Hacker News Reader

Comment by eddieplan9 | Hacker News Reader

Please stop spreading rumors and speculations. The graphic is an illustration and does not necessarily place the car in the actual lane. It clearly contradicts with the police chief’s statement that the victim walks right into traffic from center medium. It even contradicts with the left arrow pointing to the impact location in the same picture.

View on HN

Please don't accuse me or other commenters of spreading "rumors and speculations", without evidence or logical arguments.

I didn't state a bunch of claims, I linked to a NYT published article. If it turns out that the NYT depicted the incorrect lane, then I expect we'll see a correction. But they published this graphic staked on their reputation for accuracy, not on just "rumors".

Moreover, it does not contradict what the police chief said; here is her initial and only interview:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Exclusive-Tempe...

> Pushing a bicycle laden with plastic shopping bags, a woman abruptly walked from a center median into a lane of traffic and was struck by a self-driving Uber operating in autonomous mode.

> “The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them,” said Sylvia Moir, police chief in Tempe, Ariz., the location for the first pedestrian fatality involving a self-driving car. “His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision.”*

The police chief also said a number of things that have subsequently been changed. In the Chronicle article, she's reported to have said that the Uber was driving 38 in a 35mph zone. The NYT graphic and other stories from today have said it was a 45mph zone.

"It's very hard to imagine a scenario in which a 49-year-old woman walking her bike manages to cross 3 lanes of traffic so quickly that the Uber AV, moving at 40 mph, had no time to react, in a location with good street lighting and with clear weather. I would think most humans would be able to at least hit the brakes, if not completely avoid a collision."

Imagining an approximate version of the scenario and thinking that most people would be able to do what the known unimpaired driver could not is literal speculation. You are reading more into the graphic than can be reasonably derived from the graphic, and the -text- of the graphic is itself explicitly uncertain about the victim's location before and after the collision. Your comment expresses more credulity than the very source you linked to.

If you want to speculate that the Uber driver and police are covering up negligence, that's fine. Trying to claim some sort of logical high ground in a known uncertain scenario is not.

Literally every discussion of note involves reading more into the original article, so yes, I guess you have me there, I am speculating. I didn't realize that was against the rules of HN discussion to bring in evidence external to the OP and state our premises?

Is it speculation to point out that the police and OP misidentified the gender and name of the driver (it's Rafaela Vasquez, not Rafael)? Or that newer articles have disputed the 35 mph limit?

edit: I'm not reading too much into the graphic by stating explicitly what it shows. I'm making the assumption that the NYT designer isn't being loose on the facts here and that the Uber vehicle was in the right lane.

So why can't I claim a logical basis based on the other agreed facts, such as the victim being a woman who is walking her bike across the street, and our general observation of how fast people are able to cross a lane of traffic? What set of physical laws and constants should we be using here?

"If you want to speculate that the Uber driver and police are covering up negligence, that's fine" - the conclusion of the comment you're replying to.

My beef is with 'Please don't accuse me or other commenters of spreading "rumors and speculations", without evidence or logical arguments.' The problem is fooling ourselves into being more certain than we can be. While this is common human behavior, especially in emotionally fraught situations, as people attempting to engage in reasonable discussion on a discussion board, we need to do better. Acknowledging our biases and limited perspective while researching and before replying improves the discussion for everyone.

addendum: what everyone agrees and states is uncertain - where on the road the victim was hit. Another area of uncertainty among us non-witnesses is the immediate traffic at the time of collision.

That's fair. I interpreted the other commenter as saying that what I linked to was just rumors and speculation. I don't see the NYT graphic (even with its caveats) as being just rumors, but yes, I'm clearly engaged in speculation and should be called out when I'm out of line. I only disagreed that my speculation was based on rumor (e.g. "Tempe Police have a history of mistreating and oppressing homeless people, so it's likely they are overstating factors favorable to Uber")

This is a hard conversation to balance. You were right to state OP added more to the scenario than is known. But people tend to react defensively (which turns into offense often) when they’re personally called on as you did there.

The nonviolent thing to do, I am honk, is to simply describe what is actually known and point out how the accounts differ.

For what it’s worth, none of us were there and it sounds like definitive information is lacking. My hope is for this to be valuable used to ensure safer driving for everyone (autonomous or not).

"The problem is fooling ourselves into being more certain than we can be. "

I want to thank you for saying something I have been having trouble putting into words. I'm not sure if it is me or whether something has changed recently with discourse on the internet but I am coming across more and more people speaking as thought they are an Authority of a subject, while simultaneously posting complete incorrect information.

I can barely even stand to read threads here anymore, if the topic is something I'm very knowledgeable about. So many intermediate-level folks making way overconfident assertions that are way off base, or completely unaware of the state of the art. And it's virtually guaranteed that if I was foolish enough to spend time replying with corrections, they'd try to waste my whole afternoon arguing with me. I wish some of these overconfident statement-makers understood they and this community would be better off if they asked questions instead.

As someone who is doing exactly what you recommend. Most of my questions go answered. It seems people are going perform actions which bring them attention.

If you are an expert/outlier for a given topic, wouldn't you generally expect (in an open forum) that the majority of people speaking/opining on the topic will sound dumb/basic relative to what you know?

(I'm not the person you're replying to)

It's not their level of knowledge, it's them having a high level of conviction when they have no grounds to have such a high level of conviction.

Exactly. Their confidence not only helps to spread misinformation, but also signals to me that if I offer corrections, they'll argue with me down to the last pedantic toe-hold they can win. No thank you.

OK, but I already explained my reaction was interpreting the user describing my comment as "rumors". I thought it was an unfair accusation and wanted more "evidence", e.g. updated reports that contradicted the NYT graphic. I wasn't aspiring to this being anymore than a usual discussion of news events.

But I agree, yes, it is easy to fool ourselves into being more certain than justified. I like having that pointed out during HN discussions :)

The parent didn't say that he is imagining anything. Read the post again.

They are saying that based on the information in the NYT article it does not seem credible that the woman came out of nowhere, that there was no time to react, and that the first thing the driver noticed was the sound of hitting the woman before even seeing her. The driver is a party in this story and may well be at fault for causing her death.

> It's very hard to imagine a scenario in which a 49-year-old woman walking her bike manages to cross 3 lanes of traffic so quickly that the Uber AV, moving at 40 mph, had no time to react, in a location with good street lighting and with clear weather

Explaining the imagining, is the salient issue.

> The parent didn't say that he is imagining anything

Splitting hairs over the phrasing is not compelling. The poster was proposing a scenario as the most reasonable interpretation while couching it to minimize criticism (the equivalent of the "just sayin" trope).

The premise is flawed. It never sounded reasonable to assume the pedestrian did not see the vehicle at all. I can imagine a perfectly reasonable scenario where the pedestrian tried (and failed) to clear the vehicular path before being struck on the attempted destination side of the road.

I'm not splitting hairs. The person I replied to, and you, are splitting hairs.

Sincere question: how did I couch it to minimize criticism? And I don't know exactly what the "just sayin" trope is, is it this one:

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=just%20sayin...

Not sure how it applies. But anyway, in my defense, I didn't say that I was imagining scenarios. I said the exact opposite, that I could not (or, it was "very hard to") imagine a scenario in which someone crossing left-to-right is mostly unseen by a right-lane driver. By saying I can't imagine, I'm limiting myself to my own experience and observations.

News articles frequently post artistic renditions of far-away star systems but it would obviously be foolish to try draw any scientific conclusions from those graphics.

As far as I know, there hasn't been any official acknowledgement that the accident occurred in the right lane (or any specific lane for that matter). In fact, IIRC, there was a mention of the accident happening at around 100 yards from a crosswalk, whereas the stretch of road depicted in the picture is around 200ft away. The graphic also uses weasel words like "somewhere in this area". I mean, somewhere where? 100ft south? 10ft to the left? Only someone who has seen the actual video would be able to make an informed comment, and so far the police has not released it to the public.

I'm not convinced this picture can be reliably used for armchair forensics.

Agreed. As I mentioned in an earlier thread, it would make a lot more sense if the pedestrian was crossing from the right side (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16625829). But it's all speculation until we see the video, or at least get more detailed and reliable reports.

>I didn't state a bunch of claims, I linked to a NYT published article. If it turns out that the NYT depicted the incorrect lane, then I expect we'll see a correction. But they published this graphic staked on their reputation for accuracy, not on just "rumors".

My experience with the NYT (and basically every news outlet) on technical no issues that I'm familiar with, is that they are not particularly concerned with getting the details 100% correct.

I don't expect better from them in the discipline of auto accident reconstruction.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com