Driverless Cars

The first fatality to occur in a technological race to develop a new means of transportation which produces valuable results but ultimately proves to be exponentially less useful when humans are passengers?

At least the astronauts volunteered.

The first report I have heard from the person in the driver's seat was that they did not see the woman until they hit her. Obviously there will need to be a lot more research into this particular incident but there is the possibility that a human driver might not have been able to avoid this accident either.

No matter how advanced the AI behind self driving cars you cannot get around basic physics. A large mass traveling at 30 mph is not going to able to stop on a dime.

At least we should have a lot of data from the car's sensors to be able to reconstruct exactly what happened.

You raise some good and valid points, there needs to be more regulation in this area I agree. In this particular case I think the high profile nature will force Uber to be as transparent as possible. They know if they are seen in any way as hindering the investigation that there are real possibilities of new laws that could severely cut into their growth in this emerging market. This is a pretty precarious time for self-driving technology. 

In this case, the investigation will be done by the NTSB. Which, I believe, can issue subpoenas for information in a crash.

Beware that there is a SF Chronicle piece labelled "EXCLUSIVE" which claims the Tempe PD declared Uber not at fault. You should be wary of something claiming to be an "exclusive" which doesn't come from the press of the city involved. The local press is saying that Tempe PD is upset at the SF Chronicle piece for misrepresenting what they had to say.

The Tempe PD says after initial interview and reviewing the camera footage it looks like the pedestrian suddenly walked out in front of the car. "Appeared from the shadows".  Ahem. Tempe PD says they are still investigating and won't have any info on who is at fault until the investigation is completed.

I, for one, am extremely glad that the NTSB will be investigating, because I don't trust local PD who might be under pressure from government officials to keep testing going in the city.

I would like to see a much more detailed report. Primarily because the "appeared from the shadows" quote is a bit suspicious to me based on the location that this happened. I didn't go by there when I came home tonight, but I will take that road tomorrow night to see if that claim holds up to scrutiny. I drive that stretch of road every single day, but in the daytime. I only sometimes use that way to come home at night. There aren't really a lot of obstructions to viewing. This is the desert, so there aren't any big trees. And there are zero buildings or structures on the side of the road that would impede viewing. There are lights along that roadway, I believe. I will check on that. But, because it is a very popular area for pedestrians and cyclists, I am thinking that there are lights there. And it appears that the victim was wearing white clothing.

This isn't to say that she didn't actually try to cross the road with cars approaching. But that terminology seems weird to me. Like, what "shadows" did she pop out of? Are there even any shadows in that location? I will check on that tomorrow night.

It just seems very strange to me that the driver claims not to have seen her. There simply could not have been a lot of traffic on that road at 10pm. It goes towards the University. I drove home on a parallel street tonight at 9pm and I was the only car on the road for nearly the entire 3 miles home. And the street I was on is busier than the one this occurred on.

The NTSB says they are going to examine the cameras and sensor data to determine what other circumstances were occurring with the car, driver, any surrounding cars, the road condition, etc. So, I expect that they will come up with a good report.

This is coming at a strange time here, because even before this happened, the local press had been reporting on a rash of pedestrian deaths, people killed by cars. The city has seen a big uptick in pedestrian-vs.-car deaths this year. There was a big story in the major newspaper in town about pedestrian deaths within a week before this happened.

We shall see, I guess.

I see your Doctorow and raise you a Stross, albeit a blog entry rather than a story.

Remember, all, Uber’s the evil one, not A.I.

Tempe Police have released a video of the crash. I'm glad they did, because it isn't as clear cut as their initial statements made it seem.

I got the direction the pedestrian was walking reversed. So, the woman was moving from the the shadowed side of the road to the lighted side.

In the video you can see that the road ahead is darker on the left than on the right. When the pedestrian crosses into the right lane, she becomes illuminated by the street light.

What is also clear is that the human driver behind the wheel WAS NOT LOOKING AT THE ROAD. The video clearly shows, as I predicted above, that there were no other cars on the road at that time. And the pedestrian was in the right hand lane when the car hit her. There was no traffic to the driver's left. If the driver had been watching the road, the driver possibly could have moved the car into the left lane in time to avoid hitting her. The car was going 38mph. The driver didn't look up until the pedestrian was right in front of the car. But you could actually see her for several seconds before that.

Simply swerving into the (empty) left lane might have avoided this. 

Also, just because it was dark, the Uber sensors didn't work? Is that what Uber is going with here? So, maybe we shouldn't allow the cars to drive at night, then, eh?

www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe-breaking/2018/03/21/video-shows-moments-before-fatal-uber-crash-tempe/447648002/

Edited to add: The "It was dark" excuse would work if A. The human was driving the car AND B. The human was actually looking at the road. I'm not sure about the timing involved, or what a human could see. (Resolution on the camera is not as good as a human's vision.) But, a human driver watching the road probably would have slowed down, or moved left. Not just plowed into the woman without breaking.

The "it was dark" excuse with a fully autonomous car raises some different questions and concerns.

Edit again: I'm now even more glad the NTSB is investigating. If the car can't detect a person in the middle of the road right in front of it - with NOTHING else on the road at that time -  what the hell is the use of a self-driving car? 

This is a mess of liability. The pedestrian walked into the street in the dark not using a crosswalk (though, there is actually a paved walking lane across the median at that point), the human driver wasn't watching the road, and the car's sensors apparently weren't working. Or can't work in the dark? Blech.

God, Uber is the scummiest fucking company.  I know you mentioned this in a comment above, but it boggles the mind that they would think "Oh, you know what's a good test for our useless don't-even-have-to-severely-underpay-a-contractor cars, somewhere where pedestrians will always be following the pedestrian laws?  A giant college town."

Volvo claims Uber turned off their built-in collision detection system on the car that struck and killed a Tempe pedestrian.

This just adds further credence to my claim that Uber is intentionally trying to thin the herd and the uprising is coming.

I've been seeing a lot of these this week on my lunch hour walks (my office is a few blocks from General Motors' World Headquarters in a very urban area). There's still someone there in the non-driver's seat, so I would like to believe a human being could override the machine's laissez faire attitude on who lives and who dies, but my understanding is they have some have completely done away with most of the steering functions. Luckily it's impossible to build any speed downtown so the threat of human damage is virtually nothing.