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posted by takyon on Wednesday December 12 2018, @06:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the too-agile-for-safety dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Uber allegedly ignored safety warnings before self-driving fatality

Just days after Uber announced its plans to resume testing of its self-driving taxis, new information reveals that a whistleblower had made the company aware of the technology's safety failures before the incident in Arizona last March, which saw a pedestrian struck and killed by one of Uber's vehicles, and which led to the suspension of all testing activity.

According to The Information, Robbie Miller, a manager in the testing-operations group, sent a cautionary email to a number of Uber's executive and lawyers, warning that the vehicles were "routinely in accidents resulting in damage. This is usually the result of poor behavior of the operator or the AV technology."

It appears the email was prompted by an incident in Pittsburgh, where just a few days before Miller sent the message an Uber prototype swerved completely off the road and onto the sidewalk, where it continued to drive. According to Miller's email, the episode was "essentially ignored" for days, until Miller raised it with other managers. He also noted that towards the end of 2017, it took two weeks for engineers to investigate the logs of a separate Arizona incident, in which an Uber vehicle almost collided with another car.


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 13 2018, @03:38AM (2 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday December 13 2018, @03:38AM (#773872) Journal

    So, when did "regulation first came to the auto industry,"? You realize that looking back in time, there wasn't a "big three"? It had to be mid-fifties before it was "big three". Jeep, AMC, Rambler, DeSoto, and so many more have gone belly up and/or been bought out. I suppose we can point to some arbitrary regulation, and say, "This is the point at which regulation first came to the auto industry!" At what point in time was that? 1980, maybe?

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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 13 2018, @05:38PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 13 2018, @05:38PM (#774039)

    > So, when did "regulation first came to the auto industry,"?

    A case could be made for the creation of the US DOT and NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Admin.),
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Highway_Traffic_Safety_Administration#History [wikipedia.org]

    In 1964 and 1966, public pressure grew in the United States to increase the safety of cars, culminating with the publishing of Unsafe at Any Speed, by Ralph Nader, an activist lawyer, and "Accidental Death and Disability: The Neglected Disease of Modern Society" by the National Academy of Sciences.

    In 1966, Congress held a series of publicized hearings regarding highway safety, passed legislation to make installation of seat belts mandatory, and enacted Pub.L. 89–563, Pub.L. 89–564, and Pub.L. 89–670 which created the U.S. Department of Transportation on October 15, 1966. This legislation created several predecessor agencies which would eventually become NHTSA, including the National Traffic Safety Agency, the National Highway Safety Agency, and the National Highway Safety Bureau. Once the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) came into effect, vehicles not certified by the maker or importer as compliant with US safety standards were no longer legal to import into the United States.

    Congress established the NHTSA in 1970 with the Highway Safety Act of 1970 (Title II of Pub.L. 91–605, 84 Stat. 1713, enacted December 31, 1970, at 84 Stat. 1739). In 1972, the Motor Vehicle Information and Cost Savings Act (Pub.L. 92–513, 86 Stat. 947, enacted October 20, 1972) expanded NHTSA's scope to include consumer information programs. ...

    Same link mentions an earlier start in Europe on harmonizing auto regulations worldwide.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 13 2018, @08:30PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 13 2018, @08:30PM (#774122)

      Same AC, responding to myself. The more I thought about this history, this could also be the origins of what I think of as a "nanny mentality" -- the mindset that it is possible to eliminate all risk and make things completely safe. Given the car-centered culture in the USA (possibly even more so in the 1960s than today), this first step of establishing a national Dept of Transportation and the regulatory arm, NHTSA could have been the first step onto the slippery slope?

      Was this the step that led to helicopter parents, kids that aren't allowed to walk home from school and the rest of the "softening of America?"