Watching the video, I'm convinced that person died for no good reason beyond Uber rushing tech out the door before it was ready. An alert human would have braked and swerved in that circumstance.

People do die from drunk driving, and those drivers go to jail because they fucked up in a huge way. That's no reason to give Uber a dead-person mulligan. Indeed, it's a reason that some Uber exec should perhaps be wearing an orange jumpsuit over this.

I'm all for self-driving cars, as done right deaths will go down. But that means we shouldn't introduce them until they are well-made enough that deaths actually go down.

It's likely that the accident still would have been fatal, or at least the pedestrian would have been seriously injured if the safety driver was driving. Based on the video there was only a second or two to react from the time the pedestrian stepped out of the shadows, and human reaction time varies from 0.7 to 3 seconds [1]. One study found the average driver's reaction time is 2.3 seconds.

[1] http://copradar.com/redlight/factors/index.html

Yes, but it is difficult to state that it would have been "likely" fatal, and even sevral fractures are IMHO a big improvement over death, the whole point is not about the "average" braking time (BTW that same study gives 1.64 seconds average for "steering away" which is probably what most human drivers would have done in a similar situation, instead of braking or instead of only braking), it is the peaks that count.

I mean, it is about the (rightful) expectation that an automated system is safer (faster, more reactive) than the best you can find (not the average, the best) "in nature" among a random set of drivers, just like the state codes (correctly) take the worse case in the sample or however incereases the recommendation to three seconds.

If you play the game suggested on the same site you gave a link to and deliberately count up to three before clicking, you get:

Reaction time: 2916.00ms

Reaction speed age: 89 years old

Playing fairly, you are likely to get values in the range 300-500 ms.

Here is another paper:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233039156_Brake_Rea...

that puts it back to around 1-1.5 seconds or however maximum at 1.8 seconds in the very worst cases.

You also mis-cite your numbers. Reaction time to braking in that study was 2.2 seconds, but steering is 1.6 seconds, and beginning to slow is 1.0-1.3 s. Those numbers are also from a study environment; it's plausible to me that people would be more relaxed in a test than if they see a live human appear in front them.

Are you familiar with Threat Image Projection? It's a system where baggage scanning machines put in images of fake threats into real baggage. Why is this necessary? It's because regular baggage doesn't have enough in the way of actual threats to keep operators alert.

I think it's the same deal with being a backup driver for a robot car. Sure, they should be ready to take over when the car asks for help, and it's great if they notice a problem and stop the car. But I don't think expecting them to have this kind of reaction time is realistic.

(That may not stop Uber from throwing the backup driver under the bus, though.)

It's not like the car hopped the curb.

However, whether or not a driver is civilly liable for an accident usually doesn't even care about the right of way. For example, if a pedestrian is standing in the middle of the road attempting to block traffic. They have no right to be there, however, it is not ok to run them over.

When you're going to jaywalk, ensure that the next car is far enough away to where it doesn't matter if they stop. That's the correct way that would've saved this person's life without any further analysis.

I'm taking issue with this:

>that person died for no good reason beyond Uber rushing tech out the door before it was ready

Well, no. They died because they lost their gamble on an unguided crossing where the oncoming car did not stop.

We are now analyzing why the car didn't stop, but notice how no charges were pressed.

It's true that jaywalking is a gamble, but so is crossing a street with the light. Leaving the house is a gamble. That doesn't mean we can blame the victim of a collision for leaving the house. It can be simultaneously true that A) jaywalking is not always a great idea, and B) the Uber car should have avoided this collision.

i wonder... if the person crossing had been behind an obstruction and stepped out right in front of the car, would everyone still blame the car or the driver for hitting the person crossing?

If the car was speeding, you might be able to make that argument, but I don't think anyone has made that claim yet.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/police-chief-said-uber-...