Posted on 03/20/2018 10:51:55 AM PDT by Kaslin
John covered this story last night, but the death of a pedestrian struck by a self-driving Uber vehicle in Arizona should have ramifications for the entire idea of autonomous vehicles. (Something I’ve been concerned about for a couple of years now.) After covering the initial reports from the accident, John concluded with the following observations and questions.
There will be an investigation of this accident as well, but my first thought is to wonder why the human ‘backup driver’ didn’t stop the car and prevent this. Reliable self-driving cars and trucks may still be a couple years away but it’s worth pointing out that human drivers are responsible for tens of thousands of fatal accidents on the roads every year. In 2016, there were an estimated 40,200 fatal crashes. Ultimately, the question is whether the record of driverless cars turns out to be better or worse than the humans who would otherwise be at the wheel.
Before addressing those points, it’s worth noting that new information has been provided by authorities investigating the accident. While it will take a while to sort this all out, initial findings indicate that the car probably wasn’t at fault in this case and the test monitor probably wouldn’t have been able to prevent the accident even if they’d been in complete control. (Fortune)
“The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them,” Moir said. “His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision.”
According to the Chronicle, the preliminary investigation found the Uber car was driving at 38 mph in a 35 mph zone and did not attempt to brake. Herzberg is said to have abruptly walked from a center median into a lane with traffic. Police believe she may have been homeless.
Since there’s dashcam video of the entire incident, the police should be able to sort this out without too many questions going unanswered. Going by their description, the possibly homeless and confused woman was pushing a bicycle in a median strip when she suddenly veered out into traffic directly in front of the Uber vehicle which was going nearly 40 mph. Assuming the next lane of traffic was blocked by another vehicle, the car would have had no other option than to possibly try to drive up onto the median. (It looks like it would have been physically impossible to stop the vehicle in that short span.) But the car’s programming clearly wasn’t anticipating a person diving out in front of it and a human being likely couldn’t crank the wheel over in a split second to avoid her either.
So Uber is off the hook and testing of autonomous vehicles can resume presently, right? I honestly hope not. The woman’s death is a tragedy, but this accident should also give us pause to ask whether any autonomous system will ever be able to replace a human being for such tasks. The woman appears to have done something completely unexpected which the navigation software had no reason to anticipate, but the fact is that irrational, unexpected things do happen in the real world all the time. And it’s in those razor-thin moments of doubt that a human being will always best a machine.
NASA regularly argues that manned space exploration will always be superior to drones and robots because human beings are more adaptable. We simply see the complexity of the world around us in a way that no set of logical rules coded into the most complex software will ever match. Humans are also able to imagine things in a way that computers can’t, including the most unexpected. Take the idea of color for example. A computer can analyze a video image and assign a value to a given color. But there’s a limit to the number of colors it can recognize and it has to force the object into one of those pigeonholes, even if they number in the thousands. In reality, there are an infinite number of colors, with each subtle shift in light frequency blending from one to the next. A system built on ones and zeros will never grasp that.
Returning to the auto accident scenario, the car was unable to anticipate a possibly homeless and confused woman suddenly lurching out in front of it. The car may have identified her as a pedestrian, but that’s not what pedestrians are “supposed to do.” But a human driver, under other circumstances, may have noticed things about her such as disheveled clothes or an unsteady rhythm to her gait. Seeing that, a human could have slowed down in advance, wondering if she was about to do something crazy. Do you honestly believe that an autonomous car is going to be capable of that sort of thought process? And none of this even begins to address the potential problems with hacking and terrorism.
Cars need drivers for precisely this reason. John was right to point out that we’re far from perfect and humans cause many, many accidents each year. With that in mind, some technology could likely improve our record. Perhaps some of those collision detection systems which are able to slam on the brakes when they locate an object we’re about to strike could be added to most vehicles. Sensors which detect a sleepy driver nodding off and sound an alarm to fully wake them might save many lives. But we should still keep a human being at the wheel as the primary operator. Autonomous driving software isn’t going to match the human mind.
Driverless vehicles will have the side effect of putting countless lawyers’s kids through college.
Is that a damaged bicycle in the photo? Don’t see any crosswalk hash marks.
“my first thought is to wonder why the human ‘backup driver’ didn’t stop the car and prevent this.”
Because that “backup driver” job must be the most stupefying job imaginable. The “drivers”have to doze off or space out. After you’ve been backup for thousands of miles, you begin to believe the machine is 100% reliable and you zone out. The whole concept of “backup driver” is useless for a situation like this where you have a tenth of a second to intervene.
A backup could work if the vehicle continuously accelerates or it decides to fpdrive on the sidewalk, or otherwise goes out of whack and you have time to step in.
Did you know that Lightning disrupts GPS guidance. Think about it at 70 mph on a freeway. Lightning also can effect the on board computer. I never hear the industry address this absolute fact.
Tragic as it is, it had to happen sooner or later. As you stated time will tell who has the better fatality rate, computer or human.
In before the “Well, the jaywalker walked right out in front of the car...” posts.
(Since the article isn’t DIRECTLY related to politics, the “news” here is often trusted verbatim).
Suicidal people
High people
Stupid people
Distracted people
Confused people
Bikes of various types. Scooters of various types. Segways. Roller
Blades and roller skates. Wheelchairs of various types, some
Motorized.
Weather. Sudden changes
All the other cars and all the insanely random and often illegal things they do
Power outages and how we all respond
Animals.
Emergencies. Fires. Accidents. Parades. Falling safes. Fights. High speed chases. Road rage.
Then how folks will use an unoccupied vehicle. Sexual activity and drug use and crime. Lying in wait for the next guy. Vandalism. Theft.
This may be technologically possible at great expense but it can’t pay Human beings and this world are too random and destructive.
I drive a cab.
Newer cars are pretty much mechanically perfect these days except for the nut behind the wheel or the computer in the trunk.
The sensors should have been able to track/detect movement on the side of the road and slowed down appropriately. It doesn’t look like she was hiding in bushes or otherwise invisible to the driver.
A preacher I knew had a crazy homeless person jump out in front of him like this. The preacher killed the man on impact, and no charges were filed. Sometimes these things happen, and given the situation, there is no clear indication that a human would have done better.
So people should be banned from driving too?
>>Driverless vehicles will have the side effect of putting countless lawyers’s kids through college.<<
Unlike driverful vehicles, which have a 100% safety record.
The author is right, of course.
But it will not slow the headlong march to robot cars. 100’s of billions of dollars are already sunk into the concept, with more to come.
And the purveyors will bribe legislators and regulators throughout the world to put them on the road. Even granting them immunity from negligence suits.
But the only way the vast majority of people will buy them is if they are forced to do so by law and/or insurance companies.
And they will be.
road glare, black ice conditions, whiteout conditions, drifts, construction, motorcycles that are dangerously weaving in and out of lanes, loss of gps signal,
Exactly!
I read where in the USA, 15 pedestrians are killed every day in encounters with vehicles.
I doubt auto-driving software will ever be programed to avoid running into some idiot who does something totally irrational, illegal and just plain stupid.
>>I drive a cab.<<
This event may have delayed your replacement by 5 years or so — to maybe 2030?
Might not be a problem for you.
I am not for self-driving cars, however, the death of this woman would be just as tragic had it been driven by a person. Sounds like the outcome would have been the same with or without the driver, because it sounds like the pedestrian was committing suicide, thus making it intentional, not an accident.
Cameras can see into the infrared and ultraviolet when human eyes cannot. Similarly, microphones can hear frequencies that the human ear cannot. I don't think the author's analogy makes the intended point.
Bringing it back to driverless cars, It's possible that with night-vision cameras and distance-measuring sensors, that cars can "see" situations that humans might be blind to, be it on a dark night or from temporary night blindness from oncoming traffic.
On the other hand, heavy rain or snow could blind the sensors, where human eyes can still see.
-PJ
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