The analysis I've seen suggested that the self-driving system in the Uber vehicle had 4 or 5 seconds to detect the pedestrian crossing the road in front of them. Driving into a pedestrian on the road in that circumstance is /not/ acceptable for any driver, be they human or automated.
Don't be fooled by the video footage Uber released from the in-car camera - the quality is appalling. Compare it with the dashcam footage taken by people driving the same road at the same time & you'll see that visibility should have been perfect & a human driver would easily have avoided the pedestrian who was doing something that all of do every day - crossing the road.
Not only did the pedestrian instigate that, the failsafe(which are supposed to be very simple to back up complex and more fallable systems) to not getting hit and killed by a car was entirely in the pedestrians area of responsibility; don't walk into traffic.
Unless assisted driving is close to near perfection (that is, it becomes a true auto-pilot without the need of assistance), we're going to see much worse numbers of accidents on the streets for assisted-driving cars.
Assisted-driving requires the same, if not more attention, as it essentially becomes like supervising an inexperienced driver that is prone to make stupid mistakes in otherwise normal circumstances. If you ever had a kid, you should be pretty familiar with how stressful this is.
But thanks to the PR spin, the driver is led to think that he can keep less attention, until he pays none at all. Assisted driving is even more boring than regular driving, lowering the attention span.
What could possibly go wrong?
We all owe each other a duty of care. Excuses about 'she just walked out in front of me' are just that: excuses. The driver in this case had plenty of time to slow down and avoid a collision & simply chose not to do so. That's inexcusable.
The fact that the driver was a pile of self-driving code doesn't change that one iota.
No. Children wander into roads. Drivers have a responsibility to keep an eye out for the unexpected. They are faultless only if they were driving responsibly and had no opportunity to react — neither of which were the case with the Uber.
When reading something like this in sci-fi, I always thought that the stories where over the top and tongue in cheek, to make some other point. Now I see they were real.
Companies are allowed to create robots that kill people. Then we sit around here and discuss how much of the killing is on the the robot's manufacturer, the robot's owner, the street lights and the victim.
You forgot one entity and I think it is a major one.
The people of the world who just stood by and let sdv's on the street with no sort of regulations and tests.
I posted this [1] after the Uber incident, Look at the awesome response from HN community that I have received.
That is not to say CalTrans did not break some contractual obligations to replace that infrastructure in a reasonable timeframe, and shouldn't be held responsible in a commercial sense. But they are not in any way liable for the accident, the missing hardware was not a reason to stop traffic and all such devices are offered on a best effort, good to have, basis.
in both the driver was supposed not to let the car drive itself unsupervised but only in one the driver was paid to do so
Just Say'n
EDIT: While I believe Tesla and the driver are the ultimate source of the accident, I believe CalTrans messed up worse with that barrier. At least Tesla owns up to the limitations and warns drivers to stay in control, but why the hell was that barrier not replace d?! What systemic mediocracy is playing out there that they have road work signs with dates 3 years old on them, and a critical safety barrier is just missing with traffic flow as usual?!