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The person you responded to was mocking the quote in their post. Somebody was saying that the pedestrian was outside the crosswalk and that told them all they needed to know about the situation, implying it was the pedestrian’s fault. @az431 was making that implication explicit to show how absurd it was.
You're so nice. Most people would've just responded with "whoosh".
 
It’s facinating given how many people are killed by manned cars every year - just one death from an autonomous car will be a huge strike against autonomous cars in general.

In other words: if you put the collective driving intelligence of all mankind into an autonomous driving system, it still wouldn’t be good enough - even 1 death is too many for people to see it as “equal” to manned cars.

Even if the numbers of collisions, injuries, and fatalities were exactly the same, it radically changes who is involved in those situations. As such, another ethical component must be considered -- especially if vehicles are to be fully 'autonomous' as we still haven't figured out who would be responsible.
 
Lets put this in perspective...any new technology and company willing to be at the forefront of that technology, is going to go through these pains. passenger flight, public transportation, MEDICINE...basically anything that is cutting edge and in the stages of testing is going to run into those "side effects" at one point or another. Hopefully Uber takes it on the chin and continues developing and being a force for government regulation so we can buy autonomous cars in 10 years.

And really, it's a numbers game. Uber likely has more autonomous cars on the road than anyone else...that just becomes a game of chance and unfortunately the pedestrian passed away. wish it was just like a broken hip or something
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Just wait for the self-driving Honda Civic. Kids and ricers will pimp them out, but they'll inevitably do something wrong and make them crash. Maybe they'll all turn into computer hackers instead of car dudes and make special street racing modes for their AIs. Imagine a race in The Fast and the Furious except with each person just playing Pokémon Go while the car drives.
 
Auto cars will come someday. No doubt about that. But with all new tech it takes a while to get going right. There will be incidents as with everything.

Auto cars can speed up traffic flow and eliminate traffic jams. Would be able to drive faster speeds than human drivers of all cars can talk to each other and have precise movements at high speeds. There was some articles I read about it could eliminate 4 way stop type situation because cars could even go decent speed into them because they all already made the exchange that they will be entering the intersection at this speed and time.

Who knows when it will happen but it’s happening. As always it will slowly come in and the old way will get phased out after coexisting with manual drive starts to get worse stats by comparison of sizes.

Just saying that part because lots in the thread about hard to compare 100 auto cars to millions on comparing stats. Semi-auto cars are already out there and not just 100 of them. Tesla has them going big time with most of their cars and now their semis will have some type of it. There has been times Tesla cars have saved people from crashes. (Or tried and the manual driver corrected the save and crashed anyway)
 
ignatius345 said:
Crosswalks were invented for the convenience of car drivers. A person being outside one doesn't make them "fair game" to be killed.

So why is there jaywalking laws?
"Why is there jaywalking laws" you ask?

The term "jaywalk" was invented as a way to shame people into staying out of the way of motorists. Before that, people would walk the most direct route to where they were going. With all these new cars all over the place by 1920, a quarter-million people had been killed by them. In Detroit in the '20s, 60% of the deaths were young kids who foolishly thought you could still play in the street. People were pissed and were threatening to clamp down on car usage.

The people with a big financial interest in cars had to turn the tide somehow, right? There was a LOT of money to be made, and they were already having trolley tracks ripped up and had big plan$ for the landscape of the country. So someone has a great idea: make it pedestrians' fault for being hit. Make new laws so that people can only walk in specific places instead of just anywhere they wanted. They even came up with a mocking term for walking where you choose to walk: they called it "jaywalking" and made it a crime. Pretty genius right? More about it here.
 
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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?
Here is the problem with that statement, if you now take the ratio of self driving vehicles to people killed, this would be the equivalent of something like 200 people dying daily caused by self driving vehicles.

This is because there are substantially fewer self driving vehicles on the road than ones with drivers. Not saying that it is right for even one person to be even so much as injured by someone else, but I am saying that odds are now stacked against self driving vehicles being considered safer than having someone at the wheel at this point.

Now there are all sorts of other issues, social, technical and legal with self driving vehicles as well, but that is another story.

I do question why the safety driver didn't intervene here, that is what they are for after all. I would imagine the safety driver, uber and any other company involved are looking at a wrongful death lawsuit. I would also imagine that the driver could be charged with vehicular manslaughter, in fact if they aren't, then there is a problem with law enforcement and the DA not enforcing the law. Although they could get an even stricter charge against them.
 
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Self-driving cars and the global warming myth have to be the two stupidest ideas birthed in the 21st century (thus far). Simply because a car can be constructed to go from Point A to Point B by "itself" does not make it a good idea, just as slimming down the MacBook Pro to the height of a razor blade at the cost of the device's functionality does not make that a good idea, either.
 
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Very sad. I have to wonder why the human behind the wheel failed to take over in this situation though. That's the point of testing with a human behind the wheel isn't it?

If the woman just stepped out in front of the car without looking, I bet the human didn’t have time to react. She would likely have been struck had it been a normal car as well.
 
Amen to that. The police in my city let drivers speed through neighborhoods and run right through red lights. And NYC is possibly the most heavily pedestrian-oriented city in America. I can't wait for a new era where cars behave according to the rules.
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Crosswalks were invented for the convenience of car drivers. A person being outside one doesn't make them "fair game" to be killed.

Was she was jaywalking, that is illegal in most places. People have been given tickets in their hospital beds for jaywalking. But I will wait until all the information comes out before siding with the car or the pedestrian.
 
"Outside the crosswalk"

That tells me a lot right there, will wait for more details.
You know a lot of other countries people don't have to us crosswalks. Its the drivers responsibility not to hit the person. You need to look up the history of jaywalking laws. Most of these laws where made by car makers lobbing/paying off lawmakers to pass these laws. They were getting bad press from the new things called cars killing people in the street. So the did what any big business would do and blame the victim. It didn't matter that people were using the streets since the founding of the town/cities.
 
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 they were not part of experimenting with technology that could have enormous monitary gains for corporations. :apple:
 
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If the safety driver couldn't slam on the brakes fast enough, nor the computer on the car- that's definitely pointing towards the pedestrian being at fault.
If someone suddenly steps in front of a moving vehicle while jaywalking- chances are extremely high they'll get hit- whoever or whatever is driving the car. It's sad though. Jaywalking is such a natural thing to want to do. Don't do it.
 
It will be interesting to know if the car was attempting to stop. Mill Ave is a college area, lots of students running around, parked cars along the street. If she walked out onto the street by walking between a couple cars, the uber car may not have seen her until she stepped out into the street and there may not have been enough time to stop.
 
Even so, do you think it’s appropriate for someone else to make a joke or “mockery” of another members post Given the circumstances of this situation? It’s called candor, and some considerably lack it when it involves a sensitive situation as this.

So long as the post is as callous and idiotic as the one they responded to, I absolutely think it's appropriate.
 
Unfortunately, this was inevitable, and it will not be the last time. It’s very sad, but it does not negate the promise of self-driving cars. As long as the rate of accidents can be kept at or below the rate at which humans cause accidents, it’s still a step forward.
 
Was she was jaywalking, that is illegal in most places. People have been given tickets in their hospital beds for jaywalking. But I will wait until all the information comes out before siding with the car or the pedestrian.
Yeah. You're right! It may be the woman's fault that she died.

And it really does make a lot of sense to come to an injured person and fine them for getting injured.

Screw pedestrians!!!
 
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