5 ms·

One of the other front page articles right now is the PDF about Judea Pearl's book, and it describes exactly this case, including that there was a roughly six s

One of the other front page articles right now is the PDF about Judea Pearl's book, and it describes exactly this case, including that there was a roughly six second window. And that the car normally had a feature to stop in those cases, but that the engineers (who I take to not be the driver) turned it off due to false positives. I'm still unclear on how they find liability here - should it all fall on the driver? You could argue "but for" the driver's failure to pay enough attention to stop in those six seconds, and you could also argue "but for" the engineers' decision to turn off the safety feature.

jbay808 6y ago
False positives are dangerous, because cars stopping suddenly and unexpectedly can be dangerous. The engineers probably were right to disable that, if the false positive rate was too high.
- GeorgeTirebiter 6y ago
  IF the engineers told the driver, "Hey, we disabled pretty much all the safety features on your vehicle because we can't figure out how to make them work -- so be Extra Careful!!!" --- well, maybe. But shifting the blame onto a low-wage worker to shield Corporate Hubris seems....wrong.
  - true_religion 6y ago
    It's not any more responsibility than any other low wage work would have as a driver. You can put someone in a car without collision avoidance or even anti lock brakes, and it's okay to ask the driver to use their own skill and judgment instead.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  I think GP is talking about the OEM system that shipped with the car. Considering that their false positive rates are so low as to not annoy human drivers I don't see why they disabled it.
- akira2501 6y ago
  > The engineers probably were right to disable that, if the false positive rate was too high. This isn't a binary. They can also choose to stop the public test of a vehicle they can't adequately control.

jbay808 6y ago

False positives are dangerous, because cars stopping suddenly and unexpectedly can be dangerous. The engineers probably were right to disable that, if the false positive rate was too high.

GeorgeTirebiter 6y ago
IF the engineers told the driver, "Hey, we disabled pretty much all the safety features on your vehicle because we can't figure out how to make them work -- so be Extra Careful!!!" --- well, maybe. But shifting the blame onto a low-wage worker to shield Corporate Hubris seems....wrong.
- true_religion 6y ago
  It's not any more responsibility than any other low wage work would have as a driver. You can put someone in a car without collision avoidance or even anti lock brakes, and it's okay to ask the driver to use their own skill and judgment instead.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
I think GP is talking about the OEM system that shipped with the car. Considering that their false positive rates are so low as to not annoy human drivers I don't see why they disabled it.
akira2501 6y ago
> The engineers probably were right to disable that, if the false positive rate was too high. This isn't a binary. They can also choose to stop the public test of a vehicle they can't adequately control.