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Comment by obeattie | Hacker News Reader

To me there is a stunning lack of compassion and decency in the response to these incidents by both Tesla and Uber.

Uber made sure to point out that the victim of their incident was homeless. Tesla is pointing out how the driver received unrelated cues earlier in the journey. None of this information is relevant. They’re trying to bamboozle the reader in an effort to improve their images at the expense of victims who can’t defend themselves.

I don’t understand why it is so impossible for these companies to act humbly and with a sense of dignity around all this. I don’t expect them to accept responsibility if indeed their technology was not to blame, but frankly that isn’t for them to decide. Until the authorities have done their jobs, why not show remorse, regardless of culpability, as any decent human would?

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I agree with the lack of compassion bit -- I think the messaging could have been far more empathetic. However...

> Uber made sure to point out that the victim of their incident was homeless. Tesla is pointing out how the driver received unrelated cues earlier in the journey. None of this information is relevant.

I don't understand how you can equate those first two lines. Uber's observation is clearly irrelevant, but the fact that the Tesla driver received multiple "get your hands back on the wheel" notifications, as close as six seconds before the accident seems very relevant to me.

> the fact that the Tesla driver received multiple "get your hands back on the wheel" notifications, as close as six seconds before the accident

But that isn't what their statement says. It says the victim had his hands off the wheel for six seconds before the crash, and that he received hands-on warnings "earlier in the drive." It does not say that during those crucial six seconds he was being warned. Nor does it explain the fact the car plowed into a barrier.

”Nor does it explain the fact the car plowed into a barrier.”

This is critical. No matter how many notices you give, slamming into something at speed is the wrong answer. It’s almost unbelievable that they’re trying to use that as an excuse.

I'm finding it hard to believe the wording on this crucial sentence was so misleading by accident. Upon first reading it, the wording seemed a little off and seemed to me that the two statements should have been two separate sentences instead.

Even then, I fail to see how it’s relevant information.

I’m supposed to trust an “autopilot” that warns me six seconds before it slams me into a wall?

In their next statement about the next person they kill: 'The Autopilot clearly both stated in vocal synthesis and by displaying on the internal screen: "WARNING - I'll attempt to kill you in six second". Yet the driver did not manage to regain control against the rogue AI. He is clearly at fault for having died, and his family should be fined to recover the cost the the investigation.' :P

I'm willing (and almost hope) to be proven wrong on this, but I personally find it hard to believe that the ambiguity around this in the statement is accidental. A statement of this nature will have been extensively wordsmithed.

It seems that it was written in a way that confuses the issue intentionally.

>the victim had his hands off the wheel for six seconds

Actually it doesn't even say that, it says his hands "were not detected." Which means nothing to me.

@jVinc's post answers this. They didn't state specifically that he was warned six seconds before the crash.

Yeah, but it seems that they may be, statistically speaking, right. The fears that surround self driving cars may be unfounded, and if they are unfounded, then it would be a shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

They're right when they say we don't speak of the accidents that didn't happen, and I bet there's a ton of them.

As someone who's been in multiple car crashes, as a passenger, I really on longer want to be at the mercy of human drivers.

Brief reminder of the same discussion, in a different context.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzD4tIvPHwE

Yet on one, and I really mean no one complains about computer assisted landings and takeoffs. I'm not sure why. Lots of passengers even sleep through them.

I guess we've come to realise that the man machine symbiosis works well for flight. But it might take time for this to get engrained into our culture when it comes to driving.

Exactly. It's very important to ensure negative (and unjustified!) publicity do not affect technology perception, adoption and growth. There are so many Luddites who take every chance to hammer another nail.. It's understandable that any tech pioneer can easily sense being attacked and has to quiveringly rebuff any hysteria attempts.

The main thing that would make me convinced of the safety of self driving cars would be if the executives of self driving car companies took criminal liability for accidents caused by their cars or software.

When the cost of them killing somebody by having a deficient QA process is minimal (and just affects shareholders), then the cars will be rolled out before they are ready.

What will happen to liability at present is still unclear but if the self driving car companies are successful in dodging most of it (and it appears they are trying) then self driving cars are going to kill a lot of people unnecessarily - quite possibly more than humans would.

If individual engineers and executives were made to be legally responsible for potential fatal accidents resulting from technology, progress would grind to a halt.

I mean, in cases where they are criminally negligent, they are already responsible for accidents.

The tricky part is figuring out what constitutes negligence.

I dont think that's the case. However, if the people who build it refuse to take responsibility for their defects killing people then I think that's the clearest possible signal that the technology isn't viable.

Obviously this would also mean that compensation would have to go up for self driving car engineers and execs to compensate for the risk. That's fair, and, if that cost makes a self driving car venture uneconomic - again, not viable. And that's okay.

People take responsibility for other people's lives every day when they get in a car. I don't think the idea that Uber engineers should do the same should be considered particularly controversial.

I agree with your intention, though isn't it inevitable self driving cars will kill people even if they are 1000x safer than humans?

If a CEO has many millions of cars running his software, their will always be a death.

In that case, nobody would want to take on that responsibility so nobody would build self driving cars.

Therefore humans will still drive cars and there will be 1000x more deaths, most preventable with self driving cars.

This is pretty much exactly the Trolley problem in ethics and philosophy. Read up on it :)

They don't need to be 1000x safer than humans. If they are 2x safer than humans, that is plenty for me to support using them. The issue is determining how safe they in fact are, to appropriately high confidence, before putting people at risk.

That is something that "tech" companies will in all likelihood never be able to do, since they seem uniquely designed to betray and lose the public's trust at the earliest opportunity.

"Tech" companies have become far too culturally accustomed to dishonest hype, "growth hacking", marketing BS, PR spin, etc. for their statements to be trusted, especially when there are life-and-death implications.

It's not always true. Waymo is a clear exception: their car was at current Tesla's level 5 years ago, but they chose not to run into production. Many Google engineers left from the team because they wanted to see their work in public, but Larry clearly wanted safe L4 driving before getting to the roads.

(of course Google did lots of ,,ungoogly'' things in the past few years, but at least they got Waymo right)

It's not the trolley problem because as yet we don't know how many people would be killed by rolling out self driving cars and, more to the point, the speed of rollout and safety are not necessarily inversely proportional.

By characterising self driving cars as a "trolley problem" you have presented what is known as a "false dilemma". Maybe you could read up on that ;)

Good point! Are there any publicly accessible crash/death statistics for cars with a similar price/safety/demographic profile as Teslas?

I feel that is the only way we could isolate for self driving and not other factors.

But is it really unjustified? The statistics we have so far suggests that with the current state of self-driving cars they are significantly (about an order of magnitude) more likely to be involved in a fatal crash.

Maybe what we need is to put the brakes on the notion that self-driving cars are nearly ready for prime time and in a few years they will be all over the road. A level-headed review of the state of the technology suggests that is extremely unlikely. Except for people hanging around /r/futurology and to some extent here on hacker news, who are perhaps too close to technology to really appreciate it's limits in the practical world.

It would probably be for the best if the enthusiasts and the companies rushing headlong towards this new driving paradigm put forth some effort to tone down the hype.

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzD4tIvPHwE

What exactly am I looking at? The video itself says it's a computer-piloted takeoff, the YouTube title says it's a computer-piloted landing, and the top-voted comment says it's a human-piloted fly-by.

edit: it appears to be this flight: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296

Could you source the assertion that Uber (as opposed to the local police) has indicated the victim in the crash was homeless?

(That would be an inexcusable and cynical deflection.)

Uber never came out mentioning the homelessness of the person. The police did. This is typical HN banter on Uber, thanks for calling it out.

That's because Uber never released an official statement on the accident. At least, I can't find one on their website.

That is utter bullshit that Uber said the victim was homeless. It was the police chief, Uber never mentioned it once and their response was completely appropriate.

It's fashionable to hate Uber now so people don't object to lies told against them.

This was clearly vetted (or written) by a lawyer who is interested in changing the narrative for his future wrongful death defense rather than exercising empathy.

It reads like it was written by a company who has a lot of scientists working there is all. They are simply explaining what happened according the system log files before the incident and then reminding the public that it is still safer.

> They are simply explaining what happened according the system log files

I must have missed the part where they explained why their autopilot system drove into a concrete divider at high speed. Please can you quote the explanation you're referring to.

>I don’t understand why it is so impossible for these companies to act humbly and with a sense of dignity around all this.

Because humility requires you to admit wrongdoing, which from a legal standpoint is not advisable in a public statement.

What you are saying here is: "I really wish the PR person who wrote this chose words that would cause readers to feel as though the company empathized more with the victim."

Ultimately companies don't have feelings, their employees do. PR statements and the words chosen (unless written by an individual like the CEO) don't somehow make a company into a person and don't reflect the feelings of their employees: they are a crafted tool to create a certain outcome by instilling thoughts in the mind of the reader and/or providing legal cover.

> I don’t understand why it is so impossible for these companies to act humbly and with a sense of dignity around all this.

I would venture a guess this is an outcome of the "sue for everything" legal environment in the US. Any statement that could be construed as anything other than "we did nothing wrong" could be seized on by shareholders suing the company for securities fraud and demanding class action status.

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