[srishiva]

With a Tesla hitting the median recently with autopilot engaged, I think these vehicles save lives by not having stupid drivers or distracted drivers who make mistakes. But do they make some mistakes which could kill a decent driver who would not have made such mistakes ?

I think we will see more of these avoidable even by human crashes and will have lots of discussions on the efficacy of these systems.

[Prathiiik]

Uber’s autonomus car detected the pedestrian, decided not to act

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bihl9ItgsIv/?hl=en

[mpksuhas]

Related news.

Uber has laid off its self-driving car operators in Pittsburgh as the company rethinks its autonomous vehicle strategy following a fatal crash in Tempe, Arizona, earlier this year.

The company held a meeting earlier today (July 11) to inform about 100 autonomous vehicle operators—people who monitor its self-driving cars—that their jobs were being terminated, a source close to the situation told Quartz. Uber said it was eliminating the position of autonomous vehicle operator, and that operators were free to apply to other roles at the company, the source said.

Full news here at source

[mvadg]

Originally Posted by Prathiiik

...
Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bihl9ItgsIv/?hl=en

Originally Posted by srishiva

With a Tesla hitting the median recently with autopilot engaged, I think these vehicles save lives by not having stupid drivers or distracted drivers who make mistakes. But do they make some mistakes which could kill a decent driver who would not have made such mistakes ?

I think we will see more of these avoidable even by human crashes and will have lots of discussions on the efficacy of these systems.

The systems on Uber autonomous vehicles were not even sufficiently checked or even programmed to handle such situations, in other words, wilful negligence. Uber is a shady company and should never have been entrusted to take on such projects.


No reason to think we (humans) will not be able to manage the task of creating autonomous vehicles successfully; we just have to put the right people to lead the venture. After all our spacecraft have successfully navigated to planets we've never been to.


I don't know much about the Tesla crash, so I will refrain from commenting on that.

[KiloAlpha]

The NTSB, which investigated this accident, has released its report on this accident. It is available via this link: https://dms.ntsb.gov/pubdms/search/h...t=0&TXTSEARCHT

An article in IEEE analyses the design decisions that led to this crash. Full article is here: https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-...-toward-safety
Some excerpts from the article -

The Uber car that hit and killed Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Ariz., in March 2018 could not recognize all pedestrians, and was being driven by an operator likely distracted by streaming video, according to documents released by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) this week.

A radar on the modified Volvo XC90 SUV first detected Herzberg roughly six seconds before the impact, followed quickly by the car’s laser-ranging lidar. However, the car’s self-driving system did not have the capability to classify an object as a pedestrian unless they were near a crosswalk.
...
For the next five seconds, the system alternated between classifying Herzberg as a vehicle, a bike and an unknown object.
...
Worse still, each time the classification flipped, the car treated her as a brand new object. That meant it could not track her previous trajectory and calculate that a collision was likely, and thus did not even slow down. Tragically, Volvo’s own City Safety automatic braking system had been disabled because its radars could have interfered with Uber’s self-driving sensors.

[audioholic]

As quoted from the above article:

Worse still, each time the classification flipped, the car treated her as a brand new object. That meant it could not track her previous trajectory and calculate that a collision was likely, and thus did not even slow down. Tragically, Volvo’s own City Safety automatic braking system had been disabled because its radars could have interfered with Uber’s self-driving sensors.

It is totally disgusting to read this. If the system was not even able to classify objects accurately, then either Uber should not have gone so overconfident on testing it on the road, that too with a careless guy behind the wheel, or they should have used the existing systems of Volvo and given it the higher priority when it came to braking. They just wanted to make a public show of testing driverless cars and ended up this way. While this was a serious incident, there have been far more reports of fender benders and stuff involving these cars from Uber. They should first get the basics right on a test track, and then come onto public roads. There are fantastic test facilities in the USA as well as Europe where active safety systems can be tested extensively.

[Jeroen]

This is a total cock up of Uber and the various safety oversight commissions that approved of Uber taking to the roads with these experiments.

Sort of a Déjà Vu after all the Boeing/FAA mess.

Jeroen

[Sutripta]

However, the car’s self-driving system did not have the capability to classify an object as a pedestrian unless they were near a crosswalk.

Uber should pitch it to GoI. But as a population control measure.

This is a total cock up of Uber and the various safety oversight commissions that approved of Uber taking to the roads with these experiments.

I think permission was given by local authorities. Trying to show how forward thinking/ technology friendly they were. And Uber being Uber most possibly played fast and loose with the truth.

Regards
Sutripta

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by Sutripta

I think permission was given by local authorities. Trying to show how forward thinking/ technology friendly they were. And Uber being Uber most possibly played fast and loose with the truth.

Yes, that is how I read it too. The appropriate authorities did approve. But had no clue and did not do any verification on how Uber was going to test this new technology. They relied on Uber knowing what to do and how to do it. Sounds vaguely familiar.

[GutsyGibbon]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Yes, that is how I read it too. The appropriate authorities did approve. But had no clue and did not do any verification on how Uber was going to test this new technology. They relied on Uber knowing what to do and how to do it. Sounds vaguely familiar.

Authorities are no doubt screwing up in approving tech that is under development. On those lines, I do not understand how other cars are getting certain tech approved.

I have been driving a 2020 Toyota Corolla for the last week. It has Toyota Safety Sense 2.0, with Pre collision, Pedestrian detection, lane departure, road edge detection, Road sign assist, Dynamic radar Cruise control, with steering assist. The steering assist is a nightmare. Even on freeways with clear lane markings, the feature beeps and disables itself abruptly with no time to react, while it swerves out of lanes, and roads. It also enables itself randomly. All the while displaying long messages in English on the dash - with the reasoning. Who reads that while driving? I understand Toyota wants to compete with other cars, but I fail to understand how they got approval for this feature. On top of it called it safety sense, how does NHSTA allow these cars to have such flawed tech. The touch screen, and dash always has tons of disclaimers that the driver needs to agree to. .

If this is the state of cars being sold to the masses, good luck to humanity for cars in R&D phase. I am glad this Toyota I am driving is a rental.

[mvadg]

Other than "I told you so", I really have nothing much to say.
Big corporations today are completely unethical, as always. What is different is, we the people of this world, have become complacent. We always knew Uber operated illegally, unethically and even criminally. Numerous investigations have shown how Uber deliberately set up software to sidestep laws. Yet, here it is, still operating blissfully after a second murder.
Same as Boeing, with it's MAX failures. Greed rules. Uber and Boeing are high profile cases. What is interesting is that there's no Ralph Nader to block these corporations.
Each of us needs to fulfill our duties as citizens of our planet and reign in these wayward organizations.
High time to join together on Solidarity-onboarding.