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Video From the Fatal Uber Self-Driving Car Crash Has Been Released

Mason66 said:
The point about the car is that some newer cars have sensors already built in that detect things all around the car.

That should be in addition to the sensors that the self driving technology has.

Some new cars have technology to apply the brakes by them selves if it is going to hit something.

Nothing happened in this case, that is why I was asking what car was involved.
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This car was supposed to be self driving, so would have at least as many sensors, and likely far more and far more sophisticated, than what is available to the public. I'm actually very surprised it failed so badly here. I'm sure it's my own ignorance about how those things work, and we had a person on the thread talking about the difficulties, but you'd think sensors for self driving would have reacted instantly to this scenario - even if too late.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
Given that the people who make the collision avoidance system that is standard on this car (which was deactivated because it would mess up the UBER testing so goes the claim) claim that had it been turned on it certainly would have detected this woman and put the car into automatic braking.....that is to say some years old tech would have done much better than UBER did.....I am not sure that you have a point.
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Not sure what you think my point was except that Uber's tech failed. If Volvo's would have detected the woman and at least hit the brakes, that's fine but as you say and linked Volvo's tech was disabled...
 
Mason66 said:
Given that information, it looks like the responsibility changes from the pedestrian to 100 Uber.
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That isn’t how it should work. There isn’t a fixed volume of blame to be attributed out. The company and its engineers are 100% responsible for their actions and inactions, the operator is 100% responsible for her actions and inactions and the pedestrian is 100% responsible for her actions and inactions. It’s perfectly possible that they all made errors, any one of which could have prevented the collision from happening.

Note that this is applies in all traffic collisions. The fact it was an automated vehicle shouldn’t make much difference.
 
JasperL said:
This car was supposed to be self driving, so would have at least as many sensors, and likely far more and far more sophisticated, than what is available to the public. I'm actually very surprised it failed so badly here. I'm sure it's my own ignorance about how those things work, and we had a person on the thread talking about the difficulties, but you'd think sensors for self driving would have reacted instantly to this scenario - even if too late.
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I expect if the sensors were working properly they would have picked up the pedestrian. The probable failure is with the software telling the car how to react to what the sensors picked up. The self driving cars will have to have programming to instruct the car on how to react to thousands if not hundreds of thousands of different potential situations on the road. Heck the programming might have froze up, which may be why the car did not seem to brake at all
 
JasperL said:
Not sure what you think my point was except that Uber's tech failed. If Volvo's would have detected the woman and at least hit the brakes, that's fine but as you say and linked Volvo's tech was disabled...
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Hawkeye10 said:
Given that the people who make the collision avoidance system that is standard on this car (which was deactivated because it would mess up the UBER testing so goes the claim) claim that had it been turned on it certainly would have detected this woman and put the car into automatic braking.....that is to say some years old tech would have done much better than UBER did.....I am not sure that you have a point.
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The Volvo system is if I recall correctly purely a radar based system, also used for adaptive cruise control. My wife's car has a version of it on it. It will apply the brakes if it suspects a collision is going to occur. I did have it do that when I was crossing wet steel plates on the road. I have seen videos of it working. I do expect the brakes would have been applied with just the Volvo tech, it may not have stopped in time not to hit the woman, but they would have been applied. They may not have stopped in time because she was crossing the road and by the time she got into the cars lane it may have been to late to stop.
 
HonestJoe said:
That isn’t how it should work. There isn’t a fixed volume of blame to be attributed out. The company and its engineers are 100% responsible for their actions and inactions, the operator is 100% responsible for her actions and inactions and the pedestrian is 100% responsible for her actions and inactions. It’s perfectly possible that they all made errors, any one of which could have prevented the collision from happening.

Note that this is applies in all traffic collisions. The fact it was an automated vehicle shouldn’t make much difference.
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If safety features of the vehicle were purposely disabled, then yes that action makes whoever did that responsible.

The safety features of the vehicle were designed to prevent this exact type of incident. Disabling those features does shift the burden.
 
Lord Tammerlain said:
The Volvo system is if I recall correctly purely a radar based system, also used for adaptive cruise control. My wife's car has a version of it on it. It will apply the brakes if it suspects a collision is going to occur. I did have it do that when I was crossing wet steel plates on the road. I have seen videos of it working. I do expect the brakes would have been applied with just the Volvo tech, it may not have stopped in time not to hit the woman, but they would have been applied. They may not have stopped in time because she was crossing the road and by the time she got into the cars lane it may have been to late to stop.
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When brakes are applied the nose of the car dives and that lessens the impact on the pedestrian.

This car did nothing.
 
JasperL said:
Not sure what you think my point was except that Uber's tech failed. If Volvo's would have detected the woman and at least hit the brakes, that's fine but as you say and linked Volvo's tech was disabled...
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Mason66 said:
Given that information, it looks like the responsibility changes from the pedestrian to 100 Uber.

The accident was avoidable, if the car hadn't been messed with.
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The pedestrian was still crossing the street outside of a crosswalk at night without looking to see if it was safe. Had she paid attention it would have been avoided as well.
 
JasperL said:
Not sure what you think my point was except that Uber's tech failed. If Volvo's would have detected the woman and at least hit the brakes, that's fine but as you say and linked Volvo's tech was disabled...
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Mason66 said:
If safety features of the vehicle were purposely disabled, then yes that action makes whoever did that responsible.

The safety features of the vehicle were designed to prevent this exact type of incident. Disabling those features does shift the burden.
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The safety features of the vehicle were disabled because Uber needs to test its self driving features. Uber could have used a base model Ford Edge which does not have those features and the result would have been the same.
 
Lord Tammerlain said:
The pedestrian was still crossing the street outside of a crosswalk at night without looking to see if it was safe. Had she paid attention it would have been avoided as well.
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Let's change the pedestrian to a car coming out of a small side street. The sensors of the Uber did not pick up any movement at all.

This will have to be fleshed out in court and it will be a very interesting case.
 
Mason66 said:
Let's change the pedestrian to a car coming out of a small side street. The sensors of the Uber did not pick up any movement at all.

This will have to be fleshed out in court and it will be a very interesting case.
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The car coming out of a small side street is required to wait to cross until it is safe to do so. Having a car coming down the street which would hit you as you cross is not a safe situation, the car coming out of the small side street would be at fault no matter if the other car was being driven by a person or a computer


He is a legal case regarding pedestrians crossing outside of a crosswalk in the US

Who is at fault when a pedestrian is hit outside a cross-walk? « Darychuk Trial Lawyers ? serving New Westminster, Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam and Port Moody areas

Who is at fault when a pedestrian is hit outside a cross-walk?
Each case depends on its facts – both parties might be partly at fault.
A driver has the right of way if the pedestrian is not in a cross-walk.
No matter who has the right of way both parties have a duty to exercise due care and liability will fall on a party who fails to do this.
In Wong-Lai v. Ong the pedestrians were crossing the road about 20 meters away from the intersection. They were wearing dark clothes and crossing a major 4 lane street in the dark during a heavy rain storm. Despite this, they would have been visible to a driver at a distance of about a block. The driver was concentrating on changing out of the curb lane to avoid a parked car some distance ahead. Neither party saw the other before the collision.

The judge decided that both parties were at fault. The driver had the initial right of way, as the pedestrians were not in a cross-walk. However, he failed in his duty to keep a proper look out and take reasonable steps to avoid apparent hazards. The pedestrians had also failed to keep a proper look out. They had placed themselves in an extremely dangerous position in choosing to cross at a dangerous location in poor light and weather conditions. The pedestrians were 75% at fault, the driver 25%.
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The website has another example where the driver was ruled to be 70% at fault
 
Mason66 said:
The safety features of the vehicle were designed to prevent this exact type of incident. Disabling those features does shift the burden.
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You missed my point. It doesn’t shift any burden, it just creates a whole new one. If two people rob a bank together they’re not half as guilty as a person who robs the bank alone.
 
Lord Tammerlain said:
The car coming out of a small side street is required to wait to cross until it is safe to do so. Having a car coming down the street which would hit you as you cross is not a safe situation, the car coming out of the small side street would be at fault no matter if the other car was being driven by a person or a computer


He is a legal case regarding pedestrians crossing outside of a crosswalk in the US

Who is at fault when a pedestrian is hit outside a cross-walk? « Darychuk Trial Lawyers ? serving New Westminster, Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam and Port Moody areas



The website has another example where the driver was ruled to be 70% at fault
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I am not sure a crosswalk would have changed things.

There are places where there are mid-block cross walks but this car didn't see anybody crossing, crosswalk or not.
 
HonestJoe said:
That isn’t how it should work. There isn’t a fixed volume of blame to be attributed out. The company and its engineers are 100% responsible for their actions and inactions, the operator is 100% responsible for her actions and inactions and the pedestrian is 100% responsible for her actions and inactions. It’s perfectly possible that they all made errors, any one of which could have prevented the collision from happening.

Note that this is applies in all traffic collisions. The fact it was an automated vehicle shouldn’t make much difference.
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That makes no sense at all. If any one party is 100% responsible then there is no blame left to shift to any other party. In cases of joint and several liability the blame is split (divided?) among the parties at fault. If responsibility (blame?) was evenly split then each party would be 33.33% responsible since blame for a single event cannot exceed 100%.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
That makes no sense at all. If any one party is 100% responsible then there is no blame left to shift to any other party. In cases of joint and several liability the blame is split (divided?) among the parties at fault. If responsibility (blame?) was evenly split then each party would be 33.33% responsible since blame for a single event cannot exceed 100%.
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So my two bank robbers are half as guilty as the single one? Presumably that would mean they should only receive half the sentence too. Do you want to find 998 other people to rob a bank with us? ;)

I think the logical flaw here is the assumption there is only one thing to be responsible for. Nobody is entirely responsible for a complex outcome like this. Regardless of what there are, there will have been dozens, maybe hundreds of factors which all combined to lead to the tragedy. The responsibility of, for example, the engineers who (allegedly) turned off the safety measures is for turning it off. If the test had been entirely incident free, turning it off would still have been wrong and they’d still be responsible for it. If the operator had been paying attention and slammed on the breaks, the engineers would still be as responsible for turning it off.
 
HonestJoe said:
So my two bank robbers are half as guilty as the single one? Presumably that would mean they should only receive half the sentence too. Do you want to find 998 other people to rob a bank with us? ;)

I think the logical flaw here is the assumption there is only one thing to be responsible for. Nobody is entirely responsible for a complex outcome like this. Regardless of what there are, there will have been dozens, maybe hundreds of factors which all combined to lead to the tragedy. The responsibility of, for example, the engineers who (allegedly) turned off the safety measures is for turning it off. If the test had been entirely incident free, turning it off would still have been wrong and they’d still be responsible for it. If the operator had been paying attention and slammed on the breaks, the engineers would still be as responsible for turning it off.
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We seem to be talking about two entirely different things here. I am talking about civil liability and you seem to be talking about criminal charges. Yes, both bank robbers are 100% criminally responsible but just restitution would not be returning 200% of the stolen money to the bank. I doubt that any criminal charges will result from the traffic "accident" under discussion.
 
Bodhisattva said:
How is it Ubers fault when we can't see her AT ALL until she is immediately in front of a car... is it not 100% HER FAULT?

Yes... it is.
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If it was a human driver it is 100% the pedestrian's fault. Maybe legally its not Uber's fault but the lady walked all the way across the front of the car and it didn't slow down at all. that's clearly a serious flaw with the sensors or programming. As I said previously, the story should have been "Uber self-driving technology saves the life of a very stupid person". Not hitting an object in your path should be the first thing self driving cars need to do.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
We seem to be talking about two entirely different things here. I am talking about civil liability and you seem to be talking about criminal charges. Yes, both bank robbers are 100% criminally responsible but just restitution would not be returning 200% of the stolen money to the bank. I doubt that any criminal charges will result from the traffic "accident" under discussion.
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I don't think that makes any difference to the principle, I was just try to come up with a clearer and less controversial example. Look at it this way; would the failure of the operator to pay attention less serious if some engineer decided to turn off the safety system? Surely her failure is exactly the same regardless of the potential failure of anyone else. What if it could have been a team of four people who agreed to turn off the safety system? Would they each only be half as guilty than if it was a team of two?
 
Thoreau72 said:
You have quite an imagination.
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Yes I do. One so good it finally came up with something as stupid as the 911 attacks being a government conspiracy...
 
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