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posted by takyon on Thursday March 22 2018, @12:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the carmagedon dept.

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 #1Original Submission #2Original Submission #3Original Submission #4

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday March 22 2018, @03:48PM (2 children)

    by Knowledge Troll (5948) on Thursday March 22 2018, @03:48PM (#656643) Homepage Journal

    Yeah, let's see how you do stuck in a seat and told to watch the road at all times. You aren't driving, probably don't even have music, yet you have to maintain constant alertness when nothing is happening and you aren't doing anything.

    Great! The human safety monitors can't possibly do their job so the safety requirements of testing the robot car can't be met as has been just proven. Time to stop all testing until that pesky safety thing can be worked out. Maybe we should evaluate all other level 3 and 4 cars as well since they assume this kind of supervision is possible.

    This was 100% the pedestrian's fault. We see these bozos all the time. They have the right of way so they just walk in front of moving

    It is not possible to have the right of way and be at fault. Having right of way means exactly you are not at fault.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by linuxrocks123 on Thursday March 22 2018, @10:34PM (1 child)

    by linuxrocks123 (2557) on Thursday March 22 2018, @10:34PM (#656895) Journal

    Nice try, but the point isn't that the human monitor will be perfect, just better than nothing. I don't know what exactly you have against self-driving cars, or why you want to stop them through fearmongering, but it's clear that's what you're trying to do.

    This is a tragic incident, and I hope that both Uber and the Arizona regulators take serious precautions to make sure similar situations are handled better. I also hope people like you don't manage to use this tragedy to halt what promises to be this century's most significant advance in both automotive safety and automotive convenience.