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A few Soylentils wrote in to tell us about a fatal accident between a pedestrian and an autonomous Uber vehicle.
Update - Video Released of Fatal Uber - Pedestrian Accident
I debated just replying to the original story, but this seemed a pretty significant update to me:
The Uber vehicle was operating in autonomous mode when it crashed into 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg on Sunday evening. Herzberg was transported to a hospital, where she later died from her injuries, in what may be the first known pedestrian fatality in a self-driving crash.
The video footage does not conclusively show who is at fault. Tempe police initially reported that Herzberg appeared suddenly; however, the video footage seems to show her coming into view a number of seconds before the crash. It also showed the vehicle operator behind the wheel intermittently looking down while the car was driving itself.
The link shows video of the seconds just before the accident.
The pedestrian did not step out in front of the vehicle, she was essentially out in the middle of the road, and all her lateral movement was nearly irrelevant. She might as well have been a stationary object in the middle of the road. You can see the headlights bring her feet into view first, (meaning she was pretty much in the line before the headlights could see her, and then move up her body; she's already in the middle of the road in front of him when she comes into view.
If I were driving that car, I think I'd have had time to hit brakes (but not stop in time). I also think that that if the camera view is an accurate representation of what was really visible, then the car was overdriving its headlights. Although given my experience with cameras, I wouldn't be surprised if actual visibility was better than what the video shows.
This, in my opinion, is pretty damning.
Police Chief: Uber Self-Driving Car "Likely" Not At Fault In Fatal Crash
The chief of the Tempe Police has told the San Francisco Chronicle that Uber is likely not responsible for the Sunday evening crash that killed 49-year-old pedestrian Elaine Herzberg. “I suspect preliminarily it appears that the Uber would likely not be at fault in this accident," said chief Sylvia Moir.
Herzberg was "pushing a bicycle laden with plastic shopping bags," according to the Chronicle's Carolyn Said, when she "abruptly walked from a center median into a lane of traffic."
After viewing video captured by the Uber vehicle, Moir concluded that “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 added that "it is dangerous to cross roadways in the evening hour when well-illuminated, managed crosswalks are available."
Self-Driving Car Testing Likely to Continue Unobstructed
Self-Driving Cars Keep Rolling Despite Uber Crash
The death of a woman who was struck by a self-driving Uber in Arizona on Sunday has auto-safety advocates demanding that U.S. regulators and lawmakers slow down the rush to bring autonomous vehicles to the nation's roadways. Don't count on it.
Efforts to streamline regulations to accommodate the emerging technology have been under way since the Obama administration with strong bipartisan support. And the Trump administration's aversion to restrictions and regulations makes it even more unlikely that the accident in Tempe, Arizona, in which an autonomous Uber sport utility vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian, will result in significant new barriers, according to former U.S. officials and some safety advocates.
"Honestly, the last thing under this administration that car companies and self-driving vehicle developers have to worry about is heavy regulation," said David Friedman, a former National Highway Traffic Safety Administration administrator under President Barack Obama who's now director of cars and product policy for Consumers Union.
Who is to blame when driverless cars have an accident?
[Partial] or full autonomy raises the question of who is to blame in the case of an accident involving a self-driving car? In conventional (human-driven) cars, the answer is simple: the driver is responsible because they are in control. When it comes to autonomous vehicles, it isn't so clear cut. We propose a blockchain-based framework that uses sensor data to ascertain liability in accidents involving self-driving cars.
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3 Original Submission #4
(Score: 5, Insightful) by lentilla on Thursday March 22 2018, @01:37PM (13 children)
It serves the public good because it removes a large amount of speculation about what actually happened.
Your average driver now thinks: "I could see how that could happen", rather than "self-driving cars are mowing people down left-and-right".
And no, I haven't seen the footage - perhaps I would feel it in bad taste to watch it myself. I; however; believe it better serves society that uniformed speculation does not run rampant. For better or for worse this is is a defining moment in human history. I am glad it was not me, nor a member of my family. It was; however; something that was going to happen. By the numbers alone, getting rid of human drivers will remove a great deal of sorrow from society, and I would hate that to be set back by knee-jerk reactions and conspiracy theories.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday March 22 2018, @02:19PM (9 children)
When the first car(s) hit the road, they made someone walk in front of it carrying a flag.
First pedestrian death was due to a woman walking in front of a car (coincidence? Ironic coincidence? The word I can't think of?)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_traffic_collisions [wikipedia.org]
They should make self driving vehicles have the passenger walk in front carrying a flag.
Errrr.....yeah....
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @02:28PM (7 children)
The early regulations on cars were a lot smarter than most folks living now give them credit for. They didn't really know how cars would interact because they didn't have cars to interact with horses and mules. They were also smart enough to realize that cars were likely to go faster as time went by, hence some of those goofy early days regulations.
What this current incident demonstrates is that we really can't trust these tech companies to behave any more responsibly on the roads than they do on the internet. This death shouldn't have happened because the lidar should have noticed that there was somebody in the vicinity and slowed down. The vehicle also shouldn't have been driving so fast. It appears from the video that the engineer probably wouldn't have been able to apply the brakes in time anyways due to the headlights not illuminating enough of the road ahead.
Really, I think we ought to put Uber in prison for a few years for manslaughter so that these companies realize that there are consequences to recklessness.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @02:45PM
Unfortunately, drivers very rarely face any meaningful consequences for killing people, even when the driver is a negligent professional and clearly at fault [streetsblog.org] and even when the driver is drunk and flees the scene [streetsblog.org].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Thursday March 22 2018, @02:45PM (5 children)
Yup, and not just an 'engineer': make it the CEO (Kirk is responsible for the actions of his crew). Put him in REAL prison (not the fancy executive prison), charged with manslaughter.
You'd see some changes then, boyo.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Interesting) by number11 on Thursday March 22 2018, @04:21PM (4 children)
I dunno, HE wasn't personally responsible, and to a corporation any one human is expendable. I would suggest just a short sentence. For the company. Freeze their bank accounts, send the marshals around to padlock their offices. 90 days oughta do it. If they get evicted for nonpayment of rent, or their colo pulls the plug because it didn't get paid, or they get sued by drivers who didn't get paid, that's a shame, but nobody gives a crap if things like that happen to the thief in the next cell. If corporations want to be considered people, they should get the bad along with the good.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:47PM (2 children)
Imagine some [insert racial caricature of your choice] kid hopped up on [insert drug you despise] ran the lady over because he didn't see her. The CEO should get the same treatment under the law.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @09:10PM (1 child)
The evidence suggests that "I didn't see her" is likely to be a very successful defense for such a kid who kills someone with a motor vehicle.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday March 23 2018, @12:37AM
But not if you have super vision (LIDAR) and should have been able to brake in time (unless the CEO told you to ignore what your super vision told you inorder to 'make it work...just do it or you're fired".
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 23 2018, @07:45AM
Expendable? Then why do so few CEOs end up in jail for the crimes their corporations commit? Why not just sacrifice the expendable CEO?
The real reason is the CEOs really don't want to go to jail. It would actually be a deterrent.
Think about it, you're a sociopathic CEO and your corporation is criminally negligent or commits a serious crime. What would you fear more:
1) Your corporation paying hefty fines
2) Your corporation getting shutdown while you keep your bonuses etc.
3) You going to prison for 5 years.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:11PM
Which really only shows how established companies (buggy whip manufacturers, etc.) were able to warp the law for their own protectionist purposes, and little else. They knew at the time that cars presented no great additional danger.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Thursday March 22 2018, @08:02PM
That video does help me understand why the safety driver didn't react, but it does the opposite for the object detection and collision avoidance systems. There's very little margin for error for humans when driving at night. All it takes is a slight lapse of attention (or just a quick check of the speedometer) at the wrong time to be enough delay to make it impossible to react in time. Those things shouldn't be an issue for a computer. The sensors are always looking and lidar and radar systems don't rely on visible light, so why did they not detect and identify the pedestrian? It certainly had time to do so. She came out of the median, crossed a full lane and a half before being visually illuminated in the headlights. The vehicle was in the right hand lane and the impact occurred on its right (passenger) side, which means that she almost cleared the lane before impact. If the car had applied the brakes at all, even relatively late, the severity of the injury could have been much lower or the collision avoided entirely.
It looks to me like there was a significant failure of the autonomous systems and Uber has a lot of explaining to do.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday March 22 2018, @09:42PM
On the contrary, I think in this case it merely serves to stoke speculation, because now all the armchair experts think they've got solid evidence of "what actually happened."
Well, quite. Think of all the thousands of people killed by cars every day who don't make it to the news because... well, because they're not news.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 23 2018, @08:51AM
And your above average (apparently) driver now thinks "holy crap, anyone driving that fast without turning on the high beams should have their drivers license taken away for good", along with anyone who doesn't realize that what the video shows is reckless driving.