Police release video of the fatal Uber self-driving car accident
A few days ago news broke out that there had been a fatal accident involving a pedestrian and a self-driving Uber car with a passenger inside.
I personally was not aware that Uber has already started autonomous driving but I was not surprised as I've heard much good about them and that the technology has progressed a lot in recent years. The google selfdriving project called Waymo had been tested for over 1 million miles in 2015 and according to wikipedia these were the reasons to its crashes:
In June 2015, Google founder Sergey Brin confirmed that there had been 12 collisions as of that date, eight of which involved being rear-ended at a stop sign or traffic light, two in which the vehicle was side-swiped by another driver, one of which involved another driver rolling through a stop sign, and one where a Google employee was manually driving the car.
As you can see not a single time was it the car or the technology that had malfunctioned or was to blame.
The recent collision awoke a lot of controversy and people wanting to abort the autonomous service of Uber but I am not so sure if this is the best way to go.
Tempe Police of Arizona where the fatal collision occurred released the dashcam of the accident today, here is a link to the source on Twitter
if you are too lazy and want to watch it in the post I re-uploaded the short video onto youtube, warning though as the content are moments into the collision.
A user named "Little_Froto" on Reddit did the math explaining that even with a human driver, in this situation they would've not been able to avoid the accident.
White center lines = 10' each
Empty space between lines = 30'
Distance traveled in FPS "Feet Per Second" at 35 MPH = 52.5'
Road gradient roughly 0%
Reaction distance = 34'
Breaking distance at 35 MPH - 62'
Stopping distance at 35 MPH - 100'
When the pedestrians shoes first become visible in the video there is approximately 59' between the car and the pedestrian, in 1 second the car will have already covered 52.5' of that gap leaving 6.5' left to stop the car.
In order for a human driver, or the driver in this car to have avoided this collision by merely hitting the brakes and traveling in a straight line, "as is the reaction when startled by something on the road" there would have needed to be at least another 127.5' of distance between the car and the pedestrian.
For all the posts and articles that I have seen bashing the driver and Uber because this could have been avoided, it really couldn't have, the laws of physics would not have even allowed this to have been avoided in the best possible scenario.
With this in mind I don't agree that we should stop autonomous driving because of these accidents. Who knows how many accidents have been avoided self-driving so far, cutting off the technology or saying that "it's not there yet" is not a good way forward in my opinion.
What are your views on this situation, Steemians?
Well the truth is that humans allow fear to take hold and overwhelm them. We prefer doing the same old things even when it's not the best option rather than embracing New things.
Like people would always say the devil you know is better than the angel you don't know. This could be the reason for the clamor to abolish self driving cars but is that the answer ? NO!
I have watched the video and to he honest, there couldn't have been anything possibly done. The car was just a few inches away from collision when it happened. I blame the person who was hit for not looking before crossing and for crying out loud it was dark and the headlamp of the car was on. How come he didn't see the car coming before crossing.
Now if I am to attack the car, I would say, every car has two lighting modes.
Obviously the car was using the normal headlamp mode which allows you see images at a shorter distance. Well people often use this when they are driving on a narrow road which can only take two cars because ,using the full headlamp mode can disrupt the view of the driver coming in the opposite direction. But if the car had been using the full headlamp mode, it would have seen the man crossing from a longer distance away.
Actually this shouldn't call for the stoppage of autonomous driving but for a return to the drawing board to look for better ways of improvement. This should be a driving force to the company for improvements . We should embrace autonomous driving because it is the future we have always asked for.
I am completely agree with you @acidyo.Because there is million's of accident take place all over the world every day.If you make a calculation then you will find it very safe.What we seen in this video it make's us believe that under this circumstance it's just a regular accident like any other by human' driving.Self driving car is not demand of the time,we have to move on and we have to find a more secure way of avoiding thosre accident.Thank's for sharing.
Maybe educating people, but that's already being done and there have been cars everywhere for many decades. This problem will probably stay foreeeever. People are not as good as machines at decision-making on the road.
The problem will be gone when non-self driving cars are made illegal or only regulated to a few zones like tracks and closed neighborhoods.
Don't worry. Those who condemn the autonomous vehicles from this accident are only those who don't know enough of the technology and haven't understood Google's autonomous driving results.
There are countless accidents every day due to human drivers, yet only every once in a while do we get the news of a new autonomous crash.
This is just due to the disproportion (every ONE accident is news) and the novelty of the technology. People are always wary when something new comes. Be it cryptocurrencies, the internet,the phone, planes , etc.
Hello @acidyo
Great of you to have brought this issue to public debate.
From the wonderful mathematical view expressed by Little_Froto, I think the tech isn't to be blamed. One must also consider the fact that nothing in the universe is 100% hutch free. So there are some element of error in everything...
Hence, in my opinion, I don't thing these isolated cases are good enough ground to halt the technology.
Thanking you for your support always
@eurogee, the founder of @euronation community & The Host, Show Us Your Witnesses Weekly Contest
We don't stop human driving cars just because of one accident. We can't just pull the plug on autonomous cars because of one accident. If they were extensively adopted and the rate of accidents increased noticeably, then it might be worth scraping them. But I think there is a pretty good chance that the rate of accidents will decrease dramatically, even if it doesn't reach zero.
According to this video, truly, even a professional driver can do nothing about it. Where did that pedestrian come from for Chrissake? Except the car headlights were dim. Then the road itself was too dark in that event.
I love the idea of self driving cars. I'm sure the developers have put so much work into its efficiency to and it's safety. If drivers will obey traffic rules and pedestrians be more careful, I think we should have a good experience with this technology.
Remember that self-driving cars have many ways to perceive. If I remember correctly, there are motion sensors, an infrared analysis of the road, etc.
Besides, every sliver of light is a lot for a perfected receiver, depending on the technology. I don't think that the dim lights could affect the cars performance all that negatively.
Oh. I'm still looking at it from a manual sense. I really do not know about the car's perception but even with motion sensors and the infrared sensors, it is limited to a particular distance.
I believe self driving cars are here to stay but first, a thorough enlightenment should be given to people, so pedestrians and manual drivers do what is right, just as the cars are programmed by default to obey traffic rules. If a driver disobeys traffic rules when a self driving car is present, an accident is likely to occur.
Accidents are bound to happen when a technology is new and i still believe self driving cars are safer than human drivers, how many self driving car accidents have been there this year vs how many human driving cars accident have happened?
Self driving cars are the future and they are probably already safer than human drivers.
It is a pity the accident was fatal. But I do not think self driving cars should be taken off the roads in such countries @acidyo. But if it were in Nigeria, Lagos where I live, don't even mention it.
I hope such fatals don't happen anymore but how could this one have been avoided with the stats given. All the best to Uber I love their services.
self driving cars are still in testing phase and they need time until they will be available for commercial use. Uber is also planing to launch flying car and it will be amazing to see that flying car will become commercial or not.
As time goes by I think autonomous driving might be safer than human. For humans there are many factors that can affect their driving situations, however, for autonomous driving it is more consistent.