Uber self driving car kills woman
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You are describing a good human driver, what about the many deaths daily caused by detracted, dangerous drivers. By the time this technology makes it to the mainstream, all the bugs will be sorted out and the roads will be a far safer place, current dangerous and careless driving offenses will no longer exist.
I doubt that 'all' bugs will be sorted out, but that is not the point. At all. The point is that the system works better than most human drivers. Judging by the very few reports of autonomous vehicles involved in accidents, these systems have already surpassed that mark! I'm sure if, today, all vehicles would be equipped with the latest autonomous systems, the number of accidents would be drastically reduced, and the main cause for accidents still happening would be pedestrians, bikers, and other road users that are not equipped with such a system for whatever reason, behaving in erratic ways. The only good reason against such a stepp would be indications that autonomous systems can cause crashs among themselves - so far I am not aware of a single incident of that kind, but of course there are too few autonomous vehcles around for that to be a useful statement at this time.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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Tomaž Štih wrote:
We don't, we train him or her ... and pray.
That's not true. At least around here they make sure that you are equipped with the abilities of a few hundred million years of evolution before they even let you near a car with a driving instructor. Sure beats training a thing that has no idea what it is doing - or why it is supposed to do it. Did they really have to teach you how to look around and make sense of what you see?
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats. His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
Evolution doesn't have anything to do with the ability of braking in time when a pedestrian jumps in your way in unexpected places while you're controlling a 1500kg mobile object at 38 mph. Or pretty much any other situation that we have to deal with when controlling a car. If anything, the instincts that evolution got us will make us behave inappropriately. If anything, most of evolution taught us that it's best to run over any pedestrian who's stupid enough to run into our path - one less competitor on our hunt for food! In that respect, most autonomous systems are already better than that before they even start training!
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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OriginalGriff wrote:
she walked out in front of it so close than nothing could have prevented the collision
Common sense and experience would probably have saved her, i don't know how you guys drive but as soon as i see someone behaving like he would just jump on the road i drive slower and focus to react as fast as possible. Same logic as with a ball jumping on the road, expect a kid jumping after it and you'll save a live. And another thing, the car was obviously speeding :thumbsup: brilliant technology X|
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}HobbyProggy wrote:
Common sense and experience would probably have saved her
Yup, but apparently she was lacking some. On a more serious note it's true that many human drivers (including myself) watch out for other road users that may act inappropriately and prepare for that possibility, e.g. by slowing down or passing at a wider distance than strictly necessary. However, it's not reasonable (and often not possible) to do this for every other road user, and the reports indicate that the woman was acting abruptly, with little to no prior indication, LiDAR or not. This is the point where you have to rely on others to behave with a reasonable amount of self-preservation. Lacking that, not even AI can break the Darwinian law ...
HobbyProggy wrote:
And another thing, the car was obviously speeding
Was it? I only saw statements about it not showing any signs of slowing down. Which is kind of odd, given that the LiDAR systems should have been able to recognize an obstacle and should have caused the system to do something to limit the effect of the impact, assuming that it was too late for evasive maneuvers.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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CodeWraith wrote:
even the dumbest human driver has a few million years of evolution behind him
When that human driver happens to be a p***ed up 17 year old blasting out da G-funk at 110 dB whilst smoking a spliff, sending text messages and driving at faster-miles-per-hour past a school hoping to impress the girls, I'd question the value of the evolutionary input!
98.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.
Actually, evolution workks just fine when he wraps his car and himself around the tree at the next bend in the road. ;)
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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HobbyProggy wrote:
Common sense and experience would probably have saved her
Yup, but apparently she was lacking some. On a more serious note it's true that many human drivers (including myself) watch out for other road users that may act inappropriately and prepare for that possibility, e.g. by slowing down or passing at a wider distance than strictly necessary. However, it's not reasonable (and often not possible) to do this for every other road user, and the reports indicate that the woman was acting abruptly, with little to no prior indication, LiDAR or not. This is the point where you have to rely on others to behave with a reasonable amount of self-preservation. Lacking that, not even AI can break the Darwinian law ...
HobbyProggy wrote:
And another thing, the car was obviously speeding
Was it? I only saw statements about it not showing any signs of slowing down. Which is kind of odd, given that the LiDAR systems should have been able to recognize an obstacle and should have caused the system to do something to limit the effect of the impact, assuming that it was too late for evasive maneuvers.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
Well, yes. The latest news i saw was that the woman was crossing the road not abruptly, the car and the safety driver should have recognized her. But we will see what the police will state. I also i have to correct the speeding thing, initially they said it was driving 40 in a 35 zone, now it shows it was actually a 45 zone, so no speeding. This article has a good picture of the situation i think -> Pedestrian killed by Uber Self-Driving Car[^]
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I know, we have the same "rule" though it's not 10% but more like 7% + 0 but would you expect an autonomus car that is design to drive BETTER than the human driver to drive faster than officially allowed? I think if it is 50 or 35 the AI car should drive 50 or 35.
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}The UK speed tolerance has been tightened, you will now be booked if caught at any speed above the limit. That is not the point, though, the limit is an absolute maximum; you are obliged to drive at a safe speed for the road conditions. In the dark on a road that is badly lit and accessible to pedestrians that is perhaps 20mph. The risk of death to a pedestrian rises steeply between 30 and 40mph, so every mph counts. If you were to program autonomous vehicles to be safe, they would be limited to lower speeds than human ones. And would always give way. And in congested traffic, slowing all vehicles makes journey times less, because flow is restricted by junctions, not maximum speed. But try selling that to anyone.
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Well, yes. The latest news i saw was that the woman was crossing the road not abruptly, the car and the safety driver should have recognized her. But we will see what the police will state. I also i have to correct the speeding thing, initially they said it was driving 40 in a 35 zone, now it shows it was actually a 45 zone, so no speeding. This article has a good picture of the situation i think -> Pedestrian killed by Uber Self-Driving Car[^]
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}Thanks for the link. It's much more detailled than any of the other reports I've seen. Not to mention that there are barely two that offer matching information. :doh: In another forum, someone said that, according to one report, the woman was crossing from west to east, which would mean she had to pass across most of the road before the car hit her. I consider that extremely unlikely as both she should have seen the car well in advance while starting to move across, and the driver should have seen her very clearly as well. Also the statements about the video footage seem to indicate otherwise. However, if she was indeed coming from the west, I wonder whether she expected the car to see and move around her, not realizing that it was an autonomous car that may not be capable of predicting her (inappropriate) intent correctly. In some places (e. g. Paris, France) this would be a common method of crossing the street (preferably without looking left or right, and your head dug into the wide open newspaper), and the drivers there would indeed go around you, no problem (which means any autonomous system hoping to gain traction there should be able to do the same). But I suspect that in Tempe the traffic standards are not quite like that... Either way, it seems to me that although AI can beat human intelligence at chess and go, it still fails when faced with true human stupidity. P.S.: it seems the speed limit changes from 35 to 45 mph a short way to the south of the location shown in that article (speed signs can be seen at the start and end of the bridge in Street View)
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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OriginalGriff wrote:
nothing could have prevented the collision, human or robotic driver
Yeah well I would dispute that, we've all been in that situation driving along where nobody is in front of you but they are near enough that you keep your eyes open - people walking close to the edge of the road, kids playing football in front of their house, dog walkers with the dog jumping about ... If this woman "walked out in front of it so close than nothing could have prevented the collision" seems likely she was already close to the edge of the road, most humans would (1) gently nudge the car away from that lane/road edge before reaching (I'm sure in Az the lanes are wide enough), and (2) pay extra attention to watch for change of direction. There's more to driving then what does happen, but being ready for what else can happen - yes some things are completely unexpected but where you can anticipate these possibilities you can and should be prepared. You see a drunk on the road do you pass within inches or wait till a nice big gap appears...
It's one thing when you see other road users well ahead that, judging by their current behaviour, can be expected to perhaps act eratically. But it's simply impractical, even impossible, to give everyone a wide berth as well as slowing down your speed, just in case. I am not aware of autonomous systems that in fact watch other road users and try predict their behaviour, but that doesn't mean they couldn't learn to do just that in the future. The question is whether we want it to have that capability - it may eventually decide that it's not a good idea to give us a ride at all: "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" ;P
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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I doubt that 'all' bugs will be sorted out, but that is not the point. At all. The point is that the system works better than most human drivers. Judging by the very few reports of autonomous vehicles involved in accidents, these systems have already surpassed that mark! I'm sure if, today, all vehicles would be equipped with the latest autonomous systems, the number of accidents would be drastically reduced, and the main cause for accidents still happening would be pedestrians, bikers, and other road users that are not equipped with such a system for whatever reason, behaving in erratic ways. The only good reason against such a stepp would be indications that autonomous systems can cause crashs among themselves - so far I am not aware of a single incident of that kind, but of course there are too few autonomous vehcles around for that to be a useful statement at this time.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
Stefan_Lang wrote:
Judging by the very few reports of autonomous vehicles involved in accidents, these systems have already surpassed that mark!
Read up on how many vehicles are being tested, it's not that many, especially in comparison to the average number of cars on the road in the test areas. Besides, you are basing your statement on reported incidents -- I have little doubt that a lot of "minor" incidents have not been reported. Let's put this in IT terms: Testing so far has been unit testing. One report mentioned 600 cars. Ok ... over what time span and how many on the road at once? What are the recorded incident types, and how many of each occurred during testing? So far there's been no system testing, and certainly not load testing. Before we can do these the following critical question must be answered: How many deaths of innocent persons during testing are an acceptable number? More deaths will occur as the number of autonomous vehicles are on the road.
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Tomaž Štih wrote:
We don't, we train him or her ... and pray.
That's not true. At least around here they make sure that you are equipped with the abilities of a few hundred million years of evolution before they even let you near a car with a driving instructor. Sure beats training a thing that has no idea what it is doing - or why it is supposed to do it. Did they really have to teach you how to look around and make sense of what you see?
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats. His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
Home sapiens have only been around 200k years. We have only been using faster than human modes of transportation, starting with horses(?), for around 6k years. Regardless of all that, with a human, you are still counting on that person's physical limitations (age, reaction time, visual acuity, etc), their attention span, and the skills they have acquired to be a good driver. With an AI you have (hopefully) a system that pays attention 100% of the time, can aggregate and build upon past experiences of multiple individual systems, and can actually have sensors that surpass what humans can see. Look at it this way, think of the quality of cars before robots were used in mainstream production. The tolerances were able to be tightened and quality has improved by using them. Over time I would think we would get to a point where cars could talk to each other and even help avoid accidents all together.
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Evolution doesn't have anything to do with the ability of braking in time when a pedestrian jumps in your way in unexpected places while you're controlling a 1500kg mobile object at 38 mph. Or pretty much any other situation that we have to deal with when controlling a car. If anything, the instincts that evolution got us will make us behave inappropriately. If anything, most of evolution taught us that it's best to run over any pedestrian who's stupid enough to run into our path - one less competitor on our hunt for food! In that respect, most autonomous systems are already better than that before they even start training!
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
Stefan_Lang wrote:
Evolution doesn't have anything to do with the ability of braking in time when a pedestrian jumps in your way
Indeed? So you needed someone to teach you how to detect the pedestrian jumping your way? You did not have a naturally evolved image processing system (among other things) in that grey matter between your ears? And a neural net that is by orders of magnitude smaller and with only a tiny fraction of the training time (no matter how you measure it) will do the job better? I wish I could share your optimism.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats. His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Remember the American Mantra: "Guns People don't kill people, people cars kill people".
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay... AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
Excatly! It's so easy to use it...
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Home sapiens have only been around 200k years. We have only been using faster than human modes of transportation, starting with horses(?), for around 6k years. Regardless of all that, with a human, you are still counting on that person's physical limitations (age, reaction time, visual acuity, etc), their attention span, and the skills they have acquired to be a good driver. With an AI you have (hopefully) a system that pays attention 100% of the time, can aggregate and build upon past experiences of multiple individual systems, and can actually have sensors that surpass what humans can see. Look at it this way, think of the quality of cars before robots were used in mainstream production. The tolerances were able to be tightened and quality has improved by using them. Over time I would think we would get to a point where cars could talk to each other and even help avoid accidents all together.
That's very nice, but falls short of the mark.
milo-xml wrote:
ou are still counting on that person's physical limitations (age, reaction time, visual acuity, etc), their attention span, and the skills they have acquired to be a good driver
Quite so. Since when is any AI capable of forseeing future events by using experience? So far, only we have been able to do that, not even the closest relatives. Here we have stretches of highways without any speed limit. I really enjoy a ride at the maximum speed my car is capable of, usually while having a good eye on what happens on the lanes to the right. Most poeople see you coming and wait until you have passed, but there is always a 'Kamikaze' who pulls out right in front of your nose at a fraction of your current speed. A AI would not react to them until they actually pull out, but then it may already be to late. How do I notice them ahead of time? I don't know. It must be something in the way they behave prior to changing lanes, but I notice them and hit the brakes before they actually do it.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats. His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Stefan_Lang wrote:
Evolution doesn't have anything to do with the ability of braking in time when a pedestrian jumps in your way
Indeed? So you needed someone to teach you how to detect the pedestrian jumping your way? You did not have a naturally evolved image processing system (among other things) in that grey matter between your ears? And a neural net that is by orders of magnitude smaller and with only a tiny fraction of the training time (no matter how you measure it) will do the job better? I wish I could share your optimism.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats. His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
I did also say at 38 mph. Typically a human moving at 38 mph through pretty much all of evolution was only seeing one thing, and that is the ground he was about to hit - not the kind of stuff going into the genes except into the genes of the onlookers. If evolution taught us anything it is that moving at 38 mph is fatal. Now, of course, if your forefathers were running through the jungle they certainly did learn to react to a creature moving into their path. But, depending on the number of claws and teeth (or raised clubs) of that creature, stopping might not have been the preferred type of reaction. I'm not saying that this is not an important bit of information when deciding that you need to slow down when something moves into your path, but it's also so much different from the evolutionary training, that the lesson learned can be pretty much reduced to saying that: if something moves into your path, slow down. And that is trivial to learn for any autonomous system, no matter how small. In case of the accident, this raises the question why the cars sensors did not detect the woman, or identify it as an actual obstacle. Apparently the driver didn't either, or at least not in time, and his millions of years of evolution didn't help him in any way there. But the car's systems should have been able to both detect the woman (using the LiDAR sensors) and react to it as well (thanks to super-human reaction times). The investigation should focus on these questions.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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Self-driving Uber kills Arizona woman in first fatal crash involving pedestrian | Technology | The Guardian[^] And we know who the passenger was, don't we: God Mode ON | CommitStrip[^]
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay... AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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That's very nice, but falls short of the mark.
milo-xml wrote:
ou are still counting on that person's physical limitations (age, reaction time, visual acuity, etc), their attention span, and the skills they have acquired to be a good driver
Quite so. Since when is any AI capable of forseeing future events by using experience? So far, only we have been able to do that, not even the closest relatives. Here we have stretches of highways without any speed limit. I really enjoy a ride at the maximum speed my car is capable of, usually while having a good eye on what happens on the lanes to the right. Most poeople see you coming and wait until you have passed, but there is always a 'Kamikaze' who pulls out right in front of your nose at a fraction of your current speed. A AI would not react to them until they actually pull out, but then it may already be to late. How do I notice them ahead of time? I don't know. It must be something in the way they behave prior to changing lanes, but I notice them and hit the brakes before they actually do it.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats. His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
CodeWraith wrote:
How do I notice them ahead of time?
I would suspect that you see the person looking at the lane to see if there's room before moving over. :) Normal human reaction time is around a quarter of a second. I think most of the self driving cars are quite a bit less than that, although I don't have the numbers in front of me. Think of it this way though, if that other car had AI, it would see you and not pull out in front of you, or at least speed up before doing that. You're looking at it as me, try looking at it from a collective stand point and I think the advantages tip way to machine advantage. :)
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39.5 on a 35 is within the UK "unofficial tolerance" applied by the police: posted speed + 10% + 2. So they don't worry about 35 in a 30, 46 in a 40, 57 in a 50, ... and 35 would be 40.5 It's to allow for inaccuracies in speedometers and / or tire wear affecting the speedo reading I understand. I'd suspect other countries do the same thing.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay... AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
OriginalGriff wrote:
I'd suspect other countries do the same thing.
Yep. Brazil is the same. Just slightly different tolerance rules.
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Tomaž Štih wrote:
That is why the whole world talks about one casualty on the road while every year human drivers extinguish one Vietnam war of Americans.
Of course you are taking into account the disproportionate numbers of human drivers to robot drivers to arrive at such shocking statements, otherwise it could just as well be plain rhetorics. :-) My old cat was excellent at tracking moving objects and judging distances and speed. It also was arguably far more intelligent than any AI up to now. Perhaps it would have been a good idea to train the cat and give it a driver's license?
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats. His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Evolution doesn't have anything to do with the ability of braking in time when a pedestrian jumps in your way in unexpected places while you're controlling a 1500kg mobile object at 38 mph. Or pretty much any other situation that we have to deal with when controlling a car. If anything, the instincts that evolution got us will make us behave inappropriately. If anything, most of evolution taught us that it's best to run over any pedestrian who's stupid enough to run into our path - one less competitor on our hunt for food! In that respect, most autonomous systems are already better than that before they even start training!
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
That's exactly the reason why I am going to stick to driving my car myself rather than handling it over to AI. If a fool jumps in front of my car suddenly, I am going to run over the guy. I don't want the AI to brake hard and send my head to the steerwheel.
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Well, yes. The latest news i saw was that the woman was crossing the road not abruptly, the car and the safety driver should have recognized her. But we will see what the police will state. I also i have to correct the speeding thing, initially they said it was driving 40 in a 35 zone, now it shows it was actually a 45 zone, so no speeding. This article has a good picture of the situation i think -> Pedestrian killed by Uber Self-Driving Car[^]
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}The article you linked was updated to show part of the video footage.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
