Dear Uber, et al. Vehicles need human drivers

Hot Air.com ^ | March 20, 2018 | JAZZ SHAW

[Kaslin]

John covered this story last night, but the death of a pedestrian struck by a self-driving Uber vehicle in Arizona should have ramifications for the entire idea of autonomous vehicles. (Something I’ve been concerned about for a couple of years now.) After covering the initial reports from the accident, John concluded with the following observations and questions.

There will be an investigation of this accident as well, but my first thought is to wonder why the human ‘backup driver’ didn’t stop the car and prevent this. Reliable self-driving cars and trucks may still be a couple years away but it’s worth pointing out that human drivers are responsible for tens of thousands of fatal accidents on the roads every year. In 2016, there were an estimated 40,200 fatal crashes. Ultimately, the question is whether the record of driverless cars turns out to be better or worse than the humans who would otherwise be at the wheel.

Before addressing those points, it’s worth noting that new information has been provided by authorities investigating the accident. While it will take a while to sort this all out, initial findings indicate that the car probably wasn’t at fault in this case and the test monitor probably wouldn’t have been able to prevent the accident even if they’d been in complete control. (Fortune)

“The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them,” Moir said. “His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision.”

According to the Chronicle, the preliminary investigation found the Uber car was driving at 38 mph in a 35 mph zone and did not attempt to brake. Herzberg is said to have abruptly walked from a center median into a lane with traffic. Police believe she may have been homeless.

Since there’s dashcam video of the entire incident, the police should be able to sort this out without too many questions going unanswered. Going by their description, the possibly homeless and confused woman was pushing a bicycle in a median strip when she suddenly veered out into traffic directly in front of the Uber vehicle which was going nearly 40 mph. Assuming the next lane of traffic was blocked by another vehicle, the car would have had no other option than to possibly try to drive up onto the median. (It looks like it would have been physically impossible to stop the vehicle in that short span.) But the car’s programming clearly wasn’t anticipating a person diving out in front of it and a human being likely couldn’t crank the wheel over in a split second to avoid her either.

So Uber is off the hook and testing of autonomous vehicles can resume presently, right? I honestly hope not. The woman’s death is a tragedy, but this accident should also give us pause to ask whether any autonomous system will ever be able to replace a human being for such tasks. The woman appears to have done something completely unexpected which the navigation software had no reason to anticipate, but the fact is that irrational, unexpected things do happen in the real world all the time. And it’s in those razor-thin moments of doubt that a human being will always best a machine.

NASA regularly argues that manned space exploration will always be superior to drones and robots because human beings are more adaptable. We simply see the complexity of the world around us in a way that no set of logical rules coded into the most complex software will ever match. Humans are also able to imagine things in a way that computers can’t, including the most unexpected. Take the idea of color for example. A computer can analyze a video image and assign a value to a given color. But there’s a limit to the number of colors it can recognize and it has to force the object into one of those pigeonholes, even if they number in the thousands. In reality, there are an infinite number of colors, with each subtle shift in light frequency blending from one to the next. A system built on ones and zeros will never grasp that.

Returning to the auto accident scenario, the car was unable to anticipate a possibly homeless and confused woman suddenly lurching out in front of it. The car may have identified her as a pedestrian, but that’s not what pedestrians are “supposed to do.” But a human driver, under other circumstances, may have noticed things about her such as disheveled clothes or an unsteady rhythm to her gait. Seeing that, a human could have slowed down in advance, wondering if she was about to do something crazy. Do you honestly believe that an autonomous car is going to be capable of that sort of thought process? And none of this even begins to address the potential problems with hacking and terrorism.

Cars need drivers for precisely this reason. John was right to point out that we’re far from perfect and humans cause many, many accidents each year. With that in mind, some technology could likely improve our record. Perhaps some of those collision detection systems which are able to slam on the brakes when they locate an object we’re about to strike could be added to most vehicles. Sensors which detect a sleepy driver nodding off and sound an alarm to fully wake them might save many lives. But we should still keep a human being at the wheel as the primary operator. Autonomous driving software isn’t going to match the human mind.

[shanover]

"I drive a cab"

After that post I thought of every movie that has Taxis in them. Some are quite famous and it is quite a list. Life (and death) can be seen through the Taxi eyes.

[libstripper]

At age 75 with 59 years of driving experience and no accidents where I hit a human being, and only hit one dog, who survived, I can accurately say avoiding such collisions takes a good deal of human sense and environmental awareness. For example, if one sees something beside the road where it shouldn’t be, it’s time to slow down, even if a collision would not be one’s fault. I avoided hitting a small, old dog a few days ago by that kind of precaution. When driving in neighborhoods where there are kids, especially black kids, I’m paranoid level careful, regardless of potential legal liability.

Good human driver’s judgment and peripheral vision that caught unusual motion might have prevented this tragedy. There’s the inherent trouble with driverless cars—no way really to anticipate dicey situations like little kids and dogs unexpectedly running into traffic. That’s why I don’t like the whole idea, just as I don’t like the insane idea of “smart” guns.

[WayneS]

I read where in the USA, 15 pedestrians are killed every day in encounters with vehicles. I doubt auto-driving software will ever be programed to avoid running into some idiot who does something totally irrational, illegal and just plain stupid.

Will you please present your evidence that the people killed in encounters with vehicles are at fault?

[ican'tbelieveit]

You are the exact reason that the right is dying. You have stopped embracing technology and actually owning and driving it. This is why the internet is ruled by leftists, because you let them.

[Kaslin]

I have no idea if she was homeless or not and, I don’t recall a report about it.

[Reno89519]

In multiple threads on the topic we have people defending Trump hating Uber, saying little old lady at fault, too dark, too little time, she was pedestrian "not in crosswalk", etc. But consider a few things:

• She is first murder by a "driverless car". Who has responsibility? Liability?
• Uber employed, not for the first time, a felon using false ID to drive; have been warned about that problem multiple times
• Uber previously admits to problem seeing/avoiding bicycles
• Uber admits to problem with bicycle lanes and apparently makes illegal tursn into them
• Uber came to Arizona because it's lack of laws allowed them to operate on streets that other cities did not let them do without more stringent percautions
• The initial police observation and report of the video says the woman was observed walking her bike across the street (hey, who remembers that is how we were taught to cross a street with a bike), thus later claiming they did not see the woman is obviously false
• The initial police observation is that she then came out of a shadow. Look at the pictures, no shadows where she laid dead, the smashed bike lays on the ground, where the car is stopped
• The car is guided by sensors, correct? Sensors would not be affected by shadows, else the car would never be driven at night.
• Sensors normally have faster than human responses, yet the scene and video, according to the police, showed now sign of the car slowing down or breaking
• The driver, despite the video showing the woman crossing the street ahead of them, did not see her, maybe didn't watch, maybe wasn't attentive? Is there a camera on the driver?
• It bears repeating. The car ran her down, without slowing or breaking.
• Would a strictly human-driven car hit her? I wonder as we would have seen her, been watching for her. How many human cars on Phoenix area streets per death vs. the few driverless cars. The driverless car is more dangerous--whether cars per death and likely even worse by miles per death.
• How about the programming, mostly by H1B and others from or in India. What impact does their cultural bias and experience, the lack of respect for life or safety play? Does their lack of it get reflected in the programming. Have you ever been to India? I have. The roads are absolute chaos. On road to Delhi, I saw every mode of transportation you could imagine, even elephants, and everything overloaded and weaving in and out amongst each other, horns blaring. There were accidents and dead people, too. So much filth and over population that they didn’t care. Is this the mindset that programs these killer cars?
• So, does Uber take ownership of the crash or circle the wagons and hide, blaming the victim for her death? Shut the deadly program down or restart it once the breaking news focus moves on?
• Interesting timing as Arizona just changed regulations on March 1 to tighten up requirements and responsibilities for driverless cars. They may not find themselves so free to do whatever they want on the streets.
• So, over the past year we had something like 37,000 deaths for over 263 million cars and now one death for a couple hundred driverless cars. Those stats make driverless cars deathtraps by comparisons.
• Why do we have driverless cars on our streets? Is there a need? Who will die next?

Okay, lunch break over. I've always been an opponent of driverless cars being developed and tested on our streets. Using us, the public, as live guinea pigs for there experimentation. I wonder when the first time a terrorist loads one with explosives and sends it to its destination; or a family puts their kids in one to go to school and it is involved in an accident and no adult or parent is there; or someone hacks it and redirects your wife or daughter to an unintended destination; or it takes you through an undesirable no-go area of down and is stopped or breaks down, etc. Oh, yeah, what was the problem they are trying to fix?

[cyclotic]

I drive 50,000 miles plus a year. I rarely if ever use cruise control. My right foot is constantly adjusting speed to conditions around me, real or anticipated.

I can often anticipate what the drive in front or next to me is doing by watching the attitude of his car suspension and the front tire.

I can determine how fast to enter a corner by judgement of pavement, other traffic and what I can see of the curve. If I know the curve well, I’ll take it far hotter than a curve I’m not familiar with.

The camber of the road can be a factor. There’s a section of freeway with a wide sweeping right curve. It’s slightly off camber so the road actually flows to the left shoulder a little bit. I drive it far different on snow or in the rain than I do on dry pavement.

None of this can be gauged by a dirty sensor camera and a gps.

I’ll drive my own car thank you. Most of my driving is in a company car, but my own car is a manual too.

[Oldexpat]

Self driving cars are a utopian dream. We just took a longish visit in DC and VA and I kept telling the wife: how would a driverless car cover that?

[libstripper]

“. . . someone hacks it and redirects your wife or daughter to an unintended destination; or it takes you through an undesirable no-go area of down and is stopped or breaks down . . .”

You’re not even really speculating. I had one of the early GPS units on a car of mine. There were several times when it would direct me into the boondocks and I’d have to rely on a paper map to find my way out, or a call to my destination to have them talk me in. GPS is better now, but definitely not perfect.

[Reno89519]

My wife lives by GPS. When we lived in DC area she hated drives out. Took a bit to figure out that when she’d go to College Park area or up that way, the GPS would drag her through DC streets for over an hour instead of taking the beltway around in a few minutes. Many of those neighborhoods are not nice, even in daytime. She got a traffic camera ticket, which is how I found out and shockingly asked her why she was in that part of DC. Musing if she was looking for drugs or something.

[WayneS]

I remember a time when getting one’s driver’s license and driving one’s own car was practically the definition of freedom - a right of passage for young adults as one of their first experiences with personal freedom and personal responsibility. I have never forgotten that initial ‘rush’ of new-found independence, and I relish that freedom of movement to this day.

However, there seem to be an awful lot of people here who claim to love and support our “Free Republic”, but who simply cannot wait to relinquish control of all of our modes of transportation to government-controlled robotic machines.

I simply do not understand it.

[Moonman62]

You can read these excerpts from the article I have linked below. The police have already seen the video from the car that shows the view to the front as well as a video of what the driver was doing.

“The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them,” said Sylvia Moir, police chief in Tempe, Ariz., the location for the first pedestrian fatality involving a self-driving car. “His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision.”

From viewing the videos, “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 said.

“I suspect preliminarily it appears that the Uber would likely not be at fault in this accident, either,” Moir said.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Exclusive-Tempe-police-chief-says-early-probe-12765481.php

[precisionshootist]

You are confusing technology with liberty. You are willing to give control of your freedom of movement to someone else because you don’t want the responsibility of driving.

[ican'tbelieveit]

I am sure people said the same thing about the whip, horse and buggy.

But, no, I don’t want to die at the (lack of) hands of the “driver” of the car next to me or on the cross street to me too busy texting or putting on makeup or too hyped up on testosterone or too just too flipping selfish to care about anyone but themselves.

I would love to give them the freedom to sit back and enjoy the ride, and do whatever they want to do. I would love to be able to commute to work everyday and not have to spend the whole hour dodging people running stop signs and red lights. And then have to spend all day while I am at work dreading the commute home where I have to experience the exact same thing.

[WayneS]

I disagree. I think people who are virtually standing in line to hand over control of every single mode of transportation in this country to government-approved robots are "the exact reason the right is dying".

As of right now, if I do not want to put up with the government-caused hassles associated with flying, riding a train or riding a bus, I can hop in/on a vehicle which I own and control, and travel anywhere I want to within the bounds of the continental United States. You, however, appear to be itching to give up that right.

[WayneS]

I am sure people said the same thing about the whip, horse and buggy.

No, they didn't. The advent of the automobile gave people greater freedom to travel, not less.

No one wants to die due to the incompetence of someone else. Unfortunately, that is a risk we must all accept in order to live in a free society. And I'd much rather accept that physical risk than the far greater risks to liberty associated with giving up my freedom to travel where I choose, when I choose.

[ican'tbelieveit]

AND HAVING THE CAR PERFORM A MINDLESS TASK OF DRIVING ME TO WORK WOULD GIVE ME MORE FREEDOM!

[ican'tbelieveit]

AND HAVING THE CAR PERFORM A MINDLESS TASK OF DRIVING ME TO WORK WOULD GIVE ME MORE FREEDOM!

[WayneS]

I think you have a very warped sense of what the word freedom actually means. Furthermore, if you consider driving an automobile to be a mindless task then you should give up your drivers license now before you kill somebody.

And, if you think the government will not be able to control your movements once you have surrendered your ability to pilot your own car, then you are delusional.

I love driving and controlling cars. I love riding and controlling motorcycles. Part of the reason I love driving my own vehicles is that it is not a "mindless task". It requires a great deal of concentration and focus.

But, I do agree with you about one thing, though, I am looking forward to the time when you are no longer driving a vehicle on the public roads in this country.

[precisionshootist]

"I would love to give them the freedom to sit back and enjoy the ride, and do whatever they want to do. I would love to be able to commute to work everyday and not have to spend the whole hour dodging people running stop signs and red lights. And then have to spend all day while I am at work dreading the commute home where I have to experience the exact same thing."

You can do that now. It's called a cab, and it doesn't take up space in your garage and you don't need to insure it. That being said you have to obey the rules and limitations set by the cab driver and the cab company. You will have even more rules and micromanagement in your "driverless", as in "someone is driving but it's not me" car and the central government that will monitor every destination and will step in and take control when it's for your own good or the the good of the collective.