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An alert human driver would still have had a bad crash, but might not have killed the pedestrian. In a two-lane road, you cannot simply swerve to the other lan

An alert human driver would still have had a bad crash, but might not have killed the pedestrian. In a two-lane road, you cannot simply swerve to the other lane w/out checking. I (and many other?) drivers would have just slammed on the brakes. But at that road's speed limit, I believe the brakes wouldn't have stopped in time, and a collision would still have occurred. The pedestrian+bicycle was a direct obstacle, not at some slim and oblique angle. So it is odd that the car's collision detection didn't pick up on it. tldr; a human driver may or may not have done better.

whoisjuan 9y ago
"tldr; a human driver may or may not have done better."...that's not a very helpful summary. Sounds very oxymoronic.
perennate 9y ago
Although a collision may still have occurred if a human slammed on the brakes immediately after seeing the pedestrian, even a 10mph slowdown may have mitigated the fatality into a minor injury. ProPublica has a graph showing the frequency of fatalities in crashes for different impact speeds, showing a more than halving in the occurrence of fatalities in crashes between 38mph and 28mph impacts: https://www.propublica.org/article/unsafe-at-many-speeds https://www.propublica.org/article/unsafe-at-many-speeds The article says that the vehicle "doesn’t appear to slow down". If the data shows that it actually didn't slow down, it seems like there is a critical bug in Uber's software that has killed a pedestrian.
- dogweather 9y ago
  Yep, > An alert human driver would still have had a bad crash, but might not have killed the pedestrian.
jakeogh 9y ago
Checking what? It's dark. You should already know where the cars are around you at the moment. Second, a human eye easily could have seen her, this cam footage is not remotely comparable to the low light sensitivity and motion sensitivity of a human.

whoisjuan 9y ago

"tldr; a human driver may or may not have done better."...that's not a very helpful summary. Sounds very oxymoronic.

perennate 9y ago

Although a collision may still have occurred if a human slammed on the brakes immediately after seeing the pedestrian, even a 10mph slowdown may have mitigated the fatality into a minor injury. ProPublica has a graph showing the frequency of fatalities in crashes for different impact speeds, showing a more than halving in the occurrence of fatalities in crashes between 38mph and 28mph impacts: https://www.propublica.org/article/unsafe-at-many-speeds https://www.propublica.org/article/unsafe-at-many-speeds The article says that the vehicle "doesn’t appear to slow down". If the data shows that it actually didn't slow down, it seems like there is a critical bug in Uber's software that has killed a pedestrian.

dogweather 9y ago
Yep, > An alert human driver would still have had a bad crash, but might not have killed the pedestrian.

jakeogh 9y ago

Checking what? It's dark. You should already know where the cars are around you at the moment. Second, a human eye easily could have seen her, this cam footage is not remotely comparable to the low light sensitivity and motion sensitivity of a human.