from the darn-it-someone-must-take-the-blame dept.
Uber's self driving car program in AZ isn't out of the woods yet. The Phoenix New Times https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/claim-ducey-state-blamed-uber-self-driving-death-unsafe-policy-11205678 reported last month that lawyers representing family of Uber victim Herzberg have sued the state of AZ for $10M, fingering Governor Ducey for failing to protect the people of his state.
After quoting legal precedent about the state's responsibility to keep roadways "reasonably safe" for travelers, the claim says the state has "failed to make roadways safe, allowing autonomous vehicles to operate on public roadways in an unsafe manner."
The state's oversight of autonomous vehicles was negligent, it states, adding that Ducey's 2015 executive order facilitating the testing of self-driving vehicles was created "negligently and without sufficient investigation into the safety of Uber's autonomous vehicles. Any oversight provided by a committed, ADOT, or DPS, was wholly insufficient, and placed an unreasonably high risk of harm to the citizens of Arizona."
The claim goes on to quote Ducey's 2016 invitation to Uber, in which the governor quipped that "California put the brakes on innovation and change," but he wouldn't. "This rush to be first in the 'tech boom' era made Arizona's roadways unreasonably dangerous," the claim states.
New Times made a similar argument that Ducey was at least partially responsible for Herzberg's death in the April 12 cover story, "Ducey's Drive-By: How Arizona Governor Helped Cause Uber's Fatal Self-Driving Car Crash."
Last time Gov. Ducey appeared here on SN was back on December 03 2016, https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/12/02/2341241 He announced that Lucid would start making cars in a new plant in AZ...in 2018. Looks like he missed that prediction --
Officials from electric vehicle startup Lucid Motors, which broke cover from stealth mode in October [cnet.com], made a joint appearance today with Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and Sonora, Mexico's Governor Claudia Pavlovich Arellano, to announce a manufacturing plant in Casa Grande, Arizona. The plant will begin production of Lucid's first car, an electric luxury sedan, in 2018, with parts being supplied from across the border in Sonora, Mexico.
Governor Ducey said the new plant will create 2,000 jobs by 2022 [cnet.com], and that Lucid Motors has promised to prioritize hiring among Arizona veterans.
Lucid Motors has shown a very sophisticated operation for its entry as a new automaker, with its Chief Technology Officer, Peter Rawlinson, an alumni of Tesla and Lotus, and Vice President of Design Derek Jenkins having spent time at Mazda and Volkswagen. The as-yet unnamed first model will compete with the Tesla Model S as a luxury sedan, and should boast over 300 miles of range. Lucid has also designed connected features and self-driving capability into this car.
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Officials from electric vehicle startup Lucid Motors, which broke cover from stealth mode in October, made a joint appearance today with Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and Sonora, Mexico's Governor Claudia Pavlovich Arellano, to announce a manufacturing plant in Casa Grande, Arizona. The plant will begin production of Lucid's first car, an electric luxury sedan, in 2018, with parts being supplied from across the border in Sonora, Mexico.
Governor Ducey said the new plant will create 2,000 jobs by 2022, and that Lucid Motors has promised to prioritize hiring among Arizona veterans.
Lucid Motors has shown a very sophisticated operation for its entry as a new automaker, with its Chief Technology Officer, Peter Rawlinson, an alumni of Tesla and Lotus, and Vice President of Design Derek Jenkins having spent time at Mazda and Volkswagen. The as-yet unnamed first model will compete with the Tesla Model S as a luxury sedan, and should boast over 300 miles of range. Lucid has also designed connected features and self-driving capability into this car.
Lucid Motors, because there's nothing from Tesla today.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 18 2019, @12:09AM (9 children)
I'm having such a hard time avoiding a certain meaning [wikipedia.org] for the term.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18 2019, @12:26AM (8 children)
Is that the link you meant?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 18 2019, @12:31AM (7 children)
Being more precise is NSFW, but I'm sure you can get my drift.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday March 18 2019, @12:45AM
No?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday March 18 2019, @12:47AM (5 children)
Oh, I get it.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 18 2019, @12:57AM (4 children)
I could bet you will eventually manage to get it, it was only a matter of (a non-zombie moment of your) time. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday March 18 2019, @01:15AM (3 children)
Are you saying I'm slow?
Oh, maybe I'm slow.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18 2019, @01:22AM
Just requiring a bit a patience, no biggie ;)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 18 2019, @04:18AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18 2019, @07:31AM
You willing to donate yours?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18 2019, @12:28AM (4 children)
The media is usually all over stuff like this. here is why they are not in this case (criminal record):
https://afscarizona.org/2018/05/14/the-untold-story-of-elaine-herzberg/ [afscarizona.org]
At the bottom her daughter left a comment on the article
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Monday March 18 2019, @12:43AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18 2019, @12:45PM
Hogwash. She was wearing an "I'm Not A Speed Bump" t-shirt when she was hit. What more could she have done?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18 2019, @01:10AM
I guess this Herzberg wasn't Jewish.
(Score: 2) by Captival on Monday March 18 2019, @06:19AM
Bullshit. You really believe the media made a conscious decision to research the victim, found one past conviction, then buried the story because of that? How ridiculous. If they really buried the story, you wouldn't be reading about it. I've seen the story come up many times between now and then. Besides, the media LOVES sob story articles about criminals. Usually only when they can blame police or homeowners for trying to stop them a little too violenty.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Snotnose on Monday March 18 2019, @12:47AM (6 children)
If this is the case I think it is then the victim would not have been a victim had she just looked before crossing the road. Yeah, you can blame Uber and the twit behind the wheel. But the ultimate responsibility is the dipshit crossing the street without looking for oncoming traffic.
Newsflash: You in your dark clothes on a dark night are hard to see. A car on a dark night with headlights on is easy to see. You may have the right of way but guess what? When push comes to splat, you lose.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday March 18 2019, @01:44AM (2 children)
As I understand the report, the computer system flagged her first as unknown object, then as a vehicle, then as a bicycle, and for some reason even then delayed emergency braking, and despite flagging the need for emergency braking 1.3 seconds before the collision, still decelerated only minimally before striking her. (I believe because the system had automatic emergency braking disabled.)
If she had instead been a vehicle or some large piece of something in the road or whatever (as the system first thought but took no action) any passengers in the self-driving car could have been seriously injured or killed.
So, regardless of what percentage of blame you want to fault the victim with, the response of the computer system still showed serious issues that contributed to a bad outcome.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Tuesday March 19 2019, @12:12AM (1 child)
Doesn't matter. Anyone with an IQ over 70 looks both ways before crossing the street and, if a car is coming, they wait.
This dipshit didn't. This dipshit walked into incoming traffic and got killed. So sad, too bad, not a whole lot of sympathy here. Self driving car, drunk driver, dude coming off a 14 hour shift, wide awake mom with kids in the back seat, normal dude changing radio stations. Doesn't matter.
The driver may be legally at fault, but the asshat that can't be bothered to look for oncoming traffic IMHO got what they deserved.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 19 2019, @02:15PM
She paid with her life. How did Uber pay for it's screw up? With a suspension.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18 2019, @02:26AM
The video of the accident as provided by uber had clearly been altered. The contrast/brightness were adjusted to hide the victim until as late as possible to give the impression that the accident was unavoidable.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday March 19 2019, @04:07PM (1 child)
You are only marginally right according to Arizona driving law, at least when I lived there and was trained to drive in that state in High School.
In Arizona no vehicle ever has a right of way. Vehicles and pedestrians only have instances when they are required to yield the right of way.
So from that you're pretty much right, unlike a state like California where pedestrians always have a right of way. Municipalities also have right of way laws more restrictive than the state. Parts of Tempe have an ordinance where one may only cross at a crosswalk - all forms of jaywalking aren't allowed... I can't remember if the location where the crash happened is in that zone but I think not. I used to work right in that neighborhood and drove that road many times on patrol as a security officer.
However, for all those issues, they are counterbalanced by the "reasonable and prudent speed" law.
Any driver who has an accident while moving can be (and usually is) charged under 28-701A, failure to control speed to avoid an accident. While not a requirement to yield in name, in practice it means that if you get into an accident you are almost always at some degree at fault for failing to control your speed to avoid it. The Arizona driver must always be prepared to drive defensively and always be driving a reasonable and prudent speed to never allow oneself to get into a situation where an accident occurs. When you're at any speed, in Arizona, an accident is usually at least partially your fault.
This is where self-driving cars fail in Arizona, and ought to. There is no way to make a self-driving car completely compliant with this law because a computer can never truly be reasonable and use prudence - it can only simulate it. So "Ducey got fingered," might be entirely appropriate for allowing and encouraging vehicles to be on the roadway that can never truly be compliant with the law.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday March 19 2019, @04:19PM
Correction: California state law has never quite been that way. California, like Washington state has a law that the pedestrian always has the right of way at an intersection. All fifty states have an equivalent law that pedestrians are required to yield to vehicles outside of marked crosswalks according to here [mwl-law.com], but the document also says that Kentucky, Michigan, and Montana also have laws which recognize that drivers must be alert to pedestrian crossings outside of crosswalks, while simultaneously having the pedestrian-must-yield.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18 2019, @01:53AM (2 children)
Uber, Arizona, Goodyear, D.O.T., Hulu, Starbucks, Kmart, Fruit of the loom, and soon the Sun for not providing daylight.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday March 18 2019, @02:59AM (1 child)
It is frivolous as fuck but industry insiders know that "self-driving cars" operate by shitty margins of safety.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18 2019, @03:23AM
Maybe that will come out in this trial? Or will Uber just settle with a gag order?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18 2019, @03:35AM (21 children)
The number of people who died in the USA due to automobiles in 2017 is 40k[1], if replacing all cars with autonomous automobiles would result in anything less than that then it's good news and an improvement over the status quo.
Self driving cars don't have to be safe, they only have to be safer than humans, and humans suck.
[1] per the first link google returns: https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2018/02/16/480956.htm [insurancejournal.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18 2019, @03:42AM (1 child)
avg. deaths per day: 110
avg. deaths per hour: 4.6
avg. deaths per second: 1/13th
Terrorism who?
Sort your fucking budget out, government funding for self driving cars would save far more lives than whatever waste of money NZ will cause.
Lives/$ is the metric which matters, the cause of death just doesn't matter.
(Score: 2) by Sourcery42 on Monday March 18 2019, @06:20PM
While I think you are correct, this kind of Pareto approach just doesn't seem to work with most of the general public. However, policies supporting a "war on terror" (complete loss of privacy, security theater/stupid human tricks, and the occasional needless war) or being "tough on crime" (America's huge prison problem), that's sexy; that gets Congresscritters reelected. Car crashes can be horrific, especially for those personally involved and their families. They just aren't horrific like mass shootings or plane crashes, so they don't tend to make the evening news unless there's some spin like this being a self-driving Uber. There are plenty of studies out there about how terrible people are at assessing risks even when the data is right in front of them.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by legont on Monday March 18 2019, @03:53AM (7 children)
Do they have to be safer than an average human (which is what you imply) or the best human driver out there? If first, your are asking good drivers to sacrifice their lives for the sake of an average. If second, it's not going to happen any time soon.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18 2019, @04:11AM
I just CBA phrasing everything in terms of deaths per 100k miles and wanted a punchy subject.
The replacement will be gradual, and prompted by insurers.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 18 2019, @05:21AM (2 children)
Have patience, mate, this will be a transient period.
Once all the drivers that are better than the AI... ummm... sacrifice themselves, we'll certainly fall in the second case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by legont on Monday March 18 2019, @02:45PM (1 child)
Yeah, every mediocre creature dream is for the fit to die off. Fortunately, nature works the exact opposite way.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 18 2019, @04:01PM
A driverless car is not natural.
Ask Bot [soylentnews.org], it knows.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18 2019, @01:56PM
This reminds me of a conversation between me and friend after I put on a safety belt
Friend: Don't you trust my driving?
Me: Sure and if you can assure me all the other drivers are as good as you, I'll unbuckle.
Friend: Fair enough.
I'm not usually a free market adherent, but here's a situation where it'll work. As AIs get better, insurance companies will start offering bigger discounts for using them. At first it will just be the people paying for high risk insurance that will see their insurance be cheaper to use AI, but eventually if the AIs get good enough, switching to AI will exceed my good driver discount and then I'll switch too. And if they don't, then at least those drivers who are worse than AI will not be driving.
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Monday March 18 2019, @09:35PM (1 child)
Safer than the average driver - that's easy. Let's break road users down into three groups: AWESOME drivers, AVERAGE and below-average drivers and OTHER road users (motorcyclists, bicyclists and pedestrians) and consider some scenarios.
Drivers in the AWESOME group don't need to worry about themselves because they are perfect. They do; however; need to worry about everyone else, who; by the power of statistics; happens to be AVERAGE. AWESOME drivers do have one advantage, namely awesome defensive driving ability.
The AVERAGE group comprises average drivers (no advantage conferred between robot or human). I am also considering below-average drivers part of this group and they'd be better off with robots - both for them and for everybody else.
The OTHER group is the most interesting. Given that walking is a human right but driving is not, and cars and pedestrians need to co-exist - the needs of people on foot trump the needs of people in vehicles. This is all the more important because pedestrians can't protect themselves with two tonnes of armour (and; remember; they belong there, cars are there under sufferance). Since the OTHER group find themselves at the mercy of everybody else it stands to reason that people in the OTHER group prefer any solution that beats the odds.
Remember that the main causes of crashes tend to be distraction, fatigue, impairment, over-confidence, inexperience, following too closely and impatience. None of which is suffered by a computer.
So; yes; if I truly happen to be an awesome driver, a case could be made that I'd be better than a robot behind my own wheel - and even better off when all the other sub-par drivers were replaced with robots. Of course; as stated above; the needs of pedestrians outweigh the desires of motorists, thus we come to the rational conclusion: once autonomous vehicles are better on average than human drivers, it borders on immoral for humans to drive cars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 19 2019, @04:30PM
False. An operating system can crash or become bogged down so tightly that it cannot function real-time (Apollo 11 1202 error, anyone?) A memory leak might be described as creation of fatigue within a system. Put 48V through a 5V system (heck, even 12V) and see if that system is impaired or not. A computer may receive feedback, the sum total of which might be experience - let me know when your computer is experienced "enough," as until then it is inexperienced. An operating system may cause a vehicle to follow too closely. Confidence and impatience are emotions. Computers cannot be confident at all nor can they be patient.
Finally, just because computers do not suffer problems in the same methods as people, or they don't crash from the same causes, that does not mean they are safer. And even if they are "safer" that does not make them automatically desirable. This class of accident is your proof.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Monday March 18 2019, @04:23AM (9 children)
I disagree. Some human drivers suck and some can go hundreds of thousands or even millions of miles between serious accidents. The odd thing is that self-driving cars are more likely to replace the safe drivers first.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18 2019, @05:42AM (8 children)
Good drivers are what, 100x safer than the average? Let's be generous here and assume that.
How many times safer are average drivers compared to people who've never driven (without instruction)? Easily 1000x or so in terms of accidents/unit distance.
How many times safer are people who've never driven compared to toddlers? Easily 1,000,000x or so.
The difference between an untrained AI and a shitty driving AI is vastly larger than the difference between a shitty driving AI and a better-than-unmodified-humans-could-ever-be AI.
The scale isn't |toddler----------------untrained----------------average----------------good----------------superhuman|, it's probably far closer to |toddler------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------untrained--------------------------------------------------------------------------------average---------good-------superhuman|
Once AI is as good as a barely competent driver, we're nearly finished making it utterly superhuman in terms of total effort. Don't let the slow years ahead overshadow the literal decades which preceded them.
Lameness filter encountered. Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter.
Try less whitespace and/or less repetition.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi dapibus vel velit eget lacinia. Integer sed posuere lorem. Ut nec lobortis metus. Vestibulum vitae vulputate ipsum. Quisque suscipit ante velit, sed volutpat arcu suscipit dictum. Phasellus vitae sem vel nunc faucibus feugiat rutrum vitae erat. Go fuck yerrself ya crappy heuristic. Donec varius luctus arcu, id commodo urna dictum varius. Morbi id ipsum a massa varius laoreet eget at ligula. Vestibulum nisi turpis, aliquet luctus consequat id, faucibus nec justo. Duis lobortis, nulla laoreet accumsan tristique, mi lectus aliquet mi, in laoreet dui nibh vestibulum sem. Nunc varius urna id metus tristique, nec auctor orci iaculis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18 2019, @05:54AM
I don't know much at all about AI research, I could be totally wrong, this post is pure speculation, and I didn't notice the tone I was writing it with until I posted. Please imagine I sprinkled some "I expect"s and "it would seem"s in it and didn't write as if I was stating facts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18 2019, @07:39AM
Your PS being noted, you also forgot to account for the law of diminishing returns.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 18 2019, @03:17PM (5 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 19 2019, @01:58AM (4 children)
Cars could get us around far faster if their limitations were the max accelerations our bodies could handle rather than the max speed we can be safe at.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 19 2019, @03:41AM (3 children)
Indeed. But that's my point. You can't get past those limitations so easily. The perfect AI couldn't brake much faster than a trained human would, for example. So if it's tailgating another perfect AI which has a tire blowout, it's still a multi-car accident.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 19 2019, @06:12AM (2 children)
A superhuman AI would provide economic incentive for better brakes/handling/acceleration that just isn't valuable to consumers right now except as bragging rights.
Also, when one's reaction times are measured in microseconds and one can run crude physics sims in milliseconds to check if a maneuver works, a whole lot of dodging around accidents becomes possible that humans couldn't even attempt without losing control and making it worse.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 19 2019, @12:13PM (1 child)
I strongly doubt it. Particularly, for vehicles that are just rented out which is the common self-driving scenario.
And physical lag that often can be seconds long.
Keep in mind the growing sensitivity to liability in developed world societies, particularly when there are deep pockets around. If a high energy accident happens in a packed highway, and it becomes a matter of who gets to experience harm (since in the seconds of evolution of the accident not everyone can fit in safe phase space zones around the accident), every step of that above process becomes something that can be questioned in court. Thus, there will be considerable slack in traffic flow, if only to reduce one's eventual court costs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 19 2019, @05:52PM
It's an interesting ethical question too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 19 2019, @01:54AM
No thnx, I rather drive than have to submit to a system that will eventually be super abused.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 18 2019, @02:10PM (1 child)
Suing the governor for not keeping the streets safe? 100% perfectly safe?
News: how about suing the governor for allowing intoxicated drivers on the road? Oh, wait! The state already has laws about this! As, I'm sure it does about autonomous vehicles.
Ah, the fault lies in the fact that the law was not being followed. In one case, when intoxicated people are allowed to
drinkdrive. And in another case when Uber's 'safety driver' was preoccupied watching a TV show.The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday March 19 2019, @04:35PM
Yeah, it's just the opposite, I think. The Governor does have the responsibility to not encourage companies to operate vehicles against the law. If the Gov encouraged people to drive drunk ("everyone should buy this new car that has the built-in wet bar where they advertise the driver can reach over and take a shot without taking the hands off the wheel!") the Governor would be at fault for the accidents this causes. Instead, we have a Governor who allowed and encouraged vehicles which cannot exercise reason and prudence (see my post above about ARS 28-701a).
This sig for rent.