8 ms·

I understand that emergency maneuver system was disabled so the car did not brake between t minus 1.3 and t. But why didn't it brake from t minus 6 to t minus 1

I understand that emergency maneuver system was disabled so the car did not brake between t minus 1.3 and t. But why didn't it brake from t minus 6 to t minus 1.3? Looks like it detected that the car's and object's paths were converging, so why didn't it brake during that interval?

perl4ever 8y ago
I observe that cars and other objects often come very close to each other, so it would seem impossible to simply brake based on "converging paths". It's necessary to know what an object is and how it's going to behave. If you don't, I don't see how you can go anywhere.
- slavik81 8y ago
  You don't need to stop if you're uncertain, but you should slow down. That makes it easier to stop once you know you have to.
  - w0m 8y ago
    with significant fuzz factor, agreed. If i'm on the sidewalk and take a step toward the road, should it make the car jerk? Probably not, it's a hard call for passenger comfort. From another angle, think of subway tracks - the algo your describing would slow to a crawl as it crosses every station.
    - fabianhjr 8y ago
      > From another angle, think of subway tracks - the algo your describing would slow to a crawl as it crosses every station. As far as trains go, they do slow down when passing trough a track adjacent to a platform. There are some non-platform adjacent tracks the train companies use to avoid slowing down, however they will slow down or even stop if something is going on. Similarly, high speed rail doesn't have level crossings due to safety considerations. Overall trains are very safe and they are _designed_ for safety. It is highly irresponsible and immoral to just wing it with people's life/safety.
      - w0m 8y ago
        > It is highly irresponsible and immoral to just wing it with people's life/safety 100% agree. > As far as trains go, they do slow down when passing trough a track adjacent to a platform. There are some non-platform adjacent tracks the train companies use to avoid slowing down, however they will slow down or even stop if something is going on. The equivalency isn't 'trains slow down through stations' (That would be cars having lower speedlimit in pedestrian areas - they do and the ubers honor) , it would be 'train spikes breaks if someone takes a step toward the edge' (Which they don't, even though it would potentially save lives). There's always a tradeoff between usability and absolute safety. I'm not saying the uber did nothing wrong, at a minimum it should have spiked it's breaks. The 'perfect world' solution would be the uber knowing mass and momentum of approaching objects, and whether they could stop in time. But honestly, here would that have helped? We'll never get rid of people walking in front of moving cars, just have to be find the happy balance (which we clearly haven't)
        Symbiote 8y ago
        > 'train spikes breaks if someone takes a step toward the edge' (Which they don't, even though it would potentially save lives). A train's deceleration under maximum braking is far, far lower than a car. [1] suggests 1.2m/s² (paragraph 8). [2] says the deceleration of a low-speed train crashing into the buffers at the end of the line in a station should not be more than 2.45m/s² (paragraph 35). That caused "minor injuries" to some passengers. Trains do slow down earlier if the platform they are approaching is very crowded, but there's not really anything else they can do. [1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/547c906640f0b602410001b3/R252006_070108_Part_1_Esher.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/547c906640f0b... [2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/547c906640f0b602410001b3/R252006_070108_Part_1_Esher.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/547c906640f0b...
    - reubenswartz 8y ago
      With trains, nothing else is supposed to be on the tracks. With cars, there is an expectation that you have to share the road with other vehicles, objects, obstacles, pedestrians, etc.
    - slavik81 8y ago
      > If I'm on the sidewalk and take a step toward the road, should it make the car jerk? No. That's my point. Take less drastic measures earlier, and only escalate when you have to. That's how I drive, and a self-driving car can do the same.
- majormajor 8y ago
  It absolutely is not necessary to know how another object will behave on the road: you slow down because of the uncertainty! "It might move out of my way" is no reason to get so close at such a high speed that you can't avoid it when it doesn't!
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    That's not how traffic works at the moment. I often have pedestrians walk towards the street and I assume they will stop so I don't slow down unless they are children or similar. Almost every day I could hit pedestrians if they kept walking.
    - majormajor 8y ago
      > I often have pedestrians walk towards the street and I assume they will stop so I don't slow down > the self-driving system software classified the pedestrian as an unknown object, as a vehicle, and then as a bicycle with varying expectations of future travel path Little different, huh? If you see something that looks like it might be in your way, and you aren't sure what it is, you just keep going? And if I see a pedestrian in the middle of the road at a random spot, especially at night, I'm slowing down since I don't know WTF they're thinking. Or if I'm in a neighborhood with regular street crossings carved out of the sidewalk and someone's coming up to one of those - I don't know how well they're paying attention to their surroundings.
      - maxxxxx 8y ago
        I can tell pretty quickly if something is pedestrian or a bicycle and plan accordingly. In addition I can tell where the pedestrian is looking. Sometimes I slow down, sometimes I don't depending on how I assess the situation. I think it comes down to the fact that the classification algorithms are not ready for primetime.
    - c22 8y ago
      You should slow down. Those people you are describing sound like they want to cross the street, and they probably have right of way, so yield for them. Also, my two year old will sometimes walk towards the curb, but she is very good with streets, so I am not worried. She always stops and waits to hold someone's hand before crossing. This behavior freaks some drivers out, causing them to slow or come to a complete stop, which is the nicest outcome because then I can take her hand and cross the street. When I am walking by myself drivers rarely yield even as I am stepping into the street, even at marked crossings. I guess my point is if my two year old exhibits the behavior you ascribe to a hypothetical non-child pedestrian then how can you be sure your hypothetical pedestrian won't just "keep walking"? What if they are blind, or drunk, or reckless? Perhaps you have been lucky before and never struck a pedestrian but I strongly urge you to assess your behavior. Stop for pedestrians, it's the nice thing to do and it's probably the law where you live.
w0m 8y ago
Because then the car would break every time anyone approached the car from an angle (which is constantly). Think every intersection ever, every time driving near a sidewalk ever. The car would be herky/jerky as crap. They should have had it set to spike the breaks once collision was imminent though, that's (maybe) the biggest programming omission here.
- naasking 8y ago
  > Think every intersection ever, every time driving near a sidewalk ever. The car would be herky/jerky as crap. I'm not sure that'd be a huge issue. The vectors have to be intersecting first of all, which most vectors emanating from sidewalks wouldn't be, and then a little hysteresis would smooth out most of the rest.
  - sdhgaiojfsa 8y ago
    I don't know if you've been to New York or any other places where people walk, but vectors would absolutely be intersecting on a regular basis up until a fairly short time when the pedestrian would stop. Constantly I walk toward an intersection where, if I kept going for three more seconds, I would be pasted to the street by a passing car. But I stop at the end of the sidewalk, before the road begins, so the vector changes to zero in those last three seconds. It would be super weird if cars would brake at the intersection every time this happened. Cars would be braking at every major street on every major avenue, constantly. What's actually needed here is some notion of whether the pedestrian is paying attention and will correctly stop and not intersect the path of the car. Humans are constantly making that assessment based on sometimes very subtle cues (is the person looking at/talking on a phone, or are they paying attention, for example).
    - naasking 8y ago
      > Constantly I walk toward an intersection where, if I kept going for three more seconds, I would be pasted to the street by a passing car. These autonomous systems are evaluating surrounding vectors every few milliseconds. A timescale of 3 seconds simply isn't important, as they would instantly detect you slowing down and conclude that you wouldn't intersect with their vector.
andygates 8y ago
Well, exactly. Nothing wrong with the sensors, and the classifier was getting consistent pings. This is the critical failure that led to the crash, as much as the shitty final-second emergency non-process.
mygo 8y ago
I don’t know their internals but from that report it looks like their recognition system is probabilistic and routinely hops back and forth between “car collision RED ALERT!” and “lol there’s no problem”. If it were to randomly slam on its breaks every other second then it would cause all kinds of other accidents.
anomaloustho 8y ago
Based on a TED talk by someone from Google[1]. I think having the car apply the brakes when there’s a possible disturbance causes the car to apply the breaks too much and makes for a really uncomfortable ride. I think a major effort in self driving is solving the Goldilocks issue of reacting properly to impending accidents, but also not apply uncomfortable breaking if it’s not needed. Seems like it was too insensitive at that distance. [1] https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_sees_the_road/up-next https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_...
- Maybestring 8y ago
  >I think a major effort in self driving is solving the Goldilocks issue of reacting properly to impending accidents, but also not apply uncomfortable breaking if it’s not needed. This is also an issue with current production automatic braking system. One that was largely solved with on track testing, and on road testing logging false triggers with a driver driving. There's no need to risk lives unless you're just cutting corners to avoid the cost of a test track.
- athenot 8y ago
  There's the third option of slowing down. That's what most human drivers do subconsciously when we see something that we're having trouble identify, and feel it could turn into an obstacle.
  - r00fus 8y ago
    This too. An electric car would simple decelerate by letting off the gas pedal and having the regen kick in. On a gas car this would be equivalent to a partial braking. Shouldn't the brake application be not boolean but 0-100% strength based on confidence levels?
dboreham 8y ago
Because self driving doesn't actually work.
andygates 8y ago
Sensors were fine, victim was detected, software was crappy. That's vanilla testing edge-case stuff, really, and it's known that uber are unter when it comes to this, but the removal of all the useful safety layers after that (braking, alert, second human, hardware system) is reckless and stupid.

perl4ever 8y ago

I observe that cars and other objects often come very close to each other, so it would seem impossible to simply brake based on "converging paths". It's necessary to know what an object is and how it's going to behave. If you don't, I don't see how you can go anywhere.

slavik81 8y ago
You don't need to stop if you're uncertain, but you should slow down. That makes it easier to stop once you know you have to.
- w0m 8y ago
  with significant fuzz factor, agreed. If i'm on the sidewalk and take a step toward the road, should it make the car jerk? Probably not, it's a hard call for passenger comfort. From another angle, think of subway tracks - the algo your describing would slow to a crawl as it crosses every station.
  - fabianhjr 8y ago
    > From another angle, think of subway tracks - the algo your describing would slow to a crawl as it crosses every station. As far as trains go, they do slow down when passing trough a track adjacent to a platform. There are some non-platform adjacent tracks the train companies use to avoid slowing down, however they will slow down or even stop if something is going on. Similarly, high speed rail doesn't have level crossings due to safety considerations. Overall trains are very safe and they are _designed_ for safety. It is highly irresponsible and immoral to just wing it with people's life/safety.
    - w0m 8y ago
      > It is highly irresponsible and immoral to just wing it with people's life/safety 100% agree. > As far as trains go, they do slow down when passing trough a track adjacent to a platform. There are some non-platform adjacent tracks the train companies use to avoid slowing down, however they will slow down or even stop if something is going on. The equivalency isn't 'trains slow down through stations' (That would be cars having lower speedlimit in pedestrian areas - they do and the ubers honor) , it would be 'train spikes breaks if someone takes a step toward the edge' (Which they don't, even though it would potentially save lives). There's always a tradeoff between usability and absolute safety. I'm not saying the uber did nothing wrong, at a minimum it should have spiked it's breaks. The 'perfect world' solution would be the uber knowing mass and momentum of approaching objects, and whether they could stop in time. But honestly, here would that have helped? We'll never get rid of people walking in front of moving cars, just have to be find the happy balance (which we clearly haven't)
      - Symbiote 8y ago
        > 'train spikes breaks if someone takes a step toward the edge' (Which they don't, even though it would potentially save lives). A train's deceleration under maximum braking is far, far lower than a car. [1] suggests 1.2m/s² (paragraph 8). [2] says the deceleration of a low-speed train crashing into the buffers at the end of the line in a station should not be more than 2.45m/s² (paragraph 35). That caused "minor injuries" to some passengers. Trains do slow down earlier if the platform they are approaching is very crowded, but there's not really anything else they can do. [1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/547c906640f0b602410001b3/R252006_070108_Part_1_Esher.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/547c906640f0b... [2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/547c906640f0b602410001b3/R252006_070108_Part_1_Esher.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/547c906640f0b...
  - reubenswartz 8y ago
    With trains, nothing else is supposed to be on the tracks. With cars, there is an expectation that you have to share the road with other vehicles, objects, obstacles, pedestrians, etc.
  - slavik81 8y ago
    > If I'm on the sidewalk and take a step toward the road, should it make the car jerk? No. That's my point. Take less drastic measures earlier, and only escalate when you have to. That's how I drive, and a self-driving car can do the same.
majormajor 8y ago
It absolutely is not necessary to know how another object will behave on the road: you slow down because of the uncertainty! "It might move out of my way" is no reason to get so close at such a high speed that you can't avoid it when it doesn't!
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  That's not how traffic works at the moment. I often have pedestrians walk towards the street and I assume they will stop so I don't slow down unless they are children or similar. Almost every day I could hit pedestrians if they kept walking.
  - majormajor 8y ago
    > I often have pedestrians walk towards the street and I assume they will stop so I don't slow down > the self-driving system software classified the pedestrian as an unknown object, as a vehicle, and then as a bicycle with varying expectations of future travel path Little different, huh? If you see something that looks like it might be in your way, and you aren't sure what it is, you just keep going? And if I see a pedestrian in the middle of the road at a random spot, especially at night, I'm slowing down since I don't know WTF they're thinking. Or if I'm in a neighborhood with regular street crossings carved out of the sidewalk and someone's coming up to one of those - I don't know how well they're paying attention to their surroundings.
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      I can tell pretty quickly if something is pedestrian or a bicycle and plan accordingly. In addition I can tell where the pedestrian is looking. Sometimes I slow down, sometimes I don't depending on how I assess the situation. I think it comes down to the fact that the classification algorithms are not ready for primetime.
  - c22 8y ago
    You should slow down. Those people you are describing sound like they want to cross the street, and they probably have right of way, so yield for them. Also, my two year old will sometimes walk towards the curb, but she is very good with streets, so I am not worried. She always stops and waits to hold someone's hand before crossing. This behavior freaks some drivers out, causing them to slow or come to a complete stop, which is the nicest outcome because then I can take her hand and cross the street. When I am walking by myself drivers rarely yield even as I am stepping into the street, even at marked crossings. I guess my point is if my two year old exhibits the behavior you ascribe to a hypothetical non-child pedestrian then how can you be sure your hypothetical pedestrian won't just "keep walking"? What if they are blind, or drunk, or reckless? Perhaps you have been lucky before and never struck a pedestrian but I strongly urge you to assess your behavior. Stop for pedestrians, it's the nice thing to do and it's probably the law where you live.

w0m 8y ago

Because then the car would break every time anyone approached the car from an angle (which is constantly). Think every intersection ever, every time driving near a sidewalk ever. The car would be herky/jerky as crap. They should have had it set to spike the breaks once collision was imminent though, that's (maybe) the biggest programming omission here.

naasking 8y ago
> Think every intersection ever, every time driving near a sidewalk ever. The car would be herky/jerky as crap. I'm not sure that'd be a huge issue. The vectors have to be intersecting first of all, which most vectors emanating from sidewalks wouldn't be, and then a little hysteresis would smooth out most of the rest.
- sdhgaiojfsa 8y ago
  I don't know if you've been to New York or any other places where people walk, but vectors would absolutely be intersecting on a regular basis up until a fairly short time when the pedestrian would stop. Constantly I walk toward an intersection where, if I kept going for three more seconds, I would be pasted to the street by a passing car. But I stop at the end of the sidewalk, before the road begins, so the vector changes to zero in those last three seconds. It would be super weird if cars would brake at the intersection every time this happened. Cars would be braking at every major street on every major avenue, constantly. What's actually needed here is some notion of whether the pedestrian is paying attention and will correctly stop and not intersect the path of the car. Humans are constantly making that assessment based on sometimes very subtle cues (is the person looking at/talking on a phone, or are they paying attention, for example).
  - naasking 8y ago
    > Constantly I walk toward an intersection where, if I kept going for three more seconds, I would be pasted to the street by a passing car. These autonomous systems are evaluating surrounding vectors every few milliseconds. A timescale of 3 seconds simply isn't important, as they would instantly detect you slowing down and conclude that you wouldn't intersect with their vector.

andygates 8y ago

Well, exactly. Nothing wrong with the sensors, and the classifier was getting consistent pings. This is the critical failure that led to the crash, as much as the shitty final-second emergency non-process.

mygo 8y ago

I don’t know their internals but from that report it looks like their recognition system is probabilistic and routinely hops back and forth between “car collision RED ALERT!” and “lol there’s no problem”. If it were to randomly slam on its breaks every other second then it would cause all kinds of other accidents.

anomaloustho 8y ago

Based on a TED talk by someone from Google[1]. I think having the car apply the brakes when there’s a possible disturbance causes the car to apply the breaks too much and makes for a really uncomfortable ride. I think a major effort in self driving is solving the Goldilocks issue of reacting properly to impending accidents, but also not apply uncomfortable breaking if it’s not needed. Seems like it was too insensitive at that distance. [1] https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_sees_the_road/up-next https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_...

Maybestring 8y ago
>I think a major effort in self driving is solving the Goldilocks issue of reacting properly to impending accidents, but also not apply uncomfortable breaking if it’s not needed. This is also an issue with current production automatic braking system. One that was largely solved with on track testing, and on road testing logging false triggers with a driver driving. There's no need to risk lives unless you're just cutting corners to avoid the cost of a test track.
athenot 8y ago
There's the third option of slowing down. That's what most human drivers do subconsciously when we see something that we're having trouble identify, and feel it could turn into an obstacle.
- r00fus 8y ago
  This too. An electric car would simple decelerate by letting off the gas pedal and having the regen kick in. On a gas car this would be equivalent to a partial braking. Shouldn't the brake application be not boolean but 0-100% strength based on confidence levels?

dboreham 8y ago

Because self driving doesn't actually work.

andygates 8y ago

Sensors were fine, victim was detected, software was crappy. That's vanilla testing edge-case stuff, really, and it's known that uber are unter when it comes to this, but the removal of all the useful safety layers after that (braking, alert, second human, hardware system) is reckless and stupid.