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More bad news for Uber: one of the ride-hailing giant's self-driving Volvo SUVs has been involved in a crash in Arizona — apparently leaving the vehicle flipped onto its side, and with damage to at least two other human-driven cars in the vicinity.
The aftermath of the accident is pictured in photos and a video posted to Twitter by a user of @FrescoNews, a service for selling content to news outlets. According to the company's tweets, the collision happened in Tempe, Arizona, and no injuries have yet been reported.
Uber has also confirmed the accident and the veracity of the photos to Bloomberg. We've reached out to the company with questions and will update this story with any response. Update: Uber has now provided us with the following statement: "We are continuing to look into this incident and can confirm we had no backseat passengers in the vehicle."
TechCrunch understands Uber's self-driving fleet in Arizona has been grounded, following the incident, while an investigation is undertaken. The company has confirmed the vehicle involved in the incident was in self-driving mode. We're told no one was seriously injured.
Local newspaper reports suggest another car failed to yield to Uber's SUV, hitting it and resulting in the autonomous vehicle flipping onto its side. Presumably the Uber driver was unable to take over the controls in time to prevent the accident.
Source: TechCrunch
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 27 2017, @03:18PM (8 children)
> The Uber, you see, expected other drivers would play by the rules, ...
Are you certain about this? I have no inside information about Uber, but if I was designing self-driving software, I would certainly scan cross street traffic before entering intersections, even when the light was green for me.
I was able to try a demo of the Mercedes driver assist (hands-off the wheel for up to ~5 seconds) at a major car show. It was constantly checking for threats (and pedestrians) that looked like they might enter my lane from the side. They set up a full sized S-class car parked behind a semi-circular screen. The active suspension on the car was actuated to give a sense of motion to the driving simulator and there were multiple scenarios that demoed different aspects of the software.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Monday March 27 2017, @03:34PM (7 children)
if I was designing self-driving software, I would certainly scan cross street traffic
I think we have a pretty clear example of how that worked out in the present situation.
But imagine that SDCs were programmed to yield in all circumstances. Humans would soon learn that and come to expect that they could run red lights with impunity, because the SDC will flinch.
Like it or not, driving is an exercise in betting my life against yours. We both put something on the table when we decide whether to obey traffic laws or not. It is like the game of chicken played out thousands of times every second. Most of the time people know the downside is harsh and the "win" if any is meager. That keeps them in line, not perfectly, but well enough that we still brave the highways.
A computer has no fear or aggression. How can it ever share the road with people who do?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 27 2017, @04:01PM (6 children)
Idea: self driving cars should recognize other cars' serious traffic violations and automatically report them, along with supporting telemetry, to the local police and news media.
Drat! I shouldn't have said that here. Now I can't patent it. With rounded corners.
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(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday March 27 2017, @05:56PM (5 children)
And people would never obscure their license plates: that would be illegal!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 27 2017, @07:12PM (4 children)
If the humans obscured their license plates so that they can continue to drive and deliberately violate traffic rules, especially serious ones, like running red lights, then that provides huge ammunition to accelerate the process of removing all human driven vehicles from public roads.
The humans who want to continue to have the privilege of manual driving should be looking to be the safest drivers possible. Not as an excuse to run red lights because the self driving cars will flinch even when they have the right of way.
The more I think this through the more I like the idea of getting rid of any human driven vehicles -- eventually. Just as at one point it seemed improbable that automobiles would replace horse drawn carts because autos were far from perfected technology.
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(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday March 27 2017, @07:30PM (3 children)
My current vehicle (bicycle) is pointless if retrofitted to remove the driver.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 27 2017, @09:29PM (1 child)
In a post self driving car world, things could get a lot better for pedestrians and bicyclists.
In a 100% self driving car world we don't need stop signs or traffic signals. Cars going multiple directions could use the intersection at the same time if they can coordinate their efforts.
But wait! Pedestrians and bicyclists. First thought: the "walk" button on the crosswalk of traffic signals would be for pedestrians and bicyclists. Otherwise, the traffic lights could be green in multiple directions at once. But what about stop signs? It would be a pain for cars to have to needlessly stop at stop signs.
What if crosswalks could recognize the approach of pedestrians / bicycles / strollers / etc, and adjust the traffic of the self driving vehicles accordingly.
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(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday March 27 2017, @09:36PM
There is a school of thought that bicycles should emulate (slow moving) vehicles as closely as practical.
I have on occasionally treated a red light that fails to trigger as a 4-way stop (inoperative signal); rather than lean over, push the button, and wait up to 124 seconds.
(You are only supposed to have to wait up to 120 seconds, but the light cycle is another 4 seconds -- timed it once when sceptical of a sign claiming the wait was only 120s)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:50AM
> My current vehicle (bicycle) is pointless if retrofitted to remove the driver.
Well, it might count as art? https://figshare.com/articles/Towards_a_maximally-robust_self-balancing_robotic_bicycle_without_reaction-moment_gyroscopes_nor_reaction_wheels/3976596 [figshare.com] Full pdf for download. Describes an autonomous electric bicycle that may eventually roll around the Cornell University campus...just because it can!