The case is already closed on yesterday’s self-driving Uber fatality. Well, not quite, but it should be. Parades of Luddites, anti-technology fools, and parasitic lawyers will undoubtedly keep this incident stewing for weeks or longer.
Let’s turn to a police statement, blasted by some as “inappropriate”: Uber ‘likely’ not at fault in deadly self-driving car crash, police chief says.
Uber was likely not at fault in the deadly crash of its self-driving vehicle in Arizona on Sunday evening, Tempe Police Chief Sylvia Moir told theSan Francisco Chronicle in a startling interview the following day. Her comments have caused a stir in this closely watched investigation, which is being characterized as the first human killed by an autonomous vehicle.
“I suspect preliminarily it appears that the Uber would likely not be at fault in this accident,” Moir told the Chronicle, adding, “I won’t rule out the potential to file charges against the [backup driver] in the Uber vehicle.”
The vehicle was traveling 38 mph, though it is unclear whether that was above or below the speed limit. (Police said the speed limit was 35 mph, but a Google Street View shot of the roadway taken last July shows a speed limit of 45 mph along that stretch of road.) The driver, 44-year-old Rafaela Vasquez, has given a statement to police.
Police have viewed footage from two of the vehicle’s cameras, one facing forward toward the street, and the other inside the car facing the driver. Based on the footage, Moir said that the driver had little time to react. “The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them,” she said. “His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision.”
Safe streets advocates were quick to denounce Moir’s comments as tone deaf, inappropriate, and possibly misinformed.
Misinformed – No
The police chief should not have backed down. A woman walking a bicycle and carrying bags was in a marked no-travel zone attempting to cross seven lanes of traffic at night.
Release the footage, close the case, and be done with it. Here’s a Google view of the accident site.
https://twitter.com/EricPaulDennis/status/975889922413551616
https://twitter.com/EricPaulDennis/status/975896990214164480
https://twitter.com/EricPaulDennis/status/975896990214164480https://twitter.com/EricPaulDennis/status/975898068976533504
I will suggest a possibility no one else has. Was the woman attempting to get get killed or cause an accident to make a statement?
I am not saying this is likely but it is possible.
Mish Reader Comment
@mish, I will suggest a possibility no one else has. Was the woman attempting to get get killed or cause an accident to make a statement? Well, a couple years ago, I spent a lot of time in Vegas. Sitting at traffic lights, more than once I and my dash cam observed a guy standing at the curb, at the crosswalk waiting for traffic to start moving, then stepping out, slapping the side of the car and rolling on the ground next to it. One time, on Flamingo, a guy started to step into me, and I pointed at the camera on the windshield, and he stepped back up on the curb.
I added that comment from reader “AWC” after the article was posted. Here is another, from the article.
By the way …
“Court records show Vasquez has a criminal record in Arizona under a different legal name. […] Records from the Arizona Department of Corrections show Vasquez served three years and 10 months in a state prison for convictions on attempted armed robbery and unsworn falsification. She was released from prison in 2005.”
Nonsense From Hyundai
The Drive reports Hyundai Cautious About Autonomous Cars After Uber Accident, Exec Says.
“Especially under these circumstances, the Korean automaker isn’t bothered by not being first.”
Hmmm. Precisely what circumstances is the exec talking about?
In case you do not have the answer, here it is: Hyundai is miserably behind on technology and is praying for a slowdown in roll-out, hoping to catch up.
Nope. Progress is unstoppable. This incident will not slow the pace.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
The death is tragic but it also appears the woman wasn’t even looking while she crossed.
“The program is designed to avoid pedestrians, but NOT to stop the car for every bird that flies by. So somewhere in that program a decision is made, like putting a chemical additive in food that might cause problems to one or two people in a million. If the car was programmed for 100% pedestrian safety the car (a taxi) would never get anywhere. As long as the violence is within tolerable limits, then the company is not liable.”
This was plenty of open space around the pedestrian. Who is a good bit larger than, and very distinguishable from, a bird. If the pedestrian was within line of sight, and her movement weren’t erratic, quick and unpredictable in the extreme, something went wrong here.
Ambulance chasers, lobbyists and banksters/inveeestors may prattle on about large-number statistics they don’t understand, in an effort to weasel their way out of responsibility for individual accidents; but no one with sufficient aptitude to do something useful with their lives, would ever program a car to run over a pedestrian on an open road on purpose, over some vague nonsense about AVs still being “safer” than “human drivers” in some supposedly undifferentiated aggregate.
And yes: This means AVs will never get anywhere in environments densepacked with humans. Not without said humans being willing to cooperate with them. Once/if AVs go from being a neat novelty, to a mass of irritating “other drivers,” it will inevitably come down to draconian surveillance and penalties for anyone operating in what is now considered a reasonable way to get around. Slowly but surely making roads sufficiently inhospitable to humans, to make them de facto no-go zones for non-AVs.
So the first self driving car, meets the first self-immolating pedestrian? I mean we have death by commuter train all the time, and while homeless people may not be acting with self destructive intent, they often use no common sense or caution walking or bicycling,
The program is designed to avoid pedestrians, but NOT to stop the car for every bird that flies by. So somewhere in that program a decision is made, like putting a chemical additive in food that might cause problems to one or two people in a million. If the car was programmed for 100% pedestrian safety the car (a taxi) would never get anywhere. As long as the violence is within tolerable limits, then the company is not liable. We all want to believe that this car will never run over anyone, and its a car, and it will.
As a follow up I have to ask why you don’t help your best friend out of her predicament? Do you not have a couch?
Sorry but Canada has different homeless people, maybe it’s the weather or type of social safety net. There are no homeless here who care about their “reputation” – once you become homeless your reputation is the least of your worries. Your friends who are homeless sound rather dumb if they have lived their life to the point where they have to live in their car but still care what people think.
Well said again. It is clear that some of these people think that some Americans are literally disposable.
Duh! If you said it yourself, at least you are taking responsibility for it. If you say it and then add that someone else would have said it anyway, you are being obnoxious (which is bad enough) and not even taking responsibility for it (which makes it worse).
Capische?!
“ The fact that the car didn’t even make a stopping effort suggests the anti collision program isn’t working.”
If this is true, something was seriously wrong with the car. There are multiple redundant systems that should have picked up a moving object as large as a person with plenty of time to at least mitigate the impact. Visibility looks to be fairly decent, at least from roof mount height sensors. Someone mentioned she could have stepped over a tall curb accidentally and very quickly fallen into the roadway. That’s about the only way I can see her movement being abrupt enough to, literally, “fly under the car’s radar.”
Like anything else government gets involved in, their involvement with AVs are probably at least partly to blame as well. In any free society, where biblical bans on killing someone is largely the only hard restriction; testing of these vehicles would progress from labs to test tracks to deserted roads off hours to divided freeways to slightly less deserted arterials to…… etc. With roads allowing for lots of up close interaction with unpredictable soft trafficants only being attempted after all simpler environments were worked out. Kind of how the Wright brothers flew over a field. Not over downtown Manhattan.
But, in financialized dystopias, engineers can’t just pick a spot that looks good. Instead they must beg permission from “authorities.” Which are not granted on a “is my county a safe place” basis. But rather on a “I want more “inveeestment” in my commuuuunitiii” one. So you get densely populated hype centers falling over themselves grating permission, and even courting developers with legal protections etc.
Dumb as sh%^&t like all government policy, of course; as anyone with half a brain would tell you. If it wasn’t against the policiii of the company they work for, for them to talk at all without having their speech cleared by ambulance chasers and government liaisons. Neither of whom have sufficient insight into anything, to be able to understand why a field is preferable to downtown Manhattan as a flight experiment venue. I mean, New York can afford to pay more to encourage the Wright’s to “inveeest” there and stuff…..
asinine comment of the day “To say, Someone else might suggest she was trying to kill herself, is in some ways worse than directly saying it.” Please enlighten us why.
also grew up here; he also has worked all his life; he is a gardener (he is in his early 60s). This is where the jobs are – everyone says “move to where the jobs are” – well, where the jobs are is not where the housing is. I have another friend who also grew up here who could easily become homeless when his mom passes away; he is 60 y.o.; he is very attached to this area. All three of these people care about their reputations. BTW, I am upper middle class; I also know plenty of non-homeless people. If you you don’t know any, or don’t know any who care about how they are thought of, just means you don’t get out; they are everywhere now, and not all of them are crazy. Welcome to America in the 21st century; maybe you still live in some tiny town somewhere but most people don’t. By the way, even if a person doesn’t care about their reputation, that is still not an excuse to smear them; it is just as distasteful.
Yes, I do know homeless people, SweetKenny. One of my best friends is homeless here in Silicon Valley; she lives in her car; she is 72 years old. She volunteers where I volunteer. She grew up in Palo Alto and her father was a famous football coach at Stanford; she worked all of her life. There is no housing around here that anyone can afford except (the cheapest rental I could find for my father in law was 3,500 for a studio) but she is not willing to leave the area because it is home.I have another friend here who is homeless who
A homeless person can cherish their reputation? Are you for real? Do you know any homeless people? They don’t care because most have mental issues. What inane statement.
I agree. These guys are despicable. To say, “Someone else might suggest she was trying to kill herself, I am just saying” is in some ways worse than directly saying it.
Who gives af. 2020.
Believe it or not, even a homeless person can cherish his/her reputation.
Saying “it might happen at some point” does not undo the smear on this woman.
As to the substance – this woman is dead. She can’t defend her character. It is very easy to kick down. Whether it is a claim or an insinuation, it is equally nasty.
Apparently you can’t read, Mish. I did not attribute the claim to you.
Apparently, you cannot read. I did not “claim” the woman was trying to get killed. In fact, I said it was unlikely. But a reader responded with a real example. It is possible. If not her, someone else will.
The other thing I don’t understand is the hype around a SD car that still needs a “safety driver”. If a driver sits there all day for hours and months having to watch to see if the SD car F’s up, what is the use? Unless its a bridge period of safety drivers to improve the tech to get to fully autonomous. Can someone really sit there and pay attention possibly for months on end waiting the rare screw up that may happen and then have to react in a split second and take control if there is a software bug and the car runs a crosswalk or stop sign?
My issue is some peoples quick time lines for when they think fully autonomous cars will be ubiquitous. I think it will happen, it will just longer then some people think. Brand new light rail trail systems still have drivers despite being infinitely less complex in that they travel on a fixed track, vs. a robot vehicle that has to navigate the complex cities of the world. It’s a lot easier to say create a robot software system to beat a human at chess or jeopardy because there is a fixed set of rules. Driving around cities has an infinite number of unique events that could occur that a fully autonomous car will have to react to. And lots of regulatory changes will have to take place. and major changes to street and city infrastructure. And more stuff will go wrong and more people will get killed. Also, these systems have to be designed so they can’t be hijacked & modified by hackers for terrorist and nefarious uses.
Accidents like this happen all the time on freeways. If the speed limit is 45mph, it is almost like a freeway.
The above was posted on Zero Hedge; I think it is exactly right. A human drive would be on the look out for mentally ill and otherwise incapacitated people; I am when I drive.
A human driver has seen hundreds of bag-ladies and would have recognized this one a block away.
A human driver knows that bag-ladies act squirrely and sometimes dart out into traffic.
A human driver would have changed lanes away from the bag-lady, or slowed down in anticipation of squirrelly bag-lady style movements.
Those of you who drive through downtown/inner-city neighborhoods know what I’m talking about. The bag-lady shouldn’t have darted into traffic, but human drivers know this is a common occurrence, and anticipate it.
It is disgusting to claim that this poor woman was trying to get killed. It is right up there with blaming rape victims. It was a terrible place to cross; it is very hard being homeless; I have a friend who is homeless in Silicon Valley. Homeless people are often tired and disoriented. If self-driving cars can’t take that reality into account as well as regular drivers do, then they don’t belong on the road. I have never read something so vile on this site as this claim that some poor soul trying to get across a freeway with her worldly possessions was trying to thereby cause her own death.
When a CHP officer his wife two kids and brother in law were killed in a runaway Lexus, the family came in from out of town and settled for 10M. Four fairly young people, they project out what you are worth by how much you will earn. A lot depends on whether there is any immediate family left and how aggressive they are in court. Similar cases often settle for more, but if everyone is killed, or no one really cares, then the corporation lawyers do try to save the company some money.
It’s behind a pay wall at Barrons.com, but Adam Jonas and Brian Nowak – Morgan Stanley analysts – state that the “stock market is likely too aggressive on the pace of adoption” of autonomous vehicles and that ‘just 1% of “miles traveled” will be in a “fully autonomous,” fashion … by the year 2030.’ I think the truth is somewhere between these two and Mish’s bullish predictions.
Police reports on accidents between bicycles and cars in California aren’t worth spit. They get thrown out of court anyway. If you drive you better own a dashcam, if you walk own a head cam.
The pertinent issues was she homeless, bicycle with bags crossing in the middle of the street? Walking a bicycle across seven lanes, whew. However the crosswalk is not any better, the lights turn when you are halfway across and then you are in no mans land. Lawsuits are based on financial damages, if you have no job, and no prospect of getting a job, then you are worth zero. The fact that the car didn’t even make a stopping effort suggests the anti collision program isn’t working. Trouble can come from any direction.
I agree. This looks dangerous as hell to me, assuming humans are going to be in the area.
AWC – I added your comment to the article
The problem is when you get to court and you are suing a billion dollar multinational corporation. This will change litigation for sure. The plaintiff vs.a machine.
Occam’s Razor speculation: The poor lady was walking her bike while carrying groceries and in the semi-darkness stepped a few inches too close to the curb, while waiting for a chance to cross, and tumbling into the path of the vehicle before she…or the microprocessor(s) had a clue. I’d like to see the video and a time-stamped dump. My bet is they’ll show the computer braking violently, but out of time. If your head is hit by an object traveling 25 mph, you’re just as dead as if the object were going 45.
What kind of headlights do these cars have? Pure braking distance of a car from 38mph to a dead stop, is about 70 feet. From 38 to a speed low enough to be unlikely to kill anyone, shorter than that.
An autonomous car should be able to go from detecting a possible pedestrian to hammering the brakes in about no time and travelled distance at all. Heck, it should have been aware of the pedestrian’s movement towards the car’s path, before the pedestrian even left the sidewalk. At night, 10pm, approaching headlights should be VERY visible from that close.
Unless the pedestrian really did “jump out in front of the car,” it’s hard so see how the crash could have been so severe, assuming the car’s sensors and logic did work properly.
To add to the weirdness, there is plenty of swerve space available to the car, judging by the aerial photos. Meaning, unless the pedestrian really jumped out in front of it, it should have had time to swerve around her. One of the better-than-human features of these robots, is specifically their ability to be aware of, and track and predict the movement of, a multitude of objects, even when those are well outside the car’s intended path. They are already aware of where and when they can swerve, anyone approaching from the sides etc. IOW, “surprising” these things with a sudden move, really does take some doing, if their systems are working properly.
Legally, the pedestrian may have been at fault but I expect automated cars to, at least, brake if a pedestrian suddenly runs in front of one, even at night time.