Video has been released which shows how the self-driving Uber car killed a pedestrian.
Posted on 03/21/2018 5:24:49 PM PDT by COBOL2Java
Video has been released which shows how the self-driving Uber car killed a pedestrian.
An Uber spokeswoman said the company was “fully cooperating” with the local authorities.
The autonomous Uber had a safety driver at the wheel, as was required for Uber’s autonomous test vehicles operating on public roads, Tech Crunch reported.
Police said that the Uber was driving northbound near Mill Avenue and Curry Road when a woman attempted to cross the street with her bicycle in front of the vehicle outside, of a crosswalk, KNXV reported.
In the video, you can see Elaine Herzberg, 49, suddenly appear in front of the car.
The pedestrian was hit by the Uber while it was traveling 40 m.p.h. in a 45 m.p.h. zone.
After being struck, Herzberg was transported to a nearby hospital where she died, police said.
(Excerpt) Read more at themaven.net ...
I grew up in deer territory. I would not have hit bike lady.
Interesting coding scenario. An autonomous driving car with lidar should account for objects coming towards the vehicle from the side. If so equipped, this would cut down on accidents caused by red-light runners. Or from animals running across traffic lanes. Happens all the time with deer running across lanes, crashing into vehicles. It would definitely be a plus for these autonomous driven cars to handle this. For now, it appears that human drivers are better at handling this scenario. I've gotten hit and injured in my car (totaled) by a red-light runner; I would hope that technology would someday help prevent serious crashes like that. Someday... it appears that Uber and Volvos aren't quite there yet.
I can’t watch that.
By the way, in this frame what is the dark area between the victims head and her legs? There seems to be a line of dark extending from the victim all the way off to the left side of the frame. Seems a bit odd.
Would they put their camera behind a rear view mirror?
For me it’s been very educational. I do a LOT of J-walking, and it’s taught me to really look both ways CAREFULLY - even in a crosswalk.
So if the freak was paying attention, what could he have done? There still would have been no time for him to react. No time to avoid hitting that silly jaywalking woman.
Because that's what the story is about. It's not about a random vehicle/pedestrian accident. It's about a self-driving car.
No, that would be nuts. The question about self driving vehicles is not whether they can be made perfect. The alternative isn't perfect either. The question is whether they can be made safer, on the whole, than people driving. The answer is almost certainly yes, and the implementation of this technology could save many thousands of lives every year.
Yikes. That is terrible. I noticed half of those incidents happened at crosswalks and half were In an open road. Jaywalking.
I call them incidents. I can’t call them accidents because most of them looked purposefully intentional on the pedestrians part. You walk out in front of a 4000 pound car and get hit? That is no accident.
“And why didn’t that car brake on its own? The woman did NOT leap in front of the car, she was already in the road and the computer should have easily been able to track her movements and avoid her. If that is the best they can do with a self driving car equipped with night vision, then they should keep the things off the road. This design has serious flaws.”
those are excellent points, ESPECIALLY the point about the car completely failing to brake on it’s own ... isn’t that supposed to be one of the whole points about driverless cars, namely that they are safer and better drivers than humans and react faster and never waver in their attentiveness?
I have found that sometimes it’s easier/safer to cross in the middle the block.
“So are stupid pedestrians.”
well, i guess we already know a crucial fact about driverless cars then: they won’t be able to deal with stupid pedestrians ...
Looks like sleeping to me.
Terrible video. Just awful.
It only validates my long held view: If you are a pedestrian and you get hit, you are at fault.
I don’t care if there is a crosswalk, a light, or whatever. When a pedestrian, you have to walk across roads with the same mindset a motorcycle rider has to ride on the road.
You have to assume any car will hit you and conduct yourself accordingly. As on a motorcycle, that means eyeing every single car waiting to pull into traffic and assume it is going to pull out, and you have to have a plan.
As a pedestrian, you have to assume that unless a car is stopped that it will keep moving and conduct yourself accordingly.
You may be in a crosswalk. You may have the cross light. You may be 100% in the right. But it doesn’t do you any damned good if your skull is caved in.
I live near a very affluent, and very liberal town. A famous town known by nearly everyone in this country. And the downtown area has loads of crosswalks. And the people just step out into them with an arrogance that is breathtaking. I swear, I have never seen anything stupider than these people. It has to be something in the water.
When I drive through there on my way home, when the light is just right, everything looks gray and I have trouble picking people out. I almost hit someone dressed in black who couldn’t even be bothered to walk 20 yards to a crosswalk to begin with, but stepped into the darkened roadway with the same stupidity and arrogance some people seem to have because they are pedestrians. I was only doing about 20 mph, and my first sight of the person was as they flashed by my side window as I passed.
If I had hit that person, nobody would have faulted me. I would not have gone to jail or even have been fined. But I would have to live with that the rest of my life. I had an acquaintance of mine who hit and killed an elderly Italian woman all dressed in black one night as she walked on the side of the road. He wasn’t charged. But it ruined his life.
I am extremely wary and try to be considerate of people in cars, and I assume they don’t see me. If it is a crosswalk with no light, and someone has already made traffic stop and I am not already in the road, I usually turn around, and walk away from the crosswalk to let traffic go, then I wait for a large gap before I even consider walking across instead of making people wait for me.
If I am at a crosswalk, and I am not ready to cross...I step away from the mouth of the crosswalk and deliberately retreat from the roadway. Nothing irritates me more than a pedestrian standing in the mouth of a crosswalk looking at their cell phone while people have stopped for them to cross.
You can tell. People’s conduct in crossing a roadway is a pet peeve of mine as a driver. As a pedestrian, I just assume they are all out to get me, on their phone, or simply don’t care, and conduct myself accordingly.
I think it is just shadow from the bright headlights.
Rational. You are exceedingly rational, perhaps too much so for today’s world.
Heck, I even look for cars going the wrong way. Because it happens, people are idiots, and I want to leave nothing to chance.
BTW, I am told that safety research is telling us to install fewer striped crosswalks. Car drivers don’t pay attention to lightly used crosswalks, but pedestrians are more likely to walk out in them, with a net result of a greater number car-ped interactions than if there were no crosswalk striped. It makes sense, if you think about it for a minute. The peds are more careful when they cross.
A decent 1080P dash-cam for illustration of nighttime capabilities. Can see details at a distance on poorly lighted road as illustrated in this video at the 7:30 mark.
https://youtu.be/F1xu9Xpkbnk?t=362
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