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posted by martyb on Saturday June 23 2018, @03:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the unfortunate dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by frojack on Saturday June 23 2018, @07:21PM (2 children)

    by frojack (1554) on Saturday June 23 2018, @07:21PM (#697318) Journal

    False positives really are not a problem with these systems.

    This is well proven technology, available for a decade on high end cars, and now filtering down to almost every brand.
    Subaru, Honda, Chevy, Ford, Standard equipment in most cases.

    On my 2012 vintage car, I've seen maybe 4 false positives, all from metal plates (Construction plates) covering the roadway, but only at the bottom of a down-grade. An alarm sounds, the dash flashes BRAKE, but before the automatic brakes kick in the system realizes its error, and does not brake, and extinguishes the Brake alarm.

    In actual danger situations my car does break authoritatively. My car detects brake requirement at least two cars ahead, even if the car immediately ahead does not brake. It braked for deer on a night so rainy and dark I couldn't see squat.

    Again, Mine is old-ish tech - 2012. More modern systems are even better at this.

    False positives, for all intents and purposes, just don't happen. Turning this off on a car you will be carrying paying passengers is just insanely irresponsible.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @09:15PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @09:15PM (#697348)

    False positives really are not a problem with these systems.

    How so? I was an engineer on safety critical systems and false positives were treated as nearly as big of a failure as false negatives.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @12:07AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @12:07AM (#697393)
      And that's why false positives are not a problem on factory systems. Someone like you had them debugged.