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Comment by AdrianB1 | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand the fuss around this topic. In my country the law is very clear: in such a case the pedestrian has 100% of the guilt, the driver has 0% responsibility. From the movie, the pedestrian is hard to see. Yes, people point at Lidar and other systems, but human driven cars don't have anything like this: any human driver would have the accident in the same circumstances. But how about the pedestrian, didn't she see a car high 2 big headlights coming? Did expected the car to stop or avoid her? Why everyone blames the software (and Uber) and not the pedestrian crossing the street like she was crossing her living room where there are no cars around?

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The “fuss” is largely because someone was killed, and independent of the tech issues here, many people don’t believe that death is a reasonable penalty for jaywalking. The fact that states differ on applying fault in these cases should be a hint about how the morality here is not clear-cut.

Then there’s the tech-focused issue of why Uber’s AV could not stop or even slow down when encountering a human-shaped object that seems to have been visible for several seconds before impact. Part of Uber and other companies’ pitch for AV is that it has better than human reaction and detection time.

The human was a human with a bicycle in another lane. It probably was large enough being sideways to look like a car, and that car was in a different lane.

Not sure if the human with bicycle was sprinting across the road either.

For one, because self-driving cars are supposed to be better than humans at seeing in the dark with all sorts of sensors - otherwise what would be the point of even allowing them on the road?

From the NYT article it seems that Uber's self-driving car systems may have terrible performance. Worse than humans performance is very likely at this point, especially when they seem to have this attitude towards self-driving cars:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17144090/uber-car-acciden...

Also, either Uber may have potato cameras worse than a smartphone camera, or someone made that Uber video look so dark:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/police-chief-said-uber-...

We expect people to operate within the limits of their capabilities. We don't demand superhuman response time because we can't. We rely on things like "best practices" to capture reasonable standards of behavior.

Self driving car hardware is trivially capable of detecting a person walking in the road 80 feet in front of you. We should set our standards based not just upon meeting human performance, but also upon doing extra things that are well within the system capability.

Whether the pedestrian is legally at fault is only part of the issue. Failure to yield is a ticket, not a death sentence. The driver also has no legal right to strike the pedestrian.

Every driver (or equivalent) has a responsibility, be it legal or moral, to use all reasonable means to avoid crashes, injuries, and loss of life.

No one will accept autonomous vehicles that do anything less. If anything, an autonomous vehicle may be expected to avoid risk to humans by suffering self-damage.

I don't know which country you are talking about.

Dash cams are of low quality, which means such low light situations are hard for dash cams, but easy for the human eye. That means, if the drive should have take attention, the situation could have been prevented.

Second, every modern technology can cope with this situation, except Uber. A regular Volvo XC90 would have enganged emergency braking, which is called City Safety.

The video has poor dynamic range and is likely highly misleading. If the safety driver were paying attention it's quite likely they could have avoided it (although I imagine disengagement would negatively affect reaction time).

I wish this was brought up in all of the many news articles that have covered this story so far, if not from the police themselves. Even an argument from common sense seems clear: the visual range of the video is barely much better than what you see when driving down a rural highway. But the AZ road cuts through a public park where concerts are held, including the Marquee Theatre at the nearby intersection. The median from which the victim crossed even has a well-paved pedestrian path to get from a parking lot to ostensibly the park [0]. If the scene was as dark as the Uber dashcam portrayed, there would be many, many more victims than just the one from Uber's AV.

But speaking as a sometime camera enthusiast and photographer, I don't believe there any digital camera yet that comes close to capturing the dynamic range of the human eye.

Look at a still from the video. The exposure is such that the street lights are basically pinpoints that seem to illuminate little more than the patch of ground immediately beneath them. Anyone who has seen municipal street lights (or even the shitty ones on a country road) should be able to tell that that can't possibly be the actual amount of light at the scene [1]

[0] https://goo.gl/maps/xr5U1yHML6B2

[1] https://i.imgur.com/mP2jH6E.png

Somebody posted a video on youtube where they drove past the scene of the accident with a less crap camera, at the same time a day later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XOVxSCG8u0

a screenshot directly comparing the two images, appologies for the dumb meme crap

https://i.imgur.com/eSre3hL.png

There is absolutely no way the uber video is an accurate potrayl.

Well, I must admit I laughed at the meme.

The police's quick defense of Uber and their completely inaccurate comment about the pedestrian jumping in front of the car out of the shadow doesn't make sense to me except for collusion. A cursory look at even Uber's dashcam video would make it clear that the pedestrian didn't jump out, that the vehicle didn't even slow. So either the police were completely negligent or willfully lying to protect Uber. Didn't hear anything much about that.

But that was before I saw this thread and realized it wasn't even dark. If it couldn't even see a human in that lighting to even slow I don't know why this shouldn't be considered murder by negligence (whatever the legal term is) at every level from uber, engineers, the driver. And why the police chief is not being asked to explain his comment and defense of Uber.

You honestly think any alert human driver would have slammed into her as fast as that car did? I saw her in the video soon enough to have reacted, and I figure my driving skills are average. And that's assuming the lighting really was as bad as it looks from the video, which is dubious. My guess is that if I'd been driving I would have had time to slow down some, possibly saving her life.

I also find it in bad taste to blame this woman for her own death. There may have been a good reason she didn't see the car coming, but we won't ever know, will we?

Is it bad taste to point to the obvious? Really? You may be superman, your 70 year old grandma is also that fast avoiding ninjas on a highway?

It is bad form to use a strawman argument (very few people criticizing Uber have argued that the victim was blameless, at least from what I've seen on HN), though perhaps some would take extra offense when the argument involves a dead person, who among other issues hasn't been able to speak in her defense.

I can't speak for Uber and its engineering team, but I doubt they find it flattering when people defend their AV performance by comparing it to 70-year old grandmas.

You bring up a great (but separate) point. It is far too easy to renew your driving privileges even when your abilities are no longer sufficient to be a safe driver.

Arizona driver's licenses don't expire until you turn 65.

>I also find it in bad taste to blame this woman for her own death.

Not only, it shifts focus from the actual issue.

Once said that the poor woman, may she R.I.P., may or may not have concurred to the accident, the focus should be on the actual performance of the driving system.

Where I live it is common (not every-day common, but every-couple-weeks or every-month common) that while I drive home at night (plain, normal country road, with speed limits between 60 and 90 km/h) and far less public lighting than what is seen in the Uber video that any of:

1) deer/roebuck

2) boar

3) porcupine or other smaller animals such as cats, foxes, weasels

suddenly decide they want to go to the other side of the road just when I am passing.

I never happened to hit any of them, but it happens from time to time to find in the morning some of the smaller animals killed on the road.

Collisions with deers and boars as well do happen but they are maybe 1/100th or 1/1000th or 1/10000 of the "crossings", I remember having seen in several years only a handful of these accidents.

For the record, the boars are usually more predictable, you can often see them on the side of the road before they cross whilst deers and roebucks simply appear out of nothing before your car.

Even if it is a single anecdata with "vague" numbers, my experience is that on average human drivers don't hit "suddenly crossing" living creatures very often, and even when that happens/happened I have always seen evident signs of braking.

Even if we value 0 the life of these wild animals, the damage to the car when one of the large animals is hit is not trivial and then there is the shock, the risk of the car be driven off road by the impact, some (hopefully minor) injuries to the drivers or passengers.

All in all, while it would be unrealistic to expect "perfection" from an autonomous car driving system, the possibility of someone/something suddenly crossing the road in front of the vehicle should be part of the testing with some solid evidence that the reaction of the software is on average not worse than the average of human drivers, and possibly much better.

Moral or legal culpability is not a zero sum game. Recklessness by the pedestrian does not absolve Uber. Generally, if it's in your power to avoid killing someone, you have an obligation to do it. That's also why comparisons to a hypothetical human driver are beside the point. Uber should be judged according to what they could have done to minimize danger, not according to what a human driver would have done.

That seems kind of odd. Drivers are never at fault? What country is this?

In any case, it's less about the law or even who is at fault, and more about level of safety expected from self-driving vehicles and how to improve it. This is going to be investigated like an airline crash would, and the investigation should show what needs to be fixed.

It would help if you actually state the country in question, so we can properly judge your statement's applicability.

In the USA laws vary by state -- in California it is typically almost always incumbent on the driver to avoid pedestrians.

I've also traveled to countries like Jordan where the driver is always at fault, and fatally striking a pedestrian would have lifelong consequences for a driver.

The country is Romania and the law is very precise: if the pedestrian is not on a crosswalkk, any accident is the fault of the pedestrian. Funny, I lived in Jordan as my parents were expats there. Never heard about a case where a pedestrian hit by a car outside of a city had any consequences for the driver.

Funnily enough Romania is on top of the pedestrian fatalities statistics within the EU: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...

Maybe you should reconsider the law.

In Arizona it is legal to cross the road, outside of a crosswalk. Given that this was actually near an intersection, it probably wasn't legal in this case. But that isn't the issue. The issue is a self driving car, which is supposed to be better than a human driver, hit the person. A person died because a company was testing their product. A product that want ready to be used in real world conditions.

because thats not how progress is made.

I want self driving car accidents to evolve like airline crash investigations not traffic fatality ones.

Wouldn't those with greater power (the power to kill) be tasked with greater responsibility?

No. If you jump in front of a train, is the train driver's fault? Where is the pedestrian's responsibility?

A train has no steering capabilities, the breaking distance isn't even close to a car. All one can hope is that the train manages to stop within two times the line of sight, if lucky.

A selfdriving car should be able to stop a lot faster than a train, and has instruments that is supposed to be able to see an obstacle even in bad light.

In Arizona it is the driver's responsibility to yield to all pedestrians on the same side of the road. She somehow crossed 3 and a half lanes of traffic without the Uber SDV ever perceiving her. Their fault.

Coming back to this, I was wrong about the details of Arizona law. They require pedestrians to yield to drivers outside of crosswalks, marked or unmarked.

https://www.azleg.gov/ars/28/00793.htm

However, I still think Uber violated 28-794.1 and .3.

  Notwithstanding the provisions of this chapter every driver of a vehicle shall:
 
  1. Exercise due care to avoid colliding with any pedestrian on any roadway.
  2. Give warning by sounding the horn when necessary.
  3. Exercise proper precaution on observing a child or a confused or incapacitated person on a roadway.

https://www.azleg.gov/ars/28/00794.htm

Why should we accept your puny and limited human capability of "vision" as an excuse for a superior machine capable of much quicker reaction times and outfitted with a plethora of sensors that operate far beyond your narrow natural limitations.

Why should a pedestrian cross the street at nigh on a high speed street (over 30mhp limit) in front of a car? Did she know the car is controlled by a superior machine capable of much quicker reaction times and outfitted with a plenthora of sensors? Really guys? Blame anyone else except the pedestrian walking in front of a car? What if there was a train instead of a car, plenty of sensors and equipment? You completely lost your moral compass, I think.

Even if she would have crossed illegally! Drivers have to be prepared to handle situations where others violate rules! If you presume that everybody around you follows the rules, you make very dangerous assumptions:

1. that they perceive the situation in the same way you do

2. that their interpretation and application of the rules to the current situation is the same as yours

3. that they are currently able to control their body and vehicle sufficiently to follow the rules

4. That their vehicle does not malfunction

Can we accept that people walking across streets is a common occurrence? A driver, be it software or wetware, must be able to handle this.

In no country is it ok to deliberately drive into a human.

I don't know what country you live in but, in Arizona it is different:

http://www.ncsl.org/research/transportation/pedestrian-cross...

The pedestrian had the right-away in this particular situation.

EDIT :: Looks like I read that first sentence wrong (my apologies)... "Vehicles must yield the right-of-way to pedestrians within a crosswalk that are in the same half of the roadway as the vehicle or when a pedestrian is approaching closely enough from the opposite side of the roadway to constitute a danger"

Growing up in AZ I was always told that pedestrians ALWAYS have the right away - something I always thought was strange.

I do stand correct however.

My reading of it was the opposite: > Pedestrians must yield the right-of-way to vehicles when crossing outside of a marked crosswalk or an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection.

If a pedestrian is inside a crosswalk they almost always have the right of way. Outside a crosswalk it is not the case.

The link you shared disagrees with you - it says that in Arizona vehicles always have the right-of-way outside of crosswalks:

"Pedestrians must yield the right-of-way to vehicles when crossing outside of a marked crosswalk or an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection. Where traffic control devices are in operation, pedestrians may only cross between two adjacent intersections in a marked crosswalk."

Looks like I read that first sentence wrong...

"Vehicles must yield the right-of-way to pedestrians within a crosswalk that are in the same half of the roadway as the vehicle or when a pedestrian is approaching closely enough from the opposite side of the roadway to constitute a danger"

Growing up in AZ I was always told that pedestrians ALWAYS have the right away - something I always thought was strange.

I do stand correct however.

That page is about crosswalks. The person who was hit was not in a crosswalk.

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