4 ms·

I'm not sure what you mean by don't bite the hand, I understand that the police would have a vested interested in defending uber but I couldn't imagine the poli

I'm not sure what you mean by don't bite the hand, I understand that the police would have a vested interested in defending uber but I couldn't imagine the police destroying their credability over some stupid little thing in the big scheme of things.

Slartie 9y ago
Imagine the police people having seen their governor (who effectively is their boss, as far as I know, so he is the "hand that feeds them") repeatedly be very, very protective and favorable towards Uber and the self-driving car testing program. Even if they never got an explicit order of the likes of "Courteously close your eyes when dealing with Uber!", they will be much more protective of Uber than they were if their boss was known as very critical regarding Uber. This is basic human instinct, and instinctive behavior often leads to decisions which might turn out to be obviously stupid in the long run.
pjc50 9y ago
That's .. not how credibility works for the police.
jcranmer 9y ago
I don't need to believe there was a conspiracy to protect Uber here. This spot apparently has a history of pedestrian crossing, and many police departments have a habit of assigning all blame to the pedestrian in a pedestrian/vehicle collision. This blame is reinforced by the driver's "evidence" (driver didn't see anything, but she wasn't looking) and the dashcam (can't see anything, but the quality is atrocious and not at all reflective of what most drivers would see). One thing we should take away from this incident is that we need to seriously push back on immediate "pedestrian's fault" rulings when police make them after a pedestrian/vehicle collision. It was readily apparent within hours that the story didn't add up, but people only paid so much attention because it's the first such crash involving an autonomous vehicle. The more interesting question is how that shockingly poor dashcam footage came to be. That quality is so poor that I find it hard to believe that Uber is actively using it as a sensor input. Hell, it's worse than most dashcams I've seen on Youtube...
- mannykannot 9y ago
  I assume the poor dashcam footage came out because it fits the narrative they were all trying to push. I don't think there is any reason to believe it was the input to the driving system, but either way, it does not look good for Uber, and if it is apparently deliberately misleading, or, worse, has been tampered with, then that would take it to a new level. The release of the interior shot might have been an attempt to throw the 'safety' driver under the bus, so to speak, and while her inattentiveness was a very serious matter, it also does not look good for Uber.
  - scoggs 9y ago
    Yeah, they did not need to show the footage of her blatantly distracted away from the road. That was my biggest takeaway. I'm not sure who decided what footage got shown publicly but I immediately found that interesting to say the least.
    - JKCalhoun 9y ago
      I thought it looked a bit like they were throwing their human backup driver under the bus as well. Not cool.
      - JeremyBanks 9y ago
        Why is it not cool? Certainly Uber the company is systemically responsible for this failure, but the driver also had a role in preventing harm, and they were negligent. There's more than enough blame to share.
- cesarb 9y ago
  > That quality is so poor that I find it hard to believe that Uber is actively using it as a sensor input. It probably isn't used as sensor input. It's probably an off-the-shelf dashcam (the cheapest they could find that could also record the driver) added as an afterthought. It also wouldn't surprise me if the windshield were tinted, which would make the dashcam recording even darker (since it's behind the windshield).
ramblerman 9y ago
This is extremely naive, have you ever worked in organizations? I'm not being facetious, but a little top-down pressure can go a long way. This isn't about a grand conspiracy as much as it is about simple human nature, and the act to please those above you, keep your job, and move up yourself.
- kartan 9y ago
  > but a little top-down pressure can go a long way "The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
  - jonafato 9y ago
    It's a bit misleading to post that quote without including the validity section as well. People are not as quick to abandon their ethics as the original results of that experiment suggest. In 2012, Australian psychologist Gina Perry investigated Milgram's data and writings and concluded that Milgram had manipulated the results, and that there was "troubling mismatch between (published) descriptions of the experiment and evidence of what actually transpired." She wrote that "only half of the people who undertook the experiment fully believed it was real and of those, 66% disobeyed the experimenter". She described her findings as "an unexpected outcome" that "leaves social psychology in a difficult situation." In the journal Jewish Currents, Joseph Dimow, a participant in the 1961 experiment at Yale University, wrote about his early withdrawal as a "teacher", suspicious "that the whole experiment was designed to see if ordinary Americans would obey immoral orders, as many Germans had done during the Nazi period."

Slartie 9y ago

Imagine the police people having seen their governor (who effectively is their boss, as far as I know, so he is the "hand that feeds them") repeatedly be very, very protective and favorable towards Uber and the self-driving car testing program. Even if they never got an explicit order of the likes of "Courteously close your eyes when dealing with Uber!", they will be much more protective of Uber than they were if their boss was known as very critical regarding Uber. This is basic human instinct, and instinctive behavior often leads to decisions which might turn out to be obviously stupid in the long run.

pjc50 9y ago

That's .. not how credibility works for the police.

jcranmer 9y ago

I don't need to believe there was a conspiracy to protect Uber here. This spot apparently has a history of pedestrian crossing, and many police departments have a habit of assigning all blame to the pedestrian in a pedestrian/vehicle collision. This blame is reinforced by the driver's "evidence" (driver didn't see anything, but she wasn't looking) and the dashcam (can't see anything, but the quality is atrocious and not at all reflective of what most drivers would see). One thing we should take away from this incident is that we need to seriously push back on immediate "pedestrian's fault" rulings when police make them after a pedestrian/vehicle collision. It was readily apparent within hours that the story didn't add up, but people only paid so much attention because it's the first such crash involving an autonomous vehicle. The more interesting question is how that shockingly poor dashcam footage came to be. That quality is so poor that I find it hard to believe that Uber is actively using it as a sensor input. Hell, it's worse than most dashcams I've seen on Youtube...

mannykannot 9y ago
I assume the poor dashcam footage came out because it fits the narrative they were all trying to push. I don't think there is any reason to believe it was the input to the driving system, but either way, it does not look good for Uber, and if it is apparently deliberately misleading, or, worse, has been tampered with, then that would take it to a new level. The release of the interior shot might have been an attempt to throw the 'safety' driver under the bus, so to speak, and while her inattentiveness was a very serious matter, it also does not look good for Uber.
- scoggs 9y ago
  Yeah, they did not need to show the footage of her blatantly distracted away from the road. That was my biggest takeaway. I'm not sure who decided what footage got shown publicly but I immediately found that interesting to say the least.
  - JKCalhoun 9y ago
    I thought it looked a bit like they were throwing their human backup driver under the bus as well. Not cool.
    - JeremyBanks 9y ago
      Why is it not cool? Certainly Uber the company is systemically responsible for this failure, but the driver also had a role in preventing harm, and they were negligent. There's more than enough blame to share.
cesarb 9y ago
> That quality is so poor that I find it hard to believe that Uber is actively using it as a sensor input. It probably isn't used as sensor input. It's probably an off-the-shelf dashcam (the cheapest they could find that could also record the driver) added as an afterthought. It also wouldn't surprise me if the windshield were tinted, which would make the dashcam recording even darker (since it's behind the windshield).

ramblerman 9y ago

This is extremely naive, have you ever worked in organizations? I'm not being facetious, but a little top-down pressure can go a long way. This isn't about a grand conspiracy as much as it is about simple human nature, and the act to please those above you, keep your job, and move up yourself.

kartan 9y ago
> but a little top-down pressure can go a long way "The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
- jonafato 9y ago
  It's a bit misleading to post that quote without including the validity section as well. People are not as quick to abandon their ethics as the original results of that experiment suggest. In 2012, Australian psychologist Gina Perry investigated Milgram's data and writings and concluded that Milgram had manipulated the results, and that there was "troubling mismatch between (published) descriptions of the experiment and evidence of what actually transpired." She wrote that "only half of the people who undertook the experiment fully believed it was real and of those, 66% disobeyed the experimenter". She described her findings as "an unexpected outcome" that "leaves social psychology in a difficult situation." In the journal Jewish Currents, Joseph Dimow, a participant in the 1961 experiment at Yale University, wrote about his early withdrawal as a "teacher", suspicious "that the whole experiment was designed to see if ordinary Americans would obey immoral orders, as many Germans had done during the Nazi period."