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Comment by amenod | Hacker News Reader

Do you have a link or quote for 2)? I was under impression that while the video looks dark, it wasn't quite so dark in reality and human driver would have fared better (if they were driving instead of checking console every 5 seconds, that is).

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Yep, here's the quote and the link:

> "It's very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode (autonomous or human-driven) based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway," Moir told the San Francisco Chronicle after viewing the footage.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/03/20/tempe-police-...

The dashcam footage has poor dynamic range and is not representative of what a human driver would have seen. (This has been pointed out repeatedly in previous discussions here on HN — I'm saying that not to chide you, but just to establish it as a fact.)

I'm not convinced that (2) is literally true — that the pedestrian would have been likely to be killed in this particular instance — but: she was strolling nonchalantly across a four-lane roadway with a 45mph speed limit, in the dark, with dark clothing on, and paying not the slightest attention to oncoming traffic. I'm sure that if she did that regularly, sooner or later she would have had at least a close call.

This was discussed extensively here after the event happened. It's not pitch black around there and a number of people have recorded videos driving at night through that exact area and the entire road is well lit enough to see a person with a bike on the road. The low-fidelity CCD video Uber posted in the immediate aftermath is not representative of human vision or (apparently) the sensors that Uber had on the vehicle.

Right, and I said exactly the same thing elsewhere [0], but I still think she was taking a big chance by being so oblivious. A 45mph speed limit means some people will be doing 55. Stroll casually across a roadway like that enough times, and you will eventually force a driver to swerve around you at high speed or make a panic stop or at the very least blast you with the horn.

I can't imagine doing what she did — even thoroughly stoned, as she may have been (she tested positive for methamphetamine and marijuana), I would have more sense of self-preservation than that.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17147069

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