njkayaker

People should be able to keep track of the unambiguous facts of the case.

The "likely future earnings" for a dead person is zero.

Don't these cases often have a "punitive" damage component?

If she has no survivors or dependents, who would bring the case?

njkayaker

The video came out before the weekend. That did away the "stepping out from behind a bush" nonsense.

* The public knows she had to cross 3 lanes of highway before reaching the lane she was hit in.
* The video shows she wasn't moving very rapidly. It's not likely she was moving any faster before then.

noisebeam

We have no idea from where or when she came. The rest is speculation.

Sure I can guess she may have been coming from the median (from where on the median is a wild guess), but earlier there were posters blaming the car electronics based on such facts which I later clarified were only an assumption. I prefer to go by what is known, not assumed when placing blame.

njkayaker

This isn't really true.

The video shows her moving from the left to the right.

If she came from the right side and turned around (which seems very unlikely), the car had even more opportunity to determine there was something in the lane in front of it.

You can determine roughly where from the median from the direction she is seen to travel on the video. It's not a "wild guess".

The median was three lanes to the left. That there were or weren't bushes to jump out seems to be besides the point.

===============

The damage was on the right front of the car. She was moving from the left in front of the car. It doesn't seem the car even applied the brakes to slow down.

Why didn't the car start to slow down when she entered the lane where the collision occurred?

It seems reasonable to expect that the systems should have handled this much better.

02Giant 

The first is true. The remainder, not so much. It is a fact she was in the road and the vehicle had no reaction to her presence. The vehicle failed to attempt to avoid.

njkayaker

No, it's not true.

The video shows her crossing the lane from the left.

In any case, the alternatives make it even less reasonable that she was hit.

02Giant 

Yes it is.

You do not know she was crossing. She could have been walking in circles in the middle of the road. She could have started on the right, made it half way, then turned around. She could have been walking up the road towards the vehicle and turned to the right of the vehicle just prior to the first image of her showing up on the camera.

jon c. 

If that's true, there may be no one with standing to file the suit. But if there is a civil suit, it will be interesting. The decedent was clearly substantially negligent. In a more routine case the plaintiffs would argue the driver still should have seen her and the apportionment of fault would depend at least in part on the jurors sense of what they could have seen. In this case, it will revolve around the functionality of sensors. Is there greater liability if the ability to "see" the decedent should have been greater than would be the case with a human driver?

I-Like-To-Bike

You should try and keep up instead of sniping. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-a...-idUSKBN1GY30I

"The law firm of Bellah Perez in Glendale, Arizona, said in a statement on Thursday it was representing the daughter of Elaine Herzberg, who died on Sunday night after being hit by the Uber self-driving SUV in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe."

McBTC

What appears to have happened is that she didn't have to cross three lanes-- she didn't need to step out in front of the uber car-- auto lighting isn't designed to light up the road in front of oncoming traffic-- you wrote that, "The video from the car might not be a reasonable representation of what a human would be able to see," but... how could it not be at the least, a reasonable representation? You observed from the video that she was not moving very quickly and it can't be missed that virtually just appeared out of nowhere. Where it not for being a car utilizing self-driving technology, the legal standard would be clear under these circumstances.

02Giant 

I'm not suggesting that anyone suggested otherwise. Just throwing out there, everyone with any part of the autonomous vehicle/systems will be called for a deposition.

To me, rightfully so.

tyrion

Uber AV activity suspended in Arizona.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...987_story.html

Good.

02Giant 

I'm not surprised. With the lack of State over-site, they will likely face further scrutiny, maybe even Civil action.

McBTC

What may have happened is that the crossing wasn't done all at once-- having reached the center she may have lined up on the center line, either waiting or walking to a place where it may have been closer to a point on the other side that was her ultimate destination. If that did happen, she would have been a lot less visible and may possibly have been completely stationary before turning the bars and suddenly crossing the speed lane in front of the Uber 'Johnny Taxi'

CliffordK

I wouldn't be surprised if this was the end of the Uber Self-Driving experiment.

A lot seems to indicate that Uber was struggling with the self-driving before this accident, and the CEO has apparently questioned the merits of the program in the past.

Uber was nervous about self-driving program before fatal crash - Business Insider

KraneXL

Not in the least. Every time technology moves forward there will be tragedies. A lot more people died just getting the automobile moving forward, and even today with all the safety features we've put in place over the decades, its still #1 on the list of "most likely way to be injured or die."

CliffordK

A lot of car companies have also died off (or were bought out), leaving us with the Big 3 + Tesla.

Maelochs

AV tech is for sure not going away soon ... but Uber's version of it might.

The questions Uber execs and board members would be asking would be: how much might a lawsuit cost us? How many more might be generated if our sensors aren't up to par and more accidents like this happen? How many people will be looking to have an Uber moment and bring a lawsuit, sensing vulnerability?

Balanced against: How much money have we invested,? How much more does it look like we will need to invest to start seeing RoI? How much money are we making as a company (negative cash flow, I hear.) How much longer can we get investors to fund us if our prospective RoI gets worse.

And: Can we possibly compete with Waymo, which is (apparently) far ahead in terms of functionality, which has out-spent and out-tested, which has huge backing, which can attract investors just with the name and pedigree?

I could see Uber doing the "Back to core competencies' thing and shrinking or cutting its AV program.

Old management (the ones which started the program) seem to have gotten stuff done by sheer obnoxiousness and force of personality. New management actually wants to run like a business (no sex harassment, personal pressure, fits of rage ... actually have meetings to discuss possible courses of action, and above all----actually Make money some day.)

Easy for me to imagine Uber deciding the program is too far behind and cut its loses.

Not predicting they will or not, just saying if they did it wouldn't seem crazy to me.

02Giant 

I can see the potential for that to happen.

It depends how far the civil suit goes. Uber, to cover their az, pays off the family to make the case go away, they may survive. Uber digs in their heels, opens up their entire program to scrutiny, and it is clean, most of their problem goes away. On the other hand, if their program has deeper issues, they lose big in the court case and investors abandon them like the plague.
Does AZ. have Damage Caps in liability cases?

Does the State, after the fact, make Uber open their records, regardless of the civil suit outcome.

For those that think some number of deaths is acceptable during the development of, or after the full implementation of AV's, are you willing to offer up one of your family members as the next potential victim?

There is a massive difference between a motor vehicle which is in the control of a human, being in an accident and a death occurring, and an AV that is in full autonomous mode failing to recognize an object in the road, and mowing it down causing a death.

Maelochs

For those that think some number of deaths is acceptable during the current implementation and daily use of human-powered automobiles are you willing to offer up one of your family members as the next potential victim?

30,000 to 40,000 per year since about 1960 .... and that isn't "development" but full "implementation."

Apparently you, 02Giant, are one of the people who are willing to risk a family member on the roads ... because I don't hear about you arguing against automobile use in general.

Or maybe ... that who "offering up family members" is an emotionally loud but logically empty argument. Maybe the concept of "an acceptable number of deaths" is something we all accept so implicitly we don't even notice, something we do in absolutely every phase of our lives.

Again ... every one of us here "accepts" a certain number of deaths due to traffic accidents already ... and have, throughout our lives. And while Uber's AV tech may be crap, only the most willfully ignorant and benighted claim that properly operating AVs would not likely drive better than humans---humans who generate 30,000 to 40,000 "acceptable" deaths every years on the roadways.

AVs aren't being introduced to make money---car companies already make lots of money selling human-driven cars. AVs are being introduced as an Improvement in our transportation methods.

If autopilots can fly airplanes, in time, autopilots will be able to do a lot of the driving that right now humans do so badly.

Say ... now that we have mentioned flight ... think how many people died trying to fly even before the first powered flight was achieved. I guess we should have quit before 1903, eh?

"if man were meant to fly, he'd have wings."

And if man were meant to drive he'd have the processing power and concentrating ability of a computer, and be able to react at the speed of electricity flowing .....

Uber cheaped out and tried to rush to grab market share in Arizona before it was ready. So ... therefore ... no one should ever drive or fly again. No loss of life is acceptable.

But wait ... Romaine lettuce has been found to carry e.coli.

"Each year roughly one in six Americans -- or 48 million people -- gets sick from food poisoning. That includes 128,000 hospitalization and 3,000 deaths, according to previous CDC estimates." (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cdc-lea...ood-poisoning/)

I guess we need to stop eating, too. After all, who would volunteer a family member's life as we develop the process of putting food on our tables?


I suppose on the other hand we could just not freak out about everything and maintain some perspective. Do people still do that? Is that still a thing?

jon c. 

Not long ago, six people died in Miami when a pedestrian bridge collapsed during the installation phase. A few years back, a bridge on an interstate highway collapsed in Minnesota. From time to time, bridges collapse and people die. Would you suggest stop building such structures because of such periodic failures? Instead, we try to determine root causes and make improvements, but we continue on with the technology because some number of deaths are acceptable.

KraneXL

The sentiment from both perspectives is understandable, but perhaps inherent risk would make the concept of acceptability a little more palatable?

mr_bill

Sometimes you have to look for what is not seen.

See this sign?


It's here:


And here:



Watch the video again, and watch the sign. Who occludes the sign?


-mr. bill

I-Like-To-Bike

Uber looses tons of money every quarter; Tesla looses tons of money every quarter, Google makes no money in the transportation business. You really do believe in their altruistic motives!

Maelochs

Actually ... if you could and would think ... you would realize that Google is introducing AVs not to make money now ... as you said ...


but to create a new and better transport mode. As I said.

Then, somewhere way down the road, it makes money by being the most recognizable.

it is interesting when I see a person holding all the parts saying "these parts don't fit together" when the situation is really, that the person doesn't want to make the parts fit.