For people questioning the road visibility: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/police-chief-said-uber-victim-came-from-the-shadows-dont-believe-it/

Yeah the reality of the situation is even worse for Uber. If you already looked at the TV footage from the aftermath which is much, much brighter...regardless of TV camera mojo, that road is so well lit that she must have been visible by human eyes from a MILE away on that road. Urban street lighting doesn't get much better than that. Even if the driver's eyes weren't adapted to the dark because she'd been staring at a lit phone screen, the lighting conditions should have been more than adequate for both the driver and that Uber car. Night vision assistance software on a Mercedes/Audi/BMW/Cadillac would have already identified her from at least 100-200 meters distance and ultimately ring a bell after highlighting her on the viewscreen. Not to mention their anti-collision radars would have stopped those cars, including what's on modern Volvo's. I don't know WTH Uber/nVidia are doing with those Uber car Volvo's but they've definitely screwed up the existing assistance systems badly. Not a single modern car available today with what are now common collision protection systems would have hit that pedestrian. It's probably why Jen Hsun Huang proudly present a 'CAR GPU' then 'clusters four of them' then within six months announces the next chip and clusters four of those again and only to announce even more new chips to come and a three year period before he thinks he can let cars drive autonomously from A to B training them with VR. So WTF were those Uber cars doing on the road? Marketing?!?

yeeeman:

I am sorry to say, but at 60kph, an attentive driver would at least turned the wheel as fast as possible to the left and step on the brakes. We cannot judge visibility only based on footage because our eyes have much better vision on dark conditions compared to that dash cam.

while I did not see the video its a machine you cant scare it to drive better nor does it any feel remorse it is for sure made to stay in lanes and not make emergency maneuvers the driving level seems to be a teenager first finding the gas pedal with old lady vision with the claimed "super sensors" they are working on I hope it tightens up the driving ability some what it would be hard to keep this from ever happening again since every driving level gets into accidents but some do avoid them better I think California starts testing unmanned cars with no manual controls in a few weeks I feel bad for the lady and if no dwi or speeding/texting I normally feel bad for the driver if its very hard to call on video in real time you could not say a person could stop for certain * just seen how brite it was in the posted vids but the area was different in the pictures? 1 other thing were the vids made the day of or after because around here someone gets hit at night and they rush to fix street lights or city lighting .

Perhaps heat sensor would've saved her? Dunno...

wait I just seen the vid I can see the shadow of the lady from the headlights in the road, the vid on yt that is posted of the same area. no way could you see a defined shadow with that much light plus the Interior vid shows no such lights on in the roadway, so all the cameras were not working?. not sure whats up with that

wavetrex:

Most likely a human driver would have ran over the pedestrian as well. There's hundreds or thousands of deadly accidents every week all over the world which aren't making the news anymore, because ... well, we got used to the fact that cars cause fatalities. But when a self-driving does it, SHOCK, HORROR, a robot car hit some dumbass who crossed a busy street far from the crosswalk in the middle of the night without bothering to care to look if any cars are coming. Police reports are saying that NO CAR could have avoided that accident, human driven or not. Because PHYSICS.

Stuff like this boils my blood. People are so afraid of technology that even when all the odds are stacked against it, people take any chance they get to say "see, this is why we can't trust it!" even though a human driver would not have fared better. Same goes for that accident Tesla had, where the sun glare completely blinded its sensors. When you look at the camera view, there's no way a human driver would've been able to see either. And yet, people treated it as though the car is unquestionably inept and unsafe. Yes, it's a shame people die during testing phases, but even for incomplete software, it's a hell of a lot better than any of us could hope to be.

What we really need is another video of the actual accident, why is a woman walking her bike across a road(not at a intersection)? I do not think Uber's video is useful as it only shows one sided what happened, I saw the video on the news(I'm on slow internet). She did not see the car till it almost hit her or the last second, I'd think had she seen the car she would of ran across or headed back. Of course a few people are gonna die till this stuff is perfected, like the self driving truck. Real World testing...........

AI if not hacked or broken is more reliable than humans, because human behavior or nature is purely unpredictable. I don't see any problems here. Nvidia acts like a non science company. I dare to question their degrees and doctorates there.

Why halt development just because of one maniac walking in the street?

RzrTrek:

Why halt development just because of one maniac walking in the street?

Crossing the street? Lol.. Probably halting until an investigation is complete as to why the system didn't see her.

I personally am PRO technology and hope these problems are getting worked out, and that is especially because I can't drive (medical condition). I'm really hoping that one day I will be able to go places in a driverless car, something which right now I can't do. So it really saddens me when stuff like this delays this necessary progress. But ignoring personal opinions, it's about the OVERALL state of things, that human drivers kill A LOT of pedestrains all the time, and it's mostly the fault of both (driver and pedestrian), and advanced computers could reduce that number by huge amounts, making an accident like this seem like world-worthy news. ~~~ What did I see happening in this case ? - Person behind the wheel was OBVIOUSLY texting during the event ( https://twitter.com/TempePolice/status/976585098542833664 ) - She was not paying ANY attention on the road. Text & Drive accident. Wasn't her job to watch the road and act on events during the testing? Negligence @ work. - Car hardware/software failed, did not take any action to avoid accident - Woman crossing was traversing on an inappropriate location ( random place, no markings, anything ). Nobody would expect someone crossing at that location - The same woman crossing was also not paying attention to the road whatsoever, she might as well be looking at her phone ? She didn't even TRY to slow down or jump or anything, simply walked with her bike right in front of the car, looking in the other direction (or downwards). Who's most guilty in my opinion ? 1) That poor soul who died. It all started with her crossing like an idiot in an inappropriate place. 2) Supervision driver, who was texting - She's currently the legal "driver" of the car, no matter of electronic enhancements. The video clearly shows she wasn't paying attention to the road I don't blame the technology whatsoever ! It's NOT the car's fault ! The entire purpose of the tests are to determine faults in the hardware/software. We don't blame a gun for launching a bullet at somebody. We blame the person who pulled the trigger !

oh that bitch was texting? what a c this lady may have came out of no where but think if it was a wandering young kid or a cow doing the same. fix that sht and make sure there are no cell phones on board. whats the sense in testing with a human on board if they become pre occupied first time I ever tried to text and drive I almost took out 3 parked cars so I don't do that any more. people died getting to the moon but they did not give up but sure as day it was a set back. still spotty if I can admit the bright light vids into play

A human driver would have done the same in 99% of cases, but the fault is 100% the victim's. No driver would have gone to jail for running someone over in this situation unless drunk/speeding. Now this doesn't mean that the car sensors can't be improved to overcome even situations like this, but the media bashing for autonomous cars is like always, totally overblown. Literally thousands of people die of similar car accidents every single day. My first lesson as a kid was to learn how to properly cross the street...

cowie:

still spotty if I can admit the bright light vids into play

Solfaur:

A human driver would have done the same in 99% of cases... Now this doesn't mean that the car sensors can't be improved to overcome even situations like this

If you buy a Volvo like that, it will ALWAYS stop -so 100% of the time- for any kind of obstruction like that, as its LIDAR based (so it doesn't need light or clear vision) collision prevention system is matured, decade old tech...and car/pedestrian collisions don't get any more straightforward than this. So now Uber have killed someone with a car that would have 100% of the time avoided the collision if Uber hadn't tampered with it.

Texter:

If you buy a Volvo like that, it will ALWAYS stop -so 100% of the time- for any kind of obstruction like that, as its LIDAR based (so it doesn't need light or clear vision) collision prevention system is matured, decade old tech...and car/pedestrian collisions don't get any more straightforward than this. So now Uber have killed someone with a car that would have 100% of the time avoided the collision if Uber hadn't tampered with it.

You don't think Uber's system is based on a singular 2D camera that only sees in RGB, do you? That camera view is nothing more than that - just a camera. It's basically just there for record keeping. It's not possible to have a self-driving system using a single forward-facing camera, let alone one without night vision.

Solfaur:

My first lesson as a kid was to learn how to properly cross the street...

The person must have literally never looked right to see the advancing headlights People dumb, so let's make the machines smarter

Solfaur:

A human driver would have done the same in 99% of cases, but the fault is 100% the victim's. My first lesson as a kid was to learn how to properly cross the street...

scatman839:

People dumb, so let's make the machines smarter

When I was kid, I did not have to look left or right when crossing street. You knew exactly where cars are, what is their direction and speed. They were noisy. Today, they are silent death, so I do look 😀 @Solfaur : You should check reality of that street. It raises question if that Dashcam was so damn bad or if recording was altered. Because on that video, streetlamp "supposedly" does not provide enough light to illuminate itself and sidewalk right beneath it. Buildings with regular lights inside at which people work appear as dim as candles. When you see videos from other people in same place...

not even a person would be able to stop in time avoid that, but camera should be able to pick this stuff out alot easier then human, I not really sure what i think about self driving cars, On the one hand I dont drive should this could be good thing, then again I dont like the idea of everything being connect to internet or some hub, makes thing much easier to "manuplate"

Texter:

collision prevention system

Forget cars. They should develop collision prevention system for people, in the shape of a smartphone app: Ding-Ding ! (Notification): " You're about to walk across a busy street in an inappropriate location and be smashed to bits by incoming traffic. Do you wish to die in the next 15 seconds ? Yes / No "

wavetrex:

Forget cars. They should develop collision prevention system for people, in the shape of a smartphone app:

At least in some countries, jaywalking is illegal. I know, it's not the same thing (nor does it actually help), but sadly, people would just override/ignore it to avoid the notification like they do with seatbelts or safety googles or Clippy.

Do you wish to die in the next 15 seconds ? Yes / No "

lol, now I'm imagining Clippy asking that, except paraphrased as "It looks like you're trying to kill yourself. Do you need assistance?" Ironically, you then kill yourself just to get away from Clippy.