Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/03/19/autonomous-uber-car-kills-pede.html
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What extent of responsibility/liability does the safety driver have? I’m sure it’ll end up being more than the CEO.
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It’ll be interesting to see who had to accept liability for this. The car manufacturer? Uber? The safety driver? Or everyone’s personal favorite: Blame the victim?
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Google is probably very relieved they weren’t the first, since this was bound to happen. It won’t be the last either.
Um, the video shows a bent bicycle beside the vehicle. I’m confused.
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I can’t even get my head around the idea of a “safety driver.” Like, how long does it take for the human, even if hyper-vigilant the entire drive, to take over when they see there is a problem?
If the computer is responsible for highway driving and the person for navigating parking lots they can co-exist meaningfully. But the idea that a person is going to take over in a crisis where a split second reaction is necessary seems far-fetched.
Time for Uber to admit they stole Google’s code?
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The company said it was pausing its self-driving car operations in Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto.
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So you’re saying they’re the… Antichrysler?
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I feel like they’re kind of burying the lede behind the self-driving car. Ten pedestrians killed in a week seems rather a lot, doesn’t it?
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Don’t forget the municipality, which allowed itself to be bribed into allowing Uber to test their half baked autonomous vehicle tech on the city’s residents.
I’m inclined to blame Uber - not running into humans is the sort of really basic shit you’re supposed to perfect on test courses before you start putting your prototypes out in the real world.
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Whether they had a reasonable reaction time could bring a quick end to it. Did the pedestrian dash into the street? Was the driver conspicuosly inattentive? Now we get to see how well Uber has rehearsed this obvious and inevitable legal scenario.
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Even by Arizona standards, which are already surreal ballardian hell territory
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Its possible the cyclist was walking their bike across the street but i don’t know. And it’s definitely tragic this pedestrian died, i wonder if they didn’t see the car or if they did see it did they think it’d stop so they just walked onto the street? Usually when i use a crosswalk i always assume the driver isn’t paying attention and doesn’t see me, i don’t like doing that game of chicken where you walk in front of a car because you have the right of way.
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My hunch is that there was a cyclist behind the uber and it ran into it (or into a parked car) in the collision.
It’s quite a mystery. The reports unequivocally say it was a pedestrian, but that is definitely a fucked up bicycle lying right there.
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Gotta keep that scaremongering about self-driving vehicles up.
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Man, the Uber driver at my work has a hard on against autonomous cars. I am telling him these are the future. He doesn’t believe me. Yes the tech is not there yet, but it will be. At some point I even think they won’t allow people to pilot on the highways, for liability reasons. Autonomous cars won’t end all accidents or deaths, but it will be a lot more rare.
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“First of many”
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If alive, Frank Baressi could probably explain it to us:
edited-to-add: I see your point. if a safety driver needs to pay attention, they might as well do the driving.
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(Not that I am cheering for tragedy, mind you: but it can be the case that (1) a pedestrian was killed, and (2) a bicycle also got wrecked.)
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I for one and excited to not drive when the time comes, i hate driving.
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