Legal Realism? She was outside of the crosswalk, breaking the law technically. However, it will all depend how the judicial system interprets it.
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Self-Driving Uber Car Kills Pedestrian in Arizona, Accident Could Have Implications for Autonomous Vehicle Testing
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There are about 236 million registered vehicles in the U.S. If there were 236 million automated driverless cars in the U.S., they would've caused far more than one fatality.
Your assertion that the accident rate for autonomous vehicles is higher than manual vehicles is not backed up by any data. I can just as easily assert that on a per-vehicle-mile basis (which is the only meaningful way comparisons can be made) the accident rate for autonomous vehicles is far lower than manually driven vehicles.
I'm pretty sure there isn't a single person posting here who hasn't crossed outside of a crosswalk a few times in their lives.
Not sure if you're agreeing with me, or if you're confusing deaths with "death rate"... The reason this is getting outsized attention is because of the rate (annual deaths per vehicle count) and because these are test vehicles for an unproven technology.
Sure, this may be a statistically insignificant sample, and in 10 years we may realize that the rate is lower than it appears today, but saying nobody cares about people killed by human drivers is just deflection.
This is an important story for any number of reasons, but foremost among those reasons is that someone died during corporate product testing while the safety of those products is in dispute.
But far, far less than the 30,000 that manually driven vehicles cause every year.
Don't be dumb; those killed by humans are accountable and if criminality is proven that are punished by the law. Who goes to jail if an Uber kills someone?
Not if the pedestrian was outside the crosswalks. likely wouldn't even be cited.
The safety of autonomous vehicles is not in dispute by anyone who doesn't wear a tinfoil hat.
Sounds like you were there right next to this lady when the accident happened. Maybe you should contact the policy and tell them what exactly happened.
Citation needed.
Actually, "citation desired"... I agree vehicle miles is the right factor to normalize against, but I didn't think that data was published for autonomous vehicles. Still, given the orders of magnitude we're talking here I think vehicle count is probably a reasonable proxy for a simple less-than/greater-than test.
Still, my point was more about the attempt to deflect this to a conversation about whether people care about the other 15 people dying today.
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Then why are we testing?
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.
As you said in your first sentence "we know nothing about the situation".
Do you think she was trying to die? Or it is possible that she simply made a mistake, misjudged the speed of oncoming traffic, didn't see because of a bend in the road or an obstruction to her view... any of a hundred different way to mess up. People make mistakes, and sometimes they die because of it. We can't control everyone's actions.
We can and should control other things, though. Unless we're talking about a freeway here, road design can and should make it as safe as possible for other users besides just auto drivers. And in the case of autonomous (or semi-autonomous) vehicles, they obviously need to be programmed to "see" and even anticipate the presence of all users of the road.
So yeah, you're right. You can't stop any individual from randomly stepping in front of a car, but good design can make it less likely that someone would do so by accident.
We’re having two totally different debates right now. I have dealt with an aging family member who refused to get rid of the car. It’s horrible to see the desire for independence that they physically no longer have. An autonomous car for someone 75 or 80 years old who can’t operate a manual car on their own any longer is a great thing (Although I have doubts that would actually come to fruition. I imagine all autonomous would be required to have some sort of a manual mode, which would 100% require you to hold a drivers license). That said, from now until I’m 75, I will never own an autonomous car. I like driving. I like relaxing behind the wheel on an open road. Helps me clear my head. Has nothing to do with being lazy, it’s a hobby just like anything else.
Also, I’m no burden on any health system. I can guarantee I live a healthier lifestyle than you.
The arrogance that programmers with limited intelligence can somehow create a viable artificial intelligence is laughable. No GD car with AI will be able to out think and out react a sober human driver. Wrecks a plenty will occur and from what I understand there are many loopholes in the laws that might prevent lawsuits against the jackasses who place these horrible machines on the road. In this case, both the AI car and the human driver failed and a person was killed. When the human backup failsafe cannot even function, how can we believe the AI alone will succeed?
268 million cars in America and a handful of autonomous cars, the deaths by % of autonomous cars has just skyrocketed vs normal cars. It’s the same reason Concorde was taken out of commission. % of crashes per Flight versus other aircraft. Because of this one incident autonomous vehicles have become the most dangerous vehicle on the road.
So 30,000 deaths from 268,000,000 normal cars is 0.012% 1 death from 100 autonomous cars is 1%. And that’s a years worth of deaths vs the one.
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Nice victim blaming there.
The car should have absolutely have seen her, and reacted accordingly by stopping*. The car software failed.
*having said that, depends if it were possible for any sort of car to stop in time.
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I'd like to see the video before making a judgement.
As for the comments about pedestrian wasn't in a crosswalk. Not everywhere has lots of crosswalks. Where I'm located most streets have no crosswalks. Heck most have no sidewalks. You either walk in grass, mud and tall weeds or in the road. Pretty much only busy streets, schools, hospitals, shopping centers and a few other high pedestrian areas have any crosswalks. You can sometimes go a mile or more on a busy road before hitting a crosswalk. No wonder why everyone jaywalks here. It isn't like it is just a small and inconvenient walk. Going to a crosswalk on a busy road could mean a twenty minute detour hoofing through mud and wet grass.
As for the comments about pedestrian wasn't in a crosswalk. Not everywhere has lots of crosswalks. Where I'm located most streets have no crosswalks. Heck most have no sidewalks. You either walk in grass, mud and tall weeds or in the road. Pretty much only busy streets, schools, hospitals, shopping centers and a few other high pedestrian areas have any crosswalks. You can sometimes go a mile or more on a busy road before hitting a crosswalk. No wonder why everyone jaywalks here. It isn't like it is just a small and inconvenient walk. Going to a crosswalk on a busy road could mean a twenty minute detour hoofing through mud and wet grass.
Lots of white-color work is already being eradicated. Entire sectors of white-color work has been eradicated. The quickest that comes to mind is the neighborhood travel agent. The secretary that typed up letters has also been eliminated. Executives are expected to type their one correspondence.
Because the number of self driving cars on the roads is relatively minuscule. Human drivers may kill more pedestrians, but after today’s death it’s not clear that they kill more per capita.
An extremely tiny percentage of vehicles on the road are self-driving. So any accident they cause is that much more meaningful. Personally I think A.I. is nowhere near ready for the chaos of real-world conditions.
My thoughts exactly, tons of people throwing out scenarios which are not likely to have occurred, whereas this is the most logical explanation at the moment. No one can make conclusions about anything without the investigation details.
Meanwhile in Phoenix, Arizona:
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix-breaking/2018/03/13/arizona-official-10-pedestrian-deaths-week-show-major-crisis/422808002
I’m assuming you’re being sarcastic. (Dear god I hope so.) In the real world, people, pets, children, animals, falling trees, other cars, etc. — do not always stay within the lines. An AI would need to be able to deal with accidents, chaos, confusion, etc. Human minds are incredibly flexible and creative when dealing with the unexpected.