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According to this article on MSN:
Police in Tempe, Arizona said evidence showed the "safety" driver behind the wheel of a self-driving Uber was distracted and streaming a television show on her phone right up until about the time of a fatal accident in March, deeming the crash that rocked the nascent industry "entirely avoidable."
A 318-page report from the Tempe Police Department, released late on Thursday in response to a public records request, said the driver, Rafaela Vasquez, repeatedly looked down and not at the road, glancing up just a half second before the car hit 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg, who was crossing the street at night.
According to the report, Vasquez could face charges of vehicle manslaughter. Police said that, based on testing, the crash was "deemed entirely avoidable" if Vasquez had been paying attention.
Police obtained records from Hulu, an online service for streaming television shows and movies, which showed Vasquez's account was playing the television talent show "The Voice" the night of the crash for about 42 minutes, ending at 9:59 p.m., which "coincides with the approximate time of the collision," the report says.
It is not clear if Vasquez will be charged, and police submitted their findings to county prosecutors, who will make the determination.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @05:11PM (9 children)
Bear in mind that you are asking something VERY DIFFICULT, NIGH IMPOSSIBLE of the test driver: stay alert at all times, even to the point of instant reaction, while doing absolutely nothing 99% of the rest of the time.
I agree she should not have streamed a movie, but the human mind must have something to do other than be on high vigilance for hours at a time. Ironically, driving the car would have given her something to do and would have engaged her with her environment to where the collision would probably not have happened. You can't let the car drive itself and yet be simultaneously responsible for driving it yourself at a moment's notice. You are either driving the car or you are not. I know this woman was a tester, but this fundamental problem would still exist in production. Anything less than a car that totally takes care of itself in "self"-driving mode is unacceptable.
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Saturday June 23 2018, @07:44PM (4 children)
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @09:28PM (3 children)
Airline pilots are trained for hundreds of hours to be able to take over from the automatic systems and they typically have minutes to do so when they have to.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Sunday June 24 2018, @12:20AM
Here is a highly relevant video:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KK5KTQGuXSQ [youtube.com]
Watch from the beginning, the event at 00:50.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @12:28AM (1 child)
Yes, they have minutes. Automobile drivers have SECONDS.
MASSIVE difference.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday June 24 2018, @09:49AM
Have you watched the video linked by the sibling post? That definitely was not minutes of reaction time.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @09:25PM
This was something the aircraft industry figured out long ago. You are correct, as other car companies have been, in pointing out that the human brain is not a machine and can't be expected to work like one. I don't remember what the numbers are, but it is on the order of seconds to come up to situational awareness.
http://raes-hfg.com/crm/reports/sa-defns.pdf [raes-hfg.com]
See also human factors: Human Factors Analysis and Classification System
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Gaaark on Saturday June 23 2018, @09:53PM (2 children)
Fully and completely agree.
Either let me drive or make me not criminally (or anywise) responsible. DO NOT make me a passive assist driver who has to take control when the car comes upon a situation it can't figure out.
The LIDAR saw her six seconds out (LIDAR doesn't care how light or dark the roadway is): unless the driver is at the point of almost driving the vehicle themselves, the person still would have been at least injured, probably.
UBER should be banned from doing this and there should be criminal proceedings against them for 'tuning' the software.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @06:41PM (1 child)
LIDAR isn't magic though. Even if someone is within view of the LIDAR, there is some serious Computer Vision involved in segmenting and "detecting" that person amid all the noise and things you don't want to detect.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday June 24 2018, @11:10PM
But it's also Ubers fault for turning it down so it wouldn't brake for things it couldn't identify.
As @Apparition(?) said elsewhere, they should have had the driver identifying everything the car braked for.
Have a heads-up display show what it was braking for and have the driver identify it for later research, BUT brake first.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---