Video of AZ Uber crash
- Thread starter Bambooza
- Start date
That or at least cross where there is light on the road.
Han Burgundy
Space Marshal
This is what happens when one company steals tech from another company that they do not fully understand. Engineers are then rushed into putting the misunderstood tech into a "Viable product" ASAP and corners are VERY cut. This is a huge hit to the autonomous vehicle industry and serves as a reminder that safety should always trump profits. They have essentially kneecapped the driverless car movement with their negligence.
uh. The rhetoric as of yesterday was the woman "darted out" from the shadows. That was not darting, she was walking. There are serious issues if that car did not sense her presence, they should not be solely relying on the visual spectrum.
Things I noticed:
Things I noticed:
- The woman is not totally without responsibility for her fate. She's casually walking across what looks like a 4 lane roadway, without looking at oncoming traffic, at night, wearing dark clothing, on a bike without a headlight, and wearing no reflective gear. Her surprise just before the impact is palpable, but too late. I spent a lot of time showing my kids how to look before they cross the road.
- The video was very dark, cameras have the ability to include digital bright and contrast control. There are cameras that overlay infra-red over the video to detect things on the road the camera cannot see.
- You can actually see her shoes while she's approaching the center line, and crossing it. The car did not interpret that as "Hmm something is approaching from the side, I better slow down".
- The safety driver was not acting very safely. He could not have responded to anything, it actually looks like he was asleep, or dozing, not "looking down". This is also an issue that the car should have been able to detect.
Let me politely disagree - this shows that technology isn't perfect, but also this shows that technology isn't faulted to the level which is below average driver (not p.i.magnum or james bond) capabilities . I checked the video several times on .25x speed, and there is 0 indication that something is moving on the other lane ... it starts when her boots start being visible in the light ~ 1 sec before crash (and I bet automatic system of the car tried to slow down, but it is physically impossible to stop in 1-2 secs from the average speed).
Lessons learned from my perspective are as usual :
1) do NOT cross highways (I believe fines are severe) and multi lane roads in places where you are not allowed to .. or become a victim of natural selection.
2) do not be distracted from the road when you are still a "safety" driver ... or don't be safety driver at all
3) let's wait for the full analysis to be published
It still looks to be nearly entirely the pedestrians fault. No reflective gear, walking across an active roadway at night, not hurrying out of an active lane when they should clearly see lights coming. Crossing without being in a crosswalk also means she does not have right of way as it does not look like an unmarked or marked intersection, It does not look like a human could react fast enough to save them either without having to swerve, possibly putting themselves or others at risk. If it was me I would be forced to continue straight as at that speed losing control is a high possibility if I have to turn. Slamming on the breaks would likely not have saved them anyway. But this is all conjecture and it really depends on how dark it really was.
EDIT: Reading through some articles, where she crossed is marked as a no crossing area. 100 yards away was a controlled intersection. Though it appears there was a path leading up to that she crossed in a non-crossing area illegally.
So that area is just North of Mill Avenue and Curry Road in Tempe(going up Mill). It's right next to a golf course heading towards the Zoo. That is a very dark area for the city.
If you look it up on google maps, you can see that there's no real spot to cross there. Looks like she was struck just before he got to the golf course turn in.
I dunno about the car, it should have been designed to compensate for things like that, but I know i, and several other drivers i know would definitely have hit her there. It's nearly impossible to notice her quickly enough to stop, especially if the car was going at a decent clip.
It takes an average car 80 feet of travel to stop when going 40mph. By the time I could see her in the video, she was about 30-35 feet away.
If I was expecting her to be there, I still would not have had the distance to stop in time.
(Also, the Uber car was doing 40 and the speed limit is 35, but in AZ if you're not speeding then you're a road hazard for everyone else trying to pass you. 5 over is more acceptable than the speed limit)
Could you give a google maps link? I believe that there is at least one light on those crossing where she could've safely cross on red
It is an interesting situation and I agree with most that has been posted so far. One thing that is hard to gauge is how light or dark it truly was for someone in the car looking at the road.
One thing that while you and I might not have been able to see let alone avoid the pedestrian being stupid, the Uber car having lidar and radar should have picked up on the pedestrian well in advance and reacted accordingly as there was no darting out from between park cars or stepping off a curb right in front of them. They had already crossed one lane and were in the process of crossing a second one at a normal walking speed.
The Uber driver was clearly not paying attention to the road and being diligent in their task, even if they could have done anything to change the outcome.
If this wasn't a Uber AI car this would most likely not even made a blip in the local newspaper.
This crash has the possibility of serious repercussions on the climate of allowing self driving cars. Already there is news articles asking for the head of Uber and how dare they let this happen. I wish we could have placed laws in place that would protect these initiatives from lawsuits beyond normal insurance claims as long as they can show their cars are performing better then the national average.
One thing that while you and I might not have been able to see let alone avoid the pedestrian being stupid, the Uber car having lidar and radar should have picked up on the pedestrian well in advance and reacted accordingly as there was no darting out from between park cars or stepping off a curb right in front of them. They had already crossed one lane and were in the process of crossing a second one at a normal walking speed.
The Uber driver was clearly not paying attention to the road and being diligent in their task, even if they could have done anything to change the outcome.
If this wasn't a Uber AI car this would most likely not even made a blip in the local newspaper.
This crash has the possibility of serious repercussions on the climate of allowing self driving cars. Already there is news articles asking for the head of Uber and how dare they let this happen. I wish we could have placed laws in place that would protect these initiatives from lawsuits beyond normal insurance claims as long as they can show their cars are performing better then the national average.
Generally speaking, in terms of a law enforcement perspective, there would not have been enough time to stop. It takes the human brain, on first assessment on average about 1/10ths of a second to notice something and 2/10 of a second to respond. So that gives you about 1.7 seconds to respond appropriately and that's assuming you were being attentive, which the driver was not. It was obvious the driver was distracted on a phone or something taking her eyes off the road. In other words, the pedestrian is at fault but the car made no attempt to swerve or adjust course and instead started breaking less than 4/10 of a second after the pedestrian was spotted. An driver who was not distracted might have been about to prevent this accident but either way, crossing a dark highway at night is not a smart decision.
True about the papers. The section that has people who were hit by cars out here is normally just the obituary. Pedestrians only have the right of way within 10' of a crosswalk. Jay-walking is illegal and fined.
That is actually the point. The technology isn't perfect. It is not even currently intended for fully autonomous operation, like was shown in the video. The car is certified for Level 2 automation by NTHSA. The operator must monitor the system at all times. Clearly, he is not. The car is only certified as capable of keeping in the center of it's lane, and controlling it's speed. By the way, Uber is not alone. There are other companies testing Level 2 vehicles in a fully automated way. They're hoping for Level 3 certification, but as yet none has achieved it. (There are 5 levels of certification, level 5 is fully automated.)
Also, you cannot use that video as evidence for placing the blame solely on the woman. That video was uploaded as a 720p resolution video, but it is actually a copy from a dashboard cam. Under those lighting conditions it simply does not have the resolution or response to show what is even visible to the naked eye. The autonomous system used by the car itself does not use that camera, it uses several other cameras, all much higher resolution than the dashboard cam.
There are usually 3 cameras used in autonomous driving systems, one of them is a forward looking 2 Mega-pixel camera. It also uses several 24, or 77 GHz Doppler RADARs. i.e, a radar capable of detecting something measuring centimeters across, moving into the path of the vehicle. It has a range of "to the horizon", meaning in a straight line, as far as the curvature of the earth allows. That is in these conditions, from 5 to 50 Km. Certainly within the range of the woman killed. And it also uses a LIDAR system. That is an infra-red laser detection beam, designed to detect objects that are not visible to the eye. It should work in total darkness. That rotating FLIR looking thing on the top of the car? That's the LIDAR.
What you're saying is that all of these systems failed, and that's OK, because the woman wasn't in a crosswalk. Look I get it, I said she had some responsibility, but don't deny Uber theirs.