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Comment by Keats | Hacker News Reader

Someone on Reddit posted a comparison of the same spot at night but with a good camera: https://m.imgur.com/a/PM7uu from a video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XOVxSCG8u0

That paints the whole accident in a very different light from the video from Twitter. Would any human not notice someone crossing in the good camera screenshot?

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Yep, also this HDR image of the scene at night: https://imgur.com/gallery/XQrAB

Really hope the cops didn't just look at the low-dynamic range dashcam video and decide it's case-closed here. I would not want one of these Uber cars on the streets with me.

NTSB is investigating the crash, so surely they'll conduct adequate forensics work.

I think Uber should be forced to share all of the sensor data.

Historically, building and engineering codes advance in response to disasters. This mindset needs to be applied to robots that are going to be operating in public spaces. Incidents like this are an opportunity for all self-driving car developers to get better and there's a public safety interest in that happening.

I drove by last night around 10pm and this is in line with what I noticed. It is not anywhere near as dark as the original video shows.

Wow, this really paints a different picture. If Uber cars have video quality like the one in the Tweet they should not be on public roads at all.

Edit: I'm not asserting that this is the only video that car "sees", but if it's not, it seems a bit disingenuous for Uber to share only this crappy low quality video with the police.

So we have no idea if it's just a crappy dashcam or it has to do with the compression algo that twitter applies to videos. Note the video the imgur screenshot is taken from a vid uploaded to youtube.

Also, the dashcam probably isn't what the car uses to "see", that would be beyond disqualifying.

Maybe uber made the quality of the image worse? I just don't trust uber.

Uber are a totally ethical company who would never do anything as underhanded as that!!! /s

If that is true that would be egregious. I think that might qualify as tampering with evidence.

Despite the fact that the driver was clearly playing with his mobile (which makes him indefensible), I have some sympathy for the driver not reacting early enough. Even if the driver spotted the obstacle, the car is only going to apply the brakes when it gets closer to the obstacle, not half a kilometer before. So how much time would the driver have had to 1. assess that there is a danger, 2. realise that the self driving car is not reacting to that danger, 3. apply the brakes.

Your point 2. is actually very important and I haven't seen it discussed before. We don't know what instructions the drivers have been given, but there will be first a question in the drivers mind about if the car will react.

The driver has to consider if they will be reprimanded by Uber for breaking before the car had a chance to.

So this might stop any kind of reflex action - which I assume is what the standard 0.5s reaction time is based on.

Makes the Police video seem suspect to me.

The police were on the scene of the accident. They presumably would take photos of the scene. So they had other shareable evidence that would show the conditions more clearly.

Yet they choose to tweet out this very low quality video that basically absolves Uber. Plus they have a motive to spin the story after local government invited uber there to run these tests. Seems very CYA-ish.

I wonder if the moon phase or clouds had anything to do with the lighting conditions.

Don't know why this is being downvoted, it's an interesting point.

There's a significant difference in lighting between a night with a clear sky and full moon versus an overcast night and new moon. Not saying that's the case here, but it's not a valueless comment.

My guess would be because there’s already been pictures shown that show the street has pretty good street lamps.

Well, obviously it was dark. It was new moon on March 17, one day before accident. However, dark is normal conditions for driving.

That picture is shockingly clear. I have trouble imagining how any human driver would not have seen that pedestrian. The road seems incredibly well lit.

> Would any human not notice someone crossing in the good camera screenshot?

Humans run into things in broad daylight all the time.

It took me a bit of back and forth to try and exactly match various videos and pinpoint what actually happened. I've take a screenshot of Google Maps [0] and added some annotations [1].

It's confusing because in the Twitter video it all looks like there is two lanes, but at the actual collision there's four lanes.

What is stupid to me is that there is a pedestrian path that leads right up to a 4-lane highway without any kind of barrier with nowhere close to cross over.

edit: I added a screenshot of the victim's view of the on-coming car [2]. You can see how clear the road is leading up to the crash site.

[0]: https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4363673,-111.9425082,3a,75y,...

[1]: https://imgur.com/ujik94t

[2]: https://imgur.com/Z6QteJC

Thanks

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