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Consider famous autonomous Uber crash that killed a person illegally crossing the road at night. The right thing to do for the autonomous software would be to

by kjksf 2y ago

Consider famous autonomous Uber crash that killed a person illegally crossing the road at night. The right thing to do for the autonomous software would be to break hard to avoid killing that person. If there was a car behind that Uber car, it would likely rear end the Uber. That would be preferable to killing the human. The software would be right. Unpredictable but right. If the read ending happens because Waymo erroneously did phantom break (i.e. it did break because software was confused), then software would be wrong. Without analyzing rear ending accidents to decide if the software was right or wrong, we can't say if Waymo did the right thing or not. In human-to-human crashes, rear-ender is presumed guilty.

bryanlarsen 2y ago
The rear-ender is always guilty. You have to be able to stop safely if the car in front of you stops abruptly for something you cannot see. The person in front may also be guilty, if they stop for no good reason, or a malicious reason (aka brake checking).
- kube-system 2y ago
  It is hard to paint with a wide brush here; rules for determining fault vary by locale (sometimes significantly), but there are absolutely situations where your vehicle might strike the rear of another vehicle, and you are found completely free of liability. Often, situations like: * You are stopped in traffic, the driver in the front reverses into you. * Traffic comes to a quick stop, you stop, and the driver behind you rear ends you and pushes you into the vehicle in front of you. Brake checking and unsafe lane changes might result in a split of fault in places that assign comparative negligence, which might be more of what you're thinking of. Often the idea here is that the driver in the rear could have done something more to avoid the accident. This is less likely to be determined to be the case when a vehicle is completely stopped in traffic and the driver has no options.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    I wouldn't call a situation where somebody backs into you "rear-ending".
- potato3732842 2y ago
  The rear ender is guilty by default in the absense of other information. You can always prove otherwise if you have the evidince. Preventing other people from gaming this default to your detriment is arguably the main point of dashcams. In ye olden days before 1080p everywhere it was considered somewhat common courtesy to hang around and make a statement to the police if you witnessed a rear ending that was undeniably the fault of the party who got rear ended.

by kjksf 2y ago

bryanlarsen 2y ago

The rear-ender is always guilty. You have to be able to stop safely if the car in front of you stops abruptly for something you cannot see. The person in front may also be guilty, if they stop for no good reason, or a malicious reason (aka brake checking).

kube-system 2y ago
It is hard to paint with a wide brush here; rules for determining fault vary by locale (sometimes significantly), but there are absolutely situations where your vehicle might strike the rear of another vehicle, and you are found completely free of liability. Often, situations like: * You are stopped in traffic, the driver in the front reverses into you. * Traffic comes to a quick stop, you stop, and the driver behind you rear ends you and pushes you into the vehicle in front of you. Brake checking and unsafe lane changes might result in a split of fault in places that assign comparative negligence, which might be more of what you're thinking of. Often the idea here is that the driver in the rear could have done something more to avoid the accident. This is less likely to be determined to be the case when a vehicle is completely stopped in traffic and the driver has no options.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  I wouldn't call a situation where somebody backs into you "rear-ending".
potato3732842 2y ago
The rear ender is guilty by default in the absense of other information. You can always prove otherwise if you have the evidince. Preventing other people from gaming this default to your detriment is arguably the main point of dashcams. In ye olden days before 1080p everywhere it was considered somewhat common courtesy to hang around and make a statement to the police if you witnessed a rear ending that was undeniably the fault of the party who got rear ended.