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This is why I will never use any service from Uber ever. I may be insignificant but at least I know I am doing my little part to not support this disgusting mov

This is why I will never use any service from Uber ever. I may be insignificant but at least I know I am doing my little part to not support this disgusting movement of "Move Fast and Break Things" which includes actual casualties. Everyone involved except the lowest pawns get away with it so the next company can do it even worse.

solean 7y ago
I hope you don't ever set foot in any other car either, considering they kill a million people every year. But a million is just a big number, it's not as powerful as 1 obituary.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  This accident didn't save any lives though. It's just associated in your mind with saving lives. It's one more death; there's no decrease in traffic accidents to compensate.
  - eriktrautman 7y ago
    So you're implying that our ability to take risks in the pursuit of massive systemic gains is exactly zero?
    - slavik81 7y ago
      I'm fine with taking risks. I just don't think we should be making a cavelry charge into the machine guns. I know the payoff would be great if we succeeded, but it's still not a good idea. I'm deeply excited by the possibilities of self-driving cars, and I would agree that it's necessary to take risks to make them a reality. The question is always if we're taking a necessary risk or just being reckless. Uber has taken unnecessary risks and learned relatively little from them. They didn't need a fleet on public roads to tell them that object detection was terribly broken.
      - tekknik 7y ago
        I actually don’t think the payoff will be great. What’s the real benefit here. Some jobs will be lost but now we have a large hackable software system that humans have little control over. If I have to sit in the front seat and watch the road then it really doesn’t do anything for me. And then there’s always going to be instances like this “I didn’t test that scenario” crap above.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      Trading risks now for future gains is always tricky. Suppose the CEO of Uber was a cannibal, and you framed letting him eat people as a necessary perk in order to keep him happy and the self-driving program on track. Would it be valid to say the number of people it's permissible for him to eat is exactly zero, even if it slows down the production of a truly self-driving car? I mean, what's one or two lives compared to 40,000 a year or whatever? There's a lot of uncertainty about the costs and benefits though, even if you strictly adhere to a utilitarian viewpoint.
shadowgovt 7y ago
It's a choice you can make, but it's worth noting that the alternative to getting SDCs working isn't "Nobody gets hit;" the alternative is "We keep having humans operate multi-ton vehicles with their known wetware attention and correction flaws and an average of 3,200 people die a day." That doesn't imply Uber has the right chops to solve the problem, but I hope someone does.
- tekknik 7y ago
  The interesting difference is the “wetware” knows, without ever being trained, that it’s going to hit another person and stop the vehicle. If you think SDCs will reduce deaths at all I believe you’re ignoring reality. There are plenty of other options like public transport or remote work that is infinitely better then some cocky engineers thinking replacing a human brain is easy
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    6,000 pedestrian deaths a year suggests the wetware may not know to a level of certainty we should consider exclusively acceptable. And I haven't met anybody working on the problem who thinks it is easy. But a lot of them do think it's worth the hassle if it will save even a fraction of tens of thousands of lives a year (even if fully autonomous operation is decades out, the semi-autonomous driving enhancements that have come from the research are already saving lives). Adopting and enhancing mass transit is also an excellent idea, but I think it's unrealistic to assume that will work exclusively. America has had quite a few decades to decide mass transit is something that everyone will jump on to, and it seems to not be happening.
    - tekknik 7y ago
      And you still think deaths are going to be reduced by this? Read the article again. This will not go away, more pedestrians will be killed by self driving cars. Deaths will never be reduced to zero, even with self driving cars. But you will take jobs away from people driving for a living. Public transport doesn’t work in the US because of how garbage it is. If the spent half an effort to build up a proper transportation system adoption rates would be different. I live in CA and we have some of the better transportation systems in the country. It takes me 1hr to get to work via car or 2-3 hours via public transport. Solve that problem and you’ll see people adopt it real quick. Further the real problem is people not obeying traffic laws. Not that they can’t, they’re choosing not too. An easy solution is to but a device in vehicles that automatically cites a person for things like crossing solid lines and merging with no signal, speeding etc.

solean 7y ago

I hope you don't ever set foot in any other car either, considering they kill a million people every year. But a million is just a big number, it's not as powerful as 1 obituary.

perl4ever 7y ago
This accident didn't save any lives though. It's just associated in your mind with saving lives. It's one more death; there's no decrease in traffic accidents to compensate.
- eriktrautman 7y ago
  So you're implying that our ability to take risks in the pursuit of massive systemic gains is exactly zero?
  - slavik81 7y ago
    I'm fine with taking risks. I just don't think we should be making a cavelry charge into the machine guns. I know the payoff would be great if we succeeded, but it's still not a good idea. I'm deeply excited by the possibilities of self-driving cars, and I would agree that it's necessary to take risks to make them a reality. The question is always if we're taking a necessary risk or just being reckless. Uber has taken unnecessary risks and learned relatively little from them. They didn't need a fleet on public roads to tell them that object detection was terribly broken.
    - tekknik 7y ago
      I actually don’t think the payoff will be great. What’s the real benefit here. Some jobs will be lost but now we have a large hackable software system that humans have little control over. If I have to sit in the front seat and watch the road then it really doesn’t do anything for me. And then there’s always going to be instances like this “I didn’t test that scenario” crap above.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    Trading risks now for future gains is always tricky. Suppose the CEO of Uber was a cannibal, and you framed letting him eat people as a necessary perk in order to keep him happy and the self-driving program on track. Would it be valid to say the number of people it's permissible for him to eat is exactly zero, even if it slows down the production of a truly self-driving car? I mean, what's one or two lives compared to 40,000 a year or whatever? There's a lot of uncertainty about the costs and benefits though, even if you strictly adhere to a utilitarian viewpoint.

shadowgovt 7y ago

It's a choice you can make, but it's worth noting that the alternative to getting SDCs working isn't "Nobody gets hit;" the alternative is "We keep having humans operate multi-ton vehicles with their known wetware attention and correction flaws and an average of 3,200 people die a day." That doesn't imply Uber has the right chops to solve the problem, but I hope someone does.

tekknik 7y ago
The interesting difference is the “wetware” knows, without ever being trained, that it’s going to hit another person and stop the vehicle. If you think SDCs will reduce deaths at all I believe you’re ignoring reality. There are plenty of other options like public transport or remote work that is infinitely better then some cocky engineers thinking replacing a human brain is easy
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  6,000 pedestrian deaths a year suggests the wetware may not know to a level of certainty we should consider exclusively acceptable. And I haven't met anybody working on the problem who thinks it is easy. But a lot of them do think it's worth the hassle if it will save even a fraction of tens of thousands of lives a year (even if fully autonomous operation is decades out, the semi-autonomous driving enhancements that have come from the research are already saving lives). Adopting and enhancing mass transit is also an excellent idea, but I think it's unrealistic to assume that will work exclusively. America has had quite a few decades to decide mass transit is something that everyone will jump on to, and it seems to not be happening.
  - tekknik 7y ago
    And you still think deaths are going to be reduced by this? Read the article again. This will not go away, more pedestrians will be killed by self driving cars. Deaths will never be reduced to zero, even with self driving cars. But you will take jobs away from people driving for a living. Public transport doesn’t work in the US because of how garbage it is. If the spent half an effort to build up a proper transportation system adoption rates would be different. I live in CA and we have some of the better transportation systems in the country. It takes me 1hr to get to work via car or 2-3 hours via public transport. Solve that problem and you’ll see people adopt it real quick. Further the real problem is people not obeying traffic laws. Not that they can’t, they’re choosing not too. An easy solution is to but a device in vehicles that automatically cites a person for things like crossing solid lines and merging with no signal, speeding etc.