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> I think the key difference is the backup driver was watching a video on her phone when the accident happened. Blaming the individual would not solve the prob

> I think the key difference is the backup driver was watching a video on her phone when the accident happened. Blaming the individual would not solve the problem. The question that the parent comment tries to answer is "what do we do so the backup driver does not watch his phone?". That would save lives. To blame the individual and move on will kill more people in the future.

Tempest1981 6y ago
> a manager actively observing for engagement Maybe this is the key.
- watwut 6y ago
  The other ones are necessary too. The issue is that people will loose attention - it is not possible for humans to not loose attention when nothing is happening for long time. And even when things are happening, it is not possible for humans to keep attention all the time. The control is one thing, but manager can prevent you to look at phone and manager is creating interruption from monotony. The rotation is necessary to deal with human hardware which requires breaks (and moving car requries faster responses then drowning person). The overlapping zones deal with fact that breaks and manager being present is still not enough.
  - randycupertino 6y ago
    > it is not possible for humans to not loose attention when nothing is happening for long time. And even when things are happening, it is not possible for humans to keep attention all the time. But they could watch the road instead of watching their phones. It would be a pretty simple fix- have the backup driver keep their phone in the back of the car. I've had jobs where we had to lock our phones in lockers at the start of our shift, it's not uncommon. Also, disagree that moving car requires faster responses than drowning person- kids often gently slip under the water in an instant and it's generally quiet and fast, never a big splash or dog paddling "help me!" commotion like in the movies. And longer without oxygen to the brain can lead to more permanent brain death, so I'd say both activities require equal vigilance.
    - watwut 6y ago
      > ut they could watch the road instead of watching their phones. It would be a pretty simple fix- have the backup driver keep their phone in the back of the car. Sure, but that is just baindaid for one instance of problem. Something that allows management to pretend they dealt with it, while not actually trying to solve the problem. Typical human will likely start daydream without the phone or otherwise loose attention. > Also, disagree that moving car requires faster responses than drowning person- kids often gently slip under the water in an instant and it's generally quiet and fast, never a big splash or dog paddling "help me!" commotion like in the movies. And longer without oxygen to the brain can lead to more permanent brain death, so I'd say both activities require equal vigilance. That does not require split second attention and quick reflexive reaction. The permanent brain damage does not happen because kid was under water for 5 seconds, car crash can happen under one second.
  - hombre_fatal 6y ago
    > it is not possible for humans to not loose attention when nothing is happening for long time. I really don't understand this assertion. Having to babysit auto-driving cars in their development phase is well within the realm of what humans are capable of. The driver booted Netflix, navigated to an episode, and watched in on their phone for the same reason anyone would do it at work: not because they were driven to a boredom so intense that it was the only way to get a grip but because they simply thought "what harm could it do?" These replies acting like a slightly boring job is doomed to this outcome remind me of those ridiculous articles that stereotype millennials as 30yo-children so spoiled that they're unwilling to do the simplest of jobs. "Millennials refuse to be trash collectors and don't understand how someone could do it. 'Humans aren't made to pick up trash,' John, 32 years old, told our newscaster. 'Else we would have tongs for hands! I don't even think it's possible.'"
    - curryst 6y ago
      So you think that humans can sit there and simply watch, 8 hours a day for the rest of their lives, and not lose focus ever? I have yet to encounter a system built on that premise that wasn't woefully ineffective. Which is not to mention that these workers have ridiculously weak motivations. They create nothing, spending hundreds of hours merely testing out someone else's work. They exist in a field with very little upward mobility, since they are effectively the only non-skilled labor at their companies. Even if there were upward mobility, they work in a field where their job is to help eliminate their job. The only thing offsetting that is that the pay is slightly better than equivalent options. I can understand why people lose attention driving these cars around.
    - watwut 6y ago
      > Having to babysit auto-driving cars in their development phase is well within the realm of what humans are capable of. The argument is that no, it is not, even if you never open netflix you will loose attention. Rhat does not make Netflix ok. But this driver having netflix open does not imply that people without netflix wont loose attention. They will. Your second paragraph is both strawman and nonsense. Before millenials, people were not able to hold attention while nothing was happening. Which is why train drivers have protocols to prevent loss of attention and so do lifeguards. The whole "if you admit common human limitation out loud yoi are weak and spoiled is either arrogance or manipulative argument.
_AzMoo 6y ago
We should absolutely be blaming the individual in this case. They were negligent in their stated job role which led directly to the death of a bystander. We should also be finding fault with the processes and finding solutions for them, but this does not absolve the driver of their responsibility.
- Hokusai 6y ago
  > They were negligent in their stated job role This is not how labor laws work. The role description needs to be fair. A employer cannot just shift all the blame to the employee. The employer needs to take the needed actions and provide the needed equipment and procedures so the employee can do her task. But, let's see what the result of the trial is. I am not an expert and the trial will clarify this point.
  - _AzMoo 6y ago
    I'm not saying the company should be able to shift the blame to the employee, I'm saying they're both at fault. Labour Law in Australia does in fact recognise this and individuals can be held criminally liable for negligence on the job. I understand that this happened in the United States, but my intention is not to predict the outcome of the case, but to make a statement about who should be held liable in a just system.
  - woadwarrior01 6y ago
    Indeed, the employers are very much liable for negligence by their employees and its scope is much wider than labour laws. This is called Vicarious liability[1] in common law. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability
    - pc86 6y ago
      I don't think anyone is arguing that Uber has no liability here, only that the driver does have liability.
dathinab 6y ago
I think the real question is: Do self-driving cars which need a always very fast available backup driver make sense?
- mobilefriendly 6y ago
  This is clearly a development phase. 30-40,000 people a year die on US roads, almost all from driver error.
  - dathinab 6y ago
    Sure, my answer to the question I stated would be: Yes, but the legal entity behind the driving of the car needs to be hold legal liable. (i.e. the AI provider) Hand over to driver can be required but the driver needs to have reasonable time to adapt to the situation (multiple seconds). Only with this can we make sure that companies providing driving AIs give their best to make sure they don't kill. Else they will have just pressure to improve it to a point where it happens rarely and then stop there because its not worth the development cost.
    - beambot 6y ago
      This is a solved problem in actuarial & insurance circles...
    - robertlagrant 6y ago
      > Else they will have just pressure to improve it to a point where it happens rarely and then stop there because its not worth the development cost. As ever, perfect is the enemy of good. Are there currently zero fatalities on the roads because cars are 100% safe? Or have they been developed to an acceptable standard of safety?
      - unionpivo 6y ago
        Oh its never going to be perfect (imo). And agree with you that good solution now is better than perfect never. But we need to set initiatives in a way that manufacturers will be improving over time. They won't do it out of goodness of their hart, and quite possible marketing and good PR will be more impactfull on sale than 0.5% safer AI I have 0 trust that market itself will solve this issue.
robertlagrant 6y ago
> The question that the parent comment tries to answer is "what do we do so the backup driver does not watch his phone?". We should do the same thing we do to stop regular drivers watching their phones.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  Normal drivers have to drive, so they can't watch their phone. Requiring a human to do nothing while being attentive is simply not realistic.
  - toyg 6y ago
    People used to be employed as lookouts on ships for days on end. Patrols have been a thing for as long as humanity had to deal with dangerous wild animals. The fact that we cannot countenance something like this in the current world is testament to the power our devices have on us.
    - derangedHorse 6y ago
      I doubt any lookouts were good enough to spot a potential threat the second it came into one’s range of vision (which is what something like this requires)
    - nradov 6y ago
      Lookouts on ships typically don't stand watch for more than 4 hours at a time. Often they're rotated more frequently.
      - toyg 6y ago
        The point is that it can be done (on and off) for extended periods, unlike what the parent comment stated.
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      Lookouts aren't expected to react in milliseconds. They also likely communicated pretty often with the rest of the crew. Patrols... patrol. Also, all of these jobs would be done in relatively short shifts. Note that I'm not saying that the scape gal wasn't grossly negligent in watching a video on her phone. I'm saying that Uber was also negligent in making their safety system just be 1 person sitting there, expected to react in milliseconds.
pc86 6y ago
> what do we do so the backup driver does not watch his phone? You send this person to prison for negligent homicide, which I think she is guilty of, and remind backup drivers in the future they're still responsible for the safe operation of the vehicle. To imply that the individual has no culpability for watching a video on her phone while the vehicle she's in charge of runs down and kills a homeless woman is insanity.
sandworm101 6y ago
>> What do we do so the backup driver does not watch his phone? You make the human drive the car. The robot can jump in and slam the brakes when the human makes a mistake. That is the safe option. But it just won't sell. Nobody here would buy a car that prevents the driver from making mistakes. Autodrive car that obeys speed limits while allowing driver facebook on phone: acceptable. Car that doesn't allow the human driver to speed or run red lights: market kryptonite.
- nexuist 6y ago
  Do you have any evidence for this that isn't just conjecture, though? I think there are millions of parents that would love to get a car that obeys traffic laws for their children. The peace of mind would be immense, and that's on top of the existing entries in the market that allow you to view live location and speed and even set preferences for radio volume and acceleration rate. > Nobody here would buy a car that prevents the driver from making mistakes. Almost every new car today comes with adaptive cruise control, autonomous lane-keeping, augmented backup cameras, lane-change and backup alarms, etc. I don't see why a better version wouldn't sell just as well.
  - derekp7 6y ago
    And collision avoidance. Which is a highly desirable feature. I would also love to have a dashboard device that alerts me whenever I exceed the speed limit by some threshold. Practically any ticket I've gotten as an adult was due to inadvertently exceeding the speed limit (driving in a 45 zone, then hit a 30 zone for two blocks).
    - sandworm101 6y ago
      >> that alerts me whenever I exceed the speed limit by some threshold But would you buy a car that hits the brakes at the speed limit? Not an alert. An actual limiter that you cannot bypass.
      - nexuist 6y ago
ayewo 6y ago
To your question: The question that the parent comment tries to answer is "what do we do so the backup driver does not watch his phone?". This is a solved problem: you fit the experimental car with an interior camera aimed at the driver. If the backup driver is observed to be distracted by the interior camera, the car can sound a warning for the driver to be alert and if they ignore the warning, the car's hazard lights would come on and it would be slowly brought to a halt.
- hartator 6y ago
  So an AI to watch the driver that watch the AI drives?
  - ayewo 6y ago
    Such an internal camera system doesn't need to be AI powered. You could achieve the detection using a depth camera that emits active infrared (IR) stereo. Stated differently, a depth camera uses IR and visible light to see the driver's face.
crazygringo 6y ago
> "what do we do so the backup driver does not watch his phone?" I mean, a first step is to hold the driver criminally negligent if they get into an accident. Which already happens. That's what legal punishment is for -- to deter extremely dangerous/harmful/etc. behaviors. But because people often think "it'll never happen to me", that's why companies generally have supervision and spot checks of employees, to try to catch bad behavior and reprimand/fire them first, before it results in damage/death. Which, if I were Uber, would probably mean installing fish-eye cameras in the corner of each vehicle that would regularly be spot-checked to see if backup drivers were, in fact, not doing their job. This isn't a particularly difficult problem. And I don't think privacy is a particular issue here.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Blaming the individual would not solve the problem. Punishing the culpable lapse by the individual is necessary but not sufficient. It should have been monitored and supervises by the employer, and failing that is also a culpable lapse which should be punished.

Tempest1981 6y ago

> a manager actively observing for engagement Maybe this is the key.

watwut 6y ago
The other ones are necessary too. The issue is that people will loose attention - it is not possible for humans to not loose attention when nothing is happening for long time. And even when things are happening, it is not possible for humans to keep attention all the time. The control is one thing, but manager can prevent you to look at phone and manager is creating interruption from monotony. The rotation is necessary to deal with human hardware which requires breaks (and moving car requries faster responses then drowning person). The overlapping zones deal with fact that breaks and manager being present is still not enough.
- randycupertino 6y ago
  > it is not possible for humans to not loose attention when nothing is happening for long time. And even when things are happening, it is not possible for humans to keep attention all the time. But they could watch the road instead of watching their phones. It would be a pretty simple fix- have the backup driver keep their phone in the back of the car. I've had jobs where we had to lock our phones in lockers at the start of our shift, it's not uncommon. Also, disagree that moving car requires faster responses than drowning person- kids often gently slip under the water in an instant and it's generally quiet and fast, never a big splash or dog paddling "help me!" commotion like in the movies. And longer without oxygen to the brain can lead to more permanent brain death, so I'd say both activities require equal vigilance.
  - watwut 6y ago
    > ut they could watch the road instead of watching their phones. It would be a pretty simple fix- have the backup driver keep their phone in the back of the car. Sure, but that is just baindaid for one instance of problem. Something that allows management to pretend they dealt with it, while not actually trying to solve the problem. Typical human will likely start daydream without the phone or otherwise loose attention. > Also, disagree that moving car requires faster responses than drowning person- kids often gently slip under the water in an instant and it's generally quiet and fast, never a big splash or dog paddling "help me!" commotion like in the movies. And longer without oxygen to the brain can lead to more permanent brain death, so I'd say both activities require equal vigilance. That does not require split second attention and quick reflexive reaction. The permanent brain damage does not happen because kid was under water for 5 seconds, car crash can happen under one second.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  > it is not possible for humans to not loose attention when nothing is happening for long time. I really don't understand this assertion. Having to babysit auto-driving cars in their development phase is well within the realm of what humans are capable of. The driver booted Netflix, navigated to an episode, and watched in on their phone for the same reason anyone would do it at work: not because they were driven to a boredom so intense that it was the only way to get a grip but because they simply thought "what harm could it do?" These replies acting like a slightly boring job is doomed to this outcome remind me of those ridiculous articles that stereotype millennials as 30yo-children so spoiled that they're unwilling to do the simplest of jobs. "Millennials refuse to be trash collectors and don't understand how someone could do it. 'Humans aren't made to pick up trash,' John, 32 years old, told our newscaster. 'Else we would have tongs for hands! I don't even think it's possible.'"
  - curryst 6y ago
    So you think that humans can sit there and simply watch, 8 hours a day for the rest of their lives, and not lose focus ever? I have yet to encounter a system built on that premise that wasn't woefully ineffective. Which is not to mention that these workers have ridiculously weak motivations. They create nothing, spending hundreds of hours merely testing out someone else's work. They exist in a field with very little upward mobility, since they are effectively the only non-skilled labor at their companies. Even if there were upward mobility, they work in a field where their job is to help eliminate their job. The only thing offsetting that is that the pay is slightly better than equivalent options. I can understand why people lose attention driving these cars around.
  - watwut 6y ago
    > Having to babysit auto-driving cars in their development phase is well within the realm of what humans are capable of. The argument is that no, it is not, even if you never open netflix you will loose attention. Rhat does not make Netflix ok. But this driver having netflix open does not imply that people without netflix wont loose attention. They will. Your second paragraph is both strawman and nonsense. Before millenials, people were not able to hold attention while nothing was happening. Which is why train drivers have protocols to prevent loss of attention and so do lifeguards. The whole "if you admit common human limitation out loud yoi are weak and spoiled is either arrogance or manipulative argument.

_AzMoo 6y ago

We should absolutely be blaming the individual in this case. They were negligent in their stated job role which led directly to the death of a bystander. We should also be finding fault with the processes and finding solutions for them, but this does not absolve the driver of their responsibility.

Hokusai 6y ago
> They were negligent in their stated job role This is not how labor laws work. The role description needs to be fair. A employer cannot just shift all the blame to the employee. The employer needs to take the needed actions and provide the needed equipment and procedures so the employee can do her task. But, let's see what the result of the trial is. I am not an expert and the trial will clarify this point.
- _AzMoo 6y ago
  I'm not saying the company should be able to shift the blame to the employee, I'm saying they're both at fault. Labour Law in Australia does in fact recognise this and individuals can be held criminally liable for negligence on the job. I understand that this happened in the United States, but my intention is not to predict the outcome of the case, but to make a statement about who should be held liable in a just system.
- woadwarrior01 6y ago
  Indeed, the employers are very much liable for negligence by their employees and its scope is much wider than labour laws. This is called Vicarious liability[1] in common law. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability
  - pc86 6y ago
    I don't think anyone is arguing that Uber has no liability here, only that the driver does have liability.

dathinab 6y ago

I think the real question is: Do self-driving cars which need a always very fast available backup driver make sense?

mobilefriendly 6y ago
This is clearly a development phase. 30-40,000 people a year die on US roads, almost all from driver error.
- dathinab 6y ago
  Sure, my answer to the question I stated would be: Yes, but the legal entity behind the driving of the car needs to be hold legal liable. (i.e. the AI provider) Hand over to driver can be required but the driver needs to have reasonable time to adapt to the situation (multiple seconds). Only with this can we make sure that companies providing driving AIs give their best to make sure they don't kill. Else they will have just pressure to improve it to a point where it happens rarely and then stop there because its not worth the development cost.
  - beambot 6y ago
    This is a solved problem in actuarial & insurance circles...
  - robertlagrant 6y ago
    > Else they will have just pressure to improve it to a point where it happens rarely and then stop there because its not worth the development cost. As ever, perfect is the enemy of good. Are there currently zero fatalities on the roads because cars are 100% safe? Or have they been developed to an acceptable standard of safety?
    - unionpivo 6y ago
      Oh its never going to be perfect (imo). And agree with you that good solution now is better than perfect never. But we need to set initiatives in a way that manufacturers will be improving over time. They won't do it out of goodness of their hart, and quite possible marketing and good PR will be more impactfull on sale than 0.5% safer AI I have 0 trust that market itself will solve this issue.

robertlagrant 6y ago

> The question that the parent comment tries to answer is "what do we do so the backup driver does not watch his phone?". We should do the same thing we do to stop regular drivers watching their phones.

tsimionescu 6y ago
Normal drivers have to drive, so they can't watch their phone. Requiring a human to do nothing while being attentive is simply not realistic.
- toyg 6y ago
  People used to be employed as lookouts on ships for days on end. Patrols have been a thing for as long as humanity had to deal with dangerous wild animals. The fact that we cannot countenance something like this in the current world is testament to the power our devices have on us.
  - derangedHorse 6y ago
    I doubt any lookouts were good enough to spot a potential threat the second it came into one’s range of vision (which is what something like this requires)
  - nradov 6y ago
    Lookouts on ships typically don't stand watch for more than 4 hours at a time. Often they're rotated more frequently.
    - toyg 6y ago
      The point is that it can be done (on and off) for extended periods, unlike what the parent comment stated.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    Lookouts aren't expected to react in milliseconds. They also likely communicated pretty often with the rest of the crew. Patrols... patrol. Also, all of these jobs would be done in relatively short shifts. Note that I'm not saying that the scape gal wasn't grossly negligent in watching a video on her phone. I'm saying that Uber was also negligent in making their safety system just be 1 person sitting there, expected to react in milliseconds.

pc86 6y ago

> what do we do so the backup driver does not watch his phone? You send this person to prison for negligent homicide, which I think she is guilty of, and remind backup drivers in the future they're still responsible for the safe operation of the vehicle. To imply that the individual has no culpability for watching a video on her phone while the vehicle she's in charge of runs down and kills a homeless woman is insanity.

sandworm101 6y ago

>> What do we do so the backup driver does not watch his phone? You make the human drive the car. The robot can jump in and slam the brakes when the human makes a mistake. That is the safe option. But it just won't sell. Nobody here would buy a car that prevents the driver from making mistakes. Autodrive car that obeys speed limits while allowing driver facebook on phone: acceptable. Car that doesn't allow the human driver to speed or run red lights: market kryptonite.

nexuist 6y ago
Do you have any evidence for this that isn't just conjecture, though? I think there are millions of parents that would love to get a car that obeys traffic laws for their children. The peace of mind would be immense, and that's on top of the existing entries in the market that allow you to view live location and speed and even set preferences for radio volume and acceleration rate. > Nobody here would buy a car that prevents the driver from making mistakes. Almost every new car today comes with adaptive cruise control, autonomous lane-keeping, augmented backup cameras, lane-change and backup alarms, etc. I don't see why a better version wouldn't sell just as well.
- derekp7 6y ago
  And collision avoidance. Which is a highly desirable feature. I would also love to have a dashboard device that alerts me whenever I exceed the speed limit by some threshold. Practically any ticket I've gotten as an adult was due to inadvertently exceeding the speed limit (driving in a 45 zone, then hit a 30 zone for two blocks).
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    >> that alerts me whenever I exceed the speed limit by some threshold But would you buy a car that hits the brakes at the speed limit? Not an alert. An actual limiter that you cannot bypass.
    - nexuist 6y ago

ayewo 6y ago

To your question: The question that the parent comment tries to answer is "what do we do so the backup driver does not watch his phone?". This is a solved problem: you fit the experimental car with an interior camera aimed at the driver. If the backup driver is observed to be distracted by the interior camera, the car can sound a warning for the driver to be alert and if they ignore the warning, the car's hazard lights would come on and it would be slowly brought to a halt.

hartator 6y ago
So an AI to watch the driver that watch the AI drives?
- ayewo 6y ago
  Such an internal camera system doesn't need to be AI powered. You could achieve the detection using a depth camera that emits active infrared (IR) stereo. Stated differently, a depth camera uses IR and visible light to see the driver's face.

crazygringo 6y ago

> "what do we do so the backup driver does not watch his phone?" I mean, a first step is to hold the driver criminally negligent if they get into an accident. Which already happens. That's what legal punishment is for -- to deter extremely dangerous/harmful/etc. behaviors. But because people often think "it'll never happen to me", that's why companies generally have supervision and spot checks of employees, to try to catch bad behavior and reprimand/fire them first, before it results in damage/death. Which, if I were Uber, would probably mean installing fish-eye cameras in the corner of each vehicle that would regularly be spot-checked to see if backup drivers were, in fact, not doing their job. This isn't a particularly difficult problem. And I don't think privacy is a particular issue here.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Blaming the individual would not solve the problem. Punishing the culpable lapse by the individual is necessary but not sufficient. It should have been monitored and supervises by the employer, and failing that is also a culpable lapse which should be punished.