Yes, but not tested on open, uncontrolled roads. The approach my team has always used in situations like that is to use closed roads and also to have a 2nd safety spotter in a fully manned chase vehicle. The problem is, that's really expensive to do. You're paying 3 people instead of one (at a minimum).

One dark way to look at it is that the self-driving car industry is using us all as human test subjects without getting our consent first. There's research-grade (not even beta) software responsible for not hitting us and we have no choice to opt out.


Full autonomous operation in all conditions is certainly not ready. I think we'll see initial deployment in constrained applications and environments. Like automating operation over a limited urban area in daylight hours, and with no rain/snow. Etc.


Thanks!

[quote trailIt seems to corroborate my speculation earlier that Uber had false alarm problems. And they decided to ignore those false alarm problems by suppressing them and depending on the human to intervene. I can see that as a possible engineering approach to test other aspects of self-driving while another group was working to sort out the false alarm issue.

But it sounds incredibly risky to me, particularly at night. It's the sort of thing you'd want to use closed courses for.[/quote]Interesting to note that Google helped the exoplanet hunters by turning up the gain on their sensors and using AI to filter out the increased false positives. I would guess if you applied the same method to your problem you would get an AI that effectively does what you imply is done manually. It would filter out more positives on highways and situations where you wouldn't expect pedestrians.

I also admit that I naturally due the same thing when I am behind the wheel. It would take me a lot longer to register that in fact some idiot is crossing a highway at night than if someone ran out in a residential street during the day.

Report released with some interesting, but sadly not unexpected, conclusions:
- driver was streaming "the Voice" on Hulu on her cell phone and had eyes off the road much of the time
- confirmed that it was her responsibility to monitor the road and take over, which she failed to perform
- indicated the pedestrian had meth and pot in her system
- she is apparently being charged with manslaughter
- Uber themselves are not being held much to blame, but it seems to me that they could have done much more to ensure they were hiring competent drivers and monitoring their activities. Since this was there final line of defense they should make sure it is operating reliably.

https://www.azcentral.com/...-herzberg/724344002/

edit to clarify/correct as shown in post below. This was almost 4 years ago but seems I may have not noticed the name reference in the article, thanks for catching.

Interesting new article from Wired: https://www.wired.com/...ing-car-fatal-crash/

Lots of things in it to digest, but one thing that surprised me was that Uber's system identified the bicycle-walking pedestrian as a car 5.6 seconds before the crash, then identified the obstruction as other, then at 2.6 seconds identified as a bicycle, 1.5 seconds ID'd as other, then back to bicycle...

Wired wrote:

Nearly every time the system changed what it thought Herzberg was—a car, a bike, other—it started from scratch in calculating where the object might be headed, that is, across the road into the Volvo’s lane.

The interplay between humans and automated aids, and their over reliance on those aids, reminds me of Children of the Magenta: https://www.azcentral.com/...-herzberg/724344002/



Just to clarify, the pedestrian was the one with meth & pot in her system, not the driver.

I have no idea why the Wired article seemed to focus so much on her transgenderism and all the issues throughout her life associated with it. It has nothing to do with this case or incident or what happened.

Pertaining to the, case somewhere down toward end of article (FFS it was a long article), it seemed part of her defense will focus on how "The Voice" was playing on audio only, on her personal phone, and she was not actually looking at it. What they say she was looking at before the collision was her other work phone and her Uber slack channel. Not sure why that would that matter, at all. If true, then she was still looking at her phone. Content of what was on the phone or which phone it was, does not matter.

That said, I assume their angle will be to illustrate it was the work phone that had her distracted, thereby opening up a lane to lay blame at Uber, for creating working conditions such that drivers felt obliged to read their Slack-chat for updates and information, alerts, etc....

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They have no drivers

You're right that it has no bearing on what lead up to the crash, but her transgenderism probably does affect how she'll be treated by the justice system. 20 years ago she got 5 years for being an accessory to a robbery while the actual robber only got 4, and in prison she was repeatedly brutalized.



It is hard for me to gauge how truthful she is being because her official story has changed so much. Is that because her original lawyers were hired by Uber so perhaps their interests were more aligned with Uber's than the driver's?

"Watching" hulu is pretty damning - I think most people would agree that is "grossly" negligent. But I can imagine loading my favorite concert on youtube and listening to that over the car speakers with the screen face down or the phone in my pocket. And I have certainly been guilty of glancing at text alerts. Negligent, for sure, but probably not grossly negligent.

Which is what I said in my next paragraph. However, I'm not going as far as required. But if you have info or a link that says otherwise, please provide it. Per the article, it was only practice to monitor Slack channel when it was two employees in the car and only by the non driving person.

Uber has every motivation to toss her to the wolves on this and shift full blame and deflect everything away from themselves.

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As someone who has two LEOs in my immediate family, this is the one single thing they tell me repeatedly. Shut your fucking mouth when being questioned by the police.

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