I-Like-To-Bike

So sayeth Judge and Jury Maelochs about liability for the organization that ends up killing a pedestrian with a substandard product and an innattentive backup driver at the wheel.

genec

Yup, pretty damning of Uber and their win at any cost mentality. Seems like Uber is shooting themselves in the foot, while others are more likely to succeed overall with a cautious approach.

genec

NTSB is doing the investigation. BTW Uber seems to have reduced testing in CA, where stringent record keeping was required.

Do note however, damning Uber is NOT killing AV technology... the tech will continue to move forward.

KD5NRH

BS. HDL-64E is what Uber is supposedly using, in addition to the visible light cameras. At 38mph, it spotted her as much as 7 seconds before impact but didn't do squat with that information. If the LiDAR failed, the only acceptable course of action would have been for it to tell the babysitter to take over, and shut down all automated functions.

squirtdad

I would really question that conclusion until a detail accident analysis is available.

this is a test vehicle with a back up driver....who is or should be responsible if the AV fails.

Driver failed to pay attention, in what looks like (still need report) to me a situation where an alert driver could have mitigated (braked hard) or avoided the victim.

there are multiple reports that the AV did not break at all which indicates a failure of the AV system which could have/did impact severity of impact

Both of these failures, Human and Machine have liability and you can be sure there will at minimum be civil suits

noisebeam

Reports say everyone came back with clean tox screen.

Rollfast

7 seconds is an eternity on a bucking bull.

prathmann

When I view the video with some knowledge of how dash video looks compared to a live view, my conclusion is that if I had been the driver in that situation I could almost certainly have either completely avoided the crash or at least have braked and swerved enough to make it only a glancing impact.

But I'm also almost certain that no matter how diligently I tried to pay close attention as a 'back up safety driver' that I would not have been able take control and respond quickly enough to avoid the crash. It's one thing to have your hands and feet in active control and then to respond quickly to an unexpected dangerous situation and very different when you are an observer who first must determine that the computer control has failed to detect the danger and won't respond in time, then to grab control of the steering wheel and get your foot on the brake, and finally to take the necessary actions.

I remember reading an article written by one of the Google drivers a few years ago. He wrote that usually the autonomous system would take him to the destination without any issues but that sometimes the system would realize that it was confused by the situation and alert him with an alarm to take control. Meanwhile the car would start to slow and maintain a safe position in traffic until he took over. That way the 'back up' driver can avoid having the prototype AV stranded and blocking traffic in a confusing construction zone (or whatever the software may not be capable of handling). But expecting the back up driver to be able to size up the situation and take effective control in emergencies where only about 1 second is available before crashing strikes as putting unreasonable demands on that driver.

no motor?

I'll admit to not reading all 15 pages of discussion on this and wonder if anyone here knows if the use of reflectors, lights or bright colored clothing would have helped the senors detect her sooner before impact? A lot of us that commute by bicycle use those to make ourselves more obvious to human drivers, and I'd hope that these would make us more visible to the self driving vehicles of the future.

McBTC

Some of the complicating factors are that, it does not look like anyplace where someone is supposed to be crossing, it may not be a place where anyone would think they could cross safely and accordingly, a relatively high speed limit is permitted and it's very dark and poorly lit (no other cars around helping to light the road ahead) while at the same time, driving with high beams may not be appropriate due to many lanes of oncoming traffic... it's almost like you'd need radar to drive safely under the circumstances -- which no one ordinarily has -- and, it was there but didn't work... and, even if it did work, no system is going to do anything but brake-- the system is never going to turn on the blinker, switch lanes or drive into a ditch to avoid an unknown obstacle in the road.

tyrion

Agree. I bet Uber severely rethinks the "backup driver" concept. Shorten the shifts, more intense training, disallow cell phones (if not already disallowed) and maybe some tech aids like a detecting inattention and sounding an alarm.

02Giant 

I would take my chances with a jury against Uber.

mr_bill

Starting at 16m14s crossing the bridge.
Crash location at 16m57s.


-mr. bill

I-Like-To-Bike

As a pipe dreamer, I can get exited for the day when Uber with or without human drivers can take me anywhere I want for free. Why not, they don't make any money any how? Think how much market share they would get if they also provided free pizza and beer as well.

I won't hold my breath though waiting for Uber to field my dream project or even a profitable operation before it first burns through all of its investors' money.

noisebeam

^^that pretty much matches reality. it is darker than business mill, but still fairy well lit up - enough that one could get away with not bike headlight riding thru there.

I-Like-To-Bike

Possibly the NHTSA will mandate some "severe rethinking" for Uber, as well as the other AV promoters who use the their publicity departments and press releases to boast about the readiness and safety of their test vehicles to be unleashed on the public without on-board human override in case of software/hardware failure.

mr_bill

Another way of putting it, a human wearing sunglasses at night pretty much matches the reality of the released video.

-mr. bill

I-Like-To-Bike

A conventional motor vehicle driven by a human who is not paying any attention to the road who/what is crossing the road, and slamming into it/him/her without taking any evasive action pretty much matches the reality of the Uber vehicle operation seen in the video released by the police dept .

Or perhaps matches a human driven vehicle where the operator only looks to the right and not the left just like in the video cited by mr_bill.

tyrion

Can you identify any AV promoters who use the their publicity departments and press releases to boast about the readiness and safety of their test vehicles to be unleashed on the public without on-board human override in case of software/hardware failure, or is this another one of your strawmen?

KD5NRH

It's not a question of sensors detecting her; she was well within range of the LiDAR long before the point of no return. The issue is that the car did nothing with that information.

I-Like-To-Bike

https://waymo.com/

Be sure to watch the giggling cutups in the video!

https://jalopnik.com/googles-waymo-s...eng-1823729857

Extract:
"On Tuesday, Waymo CEO John Krafcik is delivering a keynote address at SXSW in Austin, where the company is unveiling a short video of what it’s like to ride in one of its driverless Chrysler Pacificas. It’s Waymo’s latest public relations effort amid an onslaught of announcements from the company ahead of the launch for its ride-hailing service—and it’s the clearest illustration of what a future world would be like if driverless cars ruled the road."

no motor?

Would the sensors have detected her sooner if she looked like a typical commuter? I agree none of that matters if the information doesn't prompt a response, but the next time things might be more complicated where the extra time would have mattered.

KD5NRH

Unfortunately, had the driver done that, the failure wouldn't be nearly so high a priority for Uber...or for any other company that's watching how this plays out.

Maelochs

The only reason I would not is because the lady had no legal right to be where she was.

As a cheezy prosecutor I would play up the drug-addled homeless crap, but in a court of law ... I strongly doubt it would ever get to trial. The judge has to follow the law, and the law is pretty clear that pedestrians are only supposed to be on roadways in very specific fashions: In crosswalks, when traffic lights are right, and when no cars are coming. To do otherwise is to use the roadway in an unsafe fashion.

Jaywalking is a ticketable offense. She was engaged in illegal and unsafe behavior and in fact, endangered not just herself the but also the driver.

if I drove my car over a median and perpendicularly across the road and got hit, whose fault would it be?

No good lawyer would let this go to a jury. it might make it into a civil court ... but the legal argument would be the same. "Your honor, my client (Uber and its driver) was driving exactly as the situation demanded---7 mph below the speed limit in fact.

"There was no negligence whatsoever. the safety driver is there in case it looks like the Uber is about to make a mistake---but in this instance, the Uber was proceeding down its lane of travel at an appropriate speed---a lower speed, in fact than any of us would likely have been driving (at which point I would bring in radar-results of speeds sampled over several days, proving that (as would be expected) most human drivers were between 40 and 50 mph through that stretch of road)---and simply had no time to react to a person moving abruptly out of the shadows and crossing the road illegally.

"The driver has no reason to expect such behavior, because such behavior is illegal, and in fact, put my client at extreme risk. had the driver Tried to avoid the homeless, drug-addled pedestrian, she might well have lost control and injured herself---or worse.

"We are all sorry for the deceased, but the fact remains that she has No Legal Right to be there and shouldn't have been, and her negligence put both herself and my client in peril.

"Holding my client answerable for the illegal and dangerous actions of another is simply unconscionable--it would be a mockery of justice."

Anyone who has ever hit a deer or any other animal at night knows how it is. As prepared as you might be for what you expect to happen, you cannot (by definition) expect the unexpected.

If people always had to drive as though at any moment anyone could suddenly run across the roadway or swerve from one lane to another, every trip would take six times as long. We could never drive more than 20 mph, and never get withing two car-lengths of another car--and would have to use only two lanes of three-lane roads, of one lane of two-lane roads.

A good lawyer would make everyone in that jury box picture him- or herself rolling down that same stretch of road---and most of them would be doing 55, particularly at that time of night, and they'd know it---and having some homeless drug addict stumble out of the dark into their paths.

"Imagine never holding your children again---never going to their high-school games or graduations or their weddings---never holding your grandchildren---because you were jailed because some homeless drug addict darted in front of your car late at night, while crossing the road Illegally in the darkest spot possible."

You want the other end of that argument?

tyrion

Lol, just as I thought. You can't.