Apple Self-Driving Car in Manual Mode Involved in Minor Collision That Wasn’t Driver’s Fault on October 15

[ApfelKuchen]

Just because google keeps data on all of it’s users - doesn’t mean they will give that data to the public. That’s false reasoning.
They have a stronger reason to lie to the public about the car being in manual, and that it was a hit and run. (Strange that 20 cameras ...with a mountain of data couldn’t see the culprit). Look at the PR nightmare of Uber. Incidents like that could potentially set back automous cars for a decade or more. Comparing PR with flat earth theory is like comparing time-out with nazi ecampment.

The accident report came from the police, not Apple’s PR department. (Of course, you can then reply that police accept bribes.)

Strange, where does it say the cameras did not record the incident?

JOKE: Hmm, maybe you know this because you were the driver of the other vehicle, and you haven’t been contacted by the police? Be careful, Apple reads this forum. Now that you’ve reported something only the perp can know, they’re going to get your identity from their spyware on Macrumors’ servers or their spies on the Macrumors staff. You’d better go underground ASAP!

NOT JOKE: California law requires that records be kept continuously and that they must be divulged to the government. Even manual-only cars with built in CPUs keep continuous records in order to determine if, for example, airbags deployed (or didn’t deploy) as designed. There has not been a report that Apple refused to provide those records.

JOKE: Now, the story is far more entertaining if the big, bad corporation behaved as you suggest. There are plenty of fictional movies that use this kind of storyline (and the occasional true story, like Erin Brokovich). How about this... The NSA and CIA are covering this up, because they don’t want the public to lose faith in self-driving vehicles. They’re actually funding all self-driving vehicle research, because they have big plans for using all those camera- and sensor-studded vehicles to spy on us, and to be able to command those robot vehicles to kill enemies of the state.

 

[ctdonath]

What a non-story.

 

[cmwade77]

We need self driving cars. They will dramatically lessen auto deaths and injuries and open our clogged roadways again with smart driving. All this story does is play into our fears of computer driving and will make self driving cars harder to populate the road with. We need POSITIVE stories about self driving cars, and statistics on HUMAN accidents and auto deaths.


Nearly 1.3 million people die in road crashes each year, on average 3,287 deaths a day. An additional 20-50 million are injured or disabled.

This will go WAY DOWN with self driving cars.

Not really, percentage wise self driving cars gave already killed more people that drivers have thanks to Teslas autopilot issues, which should be included in self driving statistics.

And this doesn't count all of the issues, such as the government being able to control where and when you can drive your vehicle (and yes, that will happen), them monitoring where you go and denying things like welfare because of where you travel or hackers hacking into your vehicle and driving you off a bridge, etc.

All of these things can and will happen with self driving cars and white possibly more.

 

[omihek]

How is this news? Who cares? It wasn't even in autonomous mode and the driver of the test car wasn't at fault.

Welcome to MacRumors, a website about all things Apple.

 

[Saturn007]

"So Apple wasn’t at fault and the car at fault fled the scene."

Arrest that car!

Hmm... maybe it was a different company's autonomous driving vehicle!

 

[Enripc]

How is this news? Who cares? It wasn't even in autonomous mode and the driver of the test car wasn't at fault.

This is news just because-or/Apple have to report all incidents with his testing vehicle as the report said: DMV Required.
Not because Apple or MacRumos want.

 

[phillman5]

Nearly 1.3 million people die in road crashes each year, on average 3,287 deaths a day. An additional 20-50 million are injured or disabled.

This will go WAY DOWN with self driving cars.

This must be world wide, not USA.

 

[robertcoogan]

I really don't think that Apple is even interested in making an Apple iCar, or whatever it would be called. They're most likely making the software that can run in other cars.

 

[ikramerica]

Good point.

In the US it was:
2016 37,461
(With 3,221 billion miles traveled) per Wikipedia

That sounds wrong (the miles part). 90,000 miles per death, average distance driven per year is 10,000 per driver, so worse than 1:10 drivers die per year? And yet I only personally know of one person who died in a wreck. My moms chiropractors daughter, 35 years ago.
[doublepost=1540154100][/doublepost]

That sounds wrong (the miles part). 90,000 miles per death, average distance driven per year is 10,000 per driver, so worse than 1:10 drivers die per year? And yet I only personally know of one person who died in a wreck. My moms chiropractors daughter, 35 years ago.

Reread it. 3.2 TRILLION miles. Why write it as 3,220 billion?

So that’s a factor of 1000.

So one in 10000 drivers? Or more likely 1:30000 when you factor in passengers and pedestrians.

No proof/evidence autonomous will reduce pedestrian deaths.

 

[tl01]

I’m going to go with “what is not news” for $300.

 

[Spazturtle]

Not really, percentage wise self driving cars gave already killed more people that drivers have thanks to Teslas autopilot issues, which should be included in self driving statistics.

And this doesn't count all of the issues, such as the government being able to control where and when you can drive your vehicle (and yes, that will happen), them monitoring where you go and denying things like welfare because of where you travel or hackers hacking into your vehicle and driving you off a bridge, etc.

All of these things can and will happen with self driving cars and white possibly more.

Tesla doesn't have self driving, it has a pimped up cruise control with a lust for concrete barriers.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

No proof/evidence autonomous will reduce pedestrian deaths.

Any proof/evidence that autonomous (vehicles) will increase pedestrian deaths?

For proof/evidence we are still awaiting the results of statistical studies. You can't prove something of this sort works or doesn't work until there's enough accumulated autonomous driving experience that researchers can come to statistically meaningful conclusions.

The U.S. Department of Transportation reports transportation fatality rates by the number of deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT). The rate for 2016 was 1.18 fatalities per 100 million VMT. There were 37,461 fatalities in 2016, which means there were something like 32 trillion vehicle miles driven in the U.S. that year.

Of those 37,461 fatalities 5,987 were pedestrian deaths - 16%.

Assuming vehicle miles traveled are not going to change dramatically over the course of a few years, what percentage of this year's 30-some trillion VMT will be driven by autonomous vehicles? Is it even as much as 100 million? If each autonomous vehicle were to drive 1,000 miles daily (that can be accomplished by driving at an average speed of 45 mph for 24 hours (half the distance at highway speed, half the distance at city speeds). Assuming no break-downs, no time off for maintenance... and assuming we need at least 1 billion autonomous VMT before the numbers can begin to be statistically valid (and I may be underestimating), we'd need a minimum of 2,739 autonomous vehicles on the road 24/7 for a full year before we can gather that much data.

All to say, it's way too early to have any kind of valid proof or evidence.

Your comments strongly suggest you believe autonomous vehicles will not reduce pedestrian death rates. Maybe your beliefs will be upheld, perhaps they won't. But if you insist that we must already have that proof... I think it's safe to say you're not really interested in proof at all.

Now, there's not much we can do if a pedestrian darts out into traffic and the vehicle's stopping distance exceeds the pedestrian's distance from the vehicle. There are some kinds of stupidity that simply can't be avoided by either human or machine. The same will hold true for vehicle-to-vehicle and single-vehicle incidents. There will always be some that can't be avoided. However, I'm not aware of a reason why pedestrian-vehicle incidents would be unavoidable.

For any accident where driver awareness and response times are significant factors, I'm going to put my money on autonomous vehicles. Distracted drivers, impaired drivers, inexperienced drivers... These are such major contributing factors to traffic injuries that I have no doubt that well-designed machines that are constantly aware/never fatigued/impaired, with "eyes" and other sensors constantly assessing the situation on the road in all directions, have to be safer than the average human driver.