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A self-driving Uber SUV struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. It was in autonomous mode at the time of the collision, with a vehicle operator behind the wheel. Uber has suspended testing of its self-driving cars.
http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/19/technology/uber-autonomous-car-fatal-crash/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/uber-driverless-fatality.html
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/self-driving-uber-kills-arizona-171055918.html
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/19/594950197/uber-suspends-self-driving-tests-after-pedestrian-is-killed-in-arizona
https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-suspends-driverless-car-program-after-pedestrian-is-struck-and-killed-1521480386
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/19/17139518/uber-self-driving-car-fatal-crash-tempe-arizona
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/19/uber-self-driving-test-car-involved-in-accident-resulting-in-pedestrian-death/
I couldn't find any good analysis of the liability situation here.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Monday March 19 2018, @10:59PM (12 children)
Might also make pedestrians a bit more careful.
I've been legally driving since 1971, and I couldn't possibly count the number of times someone has walked out into traffic in some unreasonable fashion and required me to stand on my brakes.
Might even make us build safer roads - pedestrian bridges in towns and etc., anti-wildlife-fenced highways elsewhere. A lot of death and destruction is simply a result of cheaping out on how roads should actually be built. After all, the vehicle can't hit 'em if they aren't there.
(Score: 5, Informative) by bob_super on Monday March 19 2018, @11:12PM
Outside of towns, sure. Inside cities, it might be wiser to remove the cars, or force them to really low and therefore safe speeds. There are way too many places in the US where a 4-lane road, where people go 50mph, is right against houses, shops and schools.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Monday March 19 2018, @11:40PM (2 children)
The idea of self-driving cars is being pushed on the claim that they are safer than human driven ones and that no infrastrucure changes will be required to accomodate them. But there you go already.
(Score: 2) by pendorbound on Tuesday March 20 2018, @03:35PM (1 child)
Self-driving cars don't have to be all that safe to be "safer" than human drivers. The accident stats for all self-driving cars to date back that up. Given the number of total miles driven by self-driving cars, human drivers would statistically have caused far more accidents and deaths.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @05:05PM
> human drivers would statistically have caused far more accidents and deaths.
Sorry, I don't give a rat's ass about the stats for the total driving population. I want the self driving car to be better/less accidents than my demographic niche. I don't drink and drive, I'm not a teenager and I've been to advanced driving schools--I do my racing off the public roads. My strong suspicion is that my demographic is a good order of magnitude safer than the general average. That's the target I want to see before I hand off driving to an AI.
(Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday March 19 2018, @11:45PM (1 child)
I saw a fenced highway in Banff National Park.
It had underpasses here and there to enable animals to migrate.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday March 20 2018, @11:53AM
In Indiana, the highway has (or had, it's been some years since I drove it) infrared animal detection and warning systems set up that would signal drivers if animals were near the pavement. I saw it work a couple of times.
It has always struck me that the calculus for road engineering vs. saving lives – both human and animal – is pretty harsh, most places.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday March 20 2018, @02:45AM (3 children)
An autonomous car that isn't in beta (death) testing phase should be far safer than a human driver. LIDAR can be used to see around corners and the computer can react to circumstances in milliseconds rather than hundreds of milliseconds. So I don't see it having an effect on pedestrian behavior. In fact, if pedestrians know that autonomous cars will always halt when a pedestrian gets in the way, they may be motivated to jaywalk more.
We always knew that people would die from autonomous cars. "Zero fatalities" isn't realistic.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @03:34AM (1 child)
How does lidar see around corners? Bendy light?
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday March 20 2018, @03:43AM
Stanford Researchers Develop Non-Line-of-Sight LIDAR Imaging Procedure [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday March 20 2018, @05:57PM
I don't think that "lidar seeing around corners" is realistic outside of a controlled environment. It's one thing for "over the horizon radar" to work, as the sky is a pretty uniform environment, it's another for lidar to see around corners. Yes, they've done it in a controlled environment, but that's not a typical use case.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @03:36AM
Apparently pedestrian bridges do not, in fact, make the roads safer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @06:25AM
Nice, put it on the pedestrians. Drivers are often inattentive, drive too fast*, and are aggressive-- all the while feeling invincible because they are surrounded by tons of steel. The pedestrian is a grease spot waiting to happen. If the pedestrian could kill *you* by their actions, then you would have a right to complain, as it is, it is a certainty that you have come closer to killing a pedestrian while driving that any pedestrian has come to causing your death, unless that pedestrian was packing, and shot at you, but that is another thing entirely.
I walk a lot. I've been almost killed by idiot drivers more times than I can count (cars running red lights, driving up onto the sidewalk while looking at their phones, blowing through intersections while pedestrians are in the cross walk, etc.) I've taken to carrying rocks to throw at the glass of vehicles that try to kill me, and once happened to have a bag of dog poop in hand at the right moment. Fuck car drivers, they are the problem, and the idiots who design terrible intersections / too wide of streets / too high of speed limits to make it as unsafe as possible for the pedestrians.
*car - pedestrian collisions:
40mph = 85% probability of death to pedestrian
30 mph = 40% probability of death to pedestrian
20 mph = 5% probability of death to pedestrian
There are several 45 mph streets in front of schools in my town. This is fucking insane.