Re: Humans
To be fair, the indecision made it difficult for the software to predict the future trajectory of the unknown object, and hence whether the car was on a collision course at all. Not that it matters - a human driver* who could see something up ahead that they couldn't identify would back off the throttle to buy time until they'd figured out what the hell it was. The uber car just carried on (and through) regardless of the obstruction, presumably because the software spec didn't want the car to suffer from "unnecessary" delays (c.f. the reason why the built-in automatic braking system was turned off).
This suggests that the Uber development model prioritises shorter travel times above safety, which makes this story even more alarming than it already was. That philosophy doesn't make sense unless we're talking about a morally bankrupt corporation that's trying to minimise staff costs and to hell with everything else...
...oh right, yeah, that makes perfect sense actually.
* the 99% of human drivers who aren't complete psychopaths, at any rate
Biting the hand that feeds IT
