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Uber to Suspend Autonomous Tests After Arizona Accident

225 points by rayuela 10y ago

hackbinary 10y ago
I look forward to the day when most cars are autonomously driven, and it is news that a human was driven and the crash was caused by the human. Human error accounts for something like 95% of all crashes. https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812115 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/12/human-error-cause-vehicle-crashes http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/12/human-error-cause-...
- hackbinary 10y ago
  This is only news because autonomously driven cars are still so rare.
  - jsemrau 10y ago
    It is mostly we hold automated machines to a higher standard. If 5% of all flights would not arrive would you fly?
    - supercoder 10y ago
      Depends how depressed I was
    - victorhooi 10y ago
      Your comparison doesn't really make sense. If human pilots had a 15% error rate, and autonomous planes had an error rate of 5% - which would you fly? It's basic math - you pick the one that is most likely to get you there safely. Most people have no issues getting into cars - despite the fact that they're one of the largest killers. So we've already established that for most people, the convenience (or their love affair) of cars is enough to overcome the current risk of death/injury - if we could decrease that, is that not surely a net win?
      - jacquesm 10y ago
        > If human pilots had a 15% error rate, and autonomous planes had an error rate of 5% - which would you fly? Neither.
      - notahacker 10y ago
        If human pilots have an error rate with a large variance, and you can choose your pilot (or fly your own plane) the decision is less clear cut. Especially in a world where human accident statistics include a significant proportion of people exhibiting reckless behaviours that many jurisdictions will take their licenses away or even jail them for. I'd want autonomous cars to be a lot safer than the average human driver before they were allowed on regular roads without a human behind the wheel. In fact, given that humans and machines are likely to make systematically different errors such that the human can solve most of the driving issues that the machine has and the machine can solve most of the driving issues a human has, the case for getting rid of the legally-responsible human driver altogether (humans ought to have the right to be drunk or sending emails whilst in their own vehicle; taxis ought to be cheaper?) isn't particularly strong.
      - Spooky23 10y ago
        I would choose neither. You're making a subjective judgement that humans are fundamentally less safe than autonomous drivers. Like most HN commenters you are making this assertion without any facts, as there isn't sufficient data to make the assertion. Other than drunk driving diversion, the case isn't as clear cut as you may think. If you want to reduce fatalities, reducing SUVs and drunk driving is the end goal, as rollovers and alcohol related crashes are the most preventable fatality sources.
    - dtech 10y ago
      Are you implying that 5% of all car trips result in a fatal crash? That's preposterous.
      - jsemrau 10y ago
        Every system has a quality of performance. In production (let's say steel) we can produce with a degree of quality. , for statistical models we have a degree of confidence, etc. Every machine we currently build will fail to a certain calculable degree. The less you maintain the machine the higher the degree of failure will be.
  - asdfaoeu 10y ago
    You are assuming that after this crash their rate is still lower than humans, however it might not be.
    - notahacker 10y ago
      Their rate is only lower than humans because humans take over whenever the software faces a problem they can't deal with, indicates a problem or behaves erratically. In Uber's case, that happens a little more than once per mile driven http://www.recode.net/2017/3/16/14938116/uber-travis-kalanick-self-driving-internal-metrics-slow-progress http://www.recode.net/2017/3/16/14938116/uber-travis-kalanic...
      - asdfaoeu 10y ago
        Yeah I'd agree, however it was higher than humans then not only is it not currently viable it is unsafe to test on public roads.
- blablabla123 10y ago
  I wonder if that is actually going to happen. Since going to school I'm aware that autonomous systems that "take over responsibility" are an unsolved ethical problem. Delegating this away to the manufacturer or maybe even the 3rd party who delivered the code doesn't make it better. Adding many layers to responsibility usually s*cks. At least for me it's also why I don't like corporates, it's not only that you have less control over your work - you don't even know who pushes the buttons. As it turns out, in many cases it's nobody concrete. It's some kind of weird group dynamic that is oftentimes in control. In case autonomous cars become common, analysing this kind of complexity will be an awesome kind of busywork.
  - CraigRood 10y ago
    Kind of a silly question but in the case of a "normal" car accident, don't they just come down to compensation costs. Either for repairs and damages, the individual involved or even medical costs. Couldn't the likes of Uber simply underwrite their own insurance and fight their own cases in court where appropriate?. If self-driven Ubers are as safe as we expect all self-driven cars then wouldn't this be a "cheap" option anyway?. I don't know where you would start with more serious accidents, if Uber is at fault.
    - blablabla123 10y ago
      If everybody sticked more or less to the rules and if there are no severe injuries/very costly damages, then it's really just compensation costs. I don't know the exact situation in the US (also I'm no lawyer or something), but in Germany when some kind of Negligence is involved people can lose their drivers licence temporarily or forever, may have to pay fines (on top of compensations) or even have to go to jail. (Edit: also a costly Medical-psychological assessment may be needed afterwards to be able to drive again in the future.) Coming back to the costs, it's also interesting to say that insurances usually cover sums 1 - 20 millions. That's how much damage a single person can easily do with a car. It's said that it's a plus that self-driving cars are somehow interconnected and learning from each other. You may argue they are thus one entity and may have to be insured like that. Ok, but that's maybe a bit too esoteric now... ;)
  - 10y ago
- wallace_f 10y ago
  I also look forward to that. Self-driving cars can save millions. On the other hand, car hacking is a credible threat. We already have a Michael Hastings incident.
cfetter 10y ago
link to tweet/video: https://twitter.com/fresconews/status/845538056031649793 https://twitter.com/fresconews/status/845538056031649793
- m-j-fox 10y ago
  I mean, an article about a picture that doesn't show or even link the picture? Come on Bloomberg.
  - italophil 10y ago
    There is a link in the second sentence. The rest of the article after that is basically just repeating recent issues around Uber. Guess they need to fill the space.
- smoyer 10y ago
  More importantly, those tweets purport that the other car (driven by a human) failed to yield at the intersection and hit Uber's car. If this proves to be true, the only question is whether a human driver in the Uber car's position would have noticed and braked to avoid entering the intersection. There's mention of a third car ... we'll see what the traffic cameras say!
good_vibes 10y ago
Murphy's Law.
Kiro 10y ago
People say Uber needs self-driving cars in order to survive. But how realistic is it that we have self-driving cars without a backup human operator anytime soon? If someone needs to be behind the wheel anyway I don't see how it's cutting any costs.
- HenryBemis 10y ago
  Give it time. Soon they will have a foothold (aka presence) all over the planet. By the time they do this the auto industry will be able to produce a reliable self-driving car and regulations will be catching up. Then someone who owns a self-driving (preferably electric) car will be "renting" his/her car to Uber for the hours when he/she does not need it. The uber will THRIVE using someone else's vehicle, kicking the responsibility for maintenance etc to THEM and Uber will be collecting a nice 5-10-20% cut JUST for the service provision (booking, ACH, etc).
  - BillinghamJ 10y ago
    I actually don't expect they'd be successful using arbitrary people's cars. These marketplace companies don't tend to do very well when the supply side of the market isn't properly prepared for the nature of operating in the marketplace - i.e. most Uber drivers are exclusively Uber drivers - it isn't really car sharing any more. The time and effort would shift away from dealing with drivers who know where they stand, to providing constant support to upset car owners. Quickly, it would switch to the supply primarily being provided by large businesses who own 1k+ cars because the economics stack up well in large quantities. At that point, Uber might as well just buy the cars directly and cut out the middleman.
  - bunderbunder 10y ago
    I don't think they will thrive in that scenario. Uber's got a few advantages, but I think they mostly boil down to being the first ones to have an app, and having a whole bunch of VC cash to pour into a business that hasn't proven to be any more profitable for them in the past few years than it has been for everyone else over the past couple centuries. They've got one big disadvantage, which is that the fleet maintenance costs for their service model are extraordinarily high. There are no in-house mechanics, and there's no fleet standardization. They've been able to get by without that through a combination of that VC money, and being able to shift the fleet maintenance costs onto the ledgers of their drivers, who presumably aren't generally factoring those costs in when forming a business plan. I don't know when self-driving cars will be fully autonomous. But it seems a pretty safe bet that, by the time they do, their advantages in the app and the VC cash department will have eroded away. By that point we're back to the same old commoditized, race-to-the-bottom industry that, minor departures aside, has characterized taxi service since the horse and buggy days. At which point there's no room for individual owners anymore. In that kind of industry environment, the people who have standardized fleets and in-house mechanics will always be able to outcompete the people who need to pay Volvo dealer prices for vehicle maintenance. I also don't know when self-driving cars will be cheap enough that typical individual owners will have either the need or the inclination to massively jump their depreciation rate, or to subject them to wear and tear by random strangers. But it seems a safe bet that's going to be a long way along the technology's maturity arc. I, personally, wouldn't be willing to lay down cash to bet whether the long term looks like a bunch of individuals renting out cars they own anyway, or people mostly not owning cars because it's not worth the trouble to own one anymore. For my part, though, I'm more keenly interested in the latter - right now, for me, the main value proposition behind owning a car is that it's kind of a hassle to haul myself to a car rental shop when I want one for a weekend trip. That hassle disappears when they can just send the car to me instead. tl;dr - Uber's "sharing economy" model, attractive as it sounds, never really made a whole lot of economic sense in the long view. Their more likely futures are to either become one of the traditional taxi companies, or be squashed by them.
Mtinie 10y ago
In other news, statistics from 2014[1] suggest that since the autonomous car crash was reported yesterday (11:29pm EST, Mar24), 9 people were killed by human drivers under the influence of an intoxicant of some kind. Autonomous vehicles will have challenges that human drivers do not -- like software vulnerabilities -- but those are problems worth overcoming if it means that poor decision making by humans can be reduced. ---- [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6430a2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6430a2.htm
- nialv7 10y ago
  This is not a fair comparison: there're a lot more human driver than autonomous cars.
  - sodawater 10y ago
    Parent: "It's not fair to compare two things unless the sample sizes are exactly the same."
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    One thing I just thought about, Musk said miles trains a better AI. Supposing this yields true valuable results. All SDV may become near perfect drivers. Humans will keep being spread along the spectrum of dangerous to safe driver. ps: thanks for reminding me that statistics are hard to get right.
    - chillingeffect 10y ago
      Anyone using ML knows there are points of diminishing returns. Otherwise I would be writing this from atop a pile of money.
  - mertd 10y ago
    I think the point here is not that the self driving software is already beter than humans but rather that the upside of cars driving themselves is so big that it is worth pursuing until we get it right.
heisenbit 10y ago
From a strategy point Uber is in a desperate position. After the Google lawsuit their self-driving story is not working. Their existing business is loosing money in most places with no end in sight. Top level executives are leaving which is a sign that they can't imagine a positive course in the medium term. The company is under extreme pressure and has proven over and over again to be willing to cut corners when it comes to legal compliance. It should be frightening to anyone on the streets that Uber managers are making decisions to put self driving cars on the road. They neither have the culture, patience nor the expertise to make decisions affecting life and death.
- dorfsmay 10y ago
  I'm surprised we don't hear more about Mercedes. I don't know how much of a story they have when it comes to self-driving car, but they already build cars, and they already have a well established rent-by-the-minute business: car2go.com. If and when they figure out self-driving cars all they have to do is slowly replace the people driven car2go by self-driven ones and they'll become a leader of that market without any fuss!
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    As a rule, Mercedes tends to keep mum on tech they're not ready to roll out (at least to the S-Class), and they like it be pretty near perfect at that piont.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    Every single carmaker will offer self-driving as an option at first, then as a standard feature. They'll also come with software that allows you to flip a switch and see your car take off to earn some money whenever you tell it – or it is reasonably sure from experience - that you won't need it for a while. The manufacturer will take care of billing and insure you against vandalism for a 30% cut. Meanwhile, Uber is but the faint memory of a bro-themed ponzi scheme. They have nothing that would allow them to remain relevant: no reputation, no technology, and -50 billion in capital. All they got to scale was the one part that's irrelevant: managing drivers. And groping women, of course.
bdavisx 10y ago
Here's the real question, do you trust Uber to do this (or really anything) the right way, or do you think they'll take whatever shortcuts they can? If someone finds a huge bug in the code and says, "Well, we need to completely rewrite this part or it's never going to work. The rewrite is going to take about 10 months." And someone else says "We can hack a patch in that'll work most of the time in a week.". Which road is Uber going to take in this case? I know what their past performance has shown, they'll take the shortcut. Have they ever done things the hard way?
- hashkb 10y ago
  They probably feel like they are doing it the hard way, because their shortcuts keep backfiring.
- hijra 10y ago
  I don't trust Uber, but I trust statistics. If Uber is statistically safer without human drivers, then pushing it out 10 months early with bugs could save lives. Humans aren't predisposed to trust science over their gut though.
  - dhimes 10y ago
    I agree. It has something about the loss of control- a fear of the headline that reads "Ybar (sic) self-driving car loses control, 317 people dead."
  - saosebastiao 10y ago
    I trust statistics but I don't trust bad statistics. There isn't a self driving car operator out there that is currently testing their cars in statistically representative conditions. And unless they are, there isn't a statistical methodology out there that can say they are safer. Google, for example, avoids expressways and won't go on freeways, hasn't tested their cars in extreme weather, barely ever sees even bad weather, and is electronically limited to 25mph. I'd be willing to bet the majority of drivers have nearly perfect driving records in those conditions too.
taylodl 10y ago
I can't find any details of the accident. Every headline is the same - Uber self-driving vehicle involved in Arizona crash. You read the article - and no details whatsoever. So why bother reporting it? The news isn't that the accident happen, but why it happened.
- weston 10y ago
  That's "news" for the majority of publishers in 2017: Clickbait headline designed to generate traffic to sell ads. Actual journalism and content becomes secondary. It makes you appreciate actual journalism.
chaser7016 10y ago
Yes but Kalanick and his bros are sociopaths. They will do anything/everything to try win the self driving car race even if that causes innocent people to die. How is this legal and why hasn't he stepped down???
- chaser7016 10y ago
  Why is this downvoted... a sociopath is someone who holds a complete utter disregard for everyone but themselves. Does that not describe all and any of Uber's actions or this is getting downvoted because your one or want to be his bro?
  - usaphp 10y ago
    > "or this is getting downvoted because your one or want to be his bro?" Sure that's the only reason why people can disagree with your point?
    - johansch 10y ago
      > Sure that's the only reason why people can disagree with your point? Well, there's also the 6700 Uber employees with a vested interest in the financial success of the company. It wouldn't take a very large fraction of them to downvote things here.
      - chaser7016 10y ago
        They need to jump ship like their president just did!
  - tps5 10y ago
    I think it's wrong on a few levels to use terms like sociopath in general, and especially about someone you've never met. When you use that word you're talking about another person's mental state, which is opaque to you. No one knows what anyone else thinks and feels. What you should really be concerned with is that person's actions, not what they feel about their actions. For example, you can be a murderer and not be a sociopath, as long as you feel bad about it. But it's really the murdering itself that's the problem. Does it really matter how the murderer feels about it? Some people think so, but the problem has to be dealt with either way. I'm not saying you shouldn't criticize his actions, but I'd try to avoid criticizing his mental state or making assumptions about how he perceives reality.
xyzzy_plugh 10y ago
"A car failed to yield to the autonomous SUV and hit it, authorities said. The self-driving SUV rolled onto its side as a result crash." From http://www.abc15.com/news/region-southeast-valley/tempe/tempe-police-self-driving-uber-vehicle-involved-in-car-accident-no-injuries http://www.abc15.com/news/region-southeast-valley/tempe/temp...
- mcguire 10y ago
  "However, police said there was a passenger in the self-driving car. The person was behind the wheel but it's unclear whether they were controlling the SUV or not."
- mst 10y ago
  It seems somewhat ironic that of all companies uber would fail to account for people being inconsiderate assholes. Perhaps this should be considered further evidence that they didn't write their own system ...
XJOKOLAT 10y ago
Uber now brings their toxic reputation to self-driving cars ... potentially holding back the entire drive in that direction. Thanks, Uber.
johansch 10y ago
I think safety- and brand-conscious Volvo is going to deeply regret this partnership with Uber. (Where Uber provides the self-driving logic and Volvo provides the the vehicle itself.) I can only imagine the internal struggles in Volvo right now. At the very least, if I were running Volvo Cars I'd ask Uber to replace the Volvo logos on those cars with Uber logos... (Volvo has their own, quite advanced self-driving program, but they seem to be doing it the correct/cautious way.)
arikr 10y ago
The article's current title seems like a better title: "Uber Driverless Car Not at Fault in Arizona Accident, Police Say" Current title was "clickbait-y" enough for me to click, whereas the actual title of the article could save the click. /u/dang?
- doktrin 10y ago
  How quickly titles apparently change, as it currently reads "Uber to Suspend Autonomous Tests After Arizona Accident"
- vacri 10y ago
  If you didn't click on the article, you wouldn't have learned that Uber hasn't finished its own investigation, and warrants the accident serious enough to suspend its own trials in both Arizona and Pittsburgh.
throwaway872194 10y ago
I have never driven in the US, but isn't it the job of a car to be rather risk-averse when it comes to merging ? If you're not risk averse, you'd dead meat in 10s in Bangalore - quite lit. if you're riding a motorcycle. (Watch out for the yellow number plates and the Tata Indicas if you're ever here!)
Animats 10y ago
More details would be helpful. If this goes to court, the video from the self-driving vehicle would be interesting. An important question is whether their system is smart enough to take evasive action. It's becoming clear that there are two ways to approach self-driving. The first stems from the DARPA Grand Challenge, which was about off-road driving. For that, the vehicles had to profile the terrain, plotting a path around obstacles, potholes, and cliff edges. The GPS route was just general guidance on where to go. That's the approach Google took, as can be seen from their SXSW videos. Google also identifies moving objects and tries to classify them. With all that capability, it's possible to take evasive action if some other road user is a threat. The control system has situational awareness and knows where there's clear space for escape. The other approach is to start with lane following and automatic cruise control, and try to build them up into self-driving. This can be done entirely with vision systems. That's the Cruise Automation and Tesla approach. This puts the car on a track defined by lines on the pavement, with lane changes and intersections handled as a special case. There usually isn't a full terrain profile; that requires LIDAR. So there isn't enough info to plan an emergency maneuver for collision avoidance. This distinction is not well understood, and it should be.
grogenaut 10y ago
So the thing I don't get is in this autonomous car future, is everyone time shifting to share these cars? Does this work in a factory town where everyone has to be in at shift change? Or if I lease my car out when I'm not using it how do I not get my car when I really need it or want to go home sick?
notblackNwhite 10y ago
Let's put ourselves in the shoes of someone who reads this headline and gets a quick summary. This headline makes it sound like Uber isn't confident of its technology and they think their technology might be the cause and hence they are suspending it. In this case, it seems pretty clear, as confirmed by the police officer, that Uber's car wasn't at fault.

225 points by rayuela 10y ago

I look forward to the day when most cars are autonomously driven, and it is news that a human was driven and the crash was caused by the human. Human error accounts for something like 95% of all crashes. https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812115 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/12/human-error-cause-vehicle-crashes http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/12/human-error-cause-...

hackbinary 10y ago
This is only news because autonomously driven cars are still so rare.
- jsemrau 10y ago
  It is mostly we hold automated machines to a higher standard. If 5% of all flights would not arrive would you fly?
  - supercoder 10y ago
    Depends how depressed I was
  - victorhooi 10y ago
    Your comparison doesn't really make sense. If human pilots had a 15% error rate, and autonomous planes had an error rate of 5% - which would you fly? It's basic math - you pick the one that is most likely to get you there safely. Most people have no issues getting into cars - despite the fact that they're one of the largest killers. So we've already established that for most people, the convenience (or their love affair) of cars is enough to overcome the current risk of death/injury - if we could decrease that, is that not surely a net win?
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      > If human pilots had a 15% error rate, and autonomous planes had an error rate of 5% - which would you fly? Neither.
    - notahacker 10y ago
      If human pilots have an error rate with a large variance, and you can choose your pilot (or fly your own plane) the decision is less clear cut. Especially in a world where human accident statistics include a significant proportion of people exhibiting reckless behaviours that many jurisdictions will take their licenses away or even jail them for. I'd want autonomous cars to be a lot safer than the average human driver before they were allowed on regular roads without a human behind the wheel. In fact, given that humans and machines are likely to make systematically different errors such that the human can solve most of the driving issues that the machine has and the machine can solve most of the driving issues a human has, the case for getting rid of the legally-responsible human driver altogether (humans ought to have the right to be drunk or sending emails whilst in their own vehicle; taxis ought to be cheaper?) isn't particularly strong.
    - Spooky23 10y ago
      I would choose neither. You're making a subjective judgement that humans are fundamentally less safe than autonomous drivers. Like most HN commenters you are making this assertion without any facts, as there isn't sufficient data to make the assertion. Other than drunk driving diversion, the case isn't as clear cut as you may think. If you want to reduce fatalities, reducing SUVs and drunk driving is the end goal, as rollovers and alcohol related crashes are the most preventable fatality sources.
  - dtech 10y ago
    Are you implying that 5% of all car trips result in a fatal crash? That's preposterous.
    - jsemrau 10y ago
      Every system has a quality of performance. In production (let's say steel) we can produce with a degree of quality. , for statistical models we have a degree of confidence, etc. Every machine we currently build will fail to a certain calculable degree. The less you maintain the machine the higher the degree of failure will be.
- asdfaoeu 10y ago
  You are assuming that after this crash their rate is still lower than humans, however it might not be.
  - notahacker 10y ago
    Their rate is only lower than humans because humans take over whenever the software faces a problem they can't deal with, indicates a problem or behaves erratically. In Uber's case, that happens a little more than once per mile driven http://www.recode.net/2017/3/16/14938116/uber-travis-kalanick-self-driving-internal-metrics-slow-progress http://www.recode.net/2017/3/16/14938116/uber-travis-kalanic...
    - asdfaoeu 10y ago
      Yeah I'd agree, however it was higher than humans then not only is it not currently viable it is unsafe to test on public roads.
blablabla123 10y ago
I wonder if that is actually going to happen. Since going to school I'm aware that autonomous systems that "take over responsibility" are an unsolved ethical problem. Delegating this away to the manufacturer or maybe even the 3rd party who delivered the code doesn't make it better. Adding many layers to responsibility usually s*cks. At least for me it's also why I don't like corporates, it's not only that you have less control over your work - you don't even know who pushes the buttons. As it turns out, in many cases it's nobody concrete. It's some kind of weird group dynamic that is oftentimes in control. In case autonomous cars become common, analysing this kind of complexity will be an awesome kind of busywork.
- CraigRood 10y ago
  Kind of a silly question but in the case of a "normal" car accident, don't they just come down to compensation costs. Either for repairs and damages, the individual involved or even medical costs. Couldn't the likes of Uber simply underwrite their own insurance and fight their own cases in court where appropriate?. If self-driven Ubers are as safe as we expect all self-driven cars then wouldn't this be a "cheap" option anyway?. I don't know where you would start with more serious accidents, if Uber is at fault.
  - blablabla123 10y ago
    If everybody sticked more or less to the rules and if there are no severe injuries/very costly damages, then it's really just compensation costs. I don't know the exact situation in the US (also I'm no lawyer or something), but in Germany when some kind of Negligence is involved people can lose their drivers licence temporarily or forever, may have to pay fines (on top of compensations) or even have to go to jail. (Edit: also a costly Medical-psychological assessment may be needed afterwards to be able to drive again in the future.) Coming back to the costs, it's also interesting to say that insurances usually cover sums 1 - 20 millions. That's how much damage a single person can easily do with a car. It's said that it's a plus that self-driving cars are somehow interconnected and learning from each other. You may argue they are thus one entity and may have to be insured like that. Ok, but that's maybe a bit too esoteric now... ;)
- 10y ago
wallace_f 10y ago
I also look forward to that. Self-driving cars can save millions. On the other hand, car hacking is a credible threat. We already have a Michael Hastings incident.

cfetter 10y ago

link to tweet/video: https://twitter.com/fresconews/status/845538056031649793 https://twitter.com/fresconews/status/845538056031649793

m-j-fox 10y ago
I mean, an article about a picture that doesn't show or even link the picture? Come on Bloomberg.
- italophil 10y ago
  There is a link in the second sentence. The rest of the article after that is basically just repeating recent issues around Uber. Guess they need to fill the space.
smoyer 10y ago
More importantly, those tweets purport that the other car (driven by a human) failed to yield at the intersection and hit Uber's car. If this proves to be true, the only question is whether a human driver in the Uber car's position would have noticed and braked to avoid entering the intersection. There's mention of a third car ... we'll see what the traffic cameras say!

good_vibes 10y ago

Murphy's Law.

Kiro 10y ago

People say Uber needs self-driving cars in order to survive. But how realistic is it that we have self-driving cars without a backup human operator anytime soon? If someone needs to be behind the wheel anyway I don't see how it's cutting any costs.

HenryBemis 10y ago
Give it time. Soon they will have a foothold (aka presence) all over the planet. By the time they do this the auto industry will be able to produce a reliable self-driving car and regulations will be catching up. Then someone who owns a self-driving (preferably electric) car will be "renting" his/her car to Uber for the hours when he/she does not need it. The uber will THRIVE using someone else's vehicle, kicking the responsibility for maintenance etc to THEM and Uber will be collecting a nice 5-10-20% cut JUST for the service provision (booking, ACH, etc).
- BillinghamJ 10y ago
  I actually don't expect they'd be successful using arbitrary people's cars. These marketplace companies don't tend to do very well when the supply side of the market isn't properly prepared for the nature of operating in the marketplace - i.e. most Uber drivers are exclusively Uber drivers - it isn't really car sharing any more. The time and effort would shift away from dealing with drivers who know where they stand, to providing constant support to upset car owners. Quickly, it would switch to the supply primarily being provided by large businesses who own 1k+ cars because the economics stack up well in large quantities. At that point, Uber might as well just buy the cars directly and cut out the middleman.
- bunderbunder 10y ago
  I don't think they will thrive in that scenario. Uber's got a few advantages, but I think they mostly boil down to being the first ones to have an app, and having a whole bunch of VC cash to pour into a business that hasn't proven to be any more profitable for them in the past few years than it has been for everyone else over the past couple centuries. They've got one big disadvantage, which is that the fleet maintenance costs for their service model are extraordinarily high. There are no in-house mechanics, and there's no fleet standardization. They've been able to get by without that through a combination of that VC money, and being able to shift the fleet maintenance costs onto the ledgers of their drivers, who presumably aren't generally factoring those costs in when forming a business plan. I don't know when self-driving cars will be fully autonomous. But it seems a pretty safe bet that, by the time they do, their advantages in the app and the VC cash department will have eroded away. By that point we're back to the same old commoditized, race-to-the-bottom industry that, minor departures aside, has characterized taxi service since the horse and buggy days. At which point there's no room for individual owners anymore. In that kind of industry environment, the people who have standardized fleets and in-house mechanics will always be able to outcompete the people who need to pay Volvo dealer prices for vehicle maintenance. I also don't know when self-driving cars will be cheap enough that typical individual owners will have either the need or the inclination to massively jump their depreciation rate, or to subject them to wear and tear by random strangers. But it seems a safe bet that's going to be a long way along the technology's maturity arc. I, personally, wouldn't be willing to lay down cash to bet whether the long term looks like a bunch of individuals renting out cars they own anyway, or people mostly not owning cars because it's not worth the trouble to own one anymore. For my part, though, I'm more keenly interested in the latter - right now, for me, the main value proposition behind owning a car is that it's kind of a hassle to haul myself to a car rental shop when I want one for a weekend trip. That hassle disappears when they can just send the car to me instead. tl;dr - Uber's "sharing economy" model, attractive as it sounds, never really made a whole lot of economic sense in the long view. Their more likely futures are to either become one of the traditional taxi companies, or be squashed by them.

Mtinie 10y ago

In other news, statistics from 2014[1] suggest that since the autonomous car crash was reported yesterday (11:29pm EST, Mar24), 9 people were killed by human drivers under the influence of an intoxicant of some kind. Autonomous vehicles will have challenges that human drivers do not -- like software vulnerabilities -- but those are problems worth overcoming if it means that poor decision making by humans can be reduced. ---- [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6430a2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6430a2.htm

nialv7 10y ago
This is not a fair comparison: there're a lot more human driver than autonomous cars.
- sodawater 10y ago
  Parent: "It's not fair to compare two things unless the sample sizes are exactly the same."
- agumonkey 10y ago
  One thing I just thought about, Musk said miles trains a better AI. Supposing this yields true valuable results. All SDV may become near perfect drivers. Humans will keep being spread along the spectrum of dangerous to safe driver. ps: thanks for reminding me that statistics are hard to get right.
  - chillingeffect 10y ago
    Anyone using ML knows there are points of diminishing returns. Otherwise I would be writing this from atop a pile of money.
- mertd 10y ago
  I think the point here is not that the self driving software is already beter than humans but rather that the upside of cars driving themselves is so big that it is worth pursuing until we get it right.

heisenbit 10y ago

From a strategy point Uber is in a desperate position. After the Google lawsuit their self-driving story is not working. Their existing business is loosing money in most places with no end in sight. Top level executives are leaving which is a sign that they can't imagine a positive course in the medium term. The company is under extreme pressure and has proven over and over again to be willing to cut corners when it comes to legal compliance. It should be frightening to anyone on the streets that Uber managers are making decisions to put self driving cars on the road. They neither have the culture, patience nor the expertise to make decisions affecting life and death.

dorfsmay 10y ago
I'm surprised we don't hear more about Mercedes. I don't know how much of a story they have when it comes to self-driving car, but they already build cars, and they already have a well established rent-by-the-minute business: car2go.com. If and when they figure out self-driving cars all they have to do is slowly replace the people driven car2go by self-driven ones and they'll become a leader of that market without any fuss!
- M_Grey 10y ago
  As a rule, Mercedes tends to keep mum on tech they're not ready to roll out (at least to the S-Class), and they like it be pretty near perfect at that piont.
- matt4077 10y ago
  Every single carmaker will offer self-driving as an option at first, then as a standard feature. They'll also come with software that allows you to flip a switch and see your car take off to earn some money whenever you tell it – or it is reasonably sure from experience - that you won't need it for a while. The manufacturer will take care of billing and insure you against vandalism for a 30% cut. Meanwhile, Uber is but the faint memory of a bro-themed ponzi scheme. They have nothing that would allow them to remain relevant: no reputation, no technology, and -50 billion in capital. All they got to scale was the one part that's irrelevant: managing drivers. And groping women, of course.

bdavisx 10y ago

Here's the real question, do you trust Uber to do this (or really anything) the right way, or do you think they'll take whatever shortcuts they can? If someone finds a huge bug in the code and says, "Well, we need to completely rewrite this part or it's never going to work. The rewrite is going to take about 10 months." And someone else says "We can hack a patch in that'll work most of the time in a week.". Which road is Uber going to take in this case? I know what their past performance has shown, they'll take the shortcut. Have they ever done things the hard way?

hashkb 10y ago
They probably feel like they are doing it the hard way, because their shortcuts keep backfiring.
hijra 10y ago
I don't trust Uber, but I trust statistics. If Uber is statistically safer without human drivers, then pushing it out 10 months early with bugs could save lives. Humans aren't predisposed to trust science over their gut though.
- dhimes 10y ago
  I agree. It has something about the loss of control- a fear of the headline that reads "Ybar (sic) self-driving car loses control, 317 people dead."
- saosebastiao 10y ago
  I trust statistics but I don't trust bad statistics. There isn't a self driving car operator out there that is currently testing their cars in statistically representative conditions. And unless they are, there isn't a statistical methodology out there that can say they are safer. Google, for example, avoids expressways and won't go on freeways, hasn't tested their cars in extreme weather, barely ever sees even bad weather, and is electronically limited to 25mph. I'd be willing to bet the majority of drivers have nearly perfect driving records in those conditions too.

taylodl 10y ago

I can't find any details of the accident. Every headline is the same - Uber self-driving vehicle involved in Arizona crash. You read the article - and no details whatsoever. So why bother reporting it? The news isn't that the accident happen, but why it happened.

weston 10y ago
That's "news" for the majority of publishers in 2017: Clickbait headline designed to generate traffic to sell ads. Actual journalism and content becomes secondary. It makes you appreciate actual journalism.

chaser7016 10y ago

Yes but Kalanick and his bros are sociopaths. They will do anything/everything to try win the self driving car race even if that causes innocent people to die. How is this legal and why hasn't he stepped down???

chaser7016 10y ago
Why is this downvoted... a sociopath is someone who holds a complete utter disregard for everyone but themselves. Does that not describe all and any of Uber's actions or this is getting downvoted because your one or want to be his bro?
- usaphp 10y ago
  > "or this is getting downvoted because your one or want to be his bro?" Sure that's the only reason why people can disagree with your point?
  - johansch 10y ago
    > Sure that's the only reason why people can disagree with your point? Well, there's also the 6700 Uber employees with a vested interest in the financial success of the company. It wouldn't take a very large fraction of them to downvote things here.
    - chaser7016 10y ago
      They need to jump ship like their president just did!
- tps5 10y ago
  I think it's wrong on a few levels to use terms like sociopath in general, and especially about someone you've never met. When you use that word you're talking about another person's mental state, which is opaque to you. No one knows what anyone else thinks and feels. What you should really be concerned with is that person's actions, not what they feel about their actions. For example, you can be a murderer and not be a sociopath, as long as you feel bad about it. But it's really the murdering itself that's the problem. Does it really matter how the murderer feels about it? Some people think so, but the problem has to be dealt with either way. I'm not saying you shouldn't criticize his actions, but I'd try to avoid criticizing his mental state or making assumptions about how he perceives reality.

xyzzy_plugh 10y ago

"A car failed to yield to the autonomous SUV and hit it, authorities said. The self-driving SUV rolled onto its side as a result crash." From http://www.abc15.com/news/region-southeast-valley/tempe/tempe-police-self-driving-uber-vehicle-involved-in-car-accident-no-injuries http://www.abc15.com/news/region-southeast-valley/tempe/temp...

mcguire 10y ago
"However, police said there was a passenger in the self-driving car. The person was behind the wheel but it's unclear whether they were controlling the SUV or not."
mst 10y ago
It seems somewhat ironic that of all companies uber would fail to account for people being inconsiderate assholes. Perhaps this should be considered further evidence that they didn't write their own system ...

XJOKOLAT 10y ago

Uber now brings their toxic reputation to self-driving cars ... potentially holding back the entire drive in that direction. Thanks, Uber.

johansch 10y ago

I think safety- and brand-conscious Volvo is going to deeply regret this partnership with Uber. (Where Uber provides the self-driving logic and Volvo provides the the vehicle itself.) I can only imagine the internal struggles in Volvo right now. At the very least, if I were running Volvo Cars I'd ask Uber to replace the Volvo logos on those cars with Uber logos... (Volvo has their own, quite advanced self-driving program, but they seem to be doing it the correct/cautious way.)

arikr 10y ago

The article's current title seems like a better title: "Uber Driverless Car Not at Fault in Arizona Accident, Police Say" Current title was "clickbait-y" enough for me to click, whereas the actual title of the article could save the click. /u/dang?

doktrin 10y ago
How quickly titles apparently change, as it currently reads "Uber to Suspend Autonomous Tests After Arizona Accident"
vacri 10y ago
If you didn't click on the article, you wouldn't have learned that Uber hasn't finished its own investigation, and warrants the accident serious enough to suspend its own trials in both Arizona and Pittsburgh.

throwaway872194 10y ago

I have never driven in the US, but isn't it the job of a car to be rather risk-averse when it comes to merging ? If you're not risk averse, you'd dead meat in 10s in Bangalore - quite lit. if you're riding a motorcycle. (Watch out for the yellow number plates and the Tata Indicas if you're ever here!)

Animats 10y ago

More details would be helpful. If this goes to court, the video from the self-driving vehicle would be interesting. An important question is whether their system is smart enough to take evasive action. It's becoming clear that there are two ways to approach self-driving. The first stems from the DARPA Grand Challenge, which was about off-road driving. For that, the vehicles had to profile the terrain, plotting a path around obstacles, potholes, and cliff edges. The GPS route was just general guidance on where to go. That's the approach Google took, as can be seen from their SXSW videos. Google also identifies moving objects and tries to classify them. With all that capability, it's possible to take evasive action if some other road user is a threat. The control system has situational awareness and knows where there's clear space for escape. The other approach is to start with lane following and automatic cruise control, and try to build them up into self-driving. This can be done entirely with vision systems. That's the Cruise Automation and Tesla approach. This puts the car on a track defined by lines on the pavement, with lane changes and intersections handled as a special case. There usually isn't a full terrain profile; that requires LIDAR. So there isn't enough info to plan an emergency maneuver for collision avoidance. This distinction is not well understood, and it should be.

grogenaut 10y ago

So the thing I don't get is in this autonomous car future, is everyone time shifting to share these cars? Does this work in a factory town where everyone has to be in at shift change? Or if I lease my car out when I'm not using it how do I not get my car when I really need it or want to go home sick?

notblackNwhite 10y ago

Let's put ourselves in the shoes of someone who reads this headline and gets a quick summary. This headline makes it sound like Uber isn't confident of its technology and they think their technology might be the cause and hence they are suspending it. In this case, it seems pretty clear, as confirmed by the police officer, that Uber's car wasn't at fault.