Comment by mnm1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mnm1 | Hacker News Reader

Unbelievable. I wonder how many other self driving cars are out there designed to not brake even when they clearly detect an object in their path. It's ridiculous to rely on a human to intervene in such situations. This was a completely preventable homicide, yet Uber gets away with it. As I've said before, the easiest way to get away with murder is to commit it under the protection of a corporation. True, this is manslaughter, but the principle still stands. I bet they will go after the driver now and try to place blame on her despite her having an impossible job that should simply not exist because it can't be carried out. So they get away with manslaughter and a precedent is set for other car companies that no matter how negligent your system and operations are, you can kill people and get away with it as long as you find a patsy to sit behind the wheel and take the blame. With this kind of attitude, I hope self driving cars never make it to market. I no longer think they will be safer than human drivers because there is no incentive for these companies to make them safe, let alone safer.

> I bet they will go after the driver now and try to place blame on her despite her having an impossible job

What's impossible about watching the street and hitting the breaks if necessary, while testing a prototype self-driving car? I would say if you can't even do that, you shouldn't be in that seat.

This isn't the case where just one person is responsible. The system shouldn't have been configured that way. The driver should've been alert. The woman shouldn't have crossed the road like that. Everyone was negligent.

It happened because one company was greedy, and negligent, - and has the money to pay the bill. The question is, will the jury really make them pay.

It happened just as much because one driver/monitor wasn't doing their job.

Saying opinions like statements of fact don't make them correct.

It's at least more useful to speak of legal liability, because that can become case law.

The road should not have been designed like that, allowing high speed traffic at a pedestrian crossing. Cars are a dangerous incursion on human environments, akin to letting lions wander freely in town. The whole automotit ecosystem is morally liable, joint and severally, for this assault on human life, from collisions to pollution to the appropriate of public real estate.

The pedestrian was not crossing at a designated crossing.

There is nothing more natural in a human environment than tools. A car is a tool.

Watching the road for hours at a time, day in and day out attentively is impossible. No human can do it. You're right that she shouldn't have been in that seat. No one should have as it's an almost impossible task. No one has that type of attention span or ability to react, especially when the situation is so boring. Humans can drive but even then, they will make mistakes. To expect there not to be mistakes or lapses of attention with no interaction is ridiculous. We are not built that way. Maybe some top athletes can do that, but even goalkeepers in soccer whose job is to watch the ball and stop it sometimes can't concentrate and they are selected based on this ability to only play 45 minutes at a time without a break. What tests did uber put this woman through before hiring her to make sure she was capable of the almost super human feat they asked of her? I bet none. The system could have prevented this crash easily but because the auto braking was turned off, it didn't. What kind of company tests a self driving car with the auto braking turned off? They should have known it would cause a collision sooner or later.

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