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Comment by decacorn | Hacker News Reader

in response to that piece by Brad, I sincerely hope that the "safety" driver in the uber accident was fired.

The safety driver is basically irrelevant, beyond being a scapegoat. I've written up some words on this: https://www.brainonfire.net/blog/2018/03/23/safety-driver-sh...

I mAde a similar comment on the video link last week. The good news is that the NTSB is extremely good at human factors stuff - google Cockpit Resource Management for a fascinating trip down the aviation safety rabbit hole.

I sadly agree with you on the scapegoat point.

Why? If it is not proven the driver was negligent why fire this individual? Presumably this individual has a lot of experience and domain knowledge in testing self driving cars so replacing them with someone else may not be an improvement.

If they did make a mistake that got someone killed that could change things but I would hope we wait to find out if the driver was actually at fault.

I don't think Uber's safety drivers have any domain knowledge. The law says you need bodies in seats so Uber is paying as little as possible to put bodies in seats. They aren't engineers or professional (as in stunt/trick/etc) drivers.

I’m not sure stunt or trick drivers are the best choice anyway but you make a good point. Do we know this individual’s qualifications or are we just guessing at Uber’s standards?

They released inward-facing video of the safety driver shortly after the incident.

The driver was staring at her phone in her lap with only occasional glances at the road every 5 seconds or so. I would call that pretty negligent.

That certainly doesn’t sound good. Is there footage of the driver at the time of the collision?

Here after about 10 seconds: https://www.ft.com/video/414f079b-a63d-4b0f-8dcf-b14f66e5ab2...

It was more likely the uber iPad data logging app, which they've allowed to be using whilst moving.

Can't think it would help with driver's night vision.

to me that sounds like a standard Uber driver

>Presumably this individual has a lot of experience and domain knowledge in testing self driving car

How do you arrive at this?

Well they were in a self driving car working for Uber in the capacity of self driving car test driver so they have more experience than me or anyone I know. But that’s only a presumption as I said.

Some sources mention a three-week training course. [0] It certainly costs some money to put an employee through such a course, but Uber have the deep pockets here. I'm not saying Ms. Vasquez should be fired before an investigation is complete, and she may be exonerated entirely, but presumably any investigation will take at least three weeks?

[0] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5532129/Uber-pilot-d...

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