Your Self-Driving Car Will Be Programmed to Kill You—Deal With It

First pedestrian death from a self driving car occurs in Arizona.
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5aafeabbe4b0697dfe193348

The article cites a brilliant CYA statement from Uber: "The company told HuffPost it has halted all of its autonomous vehicle testing in other cities as it works to understand what caused the accident."

Is there really any question as to what caused the accident?

Maybe the pedestrian had a heart attack, and fell in front of the autonomous vehicle. Hey it could happen.

No. No it couldn’t.

Dashcam footage from the accident on the news tonight. A human driver would not have been able to do any better.  

The stupid stupid woman was walking her bicycle across a 4-lane road in the pitch dark. She was not under a street lamp. She was not wearing reflective clothing. She was not in a crosswalk. She walked right into traffic. She was visible for only a fraction of a second before she was struck.

She deserved to die for her stupidity. If I was investigating I’d rule the self-driving car was not at fault.

The "safety" driver was looking down before the impact; probably a fucking cell phone. Had she been paying attention and was even a half-way qualified driver, she could have seen the woman with the bike before she rolled in front of her.  People can actually turn their heads and see what is to the side of the car. Really, they can. -1 for the driver.

The driver did not have her hands on the steering wheel, as is required. -2 for the driver.

The car did not detect the woman with the bike. Even when the woman was clearly visible in the headlights, the car made no attempt to turn or to apply the brakes. -1 for the car.

NoCo wrote:

She deserved to die for her stupidity.

If stupidity was deserving of the death sentence, half of the population would be employed to execute the other half.

What's wrong with that?

Wait a minute - I'll think of something. Stupidity is in the eye of the beholder much of the time.

Here's one: A person has to be stupid to put his life in the hands of some unknown programmer.

No. The woman who died didn’t “put her life in the hands of some programmer.” She had no way of knowing the car she stepped out in front of had no driver.

Her stupidity manifested by stepping in front of a car going 40 mph in the pitch dark. Regardless of who, or what, was driving.

Darwinism at work.

I wasn't talking about that woman. I was talking about "drivers."

Anyone who gets into a car and depends on the car to take care of him or her, is a fool.
The pedestrian in this case was just collateral damage of Uber's foolishness.

It needs to be understood that there is no such thing as an intelligent car or a self-driving car.
The car is being controlled by software created by people. Period. You want to put your life in the hands of those programmers, feel free. I will resist the temptation (actually, I am not at all tempted).

When you get on a bus, you're trusting the bus driver. When you get on a plane, you're trusting the pilot. When you get on a roller coaster, you're trusting the ride operator...

I don't know where I'm going with this.

Notice how all of your "you trusts" are people?

You apparently do not understand the limitations of computers.

Every time you step into an elevator....

Every time you run your credit card through a reader....

Every time you walk across a bridge....

What is the point of your last post?

Computers are more fragile than most people realize. Ignoring the occasional hardware failure, soft errors are common and can be disastrous under critical conditions.

Aplha particles and cosmic rays can cause errors in data or programs. This is seldom a problem  and is resolved by a reboot, but that's of no comfort when the error occurs while the computer-controlled device is moving at sixty mile per hour in traffic.

More info.

_Howard wrote:

What is the point of your last post?

Every day we trust our physical safety to electronic circuits (elevators) or unseen engineers (bridges) and our financial well-being to credit card readers without thinking twice. I think self-driving cars are just an extension of that.

In Seattle we have a Monorail that runs from downtown to the Seattle Center fairgrounds. When it was opened (for the World's Fair) in 1962 there were "coach operators" who greeted the passengers and opened and closed the doors (I think). The actual driving from one end of the track to the other was probably always automated. Shortly after the fair ended, the monorail started running autonomously, and ran from 1964-1971 without any accidents. In 1971 a brake failed and the train came in for a hard stop, injuring 26 passengers. In 2004 one of the cars overheated and caught fire. In 2005 the two trains collided (two minor injuries) due to timing issues on a tight curve. Otherwise this system has run without incident for 56 years.

At Sea-Tac Airport there is an underground shuttle train that goes between the main terminal, the North Satellite terminal and the South Satellite terminal. It has run automatically since 1975 with no accidents, the oldest automated train in the United States.

Granted, running on a track (or rail) is a whole lot simpler than negotiating public streets with cross-traffic and jaywalkers. But Seattle has a history of automated transport, so it seems totally realistic to me.

NoCo wrote:

Granted, running on a track (or rail) is a whole lot simpler than negotiating public streets with cross-traffic and jaywalkers.

And that is a huge fucking difference. That is, I believe, the major problem with so-called self-driving cars. I have stated before that I have no problem with the concept of autonomous cars, but I do not accept that they are safe under the current conditions. If we had roadways designed for and limited to self-driving cars, then fine. But they are not now, and may never be, safe sharing today's roads with meat-operated vehicles and pedestrians.

Once cars are self-driving, what's the point of insurance?

Quote :

If nobody’s driving, why do we need auto insurance? Premiums—and company revenue—are based on a driver’s likelihood of being in an accident, as well as actual crash rates. With more than 90 percent of accidents caused by human error, taking the driver out of the equation is going to mean big changes for insurers.

When the inevitable crashes occur with self-driving cars -- and you're right, Howard, they will -- who will be "at blame"?  Will victims sue the car company, the self-driving software company, the programmer?

It seems to me a certain (small) number of casualties will be inevitable.  It'll never be zero.  As long as stupid people do stupid things like stepping front of a car in the pitch dark, there will be casualties.

Perhaps accidents involving self-driving cars should be treated like accidental drownings, accidental falls, accidental electrocutions.  Not the fault of the river, or the building, or the electrical company (assuming reasonable safety precautions were in place).  Our present legal situation with cars, where the driver is 100% responsible for whatever happens, will have to be rethought when there's no driver.

NoCoPilot wrote:

When the inevitable crashes occur with self-driving cars -- and you're right, Howard, they will -- who will be "at blame"?  Will victims sue the car company, the self-driving software company, the programmer?

I can envision a forty-page addendum to the car purchase agreement which will absolve all persons and companies involved of any responsibility (except for the purchaser/driver, of course).

NoCoPilot wrote:

It seems to me a certain (small) number of casualties will be inevitable.  It'll never be zero.  As long as stupid people do stupid things like stepping front of a car in the pitch dark, there will be casualties.

But you seem to have predicted self-driving cars which are so brilliant and fast-responding as to prevent such occurrences.

NoCoPilot wrote:

...the driver is 100% responsible for whatever happens, ...

That's not correct.

Apparently, your new Boeing is also programmed to kill you.

Pish posh. It was entirely the ground's fault, getting in the way of the aircraft.