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I've recently been disappointed by the "Uber's car ran a red light!" stories I've been seeing. I know a lot of people hate Uber for various reasons and there's

I've recently been disappointed by the "Uber's car ran a red light!" stories I've been seeing. I know a lot of people hate Uber for various reasons and there's every reason to stay cautious about making sure self-driving cars are predictable and have the right sensors on-board, but imagine if we saw a headline on CNN every time a human-driven car ran a red light. There's no excuse for a self-driving car to run a red light, but human drivers do it millions of times every day and in most cases when we see it we just shake our heads and say "what is that fool thinking?!" But a self-driving car does it once and it's headline news for months.

marcell 10y ago
Usually when a human runs a red light, they are aware that it's red. Typically the light is just turning red, and they think they can still make it. For Uber, their car was probably not aware that the light was red, which is more dangerous.
- pyre 10y ago
  People often run red lights because they aren't paying attention too. It still doesn't make headlines on CNN.
  - saynay 10y ago
    A person running a red light is driving just one car at a time. A self-driving car's software is (potentially) driving many cars. I do not think "a self-driving car runs a red light" is analogous to "a person runs a red light". A closer analogy is to "a distinct class of people who run red lights". I do agree that the media response is overblown, however I do not think it is without some merit.
    - benologist 10y ago
      "A person" discounts the millions of other persons individually doing it around the world - orders of magnitude more than driverless cars could possibly achieve this decade. Their combined effort, while not just running red lights, kills an estimated 1.25 million people a year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
  - woofyman 10y ago
    Humans who run red lights don't have PR firms proclaiming they're disrupting driving and changing the world. That stance sets you up for bad press when your technology fails.
- benologist 10y ago
  For ~100 years nobody has been able to make a light red enough for people to consistently stop and wait to proceed. Uber and all the other companies will permanently solve that problem the one time they figure out how to reliably identify a red light.
chc 10y ago
I thought what had people upset was that Uber wasn't honest about what happened, not just that the car ran a red.
eli 10y ago
That's a perfectly reasonable argument that Uber could have made. Instead they lied about what happened. Lying to the public (and regulators?) about how safe your vehicles are is, in my opinion, worse than running the light in the first place.
- freehunter 10y ago
  Right, but if a cop pulled over a random hypothetical person after they ran a red light, how would we all expect that conversation to happen? "Do you know why I pulled you over?" "No" lie #1 "Did you know you ran that red light back there?" "No, it was yellow when I went through" lie #2 "Here's the ticket" person shows up to court to fight the ticket by claiming their innocence, lie #3 Again, no excusing Uber's behavior, just pointing to a double standard. We fully expect human drivers to run red lights, and we fully expect them to lie about it. There's no excuse for Uber's response and no excuse for their software running a red light, but there's similarly no excuse for humans doing it. Yet humans do it all the time and no one really cares. Like if we're going to report headline news every time a Tesla catches on fire, we should have breaking news stop-the-presses coverage every time a gasoline or diesel powered car catches on fire, too. But we don't because it's much more frequent, to the point where we almost expect it.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 10y ago
    Uber's lies affect society. This hypothetical drivers lie only affects his wallet.
    - freehunter 10y ago
      I would say every red light runner affects society. The main reason people support self-driving cars is because of how common traffic deaths are. Because of how bad humans are at driving. It's a lot easier to do a software update on a poorly-behaving self-driving car than it is to re-educate poorly-behaving human drivers. The real question is not "do self-driving cars commit traffic violations?" but rather "do self-driving cars commit traffic violations at a lower rate than humans?". That's what matters. Not that they're perfect, but that they're better in a measurable way.
chipgap98 10y ago
I think people fear the loss of control that a self driving car poses. If I run a red light and get into an accident I have only myself to blame. If my car does that on its own its completely out of my control and that is pretty terrifying, especially to less tech savvy people. Unfortunately that is how a lot of people look at the issue.
- euyyn 10y ago
  Yeah, while not true on aggregate, on any specific instance a human driver can make the conscious decision to pay extra attention and drive more safely. Plus, even if Uber's car recognized the traffic light as green, the fact that the cars before it on the other lanes stopped should be a clear enough signal to not just speed through.
lg 10y ago
if the contents of that fool's head were soon to be snapshotted and uploaded into the minds of hundreds of millions of drivers, it'd be headline news for months too.
Buttons840 10y ago
If a person causes a death in an accident we think "that ONE person made a bad decission, but most people would make a better decision". If a self driving car does the same people will think "ALL cars will make the same bad decission in the same situation". And there is some truth to that.
meredydd 10y ago
What fuelled the headlines is that the car ran a light while engaging in legally dubious "cowboy" testing with real passengers. The human analogy is "<politician> ran a red light while drunk". The point is that they made errors of judgement that then caused this unsafe situation, rather than it being a random accident. (Especially in this case, in which high-handed defiance of both principles and the law is an established narrative.)
Animats 10y ago
It may indicate a repeatable bug. With self-driving cars, you have different problems than with humans. Tesla has three times hit a stopped vehicle projecting into the left edge of a traffic lane. (Those are just the ones for which there's dashcam video.) That's a design failure. Humans fail in different ways, such as inattention.

marcell 10y ago

Usually when a human runs a red light, they are aware that it's red. Typically the light is just turning red, and they think they can still make it. For Uber, their car was probably not aware that the light was red, which is more dangerous.

pyre 10y ago
People often run red lights because they aren't paying attention too. It still doesn't make headlines on CNN.
- saynay 10y ago
  A person running a red light is driving just one car at a time. A self-driving car's software is (potentially) driving many cars. I do not think "a self-driving car runs a red light" is analogous to "a person runs a red light". A closer analogy is to "a distinct class of people who run red lights". I do agree that the media response is overblown, however I do not think it is without some merit.
  - benologist 10y ago
    "A person" discounts the millions of other persons individually doing it around the world - orders of magnitude more than driverless cars could possibly achieve this decade. Their combined effort, while not just running red lights, kills an estimated 1.25 million people a year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
- woofyman 10y ago
  Humans who run red lights don't have PR firms proclaiming they're disrupting driving and changing the world. That stance sets you up for bad press when your technology fails.
benologist 10y ago
For ~100 years nobody has been able to make a light red enough for people to consistently stop and wait to proceed. Uber and all the other companies will permanently solve that problem the one time they figure out how to reliably identify a red light.

chc 10y ago

I thought what had people upset was that Uber wasn't honest about what happened, not just that the car ran a red.

eli 10y ago

That's a perfectly reasonable argument that Uber could have made. Instead they lied about what happened. Lying to the public (and regulators?) about how safe your vehicles are is, in my opinion, worse than running the light in the first place.

freehunter 10y ago
Right, but if a cop pulled over a random hypothetical person after they ran a red light, how would we all expect that conversation to happen? "Do you know why I pulled you over?" "No" lie #1 "Did you know you ran that red light back there?" "No, it was yellow when I went through" lie #2 "Here's the ticket" person shows up to court to fight the ticket by claiming their innocence, lie #3 Again, no excusing Uber's behavior, just pointing to a double standard. We fully expect human drivers to run red lights, and we fully expect them to lie about it. There's no excuse for Uber's response and no excuse for their software running a red light, but there's similarly no excuse for humans doing it. Yet humans do it all the time and no one really cares. Like if we're going to report headline news every time a Tesla catches on fire, we should have breaking news stop-the-presses coverage every time a gasoline or diesel powered car catches on fire, too. But we don't because it's much more frequent, to the point where we almost expect it.
- frgtpsswrdlame 10y ago
  Uber's lies affect society. This hypothetical drivers lie only affects his wallet.
  - freehunter 10y ago
    I would say every red light runner affects society. The main reason people support self-driving cars is because of how common traffic deaths are. Because of how bad humans are at driving. It's a lot easier to do a software update on a poorly-behaving self-driving car than it is to re-educate poorly-behaving human drivers. The real question is not "do self-driving cars commit traffic violations?" but rather "do self-driving cars commit traffic violations at a lower rate than humans?". That's what matters. Not that they're perfect, but that they're better in a measurable way.

chipgap98 10y ago

I think people fear the loss of control that a self driving car poses. If I run a red light and get into an accident I have only myself to blame. If my car does that on its own its completely out of my control and that is pretty terrifying, especially to less tech savvy people. Unfortunately that is how a lot of people look at the issue.

euyyn 10y ago
Yeah, while not true on aggregate, on any specific instance a human driver can make the conscious decision to pay extra attention and drive more safely. Plus, even if Uber's car recognized the traffic light as green, the fact that the cars before it on the other lanes stopped should be a clear enough signal to not just speed through.

lg 10y ago

if the contents of that fool's head were soon to be snapshotted and uploaded into the minds of hundreds of millions of drivers, it'd be headline news for months too.

Buttons840 10y ago

If a person causes a death in an accident we think "that ONE person made a bad decission, but most people would make a better decision". If a self driving car does the same people will think "ALL cars will make the same bad decission in the same situation". And there is some truth to that.

meredydd 10y ago

What fuelled the headlines is that the car ran a light while engaging in legally dubious "cowboy" testing with real passengers. The human analogy is "<politician> ran a red light while drunk". The point is that they made errors of judgement that then caused this unsafe situation, rather than it being a random accident. (Especially in this case, in which high-handed defiance of both principles and the law is an established narrative.)

Animats 10y ago

It may indicate a repeatable bug. With self-driving cars, you have different problems than with humans. Tesla has three times hit a stopped vehicle projecting into the left edge of a traffic lane. (Those are just the ones for which there's dashcam video.) That's a design failure. Humans fail in different ways, such as inattention.