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A few months ago I wrote a short Twitter rant about a Boston Globe article that described a pedestrian being struck by a driver really poorly. Thread: https://

A few months ago I wrote a short Twitter rant about a Boston Globe article that described a pedestrian being struck by a driver really poorly. Thread: https://twitter.com/evanjfields/status/1387131251811831812/ https://twitter.com/evanjfields/status/1387131251811831812/ Article: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/04/27/metro/woman-28-seriously-injured-after-being-hit-by-car-cambridge/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/04/27/metro/woman-28-seriou... To my surprise, this tool finds no problems with the article and gives it a B. (I'm really tickled by the tool, like the idea, but based on a totally not rigorous sample, seems like the tool leans a bit too much into sort of sentence structure analysis and elides some semantics?)

chiefofgxbxl 5y ago
Thanks for linking this issue, and I'll certainly look into it. I agree with your analysis on Twitter: manually annotating the article should yield the following issues: 1. Focus: she was struck by a Toyota Corolla (emphasis is placed on the VRU) 2. Object: she was struck by a Toyota Corolla (agent is referred to as an object, rather than a person, e.g. driver of the Corolla) 3. Object: a 2010 Toyota Corolla being driven by a 29-year-old Brookline man, was driving east (again, the wording personifies the vehicle instead of assigning agency to the driver heading eastward) I will need to debug this particular example further, but it appears the "2010 Toyota Corolla" and "Toyota Corolla" are not being classified as CARLIKE, a label I trained an NER model on to help deal with all the ways you can name a vehicle: year-make-model, make-model, year-model, model, model-ish, generic terms like truck/pickup/pick-up etc., short-hands like Chevy instead of Chevrolet, etc. Furthermore, the tool is not identifying "woman" as a VRU. It's a little bit ambiguous because while "[she] entered the roadway", it's not 100% clear that means she is a VRU: a driver/vehicle can enter a roadway too.
- Tarrosion 5y ago
  Interesting context, thanks! Cool tool, will be glad to see it get tuned further :)

chiefofgxbxl 5y ago

Thanks for linking this issue, and I'll certainly look into it. I agree with your analysis on Twitter: manually annotating the article should yield the following issues: 1. Focus: she was struck by a Toyota Corolla (emphasis is placed on the VRU) 2. Object: she was struck by a Toyota Corolla (agent is referred to as an object, rather than a person, e.g. driver of the Corolla) 3. Object: a 2010 Toyota Corolla being driven by a 29-year-old Brookline man, was driving east (again, the wording personifies the vehicle instead of assigning agency to the driver heading eastward) I will need to debug this particular example further, but it appears the "2010 Toyota Corolla" and "Toyota Corolla" are not being classified as CARLIKE, a label I trained an NER model on to help deal with all the ways you can name a vehicle: year-make-model, make-model, year-model, model, model-ish, generic terms like truck/pickup/pick-up etc., short-hands like Chevy instead of Chevrolet, etc. Furthermore, the tool is not identifying "woman" as a VRU. It's a little bit ambiguous because while "[she] entered the roadway", it's not 100% clear that means she is a VRU: a driver/vehicle can enter a roadway too.

Tarrosion 5y ago
Interesting context, thanks! Cool tool, will be glad to see it get tuned further :)