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Comment by antihero | Hacker News Reader

Why on earth would they mention that someone's been on weed and meth when they are the victim of a car not stopping?

The NTSB always includes whether drugs or alcohol potentially played any role in an accident and puts it in their reports for all parties. This isn't a smear tactic, just standard practice because they are trying to determine all contributing factors.

For reasons I don't understand, they didn't test the driver.

When you're dead you don't have much expectation of privacy in the eyes of the law, they can run a toxicology report for no reason (or more likely as part of an autopsy). For a living person it requires reasonable suspicion to initiate. That said, IANAL

Because more context makes for a more comprehensive story.

Fact of the matter is, the person was not allowed to cross there. Not only was it not allowed [0], it was also extremely dangerous. Why would she do this?

That's one part of the conversation.

The other part of the story is that the self-driving car was mismanaged and misprogrammed, and that this was likely also a reason why the woman died.

There is therefore reason to believe both parties could have prevented this death. You're not sure. Perhaps drugs weren't a factor. And perhaps a driving person could not have braked quickly enough either to save her. You don't really know. But when you have information which lets you speculate plausibly to explain unknowns, I think it's relevant to include that information as a journalist. Meth use falls within that range of relevant information in this case, if you ask me.

It feels a bit analogous to saying a woman got shot and killed at a gun range. She ran into the shooting range and got shot. Why would she do this? The person shooting wasn't paying attention and was just firing casually down the range. Knowing the woman was on meth helps explain a lot. As a journalist I'd think that was relevant, and as a reader it offers a possible explanation for this kind of behaviour. It doesn't negate the fact the shooter didn't follow procedure and could have prevented this death, too.

I thought it was fitting at the very end of the article like it was in the original analysis that they refer to. Not so much in the subtitle, I feel that was in poor taste and driven by clickbait. It shouldn't be the focus of the article.

[0] http://darychuklaw.com/legal-services/personal-injury-claims...

> the person was not allowed to cross there.

Have you seen the intersection in question?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DYrspoFVwAAtJCs.jpg

I think the pedestrian is very low on the list of who to blame, with the intersection designers and Uber engineers high above her.

I have seen it. Check streetview too, it's helpful.

I really hate to defend this position because I feel terrible for her and it's quite obvious uber made some very bad calls here. (in fact I even used the very loaded word murder in another comment, see my post history). I'm definitely not arguing to put all or even most of the blame on the woman.

The intersection is indeed absolutely terrible. It makes no sense. You're not allowed to cross there, there are even signs which state it on both sides, referring to a crosswalk a minute walking up ahead. i.e., there is just no way you're allowed to cross there, despite the island in the middle having the cosmetic design of a walkway, you're not supposed to get on the island or get off it or cross the roads at that location. It's a terrible design choice, both inviting people to cross (in a dangerous spot), while also saying it's illegal. With better infrastructure planning you could have railing there preventing crossing, and no island at all.

That having been said, I can't for the life of me imagine crossing there and not seeing an oncoming car with its headlights on, assuming I was paying attention to the road I was illegally crossing. The fact meth is involved is a helpful possible explanation for why this kind of attention was not given.

You can check out the road on google street view, it definitely helps. I think you'd agree on two things, one is that it's not allowed to cross there and two that if you were to cross there, it'd be pretty easy to see cars. The reverse isn't necessarily true if you wear dark clothing at night.

Holy, crap; it's even worse in StreetView than it is in the aerial photo: https://goo.gl/maps/PRkZercuMJ62

AFAIU, the pedestrian who was killed has indeed part of the blame, and we probably would not feel as guilty saying that if it was a normal car that killed her. But for the topic of this general discussion, that is irrelevant; the emphasis is (and should be) on the incompetence and negligence of Uber, which lead to a person's death, albeit her negligence is at play too, and which demonstrated that (i) Uber is not capable of this sort of business as an unscrupulous and unethical company and that (ii) we should still be deeply sceptical of the capabilities of automated vehicles in responding to arbitrary reconfigurations and movements their paths.

The “no pedestrian zone” is part of a complex set of causes and effects.

Since it’s a no pedestrian zone, it has a higher speed limit posted

A higher speed limit causes a linear reduction in detection time, a sensor that detects a pedestrian 2 second away at 20mph will detects a pedestrian 1 second away at 40mph

Braking distance and impact energy are both quadratic and that’s part of how/why speed limits are defined

There are a lot of engineering issues that will arise from the need to cope with people violating limits and restrictions around autonomous vehicles.

I’m not defending uber here btw, they definitely jumped the gun deploying the system as described, just thinking out loud. There are decades of crashes that went into the driving code and road regulations, which humans kinda understand by relating to road design and getting cues from the environment that ais will need to learn

I hope they improve their systems before doing a worldwide rollout. Many countries have no law against walking in the road while intoxicated.

Possibly as an explanation for why the victim was slow to react or had decided to cross at that particular time.

It is the NTSB's goal to include all contributing factors in their investigations. Remember that the NTSB does not assign liability or make regulations, it simply serves in an advisory role. Their reports are as thorough as possible in identifying contributing factors so that safety recommendations can be made that address as many factors as possible.

I wonder if one day we'll see a story like: The coder was drunk or high when he created the software that killed someone... I'm pretty sure we will, the way surveillance is increasing.

To imply that it's their fault. That's how press smearing works.

I think drugs, especially drugs like meth, are usually an important detail in vehicle collision investigations.

When it doesn't have to do with anyone driving? Yeah, maybe the victim was wrong to go there, but the car should and could have stopped in time.

Why does walking/biking differ from driving if the two collided in the road? Not saying Uber couldn't have prevented this, just explaining why the media mentions the detected drug use...

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