Robo-Uber T-boned, rolls onto side, self-driving rides halted Uber's taken its nascent fleet of self-driving cars off the road after one rolled in an accident. As shown in the Tweets below, an autonomous Uber Volvo found itself in an untenable position. Police in Tempe, Arizona, where the crash occurred say the Uber-mobile was struck by a car that failed to yield. Uber-mobile t-boned, …
Pull the fleet? Why?! From this incident, Uber doesn't seem to have done anything wrong.
Are they being super-paranoid about accidents and over-regulation, or using this as an excuse for something else? If the former, I don't welcome the day when my self-driving car won't take me to the station because the fleet's "Grounded" because someone in LA had a prang.
Probably the deal they made with the state to allow the cars on the road at all required taking them down in the event of any accident until a full investigation is complete. That's entirely reasonable at this early stage.
Even if they didn't have to, given all the negative press they've had in the past couple months, they would probably prefer to show they are willing to err on the side of caution.
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Pull the fleet? Why?! From this incident, Uber doesn't seem to have done anything wrong.
I suspect they need to work on the question "WTF are we going to do when other users do NOT follow the rules?". We don't know from our desks what happened, but the trial cars record everything and I suspect Uber may have discovered that the car may have had enough data to predict a problem at a point where it was still possible to avoid it, but had no exception handling programmed to correctly act on that data.
That's the difference between self-drive and even a moderately talented driver at the wheel: the latter is more likely to notice someone making a mistake (read: NOT following the pre-programmed routine) and react accordingly, out of sheer self preservation..
I'll give self driving cars 18 months before its back to the drawing board...
I don't see why. So far there does not seem to be evidence that self-drive cars perform worse than human drivers in the same circumstances, though I am sure there will always be those who cling to the notion that 'if a human had been driving it wouldn't have happened'.
It's reasonable and responsible to take the fleet off the road while that's checked out, but I am not convinced the self-drive was worse than a human here. Sure; drop a gear and accelerate away, steer onto the sidewalk; all imagined escape plans a human could conjure up which a self-drive will be accused of not having the wits to do. But, in reality; success of such escape plans is down mostly to luck and whether one even sees it coming.
A short browsing of YouTube reveals a vast range of human drivers in various countries all around the world doing some very dimwitted things behind the wheel of a car. It will take a whole lot of doing for self-driving cars to match the capacity of human drivers to do something dumb. This is only newsworthy, if it is, because the not-at-fault car was being operated by a computer. I would understand if the self-drive car was at fault, but the way these get covered, one of these cars could be parking in a parking lot, idle, some idiot could hit the parked car, and someone would still demand the whole fleet be taken of the road (and, ironically, parked in a parking lot) until its determined the self-drive wasn't at fault.
"A short browsing of YouTube reveals a vast range of human drivers in various countries all around the world doing some very dimwitted things behind the wheel of a car."
I ALSO hear stories of drivers who act out of reflex, and because of it avoid an accident. They don't even know HOW or WHY they did it, indicating they acted SUBconsciously, intuitively. It's hard to teach intuition because we don't even KNOW how our intuition works: it all works reflexively, without our conscious thought.
You start by identifying the badge on the bonnet / boot and making assumptions about the driver from there.
Nope. That would mislead you into considering some drivers benign and/or competent, which is a major mistake. As a matter of fact, a really GOOD driver doesn't even consider himself infallible and thus leave a bit more margin for error. I've tried the badge profiling thing for a bit, but it's as reliable as US customs passenger profiling: not at all.
Secondly, I always get out of the way of people that want to go really fast. Not only could they have an emergency that I'm unaware of, but it also makes for less stress and it's better to have people like that in front where you can see them then behind you which requires you to take your eyes off the traffic to check. I'm not exactly a slow driver, but I generally stick to the speed limit because that's more relaxing than having to watch out for policemen and speed cameras (I love cruise control :) ).
"Not only could they have an emergency that I'm unaware of, but it also makes for less stress and it's better to have people like that in front where you can see them then behind you which requires you to take your eyes off the traffic to check."
In the US, there's a more practical reason, too. We call it "letting the rabbit run." Letting a speeder pass means it's the car the cops spot first (and will subsequently stop), meaning you can play looser. I've also heard rumors of trucking convoys employing a "rabbit" car at the head of the convoy that lets the whole convoy drive faster, figuring if the cops act, it'll be on the rabbit, and the time they save is worth more than the speeding ticket.
Presumably incidents like this are learning experiences and there will be teams of drivers on their test roads trying to launch themselves into the sides of autonomous Ubers to make the unpredictable more predictable and improve avoidance strategies.
I'm not sure the Uber car could have avoided it. From what I've read the Uber was in one of the three lanes heading south, my guess is the far right lane and with that I will continue to present one possible scenario.
The person turning left which hit the Uber may have had their view partially blocked by another car, possibly the Ford SUV in the photo, in a lane adjacent to the Uber car and was trying to get across quickly perhaps because the gap in traffic was small. Once that car has gunned it to sprint through the left turn the Uber car gets t-boned toward the back end which sets it spinning, impacting the curb on the far side of the intersection sideways which tips it on it's side and it continues to rotate until it comes to a stop against the Ford SUV.
In such an event, the Uber car would also likely be blinded by the adjacent vehicle, assuming it was tall like the Ford, and unable to detect the impending impact until there was little if any time for it to calculate and react. Of course that's just one possibility.
I'm not sure the Uber car could have avoided it. From what I've read the Uber was in one of the three lanes heading south, my guess is the far right lane and with that I will continue to present one possible scenario.
The important question (for which answers are conspicuously absent due to a dearth of facts on the incident) is if this was an accident that a human driver would have been able to avoid due to a healthy lack of belief in the competence of other drivers. Any advanced driving course coaches participants to run excessive "what-if" scenarios for all drivers, exactly because anyone can make a mistake.
The purpose of these test drives is partially to test, but it's more to clock up "xxx miles without an accident" mileage because the concept still has to be accepted in public. If the accident video shows a combination of factors which an average driver would have recognised as potential risk it weakens the argument for mixing self drive with human drivers.
2 previous autonomous vehicle accidents were also the result of the human occupied vehicle forcing a bad move and hoping that the self preservation of the driver of the other vehicle would allow them to get away with it. Downside is all the autonomous vehicles do not appear to have human-level self preservation built in. On the plus side, get enough of these vehicles on the road and it'll make the arseholes think twice before barging across 3 lanes of traffic or turning suddenly without indicators...
Friend of my girlfriend had a Volvo XC90 drive head on in to her. She was in a Daewoo Matiz (so quite the size difference). They were doing 20mph, the other driver about the same. The Volvo driver was more interested in a house for sale than in the direction of her vehicle.
The front of the Daewoo was flat. The front of the car push down like a giant stepped on it. There was nothing wrong with the Volvo. I think it had a scuff on the bumper, but while the Daewoo had to be towed back to the friends house, the Volvo was driven off like nothing happened.
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Last week my car was written off by somebody rear-ending me while I was waiting at the entrance to a roundabout waiting for the roundabout to be clear for me to set off. Not sure what I can learn from it. I've already trained myself into the habit of holding on the footbrake if there is nobody behind me so my brake lights are on. Sh*t happens, and self-drive developers will discover exactly the same.
Amazingly, the other car was unscratched and was able to drive off after checks. With mine the rear wheel was crushed into the car structure stopping the car from moving.
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