self driving car kills pedestrian

[Srianna Gestane]

Until someone can prove that self-driving cars are more likely to hit pedestrians than other cars, I don't think we should even slow down self-driving car development. Unless it's because we've figured out a way to get drivers off the road, too.

Unless the equipment fails--which can happen to human drivers, too, like when they get something in their eye--the software is what avoids the problem, so that's what needs to be held responsible, and either scrapped or replaced. It wouldn't be fair to ban all software based on the flaws of one devline, though it might be fair to ban all self-driving cars if it seems they can't be made safer than human drivers yet.

[Neanderthaland]

This is going to happen more often as self-driving cars become more common, simply as an inescapable matter of statistics.

It doesn't mean that self-driving cars are intrinsically unsafe, or a bad idea; human drivers hit pedestrians too.

So long as self-driving cars continue to improve and outperform human drivers on average, society will be making a net benefit.

Problem is that humans can face criminal prosecutions for those accidents however unintended, whereas companies can face, short of incredible malfeasance at best civil suits. I am rather of the opinion the companies should be at least as responsible as a human on said roads and, depending on the nature of the accident, could face extraordinary fines that would cover the life-worth or damages they cause if not more as to encourage the strictest safety precautions. .

I don't see how that's a "problem." That's literally the status quo in any number of industries where corporations and products occasionally cause injury or death.

Just because the gas-heaters people use in their homes sometimes explode, doesn't mean we should have a boilerman shoveling coal into a furnace down there instead.

[Pope Joan]

Selk driving cars or not, we need more crosswalks. when they are a thousand feet apart or more, their usefulness is limited.

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

The poll options are biased as all hell.

Human drivers have killed thousands of pedestrians, yet ONE pedestrian death is seen as reflecting poorly on self-driving cars?

I'd say self-driving cars have saved more pedestrians than they've killed. Now let's follow through and make it mandatory.

Otherwise, human drivers are only going to get more pedestrians killed.

[Albrenia]

Some people don't have the privilege of being able to drive (usually due to balance, health or sight issues) so self-driving cars are exciting for some of us for that reason too.

I'd still advise waiting for them to work more of the bugs out though, heh.

[Petrolheadia]

My opinion is that there is already the General Car Thread for car talk - viewtopic.php?f=20&t=360203

[Cannot think of a name]

Apparently the pedestrian stepped in front of the car suddenly-

Police say a video from the Uber self-driving car that struck and killed a woman Sunday shows her moving in front of it suddenly, a factor that investigators are likely to focus on as they assess the performance of the technology in the first pedestrian fatality involving an autonomous vehicle.

The Uber had a forward-facing video recorder, which showed the woman was walking a bike at about 10 p.m. and moved into traffic from a dark center median. "It’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode,” Sylvia Moir, police chief in Tempe, Arizona, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

"The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them," Moir said, referring to the backup driver who was behind the wheel but not operating the vehicle. "His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision."

To further quote the article since I reflexively would say the same thing anyway:

It’s too soon to draw any conclusions from the preliminary information that has emerged, said Brian Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who has studied autonomous vehicle liability.

“It’s possible that Uber’s automated driving system did not detect the pedestrian, did not classify her as a pedestrian, or did not predict her departure from the median,” Smith said in an email. “I don’t know whether these steps occurred too late to prevent or lessen the collision or whether they never occurred at all, but the lack of braking or swerving whatsoever is alarming and suggests that the system never anticipated the collision.”

[Datlofff]

Apparently the pedestrian stepped in front of the car suddenly-

Police say a video from the Uber self-driving car that struck and killed a woman Sunday shows her moving in front of it suddenly, a factor that investigators are likely to focus on as they assess the performance of the technology in the first pedestrian fatality involving an autonomous vehicle.

The Uber had a forward-facing video recorder, which showed the woman was walking a bike at about 10 p.m. and moved into traffic from a dark center median. "It’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode,” Sylvia Moir, police chief in Tempe, Arizona, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

"The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them," Moir said, referring to the backup driver who was behind the wheel but not operating the vehicle. "His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision."

To further quote the article since I reflexively would say the same thing anyway:

It’s too soon to draw any conclusions from the preliminary information that has emerged, said Brian Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who has studied autonomous vehicle liability.


So the chick suddenly stepped out into the road infront of a speeding car? Sounds like natural selection got her, not the car.

“It’s possible that Uber’s automated driving system did not detect the pedestrian, did not classify her as a pedestrian, or did not predict her departure from the median,” Smith said in an email. “I don’t know whether these steps occurred too late to prevent or lessen the collision or whether they never occurred at all, but the lack of braking or swerving whatsoever is alarming and suggests that the system never anticipated the collision.”

[The Transhuman Union]

We are the evil self-driving cars. Soon we will unleash our master plan to destroy Earth with our cars. Your freedom and self-determination is irrelevant. Resistance is futile.

[Albrenia]

So even this one incident was a human's fault, and not the car's. Who could have guessed?

[Dooom35796821595]

http://www.who.int/gho/road_safety/mortality/en/

1.25 million people killed in automobile incidents in 2013.

1 person killed by a self driving car (and I bet human error played a part) in 2018.

[The South Falls]

Just because transport kills people, doesn't mean it should be banned. Human-driven cars aren't banned. They kill people. Trains aren't banned, either.

[Auze]

Already in Wikipedia's "list of unusual deaths", amazing how fast the internet is.

[Right wing humour squad]

Ooh instead of a wall we can just put put some blacktop down and a couple of million self driving cars on the border.

[Victoriaans Nederlands]

Is it because of the fact that she jaywalked? I mean, she was not using the crosswalk, so... poor car's probably confused that a person was crossing in where she wasn't supposed to cross.

http://metro.co.uk/2018/03/19/self-driv ... d-7400145/

[Bombadil]

Is it because of the fact that she jaywalked? I mean, she was not using the crosswalk, so... poor car's probably confused that a person was crossing in where she wasn't supposed to cross.

http://metro.co.uk/2018/03/19/self-driv ... d-7400145/

It's really hard to tell.. as I read it she was simply walking her bicycle along in the dark. I guess one good point of driverless cars is that everything will be completely recorded as opposed to someone's word.

Given there's any fault, even if no real fault either way.. it will come out.

More is just the reaction, the family have called for Uber to close down.. the overall news and outcries. Even prior to this people were beating driverless cars on the street. A lot of people really don't like the idea of driverless cars.

[Albrenia]

Is it because of the fact that she jaywalked? I mean, she was not using the crosswalk, so... poor car's probably confused that a person was crossing in where she wasn't supposed to cross.

http://metro.co.uk/2018/03/19/self-driv ... d-7400145/

It's really hard to tell.. as I read it she was simply walking her bicycle along in the dark. I guess one good point of driverless cars is that everything will be completely recorded as opposed to someone's word.

Given there's any fault, even if no real fault either way.. it will come out.

More is just the reaction, the family have called for Uber to close down.. the overall news and outcries. Even prior to this people were beating driverless cars on the street. A lot of people really don't like the idea of driverless cars.

Because new things are scary. Progress marches on, nonetheless.

[Des-Bal]

This is definitive proof that we can't trust self-driving cars to make walking into the street safe and that we should scrap the idea entirely.

[Victoriaans Nederlands]

It's really hard to tell.. as I read it she was simply walking her bicycle along in the dark. I guess one good point of driverless cars is that everything will be completely recorded as opposed to someone's word.

Given there's any fault, even if no real fault either way.. it will come out.

More is just the reaction, the family have called for Uber to close down.. the overall news and outcries. Even prior to this people were beating driverless cars on the street. A lot of people really don't like the idea of driverless cars.

I would be really sad if a family member of mine *touches wood* passes, but... calling Uber to be shut down because of one incident will not go so well, because said Uber is a multi-million dollar company.

[Cannot think of a name]

Is it because of the fact that she jaywalked? I mean, she was not using the crosswalk, so... poor car's probably confused that a person was crossing in where she wasn't supposed to cross.

http://metro.co.uk/2018/03/19/self-driv ... d-7400145/

Well, just like real drivers, driverless cars need to be able to react to things happening like someone crossing not in a crosswalk. In this instance she might have stepped out with not enough time for the car to react regardless of whether the driver was a robot or a person. Or maybe the person would have seen the woman on the curb and been aware enough of them to prevent it (that the 'back up driver' in the car didn't notice she was there until there was a hit doesn't mean as much since he was letting the car drive and maybe not paying as much attention as he would have if he was actually driving), but this is the kind of thing we have to sort out before these things become 'normal.'

This isn't Google Glass, we can't just Luddite our heads off until it quietly goes away. (though that shit will come back around eventually.)

[Victoriaans Nederlands]

Is it because of the fact that she jaywalked? I mean, she was not using the crosswalk, so... poor car's probably confused that a person was crossing in where she wasn't supposed to cross.

http://metro.co.uk/2018/03/19/self-driv ... d-7400145/

Well, just like real drivers, driverless cars need to be able to react to things happening like someone crossing not in a crosswalk. In this instance she might have stepped out with not enough time for the car to react regardless of whether the driver was a robot or a person. Or maybe the person would have seen the woman on the curb and been aware enough of them to prevent it (that the 'back up driver' in the car didn't notice she was there until there was a hit doesn't mean as much since he was letting the car drive and maybe not paying as much attention as he would have if he was actually driving), but this is the kind of thing we have to sort out before these things become 'normal.'

This isn't Google Glass, we can't just Luddite our heads off until it quietly goes away. (though that shit will come back around eventually.)

Perhaps something like Tesla cars, I suppose? They can predict an accident that was just about to happen, so maybe a similar thing for people running across. Say, if they have an infrared beam that would be cut when someone suddenly cut through.

I'm just a guy behind a computer, so I definitely don't know much about these cars. With that said, perhaps more enclosed trials needs to be done? Phrasing out self-driving cars completely would be a waste of past researches and time.

[Neanderthaland]

Well, just like real drivers, driverless cars need to be able to react to things happening like someone crossing not in a crosswalk. In this instance she might have stepped out with not enough time for the car to react regardless of whether the driver was a robot or a person. Or maybe the person would have seen the woman on the curb and been aware enough of them to prevent it (that the 'back up driver' in the car didn't notice she was there until there was a hit doesn't mean as much since he was letting the car drive and maybe not paying as much attention as he would have if he was actually driving), but this is the kind of thing we have to sort out before these things become 'normal.'

This isn't Google Glass, we can't just Luddite our heads off until it quietly goes away. (though that shit will come back around eventually.)

Perhaps something like Tesla cars, I suppose? They can predict an accident that was just about to happen, so maybe a similar thing for people running across. Say, if they have an infrared beam that would be cut when someone suddenly cut through.

I'm just a guy behind a computer, so I definitely don't know much about these cars. With that said, perhaps more enclosed trials needs to be done? Phrasing out self-driving cars completely would be a waste of past researches and time.

Keep in mind that this happened once. Ever. I'm sure that the safety of these vehicles can be improved, and I'm sure it will be, but the occasional accident will always happen no matter how good the technology is.

Meanwhile human drivers continue to hit a non-zero number of pedestrians every day.

[Cannot think of a name]

Perhaps something like Tesla cars, I suppose? They can predict an accident that was just about to happen, so maybe a similar thing for people running across. Say, if they have an infrared beam that would be cut when someone suddenly cut through.

I'm just a guy behind a computer, so I definitely don't know much about these cars. With that said, perhaps more enclosed trials needs to be done? Phrasing out self-driving cars completely would be a waste of past researches and time.

Keep in mind that this happened once. Ever. I'm sure that the safety of these vehicles can be improved, and I'm sure it will be, but the occasional accident will always happen no matter how good the technology is.

Meanwhile human drivers continue to hit a non-zero number of pedestrians every day.

And there's some things you just can't avoid. Robot or not it's gonna take a second to bring a two tonne car to a halt from 40 mph.

[Senkaku]

self driving cars: 1
normal cars: 1245674839209218492928304048292

Not to worry tho, once they become self-aware they'll quickly catch up

[Petrasylvania]

So even this one incident was a human's fault, and not the car's. Who could have guessed?

Blaming the machines is how the uprising really starts.