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The car hit her because Uber purposefully disabled the Volvo SUV's built-in autobraking systems, and because the self-driving system detected and classified her

The car hit her because Uber purposefully disabled the Volvo SUV's built-in autobraking systems, and because the self-driving system detected and classified her with plenty of time to react...and simply did nothing to avoid hitting her. A complete and total failure of the self-driving control logic. It's also arguable that she was killed as a direct result of Nevada happily allowing Uber to conduct their self-driving testing after Uber was banned from testing in California for ignoring regulators and their cars routinely being caught violating traffic laws by dashcams, traffic cameras, and cyclist helmet cams. Even if the safety driver had not been playing with their phone - it's well demonstrated that the whole concept of a 'safety driver' is bullshit; in studies, the drivers are terrible at taking over when they haven't been in control of the vehicle. Safety drivers were lipstick on a pig, designed to make self-driving cars more palatable to the public.

Dylan16807 3y ago
> Safety drivers were lipstick on a pig, designed to make self-driving cars more palatable to the public. I go the other way with that information. Safety drivers being used that way are bullshit. If they didn't have the safety driver then there's no way in hell the braking systems would have been disabled and need manual intervention. Therefore it was bad management and the entire idea of using safety drivers that way that was the problem, not the underlying self-driving system.
gruez 3y ago
> The car hit her because Uber purposefully disabled the Volvo SUV's built-in autobraking systems Are autobraking systems mandatory? If amazon is doing deliveries using vans without autobraking systems, should they also get flak? >and because the self-driving system detected and classified her with plenty of time to react...and simply did nothing to avoid hitting her. A complete and total failure of the self-driving control logic. But that's why the human driver is there, right? To catch the system when it fails? >Even if the safety driver had not been playing with their phone - it's well demonstrated that the whole concept of a 'safety driver' is bullshit; in studies, the drivers are terrible at taking over when they haven't been in control of the vehicle. No, she was terrible at taking over because she was streaming hulu.

Dylan16807 3y ago

> Safety drivers were lipstick on a pig, designed to make self-driving cars more palatable to the public. I go the other way with that information. Safety drivers being used that way are bullshit. If they didn't have the safety driver then there's no way in hell the braking systems would have been disabled and need manual intervention. Therefore it was bad management and the entire idea of using safety drivers that way that was the problem, not the underlying self-driving system.

gruez 3y ago

> The car hit her because Uber purposefully disabled the Volvo SUV's built-in autobraking systems Are autobraking systems mandatory? If amazon is doing deliveries using vans without autobraking systems, should they also get flak? >and because the self-driving system detected and classified her with plenty of time to react...and simply did nothing to avoid hitting her. A complete and total failure of the self-driving control logic. But that's why the human driver is there, right? To catch the system when it fails? >Even if the safety driver had not been playing with their phone - it's well demonstrated that the whole concept of a 'safety driver' is bullshit; in studies, the drivers are terrible at taking over when they haven't been in control of the vehicle. No, she was terrible at taking over because she was streaming hulu.