on crystal meth and marijuana at the time of death. She had a criminal record and had previously been incarcerated for drug-related offenses.
Herzberg had improperly laden her bicycle with many shopping bags. It was not a vehicle at this point, but more like an unstable shopping cart. Did it have lights? This is not mentioned in the report.
There was a crosswalk available, several yards up the road. The crosswalk at the intersection is well-illuminated, and there is a traffic signal. The Uber vehicle would have been subject to any red light or pedestrian right-of-way at this point.
Herzberg was well-committed to crossing the street and it is said she had already crossed two lanes. Perhaps those are the southbound lanes: Mill Avenue is at least 4 lanes wide at the accident site, and there is also a separate right-turn lane at Curry Road.
Therefore, Herzberg should have been able to see a well-illuminated Uber vehicle with headlights on, but Herzberg was under the influence, and perhaps also under the impression that a driver would yield or stop upon noticing such a pedestrian.
Now the liability in a car vs. pedestrian accident will fall on the vehicle by default, but of course it doesn't hurt us to walk in a crosswalk and obey traffic signals, in order to preserve the innocence and be indemnified against any accusation of negligence, should an accident happen to us.
A very tragic situation, and Herzberg's Facebook page is in a memorialized state, for anyone who wishes to get to know her a little bit better, it's all still there for us to see.
Also the automated emergency braking system was disabled at the time.
does this : https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/police-chief-said-uber-... need more illumination?
>Herzberg was found to be high on crystal meth and marijuana
she could have been an African Elephant for all law cares, dont try victim blaming in a case of car plowing thru pedestrian without even trying to use brakes.
But also don't make martyrs out of victims. If I were to get drunk/drugged, and decided to walk into a dangerous neighborhood, at night, and someone stabs me, I am the victim, I am in the right, and I am also an idiot for deliberately putting myself in a very dangerous situation.
We should support victims, but we shouldn't normalize or overlook self-destructive behaviors. Both driver and victim were wrong, and fortunately the driver pleaded guilty, because he was much more in the wrong.
Question, does anyone know why the lights seem so dim?
Several people have reported that it's the video that was dim and if you actually went to the road in question it appears much brighter in real life.
Dead Comment
Why would this entirely predictable occurrence during a self-driving testing program have shocked Uber?
I'm always aghast at this, we call things that happen on the road "accidents" as if it's "oops, I killed you, sorry". The language of reporting isn't on the drivers "car killed pedestrian", rather than "driver killed pedestrian".
The deaths by vehicles is astonishing, last year in the USA 42,795 people died in road traffic incidents ( https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/traffic-crash-death-est... ), in the UK the number is 1,695 ( https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casua... ).
In the USA alone, that's 117 people per day.
Virtually no-one who owned the set of decisions that led to those deaths face any consequence of any kind... for ending someone's life.
When the article says "Getting behind the wheel of a car is a serious responsibility"... there are no real consequences for the individuals involved for their choices, and choices should have consequences.
Driving too fast in rural areas, not paying attention, not keeping your car in good repair, being under the influence... these are all choices, and choices should have consequences.
The consequences should be significant enough that they disincentivise that behaviour in everyone else, which means never being able to drive again, jail time, significant and meaningful financial penalties (with a large portion paid to the victims family).
3y probation, as an outlier exceptional example of consequences, shows the priority is on vehicle use rather than people's lives.
I'm not sure whether this was your point, but USA population is just under 5 times the UK population, but that US road deaths figure is more than 25 times the UK one.
Of course, the nature of UK city centres and geographic size means that there is bound to be more travelling by car in the US in the first place. But at least part of the difference has to be a different emphasis on road safety in the UK compared to the US.
An ambulance in the UK is never more than 8 minutes away from you, an ambulance in the US can be miles from you.
So when looking at the deaths metric, yes the US looks bad, but sometimes, you might be kept alive in the most horrific condition here in the UK.
I've asked around the ambulance service to see if they have anything to identify the person and then decide if it would be nicer to be swiftly put out of my misery, sadly nothing exists. The default position to keep people alive hell or high water is order of the day!
That's psychological torture the British govt is carrying out on me and there aint no law for that!
I have certain metrics, that if they occurred, I'd like to be euthanised on the spot, but the govt via the NHS and ambulance service wants to carry on experimenting with me and millions more, like a preface to the story and film Terminator.
When I watch Andy Murray walking onto centre court at Wimbledon lawn tennis club, I have the theme tune to Terminator[1] playing in my head, because I know he has an artificial hip. I also know how to avoid those and it costs less, than the GDP inducing cost of artificial joints.
Still I'm sure the surgical process will be streamlined into a factory process and possibly even automated for the battle field to get those little soldiers back up and fighting fit as quickly as possible in the future.
So is it any wonder Motability is the largest fleet provider in Europe, the largest buyer of cars in the UK, buying 10% of all cars on the road.[2]
If they disappeared, do you think the country would hit all its transport targets for pollution and numbers on the road?
Surprising how the taxpayer is used to fund its own problems dont you think?
Do you think the British govt via Motability is lowering the bar for self driving cars here in the UK?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRRmT5aBZzY
[2] https://www.transport.gov.scot/publication/motability-a-brie....
Consequences should exist, and should be a deterrence against unsafe behaviour no matter the party. Consequences for corporations should be more significant than for individuals IMHO.
If Uber contributed to this in their training of their safety driver, the equipment in use, disabling built-in safety features, and so forth... then they should have penalties severe enough to adjust their behaviour too.
My thinking is that the more vulnerable a road user, the greater the ownership is on the less vulnerable, meaning the greater the consequences of their choices.
What I didn't do is limit "their" to just a driver / safety driver.
Even engineers become confused by LLM and think that it's so quirky that ChatGPT "hallucinates" when that's the nature of the technology. So how would you expect a layperson to actually know when they should apply the brake pedal in a moving vehicle that's supposed to drive itself (maybe)?
This is a bit more complicated than driving drunk and I'm fairly certain that the company responsible for the death did not seek a safety expert to copilot the vehicle, but rather any warm body willing to take an easy dead-end job.
I'd argue no, manganese needs to be quantified in the blood stream when drunk driving imo, the state doesnt do that, but might if the doctor is called to take a blood sample having refused a breath test at the road side and/or in the police station.
Manganese has a half life of 10seconds in the blood stream, and alcohol is very good at releasing it into the blood stream for elimination and thus deficiency. When is a drunk person or a baby or toddler, not suffering from manganism which can be likened to Parkinsons?
Plus there are some gut bacteria which will produce ethanol from sugars, which is why some people always blow positive for drink driving even when they have not been drinking.
Simply measuring alcohol is not enough, and if you happen to be able to blow you own trumpet, then many musicians will know that they can do a rebreathing trick, which means they will never fail a breath test, even if they fall out of the vehicle!
You need train and trams.
People kill each other with vehicles all the time, because apes that attempt to drive 2-ton metal canisters at 100 kph around other apes doing the same, and some apes on bicycles or walking by, will inevitably do something catastrophic.
I don't really blame the apes at the wheel, since they're trapped in a system that is much larger than them.
After a year or two of intentional driving experience leading to muscle memory, ape brains are wired to fall into comfortable inattention in these scenarios.
What can you do, other than give up driving and give up walking where cars go? We weren't designed to do this safely.
Against how many passenger miles or hours?
This normalization of huge, heavy cars on the road gets to me.
Isn't Ford a US company? Do you have evidence of this happening?