Posted on 03/20/2018 1:20:31 PM PDT by Kaslin
RUSH: I mentioned that there’s the first known, first reported fatality involving an autonomously driven car. It was an Uber car. It was in Arizona. An Arizona pedestrian was killed. And because of this, Uber has halted testing of its autonomous vehicles all across North America, including San Francisco, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Toronto, and a number of others have canceled theirs too.
And, you know, it’s fascinating, folks, to read liberal blogs about this. As you know, I spend time on the tech blogs. And the tech blogs are populated by young Millennial leftist journalists. And while they hate Uber for one reason, they don’t like the CEO and his mistreatment of women. But on the other hand they love Uber ’cause it’s high-tech, it’s software, it’s automatic driving investigations or experimentation.
Now, what happened in this case, there was a human being acting as backup, so there was a human being in the car. The car was tooling along, and a woman, according to the cops, darted out in front of the car from shadow. She was in a median between lanes, and she was not in a crosswalk. Now, that’s important because the software for one of these autonomously software driven cars, the crosswalk would have been programmed into it, and it would have had a sensor, sensitivity.
The woman darted out, and the investigators, the cops said it wouldn’t have mattered if the human being in the car had total control over it, this woman would have not been missed. Nobody would have had a reaction time quick enough to avoid hitting her. So the autonomous driving car has been exonerated from any blame in the death. So I’m reading my tech blogs on this and the tech blogs are urging caution, and let’s not rush to judgment. People die every day. We can’t be hasty in our condemnation of this marvelous new technology, driverless automobiles.
And all I could think of, if this woman had been killed by a gun, would these same tech bloggers have expressed caution and said let’s not rush to judgment here, or would they be on a tear today? And, in fact, one of the tech bloggers pointed out, “Hey, we gotta keep things in perspective. There are 50,000 people a year killed in automobile accidents,” as though this is just one of them. Isn’t any big deal. But wait a minute. I thought it was life that was precious.
So is it 50,000 people killed one way or another involving automobiles every year — well, we’ll look past that. I mean, we’re not gonna ban the wheel, and we’re not gonna ban the car, and we’re not gonna blame AAA. But let there be a gun involved, they throw all that out and they become banshees on the warpath to get rid of every gun in the world. And yet they’ll sit by and acknowledge 50,000 people, hundred people a week die in car crashes, so let’s keep this in perspective. And I thought, what a bunch of hypocrites.
‘Cause the point is, we cannot allow this masterful new technology, driverless automobiles, we cannot allow it to be sidetracked. We cannot allow it to be delayed. We cannot permit it being harmed in any way because it’s the future. So in certain cases, a random death here, a random death there, that’s just the cost of doing business. But when a gun’s involved, why, we gotta go out and get rid of the Second Amendment. We gotta disband the NRA. We gotta put the chairman of the NRA in jail. Amazing hypocrisy.
Anyway, the cops said it was not the car’s fault; it was not the software’s fault. It was the woman’s fault. She jumped out in front of the car. Nobody would have been able to stop it.
Wait till the car’s owner gets sued! Will be interesting!
“It was a homicide.”
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Nope. Not even a homicide.
Homicide is the act of one human killing another...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicide
“But this accident or not, the tech is not remotely there yet”
The tech has gotten this far by being given a complete pass on all the rigorousness that automatic aircraft and train systems are forced to deal with. If they keep giving them a pass then we can expect a lot more deaths. The first automatic pilot type device was made in 1910. Yeah just a few years after planes were invented. But it was a LONG time before passenger jets were allowed to use ‘autoland’ capability. Doing something as an experiment is not the same as having it ready for prime time commercial use.
If Uber gets these cars working, who’s going to do the raping?
Then there motto would be “To Serve Mankind”.
Exactly
I'll take the human driven cars with about one death per 10,000 cars instead of three for each thousand driverless cars.
The insurance market is already adjusting.
You should have told him people get killed by cars too.
believe me, I agree and know.
I mean who doesn’t want to wind up decapitated because a semi crossed your path and the self driving system thought it was an overhead sign?
The tech is NOT THERE... watching these local mayors.. my own city’s included just let this crap go on blows my mind...
This tech is NOWHERE near ready for prime time, and yet GM is trying to get approval for a production mass produced model for next year! WTF!?!?!?
Still not murder.
The police chief of Tempe, Arizona, where a woman was struck and killed by one of Uber’s self-driving cars Sunday, says the ride-sharing company is likely not at fault for the accident, following a preliminary investigation.
Chief of Police Sylvia Moir told the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday that video footage taken from cameras equipped to the autonomous Volvo SUV potentially shift the blame to the victim herself, 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg, rather than the vehicle.
“It’s 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 told the paper, adding that the incident occurred roughly 100 yards from a crosswalk. “It is dangerous to cross roadways in the evening hour when well-illuminated managed crosswalks are available,” she said.
Though the vehicle was operating in autonomous mode, a driver was present in the front seat. But Moir said there appears to be little he could have done to intervene before the crash.
“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.
Tempe police plan to work with investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to reach a conclusion about what happened, according to the Chronicle.
Sunday’s incident appears to be the first-ever self-driving car fatality involving a pedestrian.
I would have to see the video myself. I'm not for or against the Uber vehicle here. I just want to know what truly happened. When the police watched the video, they knew the lady had been hit, and were watching for her to appear on the video. So, yes, they could say they saw her and noted the car/driver did not attempt to stop.
Did the hardware sensors detect heat/object/motion near and/or in front of the vehicle? If they did, why didn't the software respond and stop the vehicle?
On top of that, why didn't the driver respond. I think maybe the driver saw her, took longer than normal to assess the car didn't see her, and by that time it was too late, whereas you or I, knowing we don't have tech to stop the car for us, would likely have reacted differently, and possibly much faster than the backup driver did, or apparently didn't.
If it was homicide than than arrest the car. /s>
No, she was supposedly walking her bicycle across the street and Uber’s admitted they have problems seeing bicyclists.
Ed
So a person killed by a bomb wasn’t killed by homicide?
Isn’t this the same thing, an agent of a human killed a woman?
Ed
“If the 20,000 die but there is no one who is liable?”
That’s goofy! With absurd assumptions, any conclusion would be possible.
Any insurance company would be happy to take the liability if told it has half the number of cases to deal with.
They’ll introduce a law to give robot manufacturers immunity.
Robots will soon be driving better than nearly all humans but nothing is 100% perfect. It doesn’t make sense to run manufacturers into the ground if they are overall far safer than human drivers
I looked at the intersection where this occurred on Google Maps Streetview. The posted speed limits that I could see in the area for the two roads mentioned are 45 MPH. One article I read said the collision occurred near the intersection of N. Mill Avenue and E. Curry Road. It also stated the vehicle was northbound, suggesting it was on Mill Avenue. According to streetview, the last speed limit sign I saw heading north on Mill Avenue before that intersection read 45 MPH.
The speed limit could have been changed since the streeview images were taken.
So a person killed by a bomb wasn’t killed by homicide?
Isn’t this the same thing, an agent of a human killed a woman?
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Nope. Not even the same. Death by bombing puts all the blame on the bomber. If I were to assess blame here - 95% would go to the woman, 5 percent to the driver/autonomous Uber.
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