4 ms·

This opens up an interesting question going forward. We can't rely on Uber themselves to analyse the telemetry data and come to a conclusion, they're biased. So

by untog 9y ago

This opens up an interesting question going forward. We can't rely on Uber themselves to analyse the telemetry data and come to a conclusion, they're biased. So really, we need self driving car companies to turn over accident telemetry data to the police. But the police are ill equipped to process that data. We need law enforcement to be able to keep pace with advances in technology and let's face it, they're not going to have the money to employ data analysts with the required skills. Do we need a national body for this? Is there any hope of a Republican government spending the required money to do so? (no)

dmoy 9y ago
On the one hand I'd say give it to the NTSB, because historically they are really good at this sort of thing. On the other hand, I'd wonder if increasing NTSB scope this much would drastically decrease the average quality of NTSB's work. Scaling ain't easy.
- jeiting 9y ago
  Yeah, pilot here. NTSB is the right organization to handle this. The investigators over there do an amazing job of determining root cause from forensic evidence. I assume that will be the process here.
  - kortex 9y ago
    NTSB is there to handle civilian transportation accident investigations. Most automotive accidents are not very "surprising", which leaves them mostly dealing with non-personal transportation accidents. We are about to have a rapid increase in surprising, non-personal transportation accidents, so I seriously hope they are afforded the resources to deal with the influx as AVs come online.
- martin_bech 9y ago
  Shouldnt this actually be pretty easy? The system on the Uber, should have a massive amount of cameras, and lidar. Basicly dashcams on speed, recording multiple angles of the accident. I would assume that everything is beeing recorded, for debug/Testing purposes.
- gowld 9y ago
  NTSB should expand to launch an automotive division. Bonus: Job creation to replace the jobs lost to automation
  - 0xffff2 9y ago
    NTSB already has jurisdiction here, as well as on all rail accidents involving injuries, in addition to aviation accidents.
Quenty 9y ago
State governments, especially those authorizing self driving cars, could authorize this to some extent.
openasocket 9y ago
Aren't you basically just proposing that the NTSB analyze automobile telemetry, the same way they analyze aircraft telemetry data? Doesn't seem wildly outside the realm of possibility.
- untog 9y ago
  The NTSB could certainly do it. But they'd need to expand a lot in a world where self driving cars are an everyday reality, which again comes back to the question of funding.
  - Eridrus 9y ago
    IMO Uber should be on the hook for funding the NTSB investigation; smaller competitors should be able to get insurance if they need to.
    - gowld 9y ago
      It's a pretty bad look to have the involved parties directly fund the investigation. Some sort of general automated-vehicle tax may be more appropriate.
      - florean 9y ago
        Not really. The EPA has done this for decades, specifically for Superfund sites. When you can, it's more efficient to have bad actors pay for their bad acts rather than burdening an industry as a whole.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dagurp 9y ago
NTSB? https://www.ntsb.gov https://www.ntsb.gov
jv22222 9y ago
Perhaps a company like open ai or some other company setup by all the players involved could run the analysis in cases like this.
roywiggins 9y ago
This sounds like something the NHTSA should do.
pvg 9y ago
That sounds pretty much like how things are done as it is. For instance, take a look at: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/HWY16FH018-preliminary.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/HW... "The Tesla was equipped with multiple electronic systems capable of recording and transmitting vehicle performance data. NTSB investigators will continue to collect and analyze these data, and use it along with other information collected during the investigation in evaluating the crash events."
cubano 9y ago
Don't we already have a huge infrastructure of police, the courts, and insurance companies in place to decide these very things everyday? I mean, how is this different then all of the other accidents that occur every day? Yes a self-driving car is involved, but do people really think autonomous cars aren't going to be involved in fatal accidents? Of course they are...but I've always thought that autonomous vehicles only have to be like 10% safer for them to make tons of sense to replace human drivers.
- rocqua 9y ago
  For the same reason we don't leave the investigation of plane-crashes to the attorney general and the courts. We care about more than 'who should we punish for this' in this case. We want to know what happened, how it happened, how we could have prevented it, how likely it is to happen again, what assumptions or overlooked details lie at the heart of this. The required level of expertise, effort and precision here are higher than in a regular traffic accident. Moreover, the required skill-set, knowledge base, and willingness to work in a new area here make this an exceptional case. Finally, the outcome of this will be much more than liability in a single case. This could set the precedent for an entire field of industry. This could be the moment we find out self-driving cars are nearly a pipe-dream, or it could be the moment we kill self-driving cars at the cost of millions of preventable traffic accidents. This investigation just might determine a lot, again, that makes it exceptional.
- hnal943 9y ago
  Who would be liable? The owner of the AV? The manufacturer?
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
How about we wait for the problem to present it and actually cause harm before we throw law enforcement, government regulation, a regulatory body, etc at it?
- ryandrake 9y ago
  A pedestrian struck and killed doesn’t count as “harm”?
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    There's a difference between Uber playing fast and loose and industry wide bad practices. The latter needs to be addressed by government. The former can be addressed by concerned parties using their political connections to get existing law aggressively enforced.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
pdabbadabba 9y ago
NTSB has already announced that it will investigate: https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/19/ubers-fatal-self-driving-car-crash-prompts-ntsb-investigation/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/19/ubers-fatal-self-driving-c... I guess we'll find out how competent they are at this, but I think they did a surprisingly good job with the previous Tesla investigation: https://dms.ntsb.gov/pubdms/search/hitlist.cfm?docketID=59989&CurrentPage=1&EndRow=15&StartRow=1&order=1&sort=0&TXTSEARCHT= https://dms.ntsb.gov/pubdms/search/hitlist.cfm?docketID=5998...
dragonwriter 9y ago
Law enforcement already conducts traffic accident investigations where the involved drivers are biased parties of inconsistent honesty and imperfect memory that can and do both accidentally and intentionally misrepresent the facts. I don't think self-driving cars and their sensor data, even if they rely on the operator to explain what the car “remembers”, fundamentally shift the landscape.
lsmarigo 9y ago
> We need law enforcement to be able to keep pace with advances in technology Agree, Kumail Nanjiani (comedian) has a great rant on twitter about exactly this, ethical implications of tech- > As a cast member on a show about tech, our job entails visiting tech companies/conferences etc. We meet ppl eager to show off new tech. Often we'll see tech that is scary. I don't mean weapons etc. I mean altering video, tech that violates privacy, stuff w obv ethical issues. And we'll bring up our concerns to them. We are realizing that ZERO consideration seems to be given to the ethical implications of tech. They don't even have a pat rehearsed answer. They are shocked at being asked. Which means nobody is asking those questions. "We're not making it for that reason but the way ppl choose to use it isn't our fault. Safeguard will develop." But tech is moving so fast. That there is no way humanity or laws can keep up. We don't even know how to deal with open death threats online. Only "Can we do this?" Never "should we do this? We've seen that same blasé attitude in how Twitter or Facebook deal w abuse/fake news. Tech has the capacity to destroy us. We see the negative effect of social media. & no ethical considerations are going into dev of tech.You can't put this stuff back in the box. Once it's out there, it's out there. And there are no guardians. It's terrifying. The end. https://twitter.com/kumailn/status/925828976882282496?lang=en https://twitter.com/kumailn/status/925828976882282496?lang=e... It is scary, big tech orgs have no incentive or motivation to even consider ethical implications, whats worse is the American consumer has shown repeatedly that you're OK to do really shady stuff and as long as it means a lower price product/service for the consumer. We're in a kind of dark age of tech regulation and he's right it is terrifying.
adrianmonk 9y ago
Maybe something like the IIHS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance_Institute_for_Highway_Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance_Institute_for_Highwa... ), which is funded by insurance companies? Though that would of course depend on how insurance even looks for SDCs. Maybe big companies like Uber will self-insure.

by untog 9y ago

dmoy 9y ago

On the one hand I'd say give it to the NTSB, because historically they are really good at this sort of thing. On the other hand, I'd wonder if increasing NTSB scope this much would drastically decrease the average quality of NTSB's work. Scaling ain't easy.

jeiting 9y ago
Yeah, pilot here. NTSB is the right organization to handle this. The investigators over there do an amazing job of determining root cause from forensic evidence. I assume that will be the process here.
- kortex 9y ago
  NTSB is there to handle civilian transportation accident investigations. Most automotive accidents are not very "surprising", which leaves them mostly dealing with non-personal transportation accidents. We are about to have a rapid increase in surprising, non-personal transportation accidents, so I seriously hope they are afforded the resources to deal with the influx as AVs come online.
martin_bech 9y ago
Shouldnt this actually be pretty easy? The system on the Uber, should have a massive amount of cameras, and lidar. Basicly dashcams on speed, recording multiple angles of the accident. I would assume that everything is beeing recorded, for debug/Testing purposes.
gowld 9y ago
NTSB should expand to launch an automotive division. Bonus: Job creation to replace the jobs lost to automation
- 0xffff2 9y ago
  NTSB already has jurisdiction here, as well as on all rail accidents involving injuries, in addition to aviation accidents.

Quenty 9y ago

State governments, especially those authorizing self driving cars, could authorize this to some extent.

openasocket 9y ago

Aren't you basically just proposing that the NTSB analyze automobile telemetry, the same way they analyze aircraft telemetry data? Doesn't seem wildly outside the realm of possibility.

untog 9y ago
The NTSB could certainly do it. But they'd need to expand a lot in a world where self driving cars are an everyday reality, which again comes back to the question of funding.
- Eridrus 9y ago
  IMO Uber should be on the hook for funding the NTSB investigation; smaller competitors should be able to get insurance if they need to.
  - gowld 9y ago
    It's a pretty bad look to have the involved parties directly fund the investigation. Some sort of general automated-vehicle tax may be more appropriate.
    - florean 9y ago
      Not really. The EPA has done this for decades, specifically for Superfund sites. When you can, it's more efficient to have bad actors pay for their bad acts rather than burdening an industry as a whole.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

dagurp 9y ago

NTSB? https://www.ntsb.gov https://www.ntsb.gov

jv22222 9y ago

Perhaps a company like open ai or some other company setup by all the players involved could run the analysis in cases like this.

roywiggins 9y ago

This sounds like something the NHTSA should do.

pvg 9y ago

That sounds pretty much like how things are done as it is. For instance, take a look at: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/HWY16FH018-preliminary.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/HW... "The Tesla was equipped with multiple electronic systems capable of recording and transmitting vehicle performance data. NTSB investigators will continue to collect and analyze these data, and use it along with other information collected during the investigation in evaluating the crash events."

cubano 9y ago

Don't we already have a huge infrastructure of police, the courts, and insurance companies in place to decide these very things everyday? I mean, how is this different then all of the other accidents that occur every day? Yes a self-driving car is involved, but do people really think autonomous cars aren't going to be involved in fatal accidents? Of course they are...but I've always thought that autonomous vehicles only have to be like 10% safer for them to make tons of sense to replace human drivers.

rocqua 9y ago
For the same reason we don't leave the investigation of plane-crashes to the attorney general and the courts. We care about more than 'who should we punish for this' in this case. We want to know what happened, how it happened, how we could have prevented it, how likely it is to happen again, what assumptions or overlooked details lie at the heart of this. The required level of expertise, effort and precision here are higher than in a regular traffic accident. Moreover, the required skill-set, knowledge base, and willingness to work in a new area here make this an exceptional case. Finally, the outcome of this will be much more than liability in a single case. This could set the precedent for an entire field of industry. This could be the moment we find out self-driving cars are nearly a pipe-dream, or it could be the moment we kill self-driving cars at the cost of millions of preventable traffic accidents. This investigation just might determine a lot, again, that makes it exceptional.
hnal943 9y ago
Who would be liable? The owner of the AV? The manufacturer?

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

How about we wait for the problem to present it and actually cause harm before we throw law enforcement, government regulation, a regulatory body, etc at it?

ryandrake 9y ago
A pedestrian struck and killed doesn’t count as “harm”?
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  There's a difference between Uber playing fast and loose and industry wide bad practices. The latter needs to be addressed by government. The former can be addressed by concerned parties using their political connections to get existing law aggressively enforced.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

pdabbadabba 9y ago

NTSB has already announced that it will investigate: https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/19/ubers-fatal-self-driving-car-crash-prompts-ntsb-investigation/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/19/ubers-fatal-self-driving-c... I guess we'll find out how competent they are at this, but I think they did a surprisingly good job with the previous Tesla investigation: https://dms.ntsb.gov/pubdms/search/hitlist.cfm?docketID=59989&CurrentPage=1&EndRow=15&StartRow=1&order=1&sort=0&TXTSEARCHT= https://dms.ntsb.gov/pubdms/search/hitlist.cfm?docketID=5998...

dragonwriter 9y ago

Law enforcement already conducts traffic accident investigations where the involved drivers are biased parties of inconsistent honesty and imperfect memory that can and do both accidentally and intentionally misrepresent the facts. I don't think self-driving cars and their sensor data, even if they rely on the operator to explain what the car “remembers”, fundamentally shift the landscape.

lsmarigo 9y ago

> We need law enforcement to be able to keep pace with advances in technology Agree, Kumail Nanjiani (comedian) has a great rant on twitter about exactly this, ethical implications of tech- > As a cast member on a show about tech, our job entails visiting tech companies/conferences etc. We meet ppl eager to show off new tech. Often we'll see tech that is scary. I don't mean weapons etc. I mean altering video, tech that violates privacy, stuff w obv ethical issues. And we'll bring up our concerns to them. We are realizing that ZERO consideration seems to be given to the ethical implications of tech. They don't even have a pat rehearsed answer. They are shocked at being asked. Which means nobody is asking those questions. "We're not making it for that reason but the way ppl choose to use it isn't our fault. Safeguard will develop." But tech is moving so fast. That there is no way humanity or laws can keep up. We don't even know how to deal with open death threats online. Only "Can we do this?" Never "should we do this? We've seen that same blasé attitude in how Twitter or Facebook deal w abuse/fake news. Tech has the capacity to destroy us. We see the negative effect of social media. & no ethical considerations are going into dev of tech.You can't put this stuff back in the box. Once it's out there, it's out there. And there are no guardians. It's terrifying. The end. https://twitter.com/kumailn/status/925828976882282496?lang=en https://twitter.com/kumailn/status/925828976882282496?lang=e... It is scary, big tech orgs have no incentive or motivation to even consider ethical implications, whats worse is the American consumer has shown repeatedly that you're OK to do really shady stuff and as long as it means a lower price product/service for the consumer. We're in a kind of dark age of tech regulation and he's right it is terrifying.

adrianmonk 9y ago

Maybe something like the IIHS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance_Institute_for_Highway_Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance_Institute_for_Highwa... ), which is funded by insurance companies? Though that would of course depend on how insurance even looks for SDCs. Maybe big companies like Uber will self-insure.