Pedestrian killed by Uber self-driving car, testing stops in all cities

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  • Reply 61 of 91
    anomeanome Posts: 1,533member
    maestro64 said:
    First pedestrian killed by a self-driving car. Way to go Uber!
    Uber is just trying to demonstrate how much safer it is to travel in an Uber than on foot.

    Actually the self driving program demonstrated its prime directive which is save the passenger under its care at all cost. The Decision was kill the person on the street or kill the passengers, you know which choose it made. 
    Depends on how it's programmed. It may take into account the potential number of casualties inside and outside the vehicle. It there are fewer people in the car than outside who are potentially injured, they may favour the pedestrians. Of course, that may also depend on whether they've already paid. So don't pay your self-driving Uber until you're safely out of the car. And when you get out of the car, get as far away from it as you can as quickly as possible.
    [Deleted User]
  • Reply 62 of 91
    nousernouser Posts: 65member
    I am not into Autonomous but since human reaction time is laggardly when compared to computers, I suspect we would have the same result had this been a human driven vehicle. Of course, it would not have made the news as people get hit by human driven cars every day. Neither humans nor computers can determine when a careless person suddenly chooses to walk in front of a moving vehicle.

  • Reply 63 of 91
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    why on earth did you feel the need to bring up the idiot who crashed his own tesla into this article?  this article is about a freakin' pedestrian doing what pedestrians do and getting killed in the process and not about someone who let their car drive itself into a semi.  The best the pedestrian could possibly have done is to jump out of the way (if they saw or heard the car coming).  all the dill hole in the tesla had to do was keep his frickin' eyes on the road and hands near the wheel.  
    That’s right. Blame the human. 

    Autonomous cars are decades away, if ever. 
    baconstang
  • Reply 64 of 91
    MisterKitMisterKit Posts: 492member
    I would think that lives saved just from an autonomous vehicle not being able to drive drunk would save far more lives and injuries than any accidental deaths like this one at hand.
    radarthekat
  • Reply 65 of 91
    CiprolCiprol Posts: 53member
    Ok, Tempe police have now come out with their initial assessment and stated the Uber vehicle was not at fault. The accident occurred under sub-optimal lighting condition and it was the pedestrian who inappropriately walked onto the roadway, away from established crossings, describing the pedestrian as walking out from the shadows.

    https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Exclusive-Tempe-police-chief-says-early-probe-12765481.php

    Will this be the end of Uber and autonomous vehicle bashing? I suspect not.
    edited March 2018
  • Reply 66 of 91
    steven n. said:
    svanthem said:
    steven n. said:
    I am not fully comfortable with the tech yet and don't think it is fully baked for city travel.
    Heck, we have fully baked people driving around here all the time. 40,000+ dead in in 2016? No problem.
    I am just commenting on what I have seen it do here in AZ. Lots of ???? WTF ????? type of actions. Mostly, they are really good, use their blinkers but once in a while, it is like they go blind for short periods of time.

    Yup, sounds just like the human drivers in our area, except it’s not ‘once in a while.’

    As for you stat. Do you think human drivers have more than 40,000X more hours (given the 150,000,000 drivers) this year than autonomous drivers?

    This makes no sense so I’m not sure how to respond. For the record, the ‘stat’ is deaths, not hours. If you’re asking what I think you might be asking then my response is that I have no idea. I doubt you do either.

  • Reply 67 of 91
    radarthekatradarthekat Posts: 3,842moderator
    A couple more turns of Moore’s law and associated advances in machine learning and vision systems and autonomous driving will prove preferable to humans.  Five years is not too soon.
    SpamSandwich
  • Reply 68 of 91
    k2kwk2kw Posts: 2,075member
    First pedestrian killed by a self-driving car. Way to go Uber!
    Uber is just trying to demonstrate how much safer it is to travel in an Uber than on foot.
    Uber has a way to catch up with FIU (Florida International Univ.) Engineering.

    Probably no one will end up with Criminal Charges and they'll get off on some technicality for liability in both cases.
    baconstang
  • Reply 69 of 91
    k2kwk2kw Posts: 2,075member
    Here’s my take on what Apple should do, and it doesn’t involve building vehicles or developing autonomous driving technology... 

    The car of the future is already here.  It's called a Smartphone.  Think about it.  If you were to clear the slate, look at the modern world and ask yourself, how would I design a transportation system given existing and soon-to-come technologies, like autonomous driving, real-time availability scheduling, route optimization, etc, no way you'd conclude there should be a car, or two, in every garage.  You'd create a technology/software infrastructure to allow individuals to call up the transportation they need (car, truck, van, etc) on-demand.  And it would show up wherever they are, or wherever they are going to be, when it's needed.  You'd be able to schedule transportation in advance, like the airport shuttles of yesteryear that you'd schedule a week in advance. Über pretty much killed that business, I expect.  

    Or schedule recurring transportation, such as to take the kids to soccer practice and back.  In this case the transportation technology system might suggest a shared van service, that knows the schedules for local after school sports practice and offers up and constructs pick-up and drop-off routes based upon participation; a regular route to gather up the kids and deliver them.  Accommodation for security will be considered when children are being transported without accompanying parents, such as real-time tracking and a constant open line of communication, both audio and video streaming from the vehicle to parent's smartphones. 

    The specific vehicle that arrives can be determined by number of passengers, whether you'll be transporting something large or just yourself, etc.  The notion of owning, maintaining, accommodating parking requirements of, insuring, etc, a personal vehicle, for many people, has already begun to feel like 'the old paridigm.'  

    To create this infrastructure, you need route optimization software, that incorporates the real-time whereabouts of all vehicles in a local fleet. You need scheduling software.  You need to deal with remaining charge/range of each vehicle out in service to know when a vehicle can accommodate an additional requested or scheduled route without running out of juice.  You need to accommodate stand-by, where the vehicle drops someone off at a location and is requested to stand-by for an indeterminate time while the person goes into a store or bank to run an errand, because perhaps they have packages or groceries left behind in the vehicle.  In short, you need a very sophisticated set of interacting technologies to accommodate smooth operation of a transportation network that provides near immediate responsiveness to a population's constantly fluctuating needs.

    If I were Tim Cook, this is exactly the way I'd envision the future, and this is what I'd set out to create.  It's not so much about constructing vehicles yourself, but about getting sign-in from all vehicle manufacturers such that their vehicles can work within the envisioned transportation network.  And that means that people who do own vehicles could lend them into their local autonomous transportation fleet in order to earn money (this has already been suggested by Musk and makes sense for a maker of vehicles to accommodate, as it helps him sell more Teslas direct to consumers).  It means that new rental fleets will simply be staged in large metro areas, with one or more depots that the vehicles come back to for recharging, maintenance, cleaning, etc.  And that means that there's a path forward for the rental companies, because they already have staging areas for their existing fleets.  The big picture can be accommodated during a transition phase from the world we have today to a world where almost all transportation is shared and autonomous.  

    Extend this to trucking, inter-city bussing, etc, and the whole thing becomes a future that Apple could play a major role in developing.  Without ever producing, on their own, a single vehicle.

    Also key to this is that everything Apple needs to do to revolutionize transportation does not require Apple to do any work on autonomous driving, nor does Apple need to build a single vehicle model.  Nope, Apple will want to own the end user interaction used to summon and schedule transportation, and it'll want to own the route optimization algorithms and server side scheduling and dispatch.  And take a cut of every ride.  

    There will need to be some tech in each car to pick up the user interaction that began on a rider's smartphone or watch/wearable, once the car arrives to pick up the rider.  The car will need a voice interface to interact with the rider.  The car will need to constantly ping its whereabouts to the dispatch and scheduling servers, along with its charge level, so that the dispatch system can determine its next pick up and determine when it needs to exit the active fleet and return to a nearby depot for recharging or maintenance.  The car will need to contain sensors, like internal cameras, to monitor for left-behind packages, spilled coffee, dangerous items, etc, and report appropriately to riders or to dispatch.  The car will need streaming audio/video capabilities to stream to parents when children are riding without adult accompaniment.  All of this can be designed as a set of interfaces that automakers can implement in order to be compatible with Apple's dispatch and routing servers, and the vehicles might also be required to utilize Apple's mapping infrastructure.  

    Once verified as able to serve a ride request, the car is handed details on the location of the rider, and the rider's destination, and it can then utilize its own autonomous driving capabilities to serve the request.  And all of this can integrate both driverless and human driven vehicles into the same service.  So as vehicles are developed that are licensed for autonomous operation, these can be added to an existing Uber-like fleet of human driven vehicles, both serving together to form a centrally requested and directed/dispatched swarm serving a metrolitan area.  Eventually, the human driven vehicles would all be replaced with autonomous vehicles, and the future will have arrived. 

    Any one working on the self driving software is also probably working on the logistics of the car service like GM is doing with the Bolt.  
    And of course Uber and Lyft who know this is coming.  
  • Reply 70 of 91
    sflocalsflocal Posts: 6,092member
    How many years have autonomous vehicles been on the road without killing anyone?

    Meanwhile, 3,500 people per day die from non-autonomous vehicles.

    While it is tragic, this is yet another hyped, over-sensationalized article by the media (including AI) that as usual lacks any details as to the events that happened.

    waiting for the reports to come out would be way too much work.  Just post, and retract later.
    edited March 2018
  • Reply 71 of 91
    k2kwk2kw Posts: 2,075member
    A couple more turns of Moore’s law and associated advances in machine learning and vision systems and autonomous driving will prove preferable to humans.  Five years is not too soon.
    Yes.  Look at how much better the camera on an iPhone X is compared to the 5S camera.

    If Apple is going to develop their own self driving system they should also work on miniaturizing the radar and Lidar system in addition to developing the CPU and GPU chips for controlling the cars.
  • Reply 72 of 91
    k2kwk2kw Posts: 2,075member
    Ciprol said:
    Ok, Tempe police have now come out with their initial assessment and stated the Uber vehicle was not at fault. The accident occurred under sub-optimal lighting condition and it was the pedestrian who inappropriately walked onto the roadway, away from established crossings, describing the pedestrian as walking out from the shadows.

    https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Exclusive-Tempe-police-chief-says-early-probe-12765481.php

    Will this be the end of Uber and autonomous vehicle bashing? I suspect not.
    When a new passenger train service started down here in south Florida 2 people were killed the first week.   That didn’t stop the service and now pedestrians have learned they better not try to beat the train.  most people will learn not to jay walk.   maybe Uber should send the pedestrian’s family a bill for the car damage.
  • Reply 73 of 91
    zoetmbzoetmb Posts: 2,654member
    MisterKit said:
    Obviously we do not have a zero tolerance level for human driven cars as thousands of human error deaths occur and we have not outlawed driving. My opinion is that objection lies in not having a person to directly hold responsible for a mistake. I also have the opinion that self driven cars have more potential for safety than the average mindless human driver.
    It doesn't matter what the reality is, it matters what the perception is.   And both the public and politicians are going to take accidents such as this one far more seriously than "regular" car accidents.  I've predicted for a long time that as soon as some accidents like this happen, politicians are going to start banning these cars because it will get them on TV and it's a populist message and I still think that's going to happen.  And many people (and politicians) are already angry at Uber because of the way they've barged into the market, frequently ignoring existing laws and regulations.  

    More people die in bathtub and ladder accidents in the U.S. than from terrorism, but what do we pay attention to?   Emotion takes precedence over logic.
  • Reply 74 of 91
    evilutionevilution Posts: 1,399member
    Wow, I can’t believe this autonomous car was driving on the sidewalk and hit a....... oh wait.

    If you are walking in the road, it is up to you to look out for high speed lumps of metal traveling exactly where they should be. It shouldn’t be up to the driver to have took out for stupid pedestrians who can’t cross the road safely.
  • Reply 75 of 91
    I would like to know how the hell this happened.

    Tesla's car could not see the Semi across the highway because the color of the truck blended into the horizon.
    These Uber type companies are rushing crappy, stolen, untested technologies on to the streets and killing people for profits.
    Uber should pay dearly for this if only to set a precedence. 

    Countries need to set common minimum standard and vehicle communication protocols and behaviors that all vendors have to meet.
    Allowing thousands of vendors with varying crappy technologies on the roads will lead to a lot of deaths.

    I hope Apple can take the lead on this for cars, planes, medical instruments etc...
  • Reply 76 of 91
    Rayz2016Rayz2016 Posts: 6,957member
    Ciprol said:
    Ok, Tempe police have now come out with their initial assessment and stated the Uber vehicle was not at fault. The accident occurred under sub-optimal lighting condition and it was the pedestrian who inappropriately walked onto the roadway, away from established crossings, describing the pedestrian as walking out from the shadows.

    https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Exclusive-Tempe-police-chief-says-early-probe-12765481.php

    Will this be the end of Uber and autonomous vehicle bashing? I suspect not.
    Mmmm. 

    That mght explain why the Uber driver didn’t have time to stop the car. 
  • Reply 77 of 91
    Ciprol said:
    Ok, Tempe police have now come out with their initial assessment and stated the Uber vehicle was not at fault. The accident occurred under sub-optimal lighting condition and it was the pedestrian who inappropriately walked onto the roadway, away from established crossings, describing the pedestrian as walking out from the shadows.

    https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Exclusive-Tempe-police-chief-says-early-probe-12765481.php

    Will this be the end of Uber and autonomous vehicle bashing? I suspect not.
    That clarifies the situation a LOT, also explains why there was a bicycle in all the press images.

    Sounds like an unavoidable accident totally unrelated to autonomous cars.
  • Reply 78 of 91
    Agreed -- that extra information changes things...
  • Reply 79 of 91
    felix01felix01 Posts: 294member
    Local TV reported the pedestrian was outside of a crosswalk and was wearing earbuds. 

    Sounds like the pedestrian was was at fault to me. Self-driving vehicles make the going-in assumption that the applicable traffic laws will be followed although there’s programming to help mitigate the effects of brain farts. 

    This is pedestrian is adding to that body of knowledge. 
  • Reply 80 of 91
    spice-boyspice-boy Posts: 1,450member
    twistsol1 said:
    Then again, 40,200 people were killed in 2016 by human drivers.
    Certainly 40, 200 deaths is terrible but how many human driven cars are on our roads at any one time compared to the amount of self-driving cars? My guess the ratio of deaths per self-driving cars is a lot higher. Technology companies are desperate to give something nobody is asking for. 
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