Uber self-driving car kills Arizona woman

[Dove Tail]

It will be curious to see all of the statistic spinners massage this one.

Uber self-driving car kills Arizona woman, realizing worst fears of the new tech

[RMD]

I heard the driver was on his mobile phone when the accident occurred.

R

[Dove Tail]

That may well be true, which simply adds to the defendants case against Uber. The driver was a back-up to the computer/ sensors and obviously, they all failed to work correctly.

The woman was walking her bicycle across the street when she was killed. Just how much bigger of a target could she have been?

Additionally, counsel for the plaintiff should be able to present a very good case for the ineffectiveness of having a human monitoring a computer driving a car. I suspect that after a period of time, any person would drift off and become distracted.

Uber will be tripping over their feet in an effort to settle this one and do it very quietly because. If it went to court, it would be a disaster for them.

[trader_4]

Did you bother to read the facts? The police chief was quoted as saying she had already reviewed the video tape from the car, that the woman stepped out of the shadows from the median, she doesn't know if anyone could have avoided hitting her and that the Uber car is not likely at fault.

Again, read what the chief said. I think she may know more than you. And if some woman came out from the side at night, not in a crosswalk, close to your car and you hit her, see what you'd be saying. Happens all the time and the driver is rarely ticketed or charged.

Rant, rant, rant....

[Ed Pawlowski]

As I said before, people are killed every day but this was a self driver so made national news. It may well have been the fault of the pedestrian and unavoidable by any car. That won't stop sleazy lawyers though.

[Dove Tail]

Self-driving cars should be equipped with redundant infrared / night vision, FLIR, motion, radar and numerous other sensors and systems that should prevent virtually any car pedestrian impacts.

Machine vision technology exists that allows for identifying a pedestrian in virtually any circumstance with the exception of entering into the street from behind some human size (or larger) roadway obstruction, which does not appear to be the case in this situation.

There is more information to be gathered, but there are not many possible factors which could mitigate Uber's liability.

As for lawyers, just who do "you" call when you have a legal problem?

[trader_4]

How many have you built, Mr. Expert? And how does the car know if someone or something standing on the side of the road is going to walk out into the path of the car, just 10 ft ahead when the car is going 40? I suppose we could have the car stop at every possible point where something is on the side that might decide to move into it's path. We call that a traffic jam.

Seems it might be a good idea to wait and get the facts, eh? Like the toxicology report on the woman. I saw reports that said she was homeless, was she drunk or impaired with drugs?

How many of these cars have you designed, built and tested? Typical lib, immediately blame the object be it a car or a gun instead of the person, who in this case was not in a crosswalk, but walked out in front of a car at night.

ROFL. Case closed by Mr. Expert. I see similar accidents frequently where no tickets are issued, no charges are brought and the report says it was solely the fault of the pedestrian walking into traffic.

I suppose they could call you. You seem to have all the facts and already know who to blame. ROFL

[gfretwell]

I think that with FLIR technology they would see that target moving towards the road long before she came out from between the cars. (assuming there were parked cars). How the computer assessed that is still conjecture tho. Perhaps they should have an alert tone for the human in the car tho. The latest thing I saw was the cops saying the car was not at fault, although that may not be enough to avoid a suit.

[trader_4]

I'm sure the system sees lots of "targets" by the side of the road. But like I said, so what? Should the car stop because someone is standing at the side of the road, (between parked cars in your description)? And if they then step out into traffic just a short distance in front of the car, it's essentially too late. Also, if a person was between cars, then the system probably would not sense that they are there, because they are blocked by the car.

But again, we don't know most of the facts, one of the most critical would be how far in front the woman was when she stepped out. I'm betting it wasn't very far.

I saw the human said he never saw the woman, the first indication he had was the noise of the collision. But, all that is on the system in the car, most importantly the video, which like you say, the chief said she reviewed and the woman stepped out from the shadows, and the chief didn't think a human driver would have avoided the accident.

NYC there is a new trend, seems almost every week now there is one or more pedestrians hit, killed and most of them are hit and runs. Some of them are like this one, pedestrian stepping out into traffic, others were mowed down in crosswalks. One was a chef crossing the street in the crosswalk, where a car making a left turn, ran him over and killed him. That was a hit and run one. How you can be driving in any responsible fashion in NYC and not only manage to hit someone while turning into a crosswalk, but actually kill them, is beyond me. I guess the answer is you can't be driving responsibly.

[gfretwell]

This is where that "360 degree" observation comes in. You can bet that woman was not just standing there waiting for a car before she pushed her bike out into the road. I bet she was walking towards the road for a while before she got there. That might not be reason to slam on the brakes but if we are bragging about computer awareness, it should have triggered extra scrutiny. I am sure they are reviewing the logs and the software geeks are working on a fix as we speak. This is still a young science and they are still learning.

Humans are actually less attentive than we expect the computer to be. Was he on his phone?

I agree pedestrians get killed all the time. There ought to be a law ;-)

[Tekkie®]

[e-mail] posted for all of us...

Self driving cars are in their infancy. Like cars were, like airplanes were, like spacecraft are, like?

[krw]

But ambulance chasers aren't in their infancy.