Hacker News Reader

Comment by rpedela | Hacker News Reader

True, but a human would have applied the brakes at least which may not avoid the collision but would reduce the injuries. We can never know but maybe a human would have been able to stop. Or maybe a human could have braked enough to prevent death. Or maybe the exact outcome would have happened even if the brakes were applied.

View on HN

In fact, as anyone who has read the NTSB report would know, a Human was responsible for braking in this situation and FAILED to do so in time. The above discussion is irrelevant and results from ignorance of the facts.

From the report: ". At 1.3 seconds before impact, the self-driving system determined that an emergency braking maneuver was needed to mitigate a collision (see figure 2).[2] According to Uber, emergency braking maneuvers are not enabled while the vehicle is under computer control, to reduce the potential for erratic vehicle behavior. The vehicle operator is relied on to intervene and take action. The system is not designed to alert the operator."

For anyone interested in actually being informed about this incident. https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/HW...

There is going to be a reaction time difference between someone actively driving the vehicle and someone who is monitoring an automated system. It is human nature to get bored and not pay close enough attention. This is exactly why some of the Tesla autopilot crashes have happened in addition to the system screwing up.

Yes. I've pointed that out previously.

NASA has a simple tool for studying this, the Multi-Attribute Test Battery.[1] It uses a Windows PC and a joystick. The person being tested uses the joystick to center a marker in a square. The marker tends to drift away, and has to be corrected. This simulates the most basic task of flying - flying straight and level.

There's an "autopilot", which can be turned on to keep the marker centered. The user can then let go of the joystick.

But sometimes the "autopilot" fails, and the marker drifts out of the square. How long it takes for the subject to notice is measured. That's a good approximation for Tesla's semi-automatic driving system.

There are lots of papers on this. It's well understood in aviation that takeover time after a fault is seconds to tens of seconds.

[1] https://matb.larc.nasa.gov/

A human could also have attempted swerving to avoid the accident. The question that I feel can't be answered is how visible the pedestrian would have been under the conditions and if there would have been time to take action.

Even braking to half the recorded velocity would likely have been fatal.

> Even braking to half the recorded velocity would likely have been fatal.

This is not so. Half would have been under 25 mph which is much less than 50% fatal. See http://www.humantransport.org/sidewalks/SpeedKills.htm

Reply on news.ycombinator.com