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posted by cmn32480 on Monday March 27 2017, @01:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the it-is-everybody-else-you-have-to-watch-out-for dept.

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


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  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday March 27 2017, @04:43PM (2 children)

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Monday March 27 2017, @04:43PM (#484687) Journal

    I think we will have 100% self driving cars eventually. There was probably a time when people said we would never have 100% of these new fangled auto mobile thingies.

    Except we DON'T have 100% of those "new fangled automobile thingies." It's still legal to walk, ride bicycles, scooters, etc. on most public roads (generally excepting only major highways). It's frequently still legal to ride horses or use horse-pulled buggies, carriages, etc. on many public roads, particularly in rural areas.

    The OP in this thread was suggesting something that sounded more like actively banning human-driven vehicles from public roads. Maybe there will be significant attrition from human-driven vehicles over time, but it's not going to happen overnight. I expect it will be at least a couple decades while autonomous cars will have to share space with human-driven vehicles, and in that long transition, AI cars will need to deal with bad human drivers as a matter of course.

    The alternative would be to create AI-only roads, like we have highways that prohibit pedestrians, bicycles, horses, etc. That would be expensive. But those highways were generally built as new alternatives for faster transport, not created by banning horses on existing roads.

    So your historical analogy seems to fail a bit -- this is a different situation if we really want to segregate AI cars on public roads.

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  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday March 27 2017, @05:04PM (1 child)

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Monday March 27 2017, @05:04PM (#484709) Journal

    By the way, one thing that might help in this transition would be more clearly marked AI vs. human-driven vehicles... somewhat akin to the rules for horses, e.g., buggies generally need to have markings indicating a slow-moving vehicle, or my personal favorite -- this New Jersey statute [uvm.edu]:

    No person shall drive a horse attached to a sleigh or sled on a highway unless there are a sufficient number of bells attached to the horse's harness to give warning of its approach.

    Which raises the question: How many bells are "sufficient"?

    Anyhow, I expect within a decade that human drivers will be similarly distinguished in some manner to AI vehicles, so they know to "LOOK OUT!" when around them.

    • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:37AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:37AM (#484989)

      Warning: insufficient bells detected. Needs more cowbell.