Originally Posted by
JW Fas
I can think of a plausible reason for the disparity. Most, if not all, auto makers today use metallic paints, so even black cars are sparkly enough to reflect light well. Skin doesn't reflect light well unless you're sweating profusely, and even then it's not great.
As Maleochs has mentioned numerous times in this thread, most humans wear clothes in the out of doors. What skin is visible on the average person is the relatively small amount between hairline and neck! Military snipers may aim for the head during an assassination (or is that just Hollywood?) but all other forms of target acquisition use center of mass. Including, I suspect, ALL AV systems now in use. In fact the sensor suites on all the AV systems I know of are not limited just to visible light. They also use SONAR, LIDAR and Infra-red so that they can operate in all kinds of ambient light and precipitation. The sensor suite (the hardware) is not where any problem lies. We know that the victim of the deadly accident with the Uber AV was jaywalking. Is it crossing a line to speculate that such a possibility might simply not have occurred to a programming team composed of individuals from societies far more orderly than our own? Yep, its very possible that that woman would be alive today if America had not allowed its education system to lapse into dysfunction leading to an over-reliance on the intellectual work products of non-native STEM professionals.