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Wow, that self driving car is total crap if it can't pick up that obstacle. Doesn't get much more obvious than that. Slowly walking from the left lane into your

Wow, that self driving car is total crap if it can't pick up that obstacle. Doesn't get much more obvious than that. Slowly walking from the left lane into your lane on a fairly straight road. I bet it was more visible to the human eye than on that video as well. You'd have to see someone crossing the road like that. Of course the pedestrian wasn't doing the smartest thing but I believe a human driver would have at least hit the brakes had they been actually looking forward and paying attention. I thought the actual advantage of self-driving cars is that they're always meant to be looking forward and paying attention. That doesn't appear to have happened in this case.

jonknee 9y ago
> You'd have to see someone crossing the road like that. You could say the same thing about a car with headlights on coming towards you... From the little evidence we have it seems like the pedestrian, driver/monitor and the car all should have done better.
- danso 9y ago
  The pedestrian in this case isn't equipped with computer-activated motors and brakes. Yeah, it would've been best had she not crossed there at all. But that issue is entirely independent of how the AV should perform, assuming that Uber AVs are touted as being significantly safer and faster to react (day or night).
- taeric 9y ago
  Agreed. Many of us are expecting the machines to do better, by design. Humans will make mistakes. Mistakes will be baked into the designs. Should be just once. And it is surprising to see how limited this first run of sensors apparently is.
- brokenmachine 9y ago
  That pedestrian obviously didn't have good situational awareness, but are we happy to let self-driving cars mow down any unaware obstacle on the road? Broken-down cars/deer/children/roadworks? Honestly, that video proves to me that this tech is nowhere near ready. That was the most obvious of obstacles and the car did not even slow down. I believe a competent human would have at the very least slowed down in that situation, and likely stopped completely.
  - dqpb 9y ago
    > that video proves to me that this tech is nowhere near ready. It proves that Ubers tech is nowhere near ready. Based on all the stupid shit I see Uber engineers saying on Blind app, I have very little faith in their maturity, professionalism, and culture. I would bet that Google is doing a better job than Uber is.
    - drited 9y ago
      Thought you needed an Uber email address to join the Uber Blind app conversation?
      - mrep 9y ago
        He probably means the forums where anyone from any company can participate.
    - Piskvorrr 9y ago
      That could be true, but the perception of the industry is now "OMG OMG KILLER ROBOT CARS ARE UPON US", never mind that other companies are expected to behave far more responsibly. (To compare: Chernobyl was a case of 1. bad design, 2. disabled safeguards, and 3. reckless operators - yet nobody cares of the distinctions, and it has essentially killed nuclear power)
- buvanshak 9y ago
  It is not uncommon for pedestrian to notice in coming traffic, and still cross the road, in the expectation that the car ll just slow down for them to cross..A human driver, without exception, will slow down in this case. Sadly the same thing might have happened here. The lady took one look before crossing, and expected the car to slow down..
  - mrep 9y ago
    > It is not uncommon for pedestrian to notice in coming traffic, and still cross the road, in the expectation that the car ll just slow down for them to cross.. Where do you live because I never see this. That is just asking to get hit by a car. > A human driver, without exception, will slow down in this case. Goverment statistics show this is clearly not the case: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812124 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
    - et-al 9y ago
      > Where do you live because I never see this. That is just asking to get hit by a car. Probably California. Pedestrians here think man-made laws can override the laws of physics. If you're gonna jaywalk, it's better to assume the car won't stop.
Balgair 9y ago
> Wow, that self driving car is total crap if it can't pick up that obstacle. Not to nit-pick too much but 'that obstacle' is a person. A person that died because engineering hubris. I think we should be careful in our language in this situation, as it may get away from us. She was not 'an obstacle' or a 'thing to avoid' or 'hobo', she was a living person.
- abiox 9y ago
  i'm not sure i follow what you're trying to communicate. what do you mean by "get away from us"? also, framing things as "obstacle" vs "living person" seems like a false dichotomy.
  - Balgair 9y ago
    I mean that Uber, being a very shady company, has a large incentive to 'sterilize' the language. The person becomes an 'object', the person driving the car becomes a 'rouge employee', the cruddy software and cost cutting becomes an 'undiscovered malfunction', the burden of safety on the AV manufacturer becomes a 'shared breakdown'. Responsibility and humanity start to get stripped away via the word choices used.
- brokenmachine 9y ago
  I 100% agree, however arguing about semantics is not productive. I deliberately chose the word "obstacle" to hammer home the point that the car did not even need to identify that the object in front of it was a person. If that obstacle had happened to be a fallen tree, it would be the car's passengers that would be dead instead. Literally all it needed to do was stop, or at the very least slow down. In this case, I believe the car performed much worse than an average human driver would have, and this video shows without any doubt that these cars are not safe to be on the road in their current state.
  - Balgair 9y ago
    I agree, the car is not even close to prime-time

jonknee 9y ago

> You'd have to see someone crossing the road like that. You could say the same thing about a car with headlights on coming towards you... From the little evidence we have it seems like the pedestrian, driver/monitor and the car all should have done better.

danso 9y ago
The pedestrian in this case isn't equipped with computer-activated motors and brakes. Yeah, it would've been best had she not crossed there at all. But that issue is entirely independent of how the AV should perform, assuming that Uber AVs are touted as being significantly safer and faster to react (day or night).
taeric 9y ago
Agreed. Many of us are expecting the machines to do better, by design. Humans will make mistakes. Mistakes will be baked into the designs. Should be just once. And it is surprising to see how limited this first run of sensors apparently is.
brokenmachine 9y ago
That pedestrian obviously didn't have good situational awareness, but are we happy to let self-driving cars mow down any unaware obstacle on the road? Broken-down cars/deer/children/roadworks? Honestly, that video proves to me that this tech is nowhere near ready. That was the most obvious of obstacles and the car did not even slow down. I believe a competent human would have at the very least slowed down in that situation, and likely stopped completely.
- dqpb 9y ago
  > that video proves to me that this tech is nowhere near ready. It proves that Ubers tech is nowhere near ready. Based on all the stupid shit I see Uber engineers saying on Blind app, I have very little faith in their maturity, professionalism, and culture. I would bet that Google is doing a better job than Uber is.
  - drited 9y ago
    Thought you needed an Uber email address to join the Uber Blind app conversation?
    - mrep 9y ago
      He probably means the forums where anyone from any company can participate.
  - Piskvorrr 9y ago
    That could be true, but the perception of the industry is now "OMG OMG KILLER ROBOT CARS ARE UPON US", never mind that other companies are expected to behave far more responsibly. (To compare: Chernobyl was a case of 1. bad design, 2. disabled safeguards, and 3. reckless operators - yet nobody cares of the distinctions, and it has essentially killed nuclear power)
buvanshak 9y ago
It is not uncommon for pedestrian to notice in coming traffic, and still cross the road, in the expectation that the car ll just slow down for them to cross..A human driver, without exception, will slow down in this case. Sadly the same thing might have happened here. The lady took one look before crossing, and expected the car to slow down..
- mrep 9y ago
  > It is not uncommon for pedestrian to notice in coming traffic, and still cross the road, in the expectation that the car ll just slow down for them to cross.. Where do you live because I never see this. That is just asking to get hit by a car. > A human driver, without exception, will slow down in this case. Goverment statistics show this is clearly not the case: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812124 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
  - et-al 9y ago
    > Where do you live because I never see this. That is just asking to get hit by a car. Probably California. Pedestrians here think man-made laws can override the laws of physics. If you're gonna jaywalk, it's better to assume the car won't stop.

Balgair 9y ago

> Wow, that self driving car is total crap if it can't pick up that obstacle. Not to nit-pick too much but 'that obstacle' is a person. A person that died because engineering hubris. I think we should be careful in our language in this situation, as it may get away from us. She was not 'an obstacle' or a 'thing to avoid' or 'hobo', she was a living person.

abiox 9y ago
i'm not sure i follow what you're trying to communicate. what do you mean by "get away from us"? also, framing things as "obstacle" vs "living person" seems like a false dichotomy.
- Balgair 9y ago
  I mean that Uber, being a very shady company, has a large incentive to 'sterilize' the language. The person becomes an 'object', the person driving the car becomes a 'rouge employee', the cruddy software and cost cutting becomes an 'undiscovered malfunction', the burden of safety on the AV manufacturer becomes a 'shared breakdown'. Responsibility and humanity start to get stripped away via the word choices used.
brokenmachine 9y ago
I 100% agree, however arguing about semantics is not productive. I deliberately chose the word "obstacle" to hammer home the point that the car did not even need to identify that the object in front of it was a person. If that obstacle had happened to be a fallen tree, it would be the car's passengers that would be dead instead. Literally all it needed to do was stop, or at the very least slow down. In this case, I believe the car performed much worse than an average human driver would have, and this video shows without any doubt that these cars are not safe to be on the road in their current state.
- Balgair 9y ago
  I agree, the car is not even close to prime-time