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Top Gear is still a show, it’s got new presenters and is getting to be as good as it was with the old presenters. (I actually think this season of Top Gear is better than The Grand Tour Season 2)

I respect you for watching all the episodes of both, but I totally disagree. Joey will never have the arrogant charm of Clarkson. That in itself means it will never be as good.
 
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So... you're saying this was suicide? Intersting take!

I had to evict a tenant in Portland for not paying her rent (single mother who could afford to send her daughter to St. Mary's). Won a judgement. A year or two later after I had moved to another city, got a check. She had stepped out in front of a TriMet bus just as it came to a stop. Pretty sure she had calculated this move as she was knocked over, but not seriously injured. TriMet settled with her out of court, and I got my check as part of the process. I doubt the Uber accident was intentional, but never underestimate what people will do.
 
Depends on whether you value the 30,000 lives per year that won't be lost.

I've heard the streets of San Francisco called a lot of things, but "sanitary" isn't the first word that generally comes to mind.

We could save tons of lives if we prohibited alcohol, lived in our offices and never went anywhere, never ate solid foods, and were forced to exercise.

I guess the age old question is where do we draw the line.

By "sanitary" I mean that the roads are the most simple and straight forward driving conditions possible. Put these cars in construction zones in a snow storm and see how they fare.
 
You need to do some homework. In addition to optical sensors that are better than our eyes (full resolution over the entire scene, no need to shift focus, no competition for processing resources, etc.) autonomous cars also use RADAR and LIDAR, giving them the ability to track objects in the scene with centimeter accuracy.

The algorithms that process the torrent of data, and the hardware on which they run, are improving at a very rapid pace. Humans are not improving at all. It's possible that, absent any evolutionary selection pressure for superior hand/eye coordination, rapid reaction time and situational awareness (all advantageous in a predatory environment) we'll actually evolve to be less capable drivers over time.

I don't know how long it will take to happen, but humans driving cars will be but a blip in human history, far shorter than humans riding horses.

I know how this works.

The sensory data fed to the car still isn't as comprehensive as it needs to be for all driving circumstances. The car just can't "see" the world as well as humans do.

For example, in a snow storm, the camera data is severely limited. GPS data can be affected as well, but even then, there are just an endless number of things the car has to be able to correctly and quickly identify.

Even simple things like weird construction zone setups... perhaps temporary one-ways where you have to yield the way, or a stalled car that you know isn't about to move, or getting out of the way for some situation.... or recognizing ice on a hill that requires a bit of extra momentum. Or figuring out where to park even in certain places (like a cottage).

Anyone who's driven for any period knows just how different every drive can be. I'm not saying it will never happen, just that it's nowhere near that now... which is why that car in Nevada didn't get out of the way of the reversing truck, and the Tesla slammed into a stopped fire engine. They know what to do when they "see" it, but they need to "see" it and know what it is first.
 
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Meanwhile (in the US only) 15 pedestrians will be killed today by negligent human drives. 15 more will die tomorrow, 15 died yesterday and 15 die everyday. Why does no one care about that?

Obviously, people care about all deaths that happen on the road irrespective of who is "at fault". Human life is more important than purely the dollar values assigned to "liability". As such, there is a lot of focus on pedestrian and road user safety and this is being used to redesign our cities and road infrastructure as cities aim to be "Vision Zero" cities.

You aren't aware of everything happening in the world at all times, but it doesn't mean improvements aren't happening and things are being ignored...

This lady was 200% dedicated to science. Not only because of being run over by an autonomous car (which would help the industry), but also because she supported Darwin's theory by crossing outside of a crosswalk.

I don't see the reason people, such as yourself, are blaming the pedestrian here. Sure, if this was a human driver it would make sense to focus on the pedestrian jaywalking. We have jaywalking exemptions in law solely to recognize that it would be impossible for a human to keep track of everything at all times. So we punt and say that the human is required to focus on pedestrians only in limited areas that are well marked and apparent.

For self driving cars, the proponents of this technology love to point out that this technology doesn't have these limitations. They point out that these cars can always be looking at all things all the time without getting tired or bored or distracted. As such, this car should have been capable of seeing the pedestrian in a situation that a human could not have and taken appropriate action to prevent loss of life.

Humans are unpredictable and we're expecting this technology to exist on roads occupied by human drivers and humans outside of cars (pedestrians). It isn't acceptable to look at this as if the car was driven by a human driver. We have to look at this appropriately, that this isn't a human driver and shouldn't be capable of human driver errors.

Your statement makes this crash all the more troubling not less so...
 
Meanwhile (in the US only) 15 pedestrians will be killed today by negligent human drives. 15 more will die tomorrow, 15 died yesterday and 15 die everyday. Why does no one care about that?
Taken as a percentage of human-driven versus computer-driven fatalities, the computer-driven is vastly greater. There are about 250 million cars on the road today. Even assuming only a fifth were actually driving today, 15 fatalities represents 0.00003% of humans killing people with cars. I doubt Uber has even 100 self-driving cars out there. Even assuming there are a hundred times that all told, that one fatality represents 0.01% of computers killing people with cars, 333x greater.

As with everything, gotta be careful with the numbers. Plus, his it tech in ins infancy. It’s not that we don’t care about humans killing people with cars (it is a work in progress). It’s that the rapid embrace of self-driving thing deserves more restraint that perhaps it has received, as this tragic incident illustrates.
 
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There she is! Burn her! Burn the AI witch!

I mean, no amount of AI will be able to stop people throwing themselves in front of cars. Should be investigated if the car had sufficient space to stop safely and only if it had, they can blame the autonomous driving. Otherwise it's a witch hunt.
 
What I'm more interested about in this accident is who is responsible for the death if it turns out that the lady who wasn't at fault. Is it the owner of the car, the person in the car who was supposedly overseeing the car or is it the car manufacturer? You can't sue the car itself.
 
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Meanwhile (in the US only) 15 pedestrians will be killed today by negligent human drives. 15 more will die tomorrow, 15 died yesterday and 15 die everyday. Why does no one care about that?

Because if a person hits and kills someone, and it is their fault, there is no doubt about who is legally responsible. If a company which has a special permit to operate driverless cars made by another party and potentially programmed by a third, who is responsible? You can try to sue them all but they have more lawyers and more money than you do. You may win, in time for your great-grandkids to enjoy it in their retirement years.
 
"Outside the crosswalk"

That tells me a lot right there, will wait for more details.

Drove by a school on my way to work.

Guess I should have run down all those 7 year olds crossing the street outside of the crosswalk instead of stopping and waiting for them to cross.

Mow those ****ers down!!!
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Yeah, a lot of future revenue riding on this for Uber, Apple and the others.

Mainly just Uber. Their entire business model relies on cornering the market and deploying self-driving cars and replacing their human drivers.

They literally can't make money any other way.
 
Am I the only one who doesn't want self-driving cars? Not even because of this incident, I just feel like they aren't going to deliver on the promises they make. If they can get every single car on the road to be self driving, then maybe, but I feel like this dream of every car being self driving isn't going to happen for a very, very long time.
 
Does that 'kid-software' that drove that car even have a proper driver-license?
I don’t think so.
Computer driven cars should not be allowed until it is MORE safe then people with driver licenses. Now it feels like they allow kids driving around.

BTW I walk over roads wherever I want here. Drivers should have eyes to see with.
Computers in cars are still too dumb.
 
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Meanwhile (in the US only) 15 pedestrians will be killed today by negligent human drives. 15 more will die tomorrow, 15 died yesterday and 15 die everyday. Why does no one care about that?

Worldwide there are about 740 pedestrians killed every day of the year.
 
It will be illegal to drive when you’re 75. Remember this when you march with your protest sign outside of your local City Hall.

Age doesn't have to be the defining point. However the licensing for Personal-Driving could be made more rigorous, and re-accreditation more frequent. I'd have nothing against a 75 year old driver, if they can continue demonstrate the required level of competency. Same as I very much have problems with 30 year old drivers who treat the local freeway during rush hour like their personal slalom course.

At this point in many places you take a Driving test once, and have it for almost life, unless you do something really bad.

I won't have to re-up until 2050 for mine. I can't think of any other field of "heavy equipment operation" that has such a long period without needing re-certification. Crane operators only have a 5 year licence in New Jersey.
 
Age doesn't have to be the defining point. However the licensing for Personal-Driving could be made more rigorous, and re-accreditation more frequent. I'd have nothing against a 75 year old driver, if they can continue demonstrate the required level of competency. Same as I very much have problems with 30 year old drivers who treat the local freeway during rush hour like their personal slalom course.

At this point in many places you take a Driving test once, and have it for almost life, unless you do something really bad.

I won't have to re-up until 2050 for mine. I can't think of any other field of "heavy equipment operation" that has such a long period without needing re-certification. Crane operators only have a 5 year licence in New Jersey.
You need to read the previous comment, you took my quote out of context.
 
Wow... have we descended to this level of low? Where the ends justify the means? Human life matters none as long as we can have technological changes?

That is...


Well, the supposed gain is overall fewer lives lost. Would you exchange 15 deaths per year for the 15 deaths per day we currently have, according to other posts on this thread-I have no idea what the real numbers would be for either case. So that is one argument for allowing driverless vehicles.

Now, do you want to make the decision less black and white than 'X vs Y auto deaths per year? Do you want to factor in the large amount of unemployment that losing their driving jobs will do to both a person and to his family? Truckers, taxi drivers, delivery personnel, maybe mail men. And because employers also provide insurance how many people die because they no longer have health insurance? How many are kids? How many plants are shut down because we don't need as many semi-trucks, or even regular automobiles?

It won't be as simple as making a driverless car safe. This will change a lot in society.
 
Where was the nearest cross walk? could have been 500 / 1km meters away. Factors YOU don't take in to consideration.

We don't know all the facts.

Not sure of the exact spot of impact, but as I live here, the area the car was in is near a mountain preserve just outside downtown Tempe/ASU and cars drive 40-50mph down this stretch.
 
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Negligence is not at play here if someone walks out into the roadway late at night in the dark. This occurred at 10 PM Sunday night at an intersection of multi-lane divided lanes, Mill Avenue and Curry Road. The Uber driver could not have been expecting such an event. However, the person behind the wheel - as well as the vehicle's electronics - should have been vigilant for pedestrians at every intersection.
Bike riders have a habit around neighborhoods of not following the rules of the road - not stopping for stop signs or lights, not using lighting to be seen in the dark, riding/passing on the right side of a vehicle next to the curb.
 
I’ve driven on this road where the accident happened hundreds of times as I live in Phoenix. If you were driving 40mph as the crash report is stating and this woman (Elaine) didn’t dart out suddenly but was simply pushing her bike across the street, your headlights would have picked her up and you would have had plenty of time to stop. However, if someone were distracted (texting, on phone, etc.) in a non-autonomous vehicle then yes you could have hit her and/or if she darted in front of you. Report though is saying it looked like the Volvo didn’t apply its brakes so we’ll have to wait for all the data to come in to see how this happened or why the Volvo didn’t apply it brakes. But no matter what the outcome the victim is Elaine and someone just lost their mom and friend...
 
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This was inevitable. Pedestrian collisions happen daily. Investigate this and make changes, but hopefully this doesn’t set the technology back too far.

This will blow over, at least partly because she reportedly was an older homeless adult.

Still to come will be the first child killed. That's when parents will call for a ban, and it'll become harder for politicians.
 
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