The fact that they came out with a statement instead of saying "we don't comment on ongoing investigations" makes it even more shady.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/police-treated-first-austin-bo...
The police in Georgetown about half an hour north of Austin went with his gut in one murder case - "it has to be someone the victim knew" and ignored physical evidence at the scene and the eyewitness testimony of the murder victim's son. Then the prosecutor kept working against the accused for the next 25 years and suppressed evidence. https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/the-innocent-man-part-...
I was surprised at that -- it doesn't seem to me that the police would have the technical knowledge of Uber's hardware and algorithms to categorically state that, let alone so quickly.
So whether or not the police understand self-driving systems is not relevant to the fundamental physics problem. The key question is how long was the ped visible.
I don't see how from a single forward-looking camera you want to deduce this crash was "physically impossible". That isn't even half of what we expect from human drivers. We expect them to swivel their head.
> Sensor Fusion typically merges LiDAR with stereoscopic camera feeds, the latter requiring ambient light.
So might LIDAR data get de-emphasized when there's too little light for the cameras?
It may well be that the Uber cars only have LIDAR and optical, but that doesn't have anything to do with sensor fusion.
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=ped+xing&source=lnms&tbm=...
Driving is a sensitive subject, people take it personal trying to do generalizations about drivers is just going to land you in a land of troubles, almost worse than profanity.
Still... stiff upper lip. Though I can't believe I'm getting downvoted for reminding people not to kill anybody while behind the wheel :-o
Edit: Sorry about the ambiguity. I wan't referring to "ped". But rather to the slang that's offensive to women.
noun a person who is excessively concerned with minor details and rules or with displaying academic learning.
Looks like it's too late to delete it, so we're stuck with it forever.
Please still do drive carefully!
It's too late to delete but I think it's worth it (for future readers) to say that offense isn't intended, and that that word is frowned upon by most HN users and mods.
https://twitter.com/NTSB_Newsroom/status/976215176323194880
I do think discussion is warranted because the Tempe Police have gone out of their way to share details and preliminary judgments about the case. Some of these details have been inaccurate, both for and against Uber's favor. But Tempe police officials are already going out of their way to downplay what their chief claimed:
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/federal-agencies-investi...
> Glover downplayed Moir's statements, saying some were taken "out of context" by the Chronicle. The chief disagrees with the Chronicle's headline, "Tempe police chief says early probe shows no fault by Uber," Glover said.
And yet the police were so quick to say that camera footage indicates that Uber was likely not at fault. It was so quick that it makes me inclined to think it's pretty obvious. However, after the SF Chronicle published its exclusive interview with the Tempe's chief of police, the Tempe Police PR person had to issue a statement that, "Tempe Police Department does not determine fault in vehicular collisions."
I'm not one to believe in conspiracies or to automatically suspect shadowy influence, so I want to believe that the the camera footage seems to argue that this was an unavoidable accident. But the evidence released so far argues against that, regardless of whether the victim's crossing was illegal or not. And why are the police making a judgment on this so soon in the first place, especially when the decision will be made by county law officials, and ostensibly after referring to Uber's full suite of sensor data?
https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/20/uber-fault-pedestrian-fa...