First self-driving car fatal accident

innervision (48) · 7 years ago (edited)

So just to recap: humans need a driving licence but self-driving cars do not even require a human? Is that even legal? Is anyone surprised this accident happened? And do the government just accept it as a necessary statistic for the development of the technology? Self driving cars on roads with no pedestrians or other human manned vehicles might work if they were all programmed to to recognise each other and avoid each other and co-ordinated from a central control point like trains. How much of this kind of testing has been done without human drivers? Soooo many questions, not much actual research before they are trying to implement these on public roads though. Self driving cars is a bit like asking cows to have road safety awareness. They are not quite there yet.

4 votes

archerbullseye (25) · 7 years ago

They have been under testing for years now. 2,660 pedestrians were killed by cars driven by people, with driving licences... Till we know what actuality happened, you might want go google some of your questions, as there are many answers out there if you take a look.

Here, let me get you started.
https://medium.com/waymo/waymos-fleet-reaches-4-million-self-driven-miles-b28f32de495a

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sunlit7 (59) · 7 years ago

On the nightly news tonight some where asking why these cars are being tested in cities with major traffic congestion. Some thought they should be tested in remote area's before being placed on busy roads.

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innervision (48) · 7 years ago

Good point. You woud think they would be tested thoroughly in an empty car park with real time simulations first?

3 votes

harpooninvestor (47) · 7 years ago

Self-driving cars are already less accident prone than humans, but that doesn't mean a self-driving car is less accident prone than YOU. So are YOU a good driver? Everyone SHOULD have a different answer to that question, but if you're in your 40s and have never been in a real accident and driving since teens, self-driving cars probably not up to your standard, thus less safe. But if you are an average or below average driver, then self-driving cars already have lower accident rate than you.

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innervision (48) · 7 years ago

Really? How can you say that when self driving cars have a driving statistical history of near zero!?

zickens (30) · 7 years ago

But, they are quite there yet. You're not asking a car to do a cross-country race, you're asking an AI the widely studied and even perfected question "¿How do you get from point A to point B in the least amount of time without hitting anything?". Sure, reading about a pedestrian being killed by an AI is unsettling. But is simply not the machine's fault. Perhaps the note should read "Pedestrian killed by error in self-driving AI programming". The humans behind the screen are at fault, not the car itself. Tesla is doing wonderfully with their self-driving cars because they're AI team is wonderful, and you'd be surprised at just how much AI's have consitently beat humans at these sort of tasks, both in speed and safety.

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innervision (48) · 7 years ago

How does the AI know what speed to travel at? Can it read speed limit signs? And what if there are no signs?

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robbithole (25) · 7 years ago

A lot of these comments are going on the assumption that the self-driving car failed, but police are already saying it looks like the pedestrian was at fault. If this were a human driver, it wouldn't have made national news. This is a tragic accident, but nothing more.

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innervision (48) · 7 years ago

"Watch out for self driving cars because they will not break if you step in front of them" ?

thatkidsblack (66) · 7 years ago

I saw this on WSJ and Bloomberg! They're suspending testing and what not, but I'm gonna go ahead that this is only gonna motivate experts to really prioritize safety. Automated vehicles are coming, and hopefully not at the cost of any more lives.

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innervision (48) · 7 years ago (edited)

I think they need tracks in the roads like railways, to follow not to restrict their movement. Every junction, speed limit and every other vehicle needs to be programmed into their awareness in advance. They are not safe on busy public roads interacting with unpredictable humans!

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3 votes

harpooninvestor (47) · 7 years ago

#1 Uber's attempt at self-driving cars was practically a joke from the getgo, so this isn't surprising outcome whatsoever. Most me-too attempt we've ever witnesses in business. Google is lightyears ahead of everyone else in this business.

#2 Arizona police are already saying it's not Uber's fault. Whatever. Might be true, accidents happen, but again, considering Google has millions more miles driven than Uber, and without humans able to "take teh wheel", it's not surprising this fate occured to uber first despite the much much lower odds (due to less miles driven).

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barne734 (54) · 7 years ago

i don't believe I will ride in an autonomous car anytime soon

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infidel1258 (67) · 7 years ago

The thing to remember with failures like this, despite the terrible circumstances of this lost life, autonomous vehicles are going to dramatically improve road safety and dramatically lower the loss of life on the roads, eventually.

Will autonomous vehicles be perfect, of course not. Will they be many orders of magnitude better than distracted, tired, drunk, inebriated human drivers? Yup.

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chuck2u32 (53) · 7 years ago

Self-driving cars are inevitable IMHO. Airliners go down on occasion, but we keep flying. If I was a delivery driver or over-the-road truck driver I would be very concerned about my future and invest in steem : )

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dbooster (64) · 7 years ago

My pilot friends tell me that planes are already mostly "self-flying", that if the general public realized just how much of their flight was done by computers, they would freak out.

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chuck2u32 (53) · 7 years ago

Thank you. Yet still another reason not to fly : {

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ryn (58) · 7 years ago

Actually depending on the circumstances a computer pilot could be much more effective than a human pilot, then again when the computer is wrong the human pilot should have the ability to intervene.

I believe on some of the newest planes specifically the Airbus if I remember correctly if the computer thinks the human is wrong it will not allow the human to intervene this has led to preventable crashes because the pilot was not able to intervene and the computer was malfunctioning.

Sorry for the lack of details just a vague memory from watching old air crash investigations, could be wrong.

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chuck2u32 (53) · 7 years ago

Thank you for this reply! I agree. Give me a computer that will override a pilot who decides to become a terrorist and crash a plane full of people into a mountain or other immovable object. Anything that a person can logically think through and is repeatable can be programmed into a computer as I'm sure you already know. I just hope they keep a person in the cockpit in some capacity.

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guessandgain (35) · 7 years ago

Hate self driving cars. It steals so much joy from driving!!!

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tonybeacon (35) · 7 years ago

Hoping the fatality did not result in the death of the crash victim.Apparently they need to take care of the bugs ,before pushing it for mass consumption.

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themarkymark (78) · 7 years ago

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4 votes

melooo182 (68) · 7 years ago (edited)

lol I guess he never played mortal kombat :v

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freedomshift (64) · 7 years ago

I am looking for any excuse to give away my upvotes - give them or lose them.
upvote courtesy @erodedthoughts (for upvoting my comments & posts)
re:
https://steemit.com/community/@erodedthoughts/i-m-sick-of-all-the-nerds-on-steemit

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anglotrucker (40) · 7 years ago

And to think these jokers want to put autonomous trucks onto our congested roads in the UK. No thanks. It would be chaos.

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oyvindsabo (53) · 7 years ago

I don't know enough about the circumstances to actually make up an opinion about this, but an alternative way to look at it is this: If someone walks into the road in front of a car and there is no reason to expect them to walk into the road, I'm not too surprised the saftety driver didn't manage to stop. And as long as an autonomous vehicle doesn't perform worse than a human being, I think we're already on a promising path.

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sunlit7 (59) · 7 years ago

They did say she was not crossing in a crosswalk, but still....lots of people don't walk in a crosswalk let alone ride their bike in one.

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olumojustwin (25) · 7 years ago

This is astonishing, very tested and trusted

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arcange (73) · 7 years ago

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paddygsound (53) · 7 years ago

Luckily humans never make mistakes and end up hitting others. Lucky we are the perfect machine and never make errors.

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themarkymark (78) · 7 years ago

Oh, I agree, but you got to remember there is also millions and millions of cars on the road and less than 100 driverless cars.

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paddygsound (53) · 7 years ago

That is true about the numbers being less on the roads. But still these things will happen regardless of the tech, is what I'm getting at. I guess for me it is the fact that an accident can happen that we just can't avoid, well I imagine the same is true for self drive systems as well. I'm sure more infomration will come out once the buzz has lessened about this being the first accident involving a self-driving car.

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sunlit7 (59) · 7 years ago

It's not the first one, there was one but it was determined the self driving car wasn't at fault, the other driver hit the self driving car.

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paddygsound (53) · 7 years ago

Oh really. sorry my apologies, I didn't realise.

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idikuci (61) · 7 years ago

Better to stick to Tesla

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veleje (49) · 7 years ago

"but all the cases I have seen were not the fault of the self-driving car."

Actually, there are. Just few days ago, one self driving car hit another and then drove off. I wonder how can that one be classified... AI hit & run?

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themarkymark (78) · 7 years ago

LOL, got link? I haven't looked in a bit, but last time I saw something it was the first incident and it wasn't even the car's fault.

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makerhacks (66) · 7 years ago

Very odd that the "safety" driver couldn't/didn't do anything to prevent the accident but human error is a real possibility. That said, there will be a lot of people jumping on this to say "see? unsafe!!1" :(

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themarkymark (78) · 7 years ago

That's what I am wondering, not much has been released about it yet, but that's the big concern I had. Did he wait too long to see if the car would intervene? Did he just not pay attention?

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coincussion (43) · 7 years ago

Too soon. I just don’t think the roads are ready for this. Really the computers aren’t ready for the road. Sometimes a lose lose situation arises. How would a system of computer decide which loss is acceptable?

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themarkymark (78) · 7 years ago

I had this discussion a while ago with someone. Self driving cars brings up an interesting dilemma.

Should a car favor the life of the owner or the amount of lives saved? If the car can take an action that puts the driver at extreme risk but would save 2 or more other parties should it take that risk? Who would buy a car that would make that decision for them?

These types of issues will come up in a future where these types of systems become more common place.

Would a car manufacturer even be allowed to program a car to favor saving the owner without legal issues?

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sunlit7 (59) · 7 years ago

You may be right, one report said the computer didn't recognize any obstruction in the road.

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mikebluehair42 (54) · 7 years ago

Oh.... It's gunna fucking happen!

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