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Police chief said Uber victim “came from the shadows” – don’t believe it

220 points by drabiega 9y ago

gamblor956 9y ago
The Uber victim did come from the shadows. Arizona gets dark at night, especially during a new moon. The question isn't why the optical cameras didn't see her, it's why did the LIDAR failed to detect her?
- clint 9y ago
  read the article before posting
  - gamblor956 9y ago
    I did, including the comments to the article where they clarify that the follow up videos were taken with high-beams on, i.e., in dissimilar circumstances. And the picture in the comments showing the location of the crash, where there were no streetlights in the immediate vicinity, and a large bush shielding the median, from which the victim is alleged to have come from. I think there are serious questions about why the Uber car didn't detect the victim, given all the sensors it was supposed to be using, but "came from the shadows" is an accurate description based on the Google Street View and overhead views of the crash site. It helps to read the entire article before commenting.
- gargravarr 9y ago
  The first thing I noticed in watching the video is that the Uber car's lights seem to be ridiculously focused on a very small patch in front. The dark spot the cyclist appears in remains so until little more than a second before she is tragically hit. The question is indeed why the electronics failed to detect her, but there's something really wrong with car lights like that.
- lb1lf 9y ago
  AZ gets dark at night. The workaround is for cars to have headlights. Not knowing the law as it applies for (semi-)autonomous vehicle testing in Arizona, I am very curious how this one turns out. Based on my experience driving at night (In Norway, where it also gets pretty dark), even in rural areas with no street lights, you tend to discover pedestrians -even the ones not wearing safety reflectors- significantly more than a second and a half before you cross paths with them. So - while the vehicle is driving autonomously, there's still a driver (or whatever we should call it, seeing as they do not drive as such) behind the wheel. If the driver had paid attention to the road, rather than her cell phone, this accident likely wouldn't have happened. So - who is to blame, legally speaking? The 'driver' for not paying attention? The coder implementing the control algorithms? The HW engineering team deciding which sensors to use? Someone else? This will be a lot simpler when vehicles are 'properly' autonomous - but right now, it seems AVs simply give the 'driver' all sorts of incentive for not paying attention, while still not absolving them of responsibility. That's the worst of both worlds.
  - typeformer 9y ago
    Uber is a corporation, so it as a legal entity is liable, any kind of individual liability is possible to be litigated but very difficult to win. One problem is that corporate charters once granted are never revoked so corporations just keep doing terrible things and diffusing the costs of their actions onto society with minuscule repercussions. You can bet if I was looking down at my phone and not at the road and then hit a woman in the dark (all captured on camera) I would be going to jail... But, Uber has done some really despicable things (stealing the medical records of a rape victim to use for intimidation), and now they've likely killed someone and no one will ever see cell time.
- Xorlev 9y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XOVxSCG8u0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XOVxSCG8u0 I think there is a question of why didn't the optical cameras detect her. It doesn't seem poorly lit.
- dognotdog 9y ago
  Notwithstanding the fact that a typical visible light imager in a driver assistance system alternates exposure times between frames, especially at night: one over-exposed image to discern dark texture, and one under-exposed image to find the color of point light sources, such as traffic or brake lights. The released video looks like the latter, though it could also just be standalone dashcam footage. It is also pretty mangled by compression, especially the dark parts are just completely blocky, so it is probably not a good indicator of what the vehicle saw. OTOH, bikes can be notoriously hard on image recognition, for example it is not unheard of that reflective rims are interpreted as continuation of a curb or lane marking. LIDAR and RADAR should see them, though, and they probably did, so it is indeed unclear where it all went wrong.
jacksmith21006 9y ago
Would love to see how Google would handle this situation. Have to believe their algorithm would be smarter and handle. Remember Google had to deal with bike corner cases a couple of years ago. "A Cyclist's Track Stand Befuddled One of Google's Self-Driving Cars" https://gizmodo.com/a-cyclists-track-stand-totally-befuddled-one-of-googles-1727024285 https://gizmodo.com/a-cyclists-track-stand-totally-befuddled...
TheCapeGreek 9y ago
Everyone who saw the video has said it's the fault of camera for seeming so dark (since even the street lights have almost no effect anywhere), and regardless of that AVs work with lidar and such. Where is the telemetry and analysis? If it didn't see the pedestrian, then why?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- vitalysh 9y ago
  Exactly, especially considering that this is car by Volvo, manufacturer that quite often demoes it's new features in the are of detecting pedestrians or animals on the the road.
  - dullgiulio 9y ago
    The self driving technology is totally Uber, Volvo only has a partnership for cars without any self-driving gadgetry.
  - ebikelaw 9y ago
    Volvo's "city safety" features only work below 30 MPH.
- mtgx 9y ago
  And it begs the question: did Uber alter the video? Will it alter the telemetry, too? If the Tempe police doesn't get forensics experts on this, they're doing their job wrong. Uber is already known as a company that tends to hide and destroy this sort of evidence.
  - dekhn 9y ago
    It would be really hard to believe that Uber would do this. There is only downside, the probability of being caught is high (given they have to hand over a ton of data streams to the NTSB).
marchenko 9y ago
I'm not trying to be inflammatory, but should we expect the Tempe AZ City administration to be a neutral source of information in this case? Might they be biased by their decision to host this experiment in their jurisdiction (in the sense of anticipating criticism)?
- kartan 9y ago
  > “Arizona welcomes Uber self-driving cars with open arms and wide open roads. While California puts the brakes on innovation and change with more bureaucracy and more regulation, Arizona is paving the way for new technology and new businesses. In 2015, I signed an executive order supporting the testing and operation of self-driving cars in Arizona with an emphasis on innovation, economic growth, and most importantly, public safety. This is about economic development, but it’s also about changing the way we live and work. Arizona is proud to be open for business. California may not want you, but we do.” https://azgovernor.gov/governor/news/2016/12/governor-ducey-tells-uber-ca-may-not-want-you-az-does https://azgovernor.gov/governor/news/2016/12/governor-ducey-... Politics can always be an explanation.
  - Animats 9y ago
    California's self-driving car rules are essentially what Google asked for. Google/Waymo is fine with that; they have had lots of self driving cars running around Mountain View for years. The main California requirements are that the manufacturer takes total financial responsibility, has to file accident and disconnect reports, and can't use the technology commercially under a test license. Uber violated that last condition in San Francisco, and CA DMV revoked their vehicle licenses. So Uber moved to Arizona, where they could kill more freely.
- mannykannot 9y ago
  I don't know about that, but I imagine the police chief received a lot of advice, whether solicited or not, from Uber's PR, about how to interpret the video.
- mieseratte 9y ago
  As an occasional commuter cyclist, I'm well aware of the position cars and drivers hold in our social pecking order. It's a well known "joke" that if you want to get away with murder, you do it with a car. While we should not absolve Uber, including the driver who was too busy looking at his phone to intervene, I do wonder if a standard driver would have also been deemed not at fault by the police. The answer is likely, "yes".
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
908087 9y ago
It's pretty hilarious, at least with the ones who aren't blaming the victim, watching autonomous car fans use the "see, it was too dark out!" excuse for this incident. This excuse is either maliciously dishonest, or and indicator that the apologists don't actually understand anything about the technology they're rushing to defend.
bhouston 9y ago
The videos that show everything super bright look like they have their high beams on, whereas the Uber video looks like the standard headline mode. Although I can not be completely sure. If that is the case it is apples-to-oranges.
- ptaipale 9y ago
  Impact of light sensitivity of camera, and light resolution, is probably more relevant here than even low/high beams. The car must be able to drive with low beams as well, but it's really relevant for human observers, not what the car actually sees.
- KaiserPro 9y ago
  Which might form an excuse if it was a human driver. However the human wasn't looking at the road. (I can't blame them, its pretty difficult to concentrate when you are not _actually_ driving) So headlights or not, it's irrelevant. However the article goes on to explain that dip'd beam headlights don't dramatically increase your vision. However you are correct its apples to oranges. The Dashcam sensor is had not adjusted correctly to the light conditions, or it isn't sensitive enough. However thats not entirely relevant, as the dashcam doesn't (or at least I hope it doesn't) form part of the sensor array.
perfmode 9y ago
Where was the LIDAR?
Steltek 9y ago
For reference, I found this video over on reddit (from /u/ghdana) of the area. It looks _very_ different with even a cell phone camera. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XOVxSCG8u0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XOVxSCG8u0 Edit: I guess this video is also referenced in the article, after Brian's.
- zython 9y ago
  To be fair, cell phone cameras as I recall have a tendency to push the ISO up, so it potentially could look different IRL (I'm purposefully being vague). Ideally /u/ghdana would have posted the camera settings which filmed this, so you could get a better understanding of the situation. Not that I'm defending UBER on this, as others have said LIDAR and IR in addition to the cameras should have picked the woman up.
  - ksk 9y ago
    >To be fair, cell phone cameras as I recall have a tendency to push the ISO up, so it potentially could look different IRL (I'm purposefully being vague). That is true, but raising the ISO for proper (well 18% grey anyway.) exposure is something pretty much every retail camera made in the past decade does. I doubt UBER is using some experimental esoteric camera here.
- mieseratte 9y ago
  That's a pretty stark difference from the Uber video. There's no reason this incident should have happened.
- Steltek 9y ago
  Sadly Inevitable Meta: Howdy folks, look, I appreciate the upvotes on a comment I made quickly (because I've been following this topic with some interest) but it's not nearly as content rich as some of the other top level comments around here. That said, I appreciate a site like Arstechnica doing a great job of dissecting just how badly Uber's tech failed here, legal responsibility or not.
- ebikelaw 9y ago
chapill 9y ago
Most of the Twitter comments seems to believe the official story based on the released video.
antonkm 9y ago
I think a big problem with this whole debacle is that we're discussing cameras and lighting, before discussing the actual matter: a person died and someone is responsible. It doesn't matter if I were to run someone over when it's dark. I would still be accountable. The discussion about footage removes focus from the actual issue which should be a legal issue, not a technical debugging session. Edit: Sorry, am not native English speaker. What I meant when I wrote accountable was that I would have to own up to what happened. Not that I would get a sentence if it was an accident.
- phil21 9y ago
  > It doesn't matter if I were to run someone over when it's dark. I would still be accountable. As long as you weren't drinking or otherwise found to be obviously negligent this is typically not the case. The interesting part of this to me is that the police are treating this as if it were a human driver and holding the car to that level of responsibility. A human driver would not be charged with anything for a typical accident like this one (hitting a pedestrian in low light conditions outside of a crosswalk on a high speed road). The court case will happen since this is so high profile, but if an average Joe driving the exact same route home from work had hit her, it likely would not even go that far.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    >A human driver would not be charged with anything for a typical accident like this one (hitting a pedestrian in low light conditions outside of a crosswalk on a high speed road). It wasn't low light conditions and it isn't a high speed road. It most definitely could be pushed to court in the case of a human driver.
    - jessaustin 9y ago
      It would go to court if the victim were a young white woman, or an older white woman with money, and the perpetrator were not one of those. A white male victim might have a chance at "justice" if the driver were a minority. A drunk driver would be more likely, but by no means certain, to be charged with anything more than drunk driving. The victim in this case was 49, has been described as homeless (I automatically discount this detail in reporting on pedestrian fatalities), and she had a bicycle. Not the sort of person who inspires prosecutors to inconvenience upstanding taxpayers.
anotheryou 9y ago
Maybe the took the mid-range from a HDR* video and published it? This way they technically did not add contrast, but just conveniently dropped all the info in the shadows to "make it accessible" * not tone-mapped, I mean what HDR truly stands for
pwthornton 9y ago
If Uber's self-driving cars are no better than the visual acuity of humans, they shouldn't be on the road. There is no point to this at all if we can't make robots better than humans. Self-driving cars should be able to use sensors that pick up stuff better than human eyes. I can't believe that radar and LIDAR were completely unable to see this woman until the visual cameras picked her up. This seems like either a serious flaw with the sensors or with software. The driver, despite looking down at a phone, still seemed to react faster than the computer! I'm not that comfortable with Uber doing self-driving cars. I don't really consider them a true tech company. They are not built on world-class engineering and design. They are largely a company built by getting around legal regulations and getting rid of staff workers. They've done incredible legal work with regulatory environments. A company like Google, I think they have the talent and the culture to build something really good here. A company like GM would understand the stakes at hand here and would be cautious. Uber just doesn't seem to have the talent, mission or ethics to be in the self-driving car business. It's no surprise they are the first company to kill a pedestrian.
- underyx 9y ago
  >There is no point to this at all if we can't make robots better than humans. How about saving human time that would otherwise be spent on driving?
  - djKianoosh 9y ago
    as long as you're ok with the tradeoff; convenience at the expense of safety
    - throwawaylolx 9y ago
      GP didn't say self-driving cars should be less safe, only that they don't need to be safer in order to provide a benefit.
    - astine 9y ago
      If self driving cars are equally good at driving as humans then there is no trade off. It's the same level of safety with more convenience. That doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for greater safety, but I think the original poster might have been a bit over zealous with his words.
dekhn 9y ago
I'm gonna wait for the NTSB report because they are not armchair journalists citing misunderstood optics laws.
daveguy 9y ago
I'm sure the Uber footage is either extremely low dynamic range (and not similar to human vision) or was modified to make it look darker. However, the driving footage is from after release of the story. The moon on the 21st had illumination of ~17%. The night of the accident was the day after the new moon with an illumination of 1%. Someone needs to film the same section sometime between April 15 - April 17 to get a more accurate estimate of the light on that night. I expect video will still show much lighter conditions than that shown on the suspiciously dark video, but without the same moon lighting conditions we are comparing apples and oranges. (accident) http://www.moongiant.com/phase/3/18/2018 http://www.moongiant.com/phase/3/18/2018 (filmed) http://www.moongiant.com/phase/3/21/2018 http://www.moongiant.com/phase/3/21/2018 EDIT: masklinn pointed out the accident occured before the stoplight in the much more lighted area, not later area where the news crew was filming and was commented on in the second video. It was near the stoplight with the parking deck in the background rather than only the long spaced overhead lights. Incredibly misleading video from the dashcam. Maybe good to know for defense of the true conditions, but it probably won't make that much difference. look at the slideshow
- gambiting 9y ago
  I'm almost certain that the footage was modified to ride the public opinion of "it's too dark to see her, so it was her fault!" even though the car should be able to operate in complete darkness thanks to LIDAR and radar sensors. Uber never plays by the rules, I wouldn't expect them to suddenly be super honest about this.
  - jjoonathan 9y ago
    Modified? We would never! No, we simply, uh, compressed it. So that more people could view it without bringing down the server. Standard practice. "So what does the uncompressed footage look like?" Intern lost it.
  - Someone1234 9y ago
    I'd be surprised if it was actually modified seems too big of a liability. If it was, someone should be going to jail as a result, since that's the footage they seemingly handed over to the police as evidence in the investigation.
Humdeee 9y ago
I'm surprised to hear a top police authority say this. I come from a family of police and it's always said that when telling your side of the story in a traffic incident, saying something along the lines of: "But Officer, they came out of nowhere!" never really holds up too well for you. It's the same as saying "I flat out didn't see them, so not my fault." It's quite the opposite in fact... and any cool-headed person will pick that up. I'm sure the investigation is well underway in any event.
- avs733 9y ago
  Arizona officials carrying water for corporations is not a new thing by any rate.
2aa07e2 9y ago
The car driver was half the time not looking at the road! Who the hell drives like that. Jaywalking or not, the victim was clearly a pedestrian (not riding her bike), the insurance of Uber (Uber itself?) should compensate the victim's relatives. If it doesn't I expect a huge backslash.
- hmate9 9y ago
  He wasn’t driving.
pwaivers 9y ago
They should release the LIDAR sensor data, so we can learn what the car "saw". This dashcash is basically irrelevant compared to the sensors on the car.
ironjunkie 9y ago
I don't want to sound like a crazy person here, but could it be that the video released was edited to look super dark? The difference between the Uber video and the amateur cellphone videos is striking! Could it be that the police//Uber employees//municipality have a political goal to make this look like it was unavoidable? It looks so to me.
thrillgore 9y ago
Is Uber paying off the police chief to blame the victim? I'm with the majority here -- the LIDAR should have picked the pedestrian up and decelerated. Uber's self-driving tech is less safe than a human driver, and should be shelved.
logotype 9y ago
Why do we only have the dashcam videos? I want to see the LIDAR data. Also, Uber definitively has ways to render all the sensor data into a video which shows the objects which was detected (or lack of detection).
rplnt 9y ago
There needs to be a process in place for autonomous cars accidents. Required telemetry and data provided to independent organization (financed by manufacturers). If it deems the car (hardware or software) was at fault, whole fleet needs to be immediately disabled until the issue is resolved. Dead pedestrian here and there won't hurt the companies financially. There's not much reason for them to push for perfect products. They can just shoot for 99% and account for the rest in damages. Disabling their service will hurt them. This needs to be treated like planes, trains, or medical devices are. Not like consumer device.
jaragones 9y ago
I wonder why they don't want to show its LIDAR "video", I thought that all autonomous vehicle are using it. I agree that a cause of the accident can be that LIDAR had failed but I wonder why in this kind of technologies they don't have redundancies system. :/
justspamjustin 9y ago
When I learned to drive, I was taught to slow down when you see that you’re coming up on lower visibility areas of the road. This could be a turn in the road, a part of the road that reduces slope or a darker part of the road. I still do practice this safe precaution. And while the technology is in its infancy, drivers in an autonomous car should be just as attentive as a driver in any other car.
typeformer 9y ago
I think it was extremely irresponsible of the officers on the scene to imply that there was "nothing that could be done" or a lack of fault before a real investigation had even started!
boyaka 9y ago
Most of the illumination when I drive comes from my headlights. All of it that I need, no matter how dark or "shadowy" it is (give me a break).
lafar6502 9y ago
We’ll miss the good old times where road accidents were a matter settled between two humans on equal rights, no a individual vs multi-billion corps and their army of lawyers
- xapata 9y ago
  When was that? Right now if you are part of an accident, you only have rights via your insurance company and their lawyers. I suppose there's small claims court or hiring your own lawyer, but that ain't the same.
  - lafar6502 9y ago
    Where I live the insurance company does not act until the case is clear and it’s known who is guilty and of what. Sometimes it’s just police documentation, sometimes an investigation and court case. But insurance company does not represent you in the court so what exactly are you talking about?
    - xapata 9y ago
      If the other person is at fault, your insurance company will in fact go after them for money. Depends on the plan and the circumstances, I suppose.
      - lafar6502 9y ago
        This is their business, not yours. They wouldn’t pay you a penny if they could, and have whole departments for figuring out how to pay you less
        xapata 9y ago
        So it sounds like status quo ain't "a matter settled between two humans on equal rights".
        9y ago
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/speeding https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/speeding > Speed also affects your safety even when you are driving at the speed limit but too fast for road conditions, such as during bad weather, when a road is under repair, or in an area at night that isn’t well lit. This vehicle was speeding. Uber is at fault. How is this disputable? Edit: One More link. https://www.123driving.com/dmv/drivers-handbook-speed-limits https://www.123driving.com/dmv/drivers-handbook-speed-limits > You will need to drive with extra care at night. You cannot see as far ahead or to the side, and glare from oncoming cars can reduce your vision even more. Follow these guidelines for driving at night: Use your headlights (low beam or high beam) between the hours of sunset and sunrise. Low beam headlamps are only effective for speeds up to 20-25 MPH. You must use special care when driving faster than these speeds, since you are unable to detect pedestrians, bicyclists and others. High beam headlights can reveal objects up to a distance of at least 450 feet and are most effective for speeds faster than 25 MPH. Don't use high-beam headlights within 500 feet of oncoming vehicles. If you are behind other vehicles, use low beams when you are within 300 feet of the vehicle ahead. When leaving a brightly lit place, drive slowly until your eyes adjust to the darkness. If a vehicle comes toward you with high beams, flash your lights to high beam and back to low beam once. Don't look directly at oncoming headlights. Instead, watch the right edge of your lane. Look quickly to be sure of the other vehicle's position every few seconds. Drive as far to the right as you can if a vehicle with one light comes toward you.
mping 9y ago
What seems horrible from a SW engineering point of view is that they probably didn't QA this scenario. I mean, it's not a corner case, it's basically the scenario where someone appears in front of the car "all of the sudden". I just hope engineers working on software that can cause serious injury or kill someone do the appropriate diligences to ensure this doesn't happen again.
bitL 9y ago
It's pretty common to ramp up contrast in cam used for self-driving inputs for basic computer vision to make lane markers pop up. So such a camera won't have much chance of detecting a person casually crossing road without any concerns for traffic. The crash points more to failure in sensor fusion; LiDAR should have detected it, but clustering algorithm might have either removed it, or she appeared in too few scanning frames to be reliably detected as an object, due to heat map thresholding to avoid false positives.
- ksk 9y ago
  But why would they alter the recorded bits? An imaging sensor streams the RAW data (w/o tone curve). Wouldn't they prefer just storing the RAW bits (which probably have a higher dynamic range anyway) and then apply various transforms - contrast, edge-detect, etc.
  - bitL 9y ago
    I guess it's speed concerns? Maybe they have a custom ASIC they use to pipe and adjust images from the camera, achieving optimal contrast? Using CPU for that is very very slow and self-driving car companies try to push latency down as much as possible, so it might be a limitation of specialized hardware.
    - ksk 9y ago
      Sure, but if they have to process the RAW data anyway, they could easily send an unaltered copy in parallel to storage for offline use. I guess depending on the resolution & bitness, they'd want to downsample/compress it to save space. Heh, anyway its just pure speculation on my part. They probably have a good reason to do it one particular way...
sschueller 9y ago
Maybe there should be some limits to when these vehicles may travel until they have proven they can deal with more difficult situations. Driving at night or in a snow storm is a very difference environment than on a nice day.
avs733 9y ago
There is another aspect of this as well that is important to consider. I will 100% bet that the police had to interact with/rely on Uber to provide them with the video and data. With Uber's history, and the importance of this to the company, can we trust they didn't manipulate the video (i.e., make it darker)?. In the end, as much distaste as I have for Uber, this isn't even about them...its about process and chain of evidence. In a non-autonomous accident if there was a fight between two opposing drivers, the vehicle manufacturer is a neutral party and it seems reasonable to rely on them to extract and hand over data. If, however, the fight was between the driver and the manufacturer (e.g., the driver asserted a failure of the vehicle) there is no way that the manufacturer would be allowed to extract the vehicles' data logger. It would be done by an independent third party. As these accidents happen (and no matter your perspective on this one/cars/autonomous vs. human drivers/etc. - they will happen) there needs to be methodology for extracting data and assessing it from the vehicles that does not rely on the manufacturer or any other conflict of interest party. Further, this hole debacle shows how important it is that experts be involved in these decisions, discussions. The police chief has no knowledge or experience with the technical details of autonomous vehicles. His statements have, from the beginning, been irresponsible and inappropriately deferential to Uber at the expense of a citizen of his town. The rush for LIDAR/Radar technology makes clear just how much of autonomous tech relies on the nonvisual range. However, the chief obviously...based on his statements...is judging performance entirely on the visual range. He is not an expert. As an ex-Tempe resident, I doubt Tempe has independent autonomous vehicle experts. I would almost guarantee they are relying on the companies being truthful and open with them. That is bad.
- cesarb 9y ago
  > I will 100% bet that the police had to interact with/rely on Uber to provide them with the video and data. For the video released so far, not necessarily. It seems to be from an off-the-shelf dashcam, which the police most probably not only know how to download, but also has already done so several times in other accidents. For the rest of the data (and the video from the self-driving cameras, if it's stored instead of just used in the control loop and then discarded), I agree with you that the police (and the NTSB) will probably need the help of the Uber engineers.
sylvinus 9y ago
I understand people are focusing on the video because that's all we have at the moment, but it entirely misses the point: this is primarily a LIDAR failure. This should have been prevented even with the cameras off.
devy 9y ago
The takeaways from this tragic accident for me are: 1. We need to have better suited (much better low light performance) frontal cameras equipped for self-driving cars and dashcams. Be it a dual sensor/lens setup or whatnot, if Apple can make it for iPhone X for $35 [1], the technology is available now and shippable now. Compare to the cost of tens of thousands of the price of a car and hundreds/thousands for the price of packages/options manufacturers to add on to a new car, that's virtually nothing. 2. We need better more sophisticated headlamps and new laws to better suited for today's technology advancements[2] - something like a 3rd mode of wide beam on top of hi/low bean modes. From ubiquitous adaptive headlights to matrix laser beams, these improvement can increase driver visibility and perhaps save lives in situations like this. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-x-teardown-parts-cost-ihs-markit-2017-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-x-teardown-parts-cost-... [2] https://blog.dupontregistry.com/mercedes-benz/why-are-adaptive-headlights-illegal-in-the-usa/ https://blog.dupontregistry.com/mercedes-benz/why-are-adapti...
scrumper 9y ago
The concept of a safety driver in SDC testing needs refining. The guy here was clearly distracted. He only looks up at the road a fraction of a second before the crash. My bet is that he'll be prosecuted as if he were a distracted driver: he's responsible for the safe operation of the vehicle (otherwise, why's he there in the first place?). He'll go to prison, probably, and rules will change very quickly as a result. Driving a car is an active process, it's fatiguing but not inherently boring (excepting really long, straight, empty roads through unchanging scenery). Sitting in a SDC while it drives itself however is boring: there's a well-researched and well-understood attention deficit problem which nobody seems to be discussing here. It's the same thing that makes TSA security screening such a tough thing to get right, or sentry duty: you can't expect humans to sit for hours passively monitoring for unpredictable and rare events that they then have to react decisively to. Brains don't work like that. These safety drivers need short shifts with frequent breaks, they need a partner, and they need an active background task that keeps their eyes up and forward and their brain engaged (giving a commentary, for example).
dreta 9y ago
If the car is at fault here, then Uber should bare the full consequences. At the same time though, the person with the bike had no reflective markings, wasn’t blind or anything, and was crossing the road without any respect for the incoming traffic at an unmarked spot. They didn’t even flinch when the car was about to hit them. The guy in the car looked away for like 5 seconds. He clearly wasn’t absent-minded. If the visibility wasn’t that bad, any suspicious activity on the left would have grabbed his attention.
cesarb 9y ago
Is it possible that the released video was so dark because the dashcam was behind a tinted windshield? The other dashcam videos from the same place might be from cars with non-tinted windshields. Of course, any video cameras used as self-driving sensors would be outside the windshield, so their view would be clearer.
TearsInTheRain 9y ago
A lot of people are focusing on why the car didn't stop or even slow, but what about the human driver? I feel like this practice of having a human driver behind the wheel doesn't work as well as we might think it does. It is likely giving people and legislators a false sense of security if they think a human has the ability to intervene properly to stop an accident

220 points by drabiega 9y ago

The Uber victim did come from the shadows. Arizona gets dark at night, especially during a new moon. The question isn't why the optical cameras didn't see her, it's why did the LIDAR failed to detect her?

clint 9y ago
read the article before posting
- gamblor956 9y ago
  I did, including the comments to the article where they clarify that the follow up videos were taken with high-beams on, i.e., in dissimilar circumstances. And the picture in the comments showing the location of the crash, where there were no streetlights in the immediate vicinity, and a large bush shielding the median, from which the victim is alleged to have come from. I think there are serious questions about why the Uber car didn't detect the victim, given all the sensors it was supposed to be using, but "came from the shadows" is an accurate description based on the Google Street View and overhead views of the crash site. It helps to read the entire article before commenting.
gargravarr 9y ago
The first thing I noticed in watching the video is that the Uber car's lights seem to be ridiculously focused on a very small patch in front. The dark spot the cyclist appears in remains so until little more than a second before she is tragically hit. The question is indeed why the electronics failed to detect her, but there's something really wrong with car lights like that.
lb1lf 9y ago
AZ gets dark at night. The workaround is for cars to have headlights. Not knowing the law as it applies for (semi-)autonomous vehicle testing in Arizona, I am very curious how this one turns out. Based on my experience driving at night (In Norway, where it also gets pretty dark), even in rural areas with no street lights, you tend to discover pedestrians -even the ones not wearing safety reflectors- significantly more than a second and a half before you cross paths with them. So - while the vehicle is driving autonomously, there's still a driver (or whatever we should call it, seeing as they do not drive as such) behind the wheel. If the driver had paid attention to the road, rather than her cell phone, this accident likely wouldn't have happened. So - who is to blame, legally speaking? The 'driver' for not paying attention? The coder implementing the control algorithms? The HW engineering team deciding which sensors to use? Someone else? This will be a lot simpler when vehicles are 'properly' autonomous - but right now, it seems AVs simply give the 'driver' all sorts of incentive for not paying attention, while still not absolving them of responsibility. That's the worst of both worlds.
- typeformer 9y ago
  Uber is a corporation, so it as a legal entity is liable, any kind of individual liability is possible to be litigated but very difficult to win. One problem is that corporate charters once granted are never revoked so corporations just keep doing terrible things and diffusing the costs of their actions onto society with minuscule repercussions. You can bet if I was looking down at my phone and not at the road and then hit a woman in the dark (all captured on camera) I would be going to jail... But, Uber has done some really despicable things (stealing the medical records of a rape victim to use for intimidation), and now they've likely killed someone and no one will ever see cell time.
Xorlev 9y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XOVxSCG8u0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XOVxSCG8u0 I think there is a question of why didn't the optical cameras detect her. It doesn't seem poorly lit.
dognotdog 9y ago
Notwithstanding the fact that a typical visible light imager in a driver assistance system alternates exposure times between frames, especially at night: one over-exposed image to discern dark texture, and one under-exposed image to find the color of point light sources, such as traffic or brake lights. The released video looks like the latter, though it could also just be standalone dashcam footage. It is also pretty mangled by compression, especially the dark parts are just completely blocky, so it is probably not a good indicator of what the vehicle saw. OTOH, bikes can be notoriously hard on image recognition, for example it is not unheard of that reflective rims are interpreted as continuation of a curb or lane marking. LIDAR and RADAR should see them, though, and they probably did, so it is indeed unclear where it all went wrong.

jacksmith21006 9y ago

Would love to see how Google would handle this situation. Have to believe their algorithm would be smarter and handle. Remember Google had to deal with bike corner cases a couple of years ago. "A Cyclist's Track Stand Befuddled One of Google's Self-Driving Cars" https://gizmodo.com/a-cyclists-track-stand-totally-befuddled-one-of-googles-1727024285 https://gizmodo.com/a-cyclists-track-stand-totally-befuddled...

TheCapeGreek 9y ago

Everyone who saw the video has said it's the fault of camera for seeming so dark (since even the street lights have almost no effect anywhere), and regardless of that AVs work with lidar and such. Where is the telemetry and analysis? If it didn't see the pedestrian, then why?

deleted 9y ago
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vitalysh 9y ago
Exactly, especially considering that this is car by Volvo, manufacturer that quite often demoes it's new features in the are of detecting pedestrians or animals on the the road.
- dullgiulio 9y ago
  The self driving technology is totally Uber, Volvo only has a partnership for cars without any self-driving gadgetry.
- ebikelaw 9y ago
  Volvo's "city safety" features only work below 30 MPH.
mtgx 9y ago
And it begs the question: did Uber alter the video? Will it alter the telemetry, too? If the Tempe police doesn't get forensics experts on this, they're doing their job wrong. Uber is already known as a company that tends to hide and destroy this sort of evidence.
- dekhn 9y ago
  It would be really hard to believe that Uber would do this. There is only downside, the probability of being caught is high (given they have to hand over a ton of data streams to the NTSB).

marchenko 9y ago

I'm not trying to be inflammatory, but should we expect the Tempe AZ City administration to be a neutral source of information in this case? Might they be biased by their decision to host this experiment in their jurisdiction (in the sense of anticipating criticism)?

kartan 9y ago
> “Arizona welcomes Uber self-driving cars with open arms and wide open roads. While California puts the brakes on innovation and change with more bureaucracy and more regulation, Arizona is paving the way for new technology and new businesses. In 2015, I signed an executive order supporting the testing and operation of self-driving cars in Arizona with an emphasis on innovation, economic growth, and most importantly, public safety. This is about economic development, but it’s also about changing the way we live and work. Arizona is proud to be open for business. California may not want you, but we do.” https://azgovernor.gov/governor/news/2016/12/governor-ducey-tells-uber-ca-may-not-want-you-az-does https://azgovernor.gov/governor/news/2016/12/governor-ducey-... Politics can always be an explanation.
- Animats 9y ago
  California's self-driving car rules are essentially what Google asked for. Google/Waymo is fine with that; they have had lots of self driving cars running around Mountain View for years. The main California requirements are that the manufacturer takes total financial responsibility, has to file accident and disconnect reports, and can't use the technology commercially under a test license. Uber violated that last condition in San Francisco, and CA DMV revoked their vehicle licenses. So Uber moved to Arizona, where they could kill more freely.
mannykannot 9y ago
I don't know about that, but I imagine the police chief received a lot of advice, whether solicited or not, from Uber's PR, about how to interpret the video.
mieseratte 9y ago
As an occasional commuter cyclist, I'm well aware of the position cars and drivers hold in our social pecking order. It's a well known "joke" that if you want to get away with murder, you do it with a car. While we should not absolve Uber, including the driver who was too busy looking at his phone to intervene, I do wonder if a standard driver would have also been deemed not at fault by the police. The answer is likely, "yes".

deleted 9y ago

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908087 9y ago

It's pretty hilarious, at least with the ones who aren't blaming the victim, watching autonomous car fans use the "see, it was too dark out!" excuse for this incident. This excuse is either maliciously dishonest, or and indicator that the apologists don't actually understand anything about the technology they're rushing to defend.

bhouston 9y ago

The videos that show everything super bright look like they have their high beams on, whereas the Uber video looks like the standard headline mode. Although I can not be completely sure. If that is the case it is apples-to-oranges.

ptaipale 9y ago
Impact of light sensitivity of camera, and light resolution, is probably more relevant here than even low/high beams. The car must be able to drive with low beams as well, but it's really relevant for human observers, not what the car actually sees.
KaiserPro 9y ago
Which might form an excuse if it was a human driver. However the human wasn't looking at the road. (I can't blame them, its pretty difficult to concentrate when you are not _actually_ driving) So headlights or not, it's irrelevant. However the article goes on to explain that dip'd beam headlights don't dramatically increase your vision. However you are correct its apples to oranges. The Dashcam sensor is had not adjusted correctly to the light conditions, or it isn't sensitive enough. However thats not entirely relevant, as the dashcam doesn't (or at least I hope it doesn't) form part of the sensor array.

perfmode 9y ago

Where was the LIDAR?

Steltek 9y ago

For reference, I found this video over on reddit (from /u/ghdana) of the area. It looks _very_ different with even a cell phone camera. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XOVxSCG8u0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XOVxSCG8u0 Edit: I guess this video is also referenced in the article, after Brian's.

zython 9y ago
To be fair, cell phone cameras as I recall have a tendency to push the ISO up, so it potentially could look different IRL (I'm purposefully being vague). Ideally /u/ghdana would have posted the camera settings which filmed this, so you could get a better understanding of the situation. Not that I'm defending UBER on this, as others have said LIDAR and IR in addition to the cameras should have picked the woman up.
- ksk 9y ago
  >To be fair, cell phone cameras as I recall have a tendency to push the ISO up, so it potentially could look different IRL (I'm purposefully being vague). That is true, but raising the ISO for proper (well 18% grey anyway.) exposure is something pretty much every retail camera made in the past decade does. I doubt UBER is using some experimental esoteric camera here.
mieseratte 9y ago
That's a pretty stark difference from the Uber video. There's no reason this incident should have happened.
Steltek 9y ago
Sadly Inevitable Meta: Howdy folks, look, I appreciate the upvotes on a comment I made quickly (because I've been following this topic with some interest) but it's not nearly as content rich as some of the other top level comments around here. That said, I appreciate a site like Arstechnica doing a great job of dissecting just how badly Uber's tech failed here, legal responsibility or not.
ebikelaw 9y ago

chapill 9y ago

Most of the Twitter comments seems to believe the official story based on the released video.

antonkm 9y ago

I think a big problem with this whole debacle is that we're discussing cameras and lighting, before discussing the actual matter: a person died and someone is responsible. It doesn't matter if I were to run someone over when it's dark. I would still be accountable. The discussion about footage removes focus from the actual issue which should be a legal issue, not a technical debugging session. Edit: Sorry, am not native English speaker. What I meant when I wrote accountable was that I would have to own up to what happened. Not that I would get a sentence if it was an accident.

phil21 9y ago
> It doesn't matter if I were to run someone over when it's dark. I would still be accountable. As long as you weren't drinking or otherwise found to be obviously negligent this is typically not the case. The interesting part of this to me is that the police are treating this as if it were a human driver and holding the car to that level of responsibility. A human driver would not be charged with anything for a typical accident like this one (hitting a pedestrian in low light conditions outside of a crosswalk on a high speed road). The court case will happen since this is so high profile, but if an average Joe driving the exact same route home from work had hit her, it likely would not even go that far.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  >A human driver would not be charged with anything for a typical accident like this one (hitting a pedestrian in low light conditions outside of a crosswalk on a high speed road). It wasn't low light conditions and it isn't a high speed road. It most definitely could be pushed to court in the case of a human driver.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    It would go to court if the victim were a young white woman, or an older white woman with money, and the perpetrator were not one of those. A white male victim might have a chance at "justice" if the driver were a minority. A drunk driver would be more likely, but by no means certain, to be charged with anything more than drunk driving. The victim in this case was 49, has been described as homeless (I automatically discount this detail in reporting on pedestrian fatalities), and she had a bicycle. Not the sort of person who inspires prosecutors to inconvenience upstanding taxpayers.

anotheryou 9y ago

Maybe the took the mid-range from a HDR* video and published it? This way they technically did not add contrast, but just conveniently dropped all the info in the shadows to "make it accessible" * not tone-mapped, I mean what HDR truly stands for

pwthornton 9y ago

If Uber's self-driving cars are no better than the visual acuity of humans, they shouldn't be on the road. There is no point to this at all if we can't make robots better than humans. Self-driving cars should be able to use sensors that pick up stuff better than human eyes. I can't believe that radar and LIDAR were completely unable to see this woman until the visual cameras picked her up. This seems like either a serious flaw with the sensors or with software. The driver, despite looking down at a phone, still seemed to react faster than the computer! I'm not that comfortable with Uber doing self-driving cars. I don't really consider them a true tech company. They are not built on world-class engineering and design. They are largely a company built by getting around legal regulations and getting rid of staff workers. They've done incredible legal work with regulatory environments. A company like Google, I think they have the talent and the culture to build something really good here. A company like GM would understand the stakes at hand here and would be cautious. Uber just doesn't seem to have the talent, mission or ethics to be in the self-driving car business. It's no surprise they are the first company to kill a pedestrian.

underyx 9y ago
>There is no point to this at all if we can't make robots better than humans. How about saving human time that would otherwise be spent on driving?
- djKianoosh 9y ago
  as long as you're ok with the tradeoff; convenience at the expense of safety
  - throwawaylolx 9y ago
    GP didn't say self-driving cars should be less safe, only that they don't need to be safer in order to provide a benefit.
  - astine 9y ago
    If self driving cars are equally good at driving as humans then there is no trade off. It's the same level of safety with more convenience. That doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for greater safety, but I think the original poster might have been a bit over zealous with his words.

dekhn 9y ago

I'm gonna wait for the NTSB report because they are not armchair journalists citing misunderstood optics laws.

daveguy 9y ago

I'm sure the Uber footage is either extremely low dynamic range (and not similar to human vision) or was modified to make it look darker. However, the driving footage is from after release of the story. The moon on the 21st had illumination of ~17%. The night of the accident was the day after the new moon with an illumination of 1%. Someone needs to film the same section sometime between April 15 - April 17 to get a more accurate estimate of the light on that night. I expect video will still show much lighter conditions than that shown on the suspiciously dark video, but without the same moon lighting conditions we are comparing apples and oranges. (accident) http://www.moongiant.com/phase/3/18/2018 http://www.moongiant.com/phase/3/18/2018 (filmed) http://www.moongiant.com/phase/3/21/2018 http://www.moongiant.com/phase/3/21/2018 EDIT: masklinn pointed out the accident occured before the stoplight in the much more lighted area, not later area where the news crew was filming and was commented on in the second video. It was near the stoplight with the parking deck in the background rather than only the long spaced overhead lights. Incredibly misleading video from the dashcam. Maybe good to know for defense of the true conditions, but it probably won't make that much difference. look at the slideshow

gambiting 9y ago
I'm almost certain that the footage was modified to ride the public opinion of "it's too dark to see her, so it was her fault!" even though the car should be able to operate in complete darkness thanks to LIDAR and radar sensors. Uber never plays by the rules, I wouldn't expect them to suddenly be super honest about this.
- jjoonathan 9y ago
  Modified? We would never! No, we simply, uh, compressed it. So that more people could view it without bringing down the server. Standard practice. "So what does the uncompressed footage look like?" Intern lost it.
- Someone1234 9y ago
  I'd be surprised if it was actually modified seems too big of a liability. If it was, someone should be going to jail as a result, since that's the footage they seemingly handed over to the police as evidence in the investigation.

Humdeee 9y ago

I'm surprised to hear a top police authority say this. I come from a family of police and it's always said that when telling your side of the story in a traffic incident, saying something along the lines of: "But Officer, they came out of nowhere!" never really holds up too well for you. It's the same as saying "I flat out didn't see them, so not my fault." It's quite the opposite in fact... and any cool-headed person will pick that up. I'm sure the investigation is well underway in any event.

avs733 9y ago
Arizona officials carrying water for corporations is not a new thing by any rate.

2aa07e2 9y ago

The car driver was half the time not looking at the road! Who the hell drives like that. Jaywalking or not, the victim was clearly a pedestrian (not riding her bike), the insurance of Uber (Uber itself?) should compensate the victim's relatives. If it doesn't I expect a huge backslash.

hmate9 9y ago
He wasn’t driving.

pwaivers 9y ago

They should release the LIDAR sensor data, so we can learn what the car "saw". This dashcash is basically irrelevant compared to the sensors on the car.

ironjunkie 9y ago

I don't want to sound like a crazy person here, but could it be that the video released was edited to look super dark? The difference between the Uber video and the amateur cellphone videos is striking! Could it be that the police//Uber employees//municipality have a political goal to make this look like it was unavoidable? It looks so to me.

thrillgore 9y ago

Is Uber paying off the police chief to blame the victim? I'm with the majority here -- the LIDAR should have picked the pedestrian up and decelerated. Uber's self-driving tech is less safe than a human driver, and should be shelved.

logotype 9y ago

Why do we only have the dashcam videos? I want to see the LIDAR data. Also, Uber definitively has ways to render all the sensor data into a video which shows the objects which was detected (or lack of detection).

rplnt 9y ago

There needs to be a process in place for autonomous cars accidents. Required telemetry and data provided to independent organization (financed by manufacturers). If it deems the car (hardware or software) was at fault, whole fleet needs to be immediately disabled until the issue is resolved. Dead pedestrian here and there won't hurt the companies financially. There's not much reason for them to push for perfect products. They can just shoot for 99% and account for the rest in damages. Disabling their service will hurt them. This needs to be treated like planes, trains, or medical devices are. Not like consumer device.

jaragones 9y ago

I wonder why they don't want to show its LIDAR "video", I thought that all autonomous vehicle are using it. I agree that a cause of the accident can be that LIDAR had failed but I wonder why in this kind of technologies they don't have redundancies system. :/

justspamjustin 9y ago

When I learned to drive, I was taught to slow down when you see that you’re coming up on lower visibility areas of the road. This could be a turn in the road, a part of the road that reduces slope or a darker part of the road. I still do practice this safe precaution. And while the technology is in its infancy, drivers in an autonomous car should be just as attentive as a driver in any other car.

typeformer 9y ago

I think it was extremely irresponsible of the officers on the scene to imply that there was "nothing that could be done" or a lack of fault before a real investigation had even started!

boyaka 9y ago

Most of the illumination when I drive comes from my headlights. All of it that I need, no matter how dark or "shadowy" it is (give me a break).

lafar6502 9y ago

We’ll miss the good old times where road accidents were a matter settled between two humans on equal rights, no a individual vs multi-billion corps and their army of lawyers

xapata 9y ago
When was that? Right now if you are part of an accident, you only have rights via your insurance company and their lawyers. I suppose there's small claims court or hiring your own lawyer, but that ain't the same.
- lafar6502 9y ago
  Where I live the insurance company does not act until the case is clear and it’s known who is guilty and of what. Sometimes it’s just police documentation, sometimes an investigation and court case. But insurance company does not represent you in the court so what exactly are you talking about?
  - xapata 9y ago
    If the other person is at fault, your insurance company will in fact go after them for money. Depends on the plan and the circumstances, I suppose.
    - lafar6502 9y ago
      This is their business, not yours. They wouldn’t pay you a penny if they could, and have whole departments for figuring out how to pay you less
      - xapata 9y ago
        So it sounds like status quo ain't "a matter settled between two humans on equal rights".
        9y ago

JustSomeNobody 9y ago

https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/speeding https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/speeding > Speed also affects your safety even when you are driving at the speed limit but too fast for road conditions, such as during bad weather, when a road is under repair, or in an area at night that isn’t well lit. This vehicle was speeding. Uber is at fault. How is this disputable? Edit: One More link. https://www.123driving.com/dmv/drivers-handbook-speed-limits https://www.123driving.com/dmv/drivers-handbook-speed-limits > You will need to drive with extra care at night. You cannot see as far ahead or to the side, and glare from oncoming cars can reduce your vision even more. Follow these guidelines for driving at night: Use your headlights (low beam or high beam) between the hours of sunset and sunrise. Low beam headlamps are only effective for speeds up to 20-25 MPH. You must use special care when driving faster than these speeds, since you are unable to detect pedestrians, bicyclists and others. High beam headlights can reveal objects up to a distance of at least 450 feet and are most effective for speeds faster than 25 MPH. Don't use high-beam headlights within 500 feet of oncoming vehicles. If you are behind other vehicles, use low beams when you are within 300 feet of the vehicle ahead. When leaving a brightly lit place, drive slowly until your eyes adjust to the darkness. If a vehicle comes toward you with high beams, flash your lights to high beam and back to low beam once. Don't look directly at oncoming headlights. Instead, watch the right edge of your lane. Look quickly to be sure of the other vehicle's position every few seconds. Drive as far to the right as you can if a vehicle with one light comes toward you.

mping 9y ago

What seems horrible from a SW engineering point of view is that they probably didn't QA this scenario. I mean, it's not a corner case, it's basically the scenario where someone appears in front of the car "all of the sudden". I just hope engineers working on software that can cause serious injury or kill someone do the appropriate diligences to ensure this doesn't happen again.

bitL 9y ago

It's pretty common to ramp up contrast in cam used for self-driving inputs for basic computer vision to make lane markers pop up. So such a camera won't have much chance of detecting a person casually crossing road without any concerns for traffic. The crash points more to failure in sensor fusion; LiDAR should have detected it, but clustering algorithm might have either removed it, or she appeared in too few scanning frames to be reliably detected as an object, due to heat map thresholding to avoid false positives.

ksk 9y ago
But why would they alter the recorded bits? An imaging sensor streams the RAW data (w/o tone curve). Wouldn't they prefer just storing the RAW bits (which probably have a higher dynamic range anyway) and then apply various transforms - contrast, edge-detect, etc.
- bitL 9y ago
  I guess it's speed concerns? Maybe they have a custom ASIC they use to pipe and adjust images from the camera, achieving optimal contrast? Using CPU for that is very very slow and self-driving car companies try to push latency down as much as possible, so it might be a limitation of specialized hardware.
  - ksk 9y ago
    Sure, but if they have to process the RAW data anyway, they could easily send an unaltered copy in parallel to storage for offline use. I guess depending on the resolution & bitness, they'd want to downsample/compress it to save space. Heh, anyway its just pure speculation on my part. They probably have a good reason to do it one particular way...

sschueller 9y ago

Maybe there should be some limits to when these vehicles may travel until they have proven they can deal with more difficult situations. Driving at night or in a snow storm is a very difference environment than on a nice day.

avs733 9y ago

There is another aspect of this as well that is important to consider. I will 100% bet that the police had to interact with/rely on Uber to provide them with the video and data. With Uber's history, and the importance of this to the company, can we trust they didn't manipulate the video (i.e., make it darker)?. In the end, as much distaste as I have for Uber, this isn't even about them...its about process and chain of evidence. In a non-autonomous accident if there was a fight between two opposing drivers, the vehicle manufacturer is a neutral party and it seems reasonable to rely on them to extract and hand over data. If, however, the fight was between the driver and the manufacturer (e.g., the driver asserted a failure of the vehicle) there is no way that the manufacturer would be allowed to extract the vehicles' data logger. It would be done by an independent third party. As these accidents happen (and no matter your perspective on this one/cars/autonomous vs. human drivers/etc. - they will happen) there needs to be methodology for extracting data and assessing it from the vehicles that does not rely on the manufacturer or any other conflict of interest party. Further, this hole debacle shows how important it is that experts be involved in these decisions, discussions. The police chief has no knowledge or experience with the technical details of autonomous vehicles. His statements have, from the beginning, been irresponsible and inappropriately deferential to Uber at the expense of a citizen of his town. The rush for LIDAR/Radar technology makes clear just how much of autonomous tech relies on the nonvisual range. However, the chief obviously...based on his statements...is judging performance entirely on the visual range. He is not an expert. As an ex-Tempe resident, I doubt Tempe has independent autonomous vehicle experts. I would almost guarantee they are relying on the companies being truthful and open with them. That is bad.

cesarb 9y ago
> I will 100% bet that the police had to interact with/rely on Uber to provide them with the video and data. For the video released so far, not necessarily. It seems to be from an off-the-shelf dashcam, which the police most probably not only know how to download, but also has already done so several times in other accidents. For the rest of the data (and the video from the self-driving cameras, if it's stored instead of just used in the control loop and then discarded), I agree with you that the police (and the NTSB) will probably need the help of the Uber engineers.

sylvinus 9y ago

I understand people are focusing on the video because that's all we have at the moment, but it entirely misses the point: this is primarily a LIDAR failure. This should have been prevented even with the cameras off.

devy 9y ago

The takeaways from this tragic accident for me are: 1. We need to have better suited (much better low light performance) frontal cameras equipped for self-driving cars and dashcams. Be it a dual sensor/lens setup or whatnot, if Apple can make it for iPhone X for $35 [1], the technology is available now and shippable now. Compare to the cost of tens of thousands of the price of a car and hundreds/thousands for the price of packages/options manufacturers to add on to a new car, that's virtually nothing. 2. We need better more sophisticated headlamps and new laws to better suited for today's technology advancements[2] - something like a 3rd mode of wide beam on top of hi/low bean modes. From ubiquitous adaptive headlights to matrix laser beams, these improvement can increase driver visibility and perhaps save lives in situations like this. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-x-teardown-parts-cost-ihs-markit-2017-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-x-teardown-parts-cost-... [2] https://blog.dupontregistry.com/mercedes-benz/why-are-adaptive-headlights-illegal-in-the-usa/ https://blog.dupontregistry.com/mercedes-benz/why-are-adapti...

scrumper 9y ago

The concept of a safety driver in SDC testing needs refining. The guy here was clearly distracted. He only looks up at the road a fraction of a second before the crash. My bet is that he'll be prosecuted as if he were a distracted driver: he's responsible for the safe operation of the vehicle (otherwise, why's he there in the first place?). He'll go to prison, probably, and rules will change very quickly as a result. Driving a car is an active process, it's fatiguing but not inherently boring (excepting really long, straight, empty roads through unchanging scenery). Sitting in a SDC while it drives itself however is boring: there's a well-researched and well-understood attention deficit problem which nobody seems to be discussing here. It's the same thing that makes TSA security screening such a tough thing to get right, or sentry duty: you can't expect humans to sit for hours passively monitoring for unpredictable and rare events that they then have to react decisively to. Brains don't work like that. These safety drivers need short shifts with frequent breaks, they need a partner, and they need an active background task that keeps their eyes up and forward and their brain engaged (giving a commentary, for example).

dreta 9y ago

If the car is at fault here, then Uber should bare the full consequences. At the same time though, the person with the bike had no reflective markings, wasn’t blind or anything, and was crossing the road without any respect for the incoming traffic at an unmarked spot. They didn’t even flinch when the car was about to hit them. The guy in the car looked away for like 5 seconds. He clearly wasn’t absent-minded. If the visibility wasn’t that bad, any suspicious activity on the left would have grabbed his attention.

cesarb 9y ago

Is it possible that the released video was so dark because the dashcam was behind a tinted windshield? The other dashcam videos from the same place might be from cars with non-tinted windshields. Of course, any video cameras used as self-driving sensors would be outside the windshield, so their view would be clearer.

TearsInTheRain 9y ago

A lot of people are focusing on why the car didn't stop or even slow, but what about the human driver? I feel like this practice of having a human driver behind the wheel doesn't work as well as we might think it does. It is likely giving people and legislators a false sense of security if they think a human has the ability to intervene properly to stop an accident