Uber suspends self-driving car tests after pedestrian death

[Boggy Man]

There are other issues with self-driving cars. It seems that if a car in front of you changes lanes and a stationary vehicle is then ahead of you, the self driving car will keep going at full speed, and crash into the stationary vehicle!

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/

[Duncan Edwards]

There are other issues with self-driving cars. It seems that if a car in front of you changes lanes and a stationary vehicle is then ahead of you, the self driving car will keep going at full speed, and crash into the stationary vehicle!

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/

This is a poorly written article that points out the current state of the art is only in driver-assist and not true autonomous driving. It then ends by saying we are stuck with this system which is not true. As of a few weeks ago Tesla released its latest update which is much closer to autonomous driving and is the subject of the link I posted above. People keep acting like driver-assist is the same thing as autonomous driving and simply ignore the instructions with results like this and worse. One statistic I have been unable to find, and we will probably never know, is how many such accidents are prevented. I do have some personal experience with this. My elderly mother-in-law drives a 2018 Cadillac with all manner of collision avoidance and driver assist features. So far I have personally witnessed her very nice car prevent her from hitting a stationary Church building and another vehicle that turned in front of her.

Uber is trying to work out the bugs of a more advanced autonomous system. There's a ways to go but it's going to happen.

[Duncan Edwards]

... I also see insurance as a scam... a form of legalized extortion! But, again, that's just my opinion!

Insurance was once about transferring risk. Now it has become exactly as you describe. Protection money paid to the "Legal" industry.

And who will be cleaning the cum off the back seats because people decided to get frisky because the car drives itself?! LOL!

You can put cameras literally anywhere today for a negligible price. If you can't behave you will get a cleaning charge on your bill and ultimately be barred from the service. Just the same as Uber and Lyft already do.

Say what you want about any of them but if GM, Toyota, and Volkswagen are buying into this then it's going to happen. Soon.

... Screw battery/hybrid technology (which has been exposed by numerous places as being a technology that uses MORE natural resources to produce LESS power than conventional combustion engines!) ...

Maybe then I'll go buy me one of those confounded newfangled color TVs!

I share your wonder at the power that Ford in particular is squeezing out of truck engines. I own one myself. Electric motors produce full torque at all RPM and are fundamentally better at the basic physics of moving vehicles. This is why diesel electric locomotives don't drive directly with diesel engines. Hybrid is a temporary gimmick for tree huggers that will soon be left behind by full electric drives. The numerous expositions you speak of are limited to internet click bait and are not studied by Ford, GM, Toyota, Tesla, VW, etc. Get back to me in ten years and a measurable portion of the driving public will be in self driving electric automobiles and full size highway trucks.

[Mynock]

When the turbos burn up around 100k miles and you have to replace them at $2,000 each, there goes your gas money.
I'll take the 5.0L and remap it with a Mustang tune. 450bhp and no exploding turbos.

Agreed with Duncan, driving assist IS NOT autonomous driving. That being said if you have sit there hover handing the steering wheel "just in case" that makes it kind of useless IMHO.

[Fred588]

Not sure what other costs might be involved but 2000.00 for 100,000 miles is only 2 cents a mile.

When the turbos burn up around 100k miles and you have to replace them at $2,000 each, there goes your gas money.
I'll take the 5.0L and remap it with a Mustang tune. 450bhp and no exploding turbos.

Agreed with Duncan, driving assist IS NOT autonomous driving. That being said if you have sit there hover handing the steering wheel "just in case" that makes it kind of useless IMHO.

[Mr Mudster]

Electric motors produce full torque at all RPM and are fundamentally better at the basic physics of moving vehicles. This is why diesel electric locomotives don't drive directly with diesel engines.

I won't say that the power/torque is much better with electric drive than it is with any other type of engine. However, power and efficiency is not synonymous. There's still the matter of conversion from one form of energy to another. After all, energy is neither created nor destroyed. Typical gasoline combustion engines have an efficiency around 61%. The other 39% is turned into byproducts, which includes hydrocarbons. Diesel engines are typically much better, at around 70% efficient.

Put another way (for the less math savvy!) For every $1 you spend on gas, only $0.61 of that goes to pushing a typical automobile. The other $0.39 is being burned away... literally!

Now an electric engine by itself is about 92% efficient. The other 8% is usually wasted heat and metal sacrifice. So you can say that it is a lot better than a combustion engine. But just the engine efficiency alone is not enough to reveal the whole picture! The DC power regulation system (which controls the speed of the motor) is about 88% efficient. Then the charging system is about 85% efficient. And the batteries themselves are usually about 98% efficient, as a perfect conductor has not yet been invented!

Added together, that gives us a total system efficiency of about 67.5%. Yes, it is slightly more efficient than a gasoline combustion engine, but it's still not enough to be at the break-even stage considering the cost of manufacturing and ongoing research.

We could sit down and figure out the entire picture if we had all the variables in front of us (manufacturing costs, distribution costs, research costs, transportation costs, fuel delivery costs, and about 100 other variables!) but in the end we're not even close to having a viable alternative. And when you add full autonomous mode to a vehicle, you increase it's cost four-fold currently!

So, yes, in 20 years we may have self-driving electric vehicles. But they will likely be at the same stage as the Model "T" was in 1910. It was viable, but still not ready to replace a more reliable mode of transportation that was much more efficient!

This has been a very fun discussion! Amazing that we can talk about something other than mud and quicksand! We need to be careful though... might give the lurkers the wrong opinion about us! Lab coats and pocket protectors don't make for great sinking costumes! LOL!

[Mynock]

Crash video (note: camera cuts right before actual impact, no death/trama shown).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtTB8hTgHbM

Lady behind the wheel was texting and driving (which I think should be punished by public whipping) but even if she'd been 100% paying attention there was no way she could've stopped in time.
Bicyclist was crossing a high speed roadway, at night, in a dimly lit area with no hi-vis clothing, no reflectors on the bike, and no helmet. I don't want to speak ill of the dead but the common sense was definitely not strong with this one.

[BogDog]

Sensors do not require visible light and should have detected her. Waymo (Google claims their car would have seen her, and I do not doubt that. Meanwhile, Uber states that they had REMOVED some of the sensors from their cars (possible stolen tech form Google?) and were just depending on the LIDAR.

Sadly enough, Uber has already settled out of court with the family to avoid a trial, and you know THAT cost them plenty. A trial may have revealed more of the cause.

[Mynock]

Pretty sure the NTSB is involved, so should be able to seize/examine data if necessary.
I don't know what the range is on those sensors but it would have to be significant to stop in time from that speed. Also read (this is unconfirmed) that the highway where this happened on is a "no-pedestrians/no bikes" zone, so maybe the AI just wasn't expecting to encounter a a pedestrian or something.