Arizona suspends testing of Uber self-driving cars following crash. - Polidicks

https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/self-driving-uber-crash-arizona/ [quote]Arizona Governor Doug Ducey has suspended Uber’s authorization to test its self-driving cars on the state’s roads following last week’s crash in which a pedestrian died. In a letter to Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, Ducey said he found the video of the incident “disturbing and alarming,” adding that as governor, his top priority is public safety. He said public safety should also be the top priority for those operating autonomous-car technology, but said the fatal crash was “an unquestionable failure to comply with this expectation.” He finished by saying that he had instructed the Arizona Department of Transportation to suspend Uber’s self-driving tests in the state.[/quote]

Based on Arizona DoT statistics, a person has died in an automobile accident since this article was posted to Digital Trends yesterday and then posted to FP today. I'm very afraid that the this Uber crash news is going to hinder progress, even if the technology isn't perfected in 2018. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-traffic/2017/06/22/officials-car-accidents-killed-nearly-1000-arizona-last-year/418578001/

If automatic cars are performing worse than human drivers on a per mileage basis average then they should not be enabled on public roads.

The question of accountability, and whether we'll accept that accidents without a human driver responsible can happen, is a difficult one that we need to work out. The upside of accidents involving autonomous vehicles is that there will always be a ton of sensor data and logs available, meaning each incident can be analyzed in great detail and has the potential to contribute towards improving safety for everyone.

while I think a lot of statistics need accounting for, I think per-mileage isn't a great factor to take at face value when it seems a vast majority of self-driving testing is quarantined to small city driving instead of consistent highway commuting

This is pretty much the end of it for me. I love the idea of driverless cars, but statistically, they are still less safe then manual operated vehicles. No doubt the tech is developing quickly, we just have a bit further to go.

Wowie, more knee jerk reactions! Just what this country needs.

I hope that people understand that self-driving tech will improve as time goes on and don't just write it off after this. As well as that, there's a lot of factors at fault here and some of them are human. Self-driving cars should not be the only thing blamed for this crash.

As far as I can tell, Arizona hasn't banned Waymo or whatever from testing their cars. If you've looked at the footage, I don't think it's unreasonable to suspend Uber's program until an investigation has been done. Why didn't the car see cyclist with its LIDAR? Why was the driver so comfortable with having her attention anywhere but the road?

Wow are you stupid. They disabled the cars safety system. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-26/uber-disabled-volvo-suv-s-standard-safety-system-before-fatality

That latter bit is a large part of why I loathe self-driving cars. People are bad enough about being inattentive when they've got to at least turn that big round thing sticking out of the dashboard once in a while.

The entire point is that these vehicles will drive without input from a human at all, discarding the entire issue of inattentive drivers. Can't tell you how long that's gonna take, but it's gonna happen at some point. Until then they need drivers that pay attention all the time, though - I'd suggest two at a time, taking shifts.

The way people and our economy depend on personal transportation to function sort of makes it problematic to attempt to sharply raise the bar when it comes to who gets to drive cars. I mean, we should probably still implement compulsory recurring test and stricter laws anyway, but it's not gonna help the fact that humans are pretty shit in general at what driving requires. Public transport is a thing, yes, but that too will undergo automation eventually. We're not getting automated vehicles just because it's a cool new tech to have, it's just one part of society's massive shift towards letting machines handle stuff better.

I don't have a problem with this. They didn't ban all companies, just the one that has yet to explain why their software failed. And as the article states, Uber itself has voluntarily pulled its prototype vehicles off the road for the time being - hopefully until they can figure out what the hell went wrong. I doubt doubt that self-driving technology is going to get better, nor that there will be people trying to stop progress every step of the way for bullshit reasons. But once death is actually involved, not just unfounded paranoia, you have to take things very seriously - especially when the technology is new and not fully proven.

To be fair, if you are installing your own self-driving hardware suite, you are probably going to run your own safety system and disable any factory safety system. You don't want two safety systems potentially interfering with each other.

uhh statistically aren't they still hilariously safer than human operated vehicles?

Maybe I'm muddling my statistics. I thought the last thing I read showed autonomous vehicles with more accidents per mile than human vehicles, but thinking back I can't even remember where or when I read that.

Unless you totally automate all cars its going to take a long time. Computers are not good at handling dumb and illogical human choice.

Isn't that literally what I wrote, though?

Doug Ducey is a fucking moron. Just because you had one death due to an autonomous accident doesn't mean all testing should be suspended. Worse governor since the one he succeeded.