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 didnt stop the car and prevent this. Reliable self-driving cars and trucks may still be a couple years away but its 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.
After that post I thought of every movie that has Taxis in them. Some are quite famous and it is quite a list. Life (and death) can be seen through the Taxi eyes.
At age 75 with 59 years of driving experience and no accidents where I hit a human being, and only hit one dog, who survived, I can accurately say avoiding such collisions takes a good deal of human sense and environmental awareness. For example, if one sees something beside the road where it shouldn’t be, it’s time to slow down, even if a collision would not be one’s fault. I avoided hitting a small, old dog a few days ago by that kind of precaution. When driving in neighborhoods where there are kids, especially black kids, I’m paranoid level careful, regardless of potential legal liability.
Good human driver’s judgment and peripheral vision that caught unusual motion might have prevented this tragedy. There’s the inherent trouble with driverless cars—no way really to anticipate dicey situations like little kids and dogs unexpectedly running into traffic. That’s why I don’t like the whole idea, just as I don’t like the insane idea of “smart” guns.
Will you please present your evidence that the people killed in encounters with vehicles are at fault?
You are the exact reason that the right is dying. You have stopped embracing technology and actually owning and driving it. This is why the internet is ruled by leftists, because you let them.
I have no idea if she was homeless or not and, I don’t recall a report about it.
I drive 50,000 miles plus a year. I rarely if ever use cruise control. My right foot is constantly adjusting speed to conditions around me, real or anticipated.
I can often anticipate what the drive in front or next to me is doing by watching the attitude of his car suspension and the front tire.
I can determine how fast to enter a corner by judgement of pavement, other traffic and what I can see of the curve. If I know the curve well, I’ll take it far hotter than a curve I’m not familiar with.
The camber of the road can be a factor. There’s a section of freeway with a wide sweeping right curve. It’s slightly off camber so the road actually flows to the left shoulder a little bit. I drive it far different on snow or in the rain than I do on dry pavement.
None of this can be gauged by a dirty sensor camera and a gps.
I’ll drive my own car thank you. Most of my driving is in a company car, but my own car is a manual too.
Self driving cars are a utopian dream. We just took a longish visit in DC and VA and I kept telling the wife: how would a driverless car cover that?
“. . . someone hacks it and redirects your wife or daughter to an unintended destination; or it takes you through an undesirable no-go area of down and is stopped or breaks down . . .”
You’re not even really speculating. I had one of the early GPS units on a car of mine. There were several times when it would direct me into the boondocks and I’d have to rely on a paper map to find my way out, or a call to my destination to have them talk me in. GPS is better now, but definitely not perfect.
My wife lives by GPS. When we lived in DC area she hated drives out. Took a bit to figure out that when she’d go to College Park area or up that way, the GPS would drag her through DC streets for over an hour instead of taking the beltway around in a few minutes. Many of those neighborhoods are not nice, even in daytime. She got a traffic camera ticket, which is how I found out and shockingly asked her why she was in that part of DC. Musing if she was looking for drugs or something.
I remember a time when getting one’s driver’s license and driving one’s own car was practically the definition of freedom - a right of passage for young adults as one of their first experiences with personal freedom and personal responsibility. I have never forgotten that initial ‘rush’ of new-found independence, and I relish that freedom of movement to this day.
However, there seem to be an awful lot of people here who claim to love and support our “Free Republic”, but who simply cannot wait to relinquish control of all of our modes of transportation to government-controlled robotic machines.
I simply do not understand it.
You can read these excerpts from the article I have linked below. The police have already seen the video from the car that shows the view to the front as well as a video of what the driver was doing.
The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them, said Sylvia Moir, police chief in Tempe, Ariz., the location for the first pedestrian fatality involving a self-driving car. His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision.
From viewing the videos, its very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode (autonomous or human-driven) based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway, Moir said.
I suspect preliminarily it appears that the Uber would likely not be at fault in this accident, either, Moir said.
You are confusing technology with liberty. You are willing to give control of your freedom of movement to someone else because you dont want the responsibility of driving.
I am sure people said the same thing about the whip, horse and buggy.
But, no, I don’t want to die at the (lack of) hands of the “driver” of the car next to me or on the cross street to me too busy texting or putting on makeup or too hyped up on testosterone or too just too flipping selfish to care about anyone but themselves.
I would love to give them the freedom to sit back and enjoy the ride, and do whatever they want to do. I would love to be able to commute to work everyday and not have to spend the whole hour dodging people running stop signs and red lights. And then have to spend all day while I am at work dreading the commute home where I have to experience the exact same thing.
As of right now, if I do not want to put up with the government-caused hassles associated with flying, riding a train or riding a bus, I can hop in/on a vehicle which I own and control, and travel anywhere I want to within the bounds of the continental United States. You, however, appear to be itching to give up that right.
No, they didn't. The advent of the automobile gave people greater freedom to travel, not less.
No one wants to die due to the incompetence of someone else. Unfortunately, that is a risk we must all accept in order to live in a free society. And I'd much rather accept that physical risk than the far greater risks to liberty associated with giving up my freedom to travel where I choose, when I choose.
AND HAVING THE CAR PERFORM A MINDLESS TASK OF DRIVING ME TO WORK WOULD GIVE ME MORE FREEDOM!
AND HAVING THE CAR PERFORM A MINDLESS TASK OF DRIVING ME TO WORK WOULD GIVE ME MORE FREEDOM!
And, if you think the government will not be able to control your movements once you have surrendered your ability to pilot your own car, then you are delusional.
I love driving and controlling cars. I love riding and controlling motorcycles. Part of the reason I love driving my own vehicles is that it is not a "mindless task". It requires a great deal of concentration and focus.
But, I do agree with you about one thing, though, I am looking forward to the time when you are no longer driving a vehicle on the public roads in this country.
You can do that now. It's called a cab, and it doesn't take up space in your garage and you don't need to insure it. That being said you have to obey the rules and limitations set by the cab driver and the cab company. You will have even more rules and micromanagement in your "driverless", as in "someone is driving but it's not me" car and the central government that will monitor every destination and will step in and take control when it's for your own good or the the good of the collective.
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