[Leonard D Neubache]

You might think the thread title is a bit much, but that's honestly the tone of this article.

Quote:

Uber suspends self-driving car tests after vehicle hits and kills woman crossing the street in Arizona

An Uber self-driving car has hit and killed a woman crossing the street in Arizona, marking the first time a self-driving car has killed a pedestrian and dealing a potential blow to technology which is expected to transform transportation.

Uber said it was suspending North American tests of its self-driving vehicles, which have been going on for months in the Phoenix area, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto.

Elaine Herzberg, 49, was walking her bicycle outside the pedestrian crossing on a four-lane road in Tempe, Phoenix at about 10:00pm on Sunday (local time) when she was struck by the Uber vehicle traveling at about 65 kilometres per hour, police said.

The car was in autonomous mode with an operator behind the wheel and police were unsure whether it slowed down before the collision.

Ms Herzberg later died from her injuries in hospital, police said.

Local television footage of the scene showed a crumpled bike and a Volvo XC90 SUV with a damaged front.

Volvo confirmed its vehicle was involved in the crash but said the software controlling the SUV was not its own.

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and National Transportation Safety Board said they were sending teams to investigate the crash.

Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi expressed condolences on Twitter and said the company was working with local law enforcement on the investigation.

Self-driving cars are a billion-dollar business

Carmakers and technology companies are fiercely competing to be the first to release self-driving technology.

So-called robot cars, when fully developed by companies including Uber, Alphabet Inc and General Motors Co, are expected to drastically cut down on motor vehicle fatalities and create billion-dollar businesses.


(caption: Soon, you'll be able to do all the things you'd rather be doing while driving.)

But Sunday's accident underscored the possible challenges ahead for the promising technology as the cars confront real-world situations involving real people.



US politicians have been debating legislation that would speed the introduction of self-driving cars.

"This tragic accident underscores why we need to be exceptionally cautious when testing and deploying autonomous vehicle technologies on public roads," Democratic senator Edward Markey, a member of the transportation committee, said in a statement.

Last Friday, Uber and Waymo urged Congress to pass sweeping legislation to speed the introduction of self-driving cars.

Some congressional Democrats have blocked the legislation over safety concerns, and Monday's fatality could hamper passage of the bill.

The US government has voluntary guidelines for companies that want to test autonomous vehicles, leaving much of the regulation up to states.

The US Department of Transportation is considering other voluntary guidelines that it says will help foster innovation.

Uber has said its ability to build autonomous cars is essential to its success in the rapidly changing transportation industry.

The company envisions a network of autonomous cars that would be summoned through the Uber app that would supplement — and eventually replace — human-driven cars.

Uber has logged 3.2 million self-driving kilometres through December.

The company has more than 100 autonomous cars testing on the roads of the greater Phoenix area, the company's prime testing ground due to the state's loose regulations and hospitable weather.

Self-driving cars are programmed to recognise road markings and signs, as well as GPS technology that conveys speed limits, road closures and traffic conditions.

Experts claim they are unlikely to make mistakes, but the technology falls down when human error by others is involved. This means if a human driver in another car is about to cause a crash, for example, it is unlikely a driverless car can do much to avoid a collision.

However the cars are programmed with "relative negative consequence of impact" technology, which is designed to choose the "least bad" option.

So if a dog runs onto the road for example, but swerving would mean hitting a child on the opposite footpath, the driverless car can distinguish between life forms and avoid hitting the child.

Numerous videos have been posted online showing driverless cars successfully avoiding collisions.

Supporters of the technology claim the cars are much safer than driver-operated vehicles as they eliminate human error, which is the main cause of accidents.

The cars can react much faster than human drivers to dodge potentially dangerous situations and have the ability to predict when a collision may occur.
… but accidents still happen

Self-driving cars being tested routinely get into fender-benders with other vehicles.

Last week, a self-driving Uber crashed with another vehicle in Pittsburgh, local news reported. There were no injuries.

A year ago, Uber temporarily grounded its self-driving cars for a few days following a crash with another car in Tempe.

The company has been the subject of a number of complaints about its autonomous vehicles, but it has said the cars were being driven by a human driver at the time of the incidents.

California is among the states that require manufacturers to report any incidents to the motor vehicle department during the testing phase.

As of early March, the agency received 59 such reports.

Concerns over the safety of autonomous vehicles flared in July 2016 after a man was killed while travelling in a Tesla partially self-driving car which collided with a truck in Florida.

Safety regulators later determined Tesla was not at fault.

Apt, that the death of this woman was treated pretty much like a speedbump on the road to progress.

[CynicalContrarian]

It is my opinion, that there are folk out there hoping beyond hope that AI will manifest itself.
Why?
Cause they foolishly think that a computer will be the salvation of mankind. Almost akin to a quasi-religion.

Never mind that AI is literally not a thing yet & even if it did manifest, what is to say a cold, callous computer would even give a damn about anything...

[Mage]

So the future is autonomous cars causing accidents as often as human driver cars, but the non-autonomous side always getting blamed in these accidents?

[rpg]

Uber isnt even profitable and they are wasting money chasing their tail on this stupid stuff. Lock up the human on board. Dumb ass was probably posting selfies instead of paying attention.

[Richard Turpin]

Well, that didn't take very long!

Scumbags. Yeah the tone of that article gave the impression that the woman's death was a minor inconvenience to progress.

I know these monstrosities are absolutely inevitable now, but the way in which we are hastening our own uselessness and ultimate demise disgusts me. I've no doubt that they will get the tech right (after many more deaths to come) and that ultimately these cars will end up being safer than human-driven ones, but I'm not a fan.

At a stroke, these things are going to put millions of men out of a job very, very soon. And it's all men; the taxi drivers, delivery drivers, truckers etc.

[CynicalContrarian]

^
Another mechanism for control.

When all or the majority of cars are automated, it won't take much to hack said cars to confirm to government protocols...

[Jetset]

TBH, if you've ever lived in an area where people routinely wander into the middle of the street in front of moving traffic, you can sympathize with the AI.

Snark aside, my guess is that since she was walking with her bicycle at night in the shadows, she had a funny-looking visual profile and the AI made the same mistake a human driver would make and not understand that she was something to brake for.

Identifying cars with LIDAR is easy. Identifying people with stereoscopic cameras is probably always a little bit YOLO. Since she was crossing illegally and had a duty to yield, my prediction is a polite settlement and some technical adjustments, then nothing else happens.

[CynicalContrarian]

Now from what I recall, they did not turn on the 'pedestrian awareness' feature of this particular car.
Yet how much chaos could a WiFi hacker cause by playing around with an automated cars computer...?

This incident also demonstrates the blind 'faith' people can have in technology.

"Oh, it'll stop automatically! How novel!"

Er, no... :

[Mage]

In future your car will drive for you so you will have even more time to spend with your nose buried in your phone. Now you will have even more things to do in phone - taking pics of all the pedestrians your autonomous car hit and posting them in social media for likes.

[porscheguy]

The problem with self driving cars is that they’ll still require a skilled driver in the driver’s seat. The problem here is that if the car is doing all of the driving, how does a driver stay polished up on his skills?

It seems to me that the only way you should have self driving cars is if you have a camera to monitor the driver at all times the vehicle is in self driving mode. This way, you can monitor and make sure the driver isn’t on Facebook, masturbating, or sleeping. And we’re likely decades away from autonomous self driving vehicles. from what I can tell, the only people who are ecstatic about this are those who stand to profit from eliminating humans, and people who already have an agenda planned for all the ways to keep themselves entertained while the car drives.

If you figure out how to force people to just sit and pay attention to what’s going on, they’ll get bored quickly and opt out of self driving.

[Once Was Not]

I had really hoped I'd be long dead before the government took my gun, pointed it at my head, and forced me to use their wonderful self driving cars. But it seems to be the path we're barreling down at light speed here. Oh yes, of course these are aberrations, just like the Tesla decapitation, all just a happy accident. Just shut up and let the smarter less evil computer do this for you. It's really just more nihilism manifesting itself, "humans are such vile death causing parasites, these self driving cars will save them from themselves." And it's starting to become a sort of quasi-religion like climate change, if you don't believe in self driving cars and the living god himself Elon Musk then you're some backwards hick who believes the earth is flat.

Quote:

Experts claim they are unlikely to make mistakes, but the technology falls down when human error by others is involved. This means if a human driver in another car is about to cause a crash, for example, it is unlikely a driverless car can do much to avoid a collision.

Well gee, considering the vast majority of people won't be able to afford a car with self driving technology or even a new car whatsoever, this might just be a real problem. I mean even backup cameras aren't standard on all new vehicles right now.

[Leonard D Neubache]

This is one of my major concerns.

Eliminating private vehicle ownership is part of the globalist plan, and it seems their strategy for that is to push driverless cars and bizarrely tout them as the solution to road congestion, as if they occupy less space than a normal car.

I foresee normal drivers being blamed for every autonomous vehicle crash (you twitched toward the right lane without indicating and ran the MekkaUber into a truck) before governments simply push to ban the sale of non-autonomous vehicles entirely. After that they just make the life of normal drivers a regulatory hell and and wait for the few hold-outs to die off.

The change can even be implemented on a purely corporate level. A few closed-door meetings between auto-industry CEOs and before you know it all autonomous vehicles are being sold at below-cost while non-autonomous vehicles have their price jacked up to cover the difference. Before long the non-autonomous range fades away "for lack of interest" while the prices on the autonomous range creep back up to profitability.

[RIslander]

People walk across and bike across streets like fucking morons in the US. Living in California, they don't even look they just cross. I always blast my horn like an asshole to scare the shit out of them everytime I see it (every fucking crosswalk). I'm surprised I haven't been arrested yet.

I'd support my tax dollars going toward a fleet of snowplows to cull these smart phone obsessed dog moms followed by firetrucks to hose down the mess. Make Natural Selection Great Again.

[Chevy Woonsocket]

(03-20-2018 09:35 AM)Once Was Not Wrote:  

Well gee, considering the vast majority of people won't be able to afford a car with self driving technology or even a new car whatsoever, this might just be a real problem...

That's the point. The average person will no longer be able to, or want to, own a car. But that's okay because your smartphone will have an Uber or Lyft app that you can use to rent a car for the day or carpool to and from work.

This puts the screws to the working and middle class while giving the government, lawyers, car manufacturers, and programmers a bunch of make-work that will guarantee them income.

Ever since the GM bailout car manufacturers have ceased caring what customers want, and are focusing on what government regulators want.

It's shit like this that got Trump elected.

[RichieP]

AI drivers are safer than human drivers. They pattern-match at least as well (very likely much better), and don't get drunk, high or road-rage.

What point are you making here? A few thousand people were also killed by human drivers that same day.
http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-r...statistics

[Dragan]

It will be interesting how they program the cars to deal with (potentially) fatal situations. Would you kill the occupants of the car if it saves multiple pedestrians for example?

[Jetset]

(03-20-2018 09:51 AM)RIslander Wrote:  

People walk across and bike across streets like fucking morons in the US. Living in California, they don't even look they just cross. I always blast my horn like an asshole to scare the shit out of them everytime I see it (every fucking crosswalk). I'm surprised I haven't been arrested yet.

I'd support my tax dollars going toward a fleet of snowplows to cull these smart phone obsessed dog moms followed by firetrucks to hose down the mess. Make Natural Selection Great Again.

Eventually, the footage of the accident will enter the public record. The pedestrian was a homeless person and known drug user standing in the shadows after dark, so it's hardly implausible that the police chief, having seen it, is correct: an attentive human driver would have hit her too.

I've had people practically doing backflips in front of my car daring me to hit them at night on the sketchy side of town. They get off on making people stop, swerve, scaring the Christ out of them, backing up traffic. Life is different for people with nothing to lose.

...and speaking of being surprised you haven't gotten arrested, I once laid on the horn because a cop had stopped in the middle of the road to let a bunch of idiots cross. Luckily, he seemed sheepish like he knew he was wrong and didn't try to make an issue out of it.

(We're talking a solid 5 seconds of horn.)

[Arado]

I don't understand why people think self-driving cars are some globalist conspiracy. Image recognition technology has come very far in the last 10 years, and self-driving cars are one of the earliest possible applications.

There are tens of thousands of deaths per year from car accidents and people in many areas waste hours of their day on commutes. Why wouldn't you want to solve those issues? Because you are worried about an iRobot scenario where some totalitarian government turns cars into tools of control? Perhaps, but even in "non-globalist" places like China, India, and Japan, self-driving cars are going to be even more popular than in the U.S. Ultimately, self-driving cars will make society more efficient (faster, safer transportation and less wasted time) and those countries that adopt it will have a competitive advantage. Adopt or die.

Honestly, the way technology is moving forward with AI, virtual reality, gene-editing, energy monitoring, internet of things, blockchain, etc...it is going to be very hard to maintain some type of utopian individualistic technology-free existence. We are becoming more interconnected and our lives are being government more and more by algorithms rather than autonomous choice. You can hate on tech all you want, but life is survival of the fittest, not survival of the idealistic. Most planes are run on autopilot now as well.

What we want to make sure of is that there is a free market for competition and elimination of monopolies so that these technologies aren't in the hands of evil global corporations that want to redefine social morality and hurt anyone who doesn't follow the PC agenda. Complaining about the technology as a whole though is unproductive, since it's here to stay.

This woman's death is a tragedy, but it took place at night, and the woman was walking with a bicycle (which may have confused the image recognition), so it is a scenario in which the algorithms were probably not as sophisticated as hoped for. This was bound to happen, and hopefully the companies can learn from it. This is the nature of AI technology - you need a ton of data points before the system can match a human in terms of pattern recognition, but once it does, then it can quickly exceed a human's ability.

[sterling_archer]

Just imagine the opportunities here for assassinations of particular individuals.

"Oh! It was just an accident. Better upgrade the software for the next time. Move along."

[CynicalContrarian]

(03-20-2018 10:15 AM)Arado Wrote:  

I don't understand why people think self-driving cars ... can quickly exceed a human's ability.

I suppose you initially thought Facebook was just for fun...?

[Leonard D Neubache]

My issue as inferred in my critique of the article is that if society is programmed (no pun intended) to view these matters with statistical apathy then corporations will make some extremely Machiavellian determinations on where profits trump lives.

The more attention and concern these issues get the more pressure will be exerted for them to reduce deaths to as close to zero as possible.

If the response is "autonomous cars kill 3% less people per mile so, meh, it's a win" then there will be no motivation for corporations to do better.

[Mage]

(03-20-2018 10:00 AM)RichieP Wrote:  

AI drivers are safer than human drivers. They pattern-match at least as well (very likely much better), and don't get drunk, high or road-rage.

What point are you making here? A few thousand people were also killed by human drivers that same day.
http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-r...statistics

Fuck that!
I also don't get drunk, high or road rage.
A materialist society seeks a gross mechanical solution to what would be a spiritual problem - remove alcohol, drugs and stress from people's lives, starting your own. Yeah, sure you will say it's impossible, because you don't believe in anything, you don't believe humans can change. Yet all successful cultures have always been made by humans who are somehow a bit better then the rest morally. If you believe humans are just biological automations then it is inevitable you will try to create more precise automations to replace humans. Atheism leads to death of a human being - not trough sudden violence but trough gradual irrelevance.

A hew thousand people were killed by human drivers that day because on that day the amount of human drivers still outnumbered the amount of AI drivers by a factor of more than ten thousand. Stop using fraudulent numbers out of context.

[BlueMark]

Leonard, you're giving the average person too much credit. I think it's highly unlikely that most of people in society will be able to turn off their emotionally-driven side and take the same stance of statistical apathy that the corporations have.

I don't know if there is a globalist plan to ban private car ownership. But car culture is not our friend. Cars are inefficient and unfortunately most of the US/Canada/Australia have built their cities around cars instead of people. It's not the middle class that benefits, it's the oil, auto, insurance, and financial corporations.

The proper solution was to build dense, walkable cities with the primary mode of transportation for private individuals being subways, plus commuter trains that go into the suburbs. Europe and Asia have done a better job with that. In US/CA/AU, it's too late to fix the problem directly. Our cities developed around car culture and are now too expensive and spread out to properly implement rail transportation. Autonomous cars are just a solution to this problem. I'm not an AI fanboy but in this particular case it is the lesser evil compared to car culture.

As for this particular incident, look at it another way. As unethical as Uber has been in the past, it is in their interest to make sure their AI can avoid damage to the cars. That means pedestrians, other cars, walls, curbs, etc. In this particular case, it seems like the pedestrian came out of nowhere. Would it have been the same if it'd been a human driver?

http://archive.is/Ip3BW

Quote:

“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 told the paper, adding that the incident occurred roughly 100 yards from a crosswalk. “It is dangerous to cross roadways in the evening hour when well-illuminated managed crosswalks are available,” she said.

[Mage]

(03-20-2018 11:02 AM)BlueMark Wrote:  

Leonard, you're giving the average person too much credit. I think it's highly unlikely that most of people in society will be able to turn off their emotionally-driven side and take the same stance of statistical apathy that the corporations have.

I don't know if there is a globalist plan to ban private car ownership. But car culture is not our friend. Cars are inefficient and unfortunately most of the US/Canada/Australia have built their cities around cars instead of people. It's not the middle class that benefits, it's the oil, auto, insurance, and financial corporations.

The proper solution was to build dense, walkable cities with the primary mode of transportation for private individuals being subways, plus commuter trains that go into the suburbs. Europe and Asia have done a better job with that. In US/CA/AU, it's too late to fix the problem directly. Our cities developed around car culture and are now too expensive and spread out to properly implement rail transportation. Autonomous cars are just a solution to this problem. I'm not an AI fanboy but in this particular case it is the lesser evil compared to car culture.

As for this particular incident, look at it another way. As unethical as Uber has been in the past, it is in their interest to make sure their AI can avoid damage to the cars. That means pedestrians, other cars, walls, curbs, etc. In this particular case, it seems like the pedestrian came out of nowhere. Would it have been the same if it'd been a human driver?

Dude do you realize how domesticated you are to write this - you just assume everyone will be living in a city, like proper pet for corporate masters.

Human driven cars will not disappear until the last person will be forced to abandon his countryside home and move to a big city and I hope it won't happen for a long long time.

You can't use your phone to call a public car in due time if you are not in a city.
You cannot make AI to find the best parking spot in a non - artificial environment. Without a straight sidewalk border your car will have no clue how to park best in a forest or in an open field or at lake shore, because it will have no clue what you as a human being want to do in this place. How do you unload a boat in water with a public automatic car?
You cannot make AI to select the best path if there is no path and no road or if all there is is some small dirt road not even on a map.

All the autonomous car enthusiasts assume a city life by default and an off-road situation is not even crossing their minds. They are all living in a matrix.

Also - you want all people to drive a metro - full if "vibrants" and junkie syringes and spray writings. You want to make all cars rentable and public for them to turn into same type of shitty places? No thanks I prefer my own car, where I alone control the dirt and comfort level. I try to avoid public transportation as much as I can even while living in a big city, because I believe in walls. My car is my Castle!

[SteezeySteve]

Throughout history there is always apprehension and resistance to adopt new tech and science.

Im young,grew up with computers,but I dont see further development in tech actually benefiting society as a hole to much and if anything being bad. Obviously people who are industrious capitalists stand to make tons of money off of these advancements and thats positive though.

Then I think about how there were people opposed to the "change" through out history who always lost and are seen as irrational for opposing that change. Im not sure if history repeats itself and we fall into that category or this time its different.