Domenick
Well-Known Member
As many of you probably know, an "autonomous" Uber car hit and killed a pedestrian the other night. Now that I've seen the video, there's no doubt in my mind the the driver bears the responsibility for the accident.
I wrote up a thread on Twitter, so I thought I'd echo my thoughts here.
Whole lot of victim blaming going on with this Uber fatality situation, but having watched the video, it's clear that the driver is at fault. And only the driver.
Autonomous vehicles aren't really my beat, but I do have a lot of experience driving on dark rural roads — 16+ years/1.5 million miles, more or less. I've hit and missed a lot of wildlife. Sometimes there nothing you can do. But that's rare.
If you are watching the road, and it's clear the Uber operator wasn't, you can see deer ambling across an unlit road, or a pedestrian ploddingly pushing a bicycle, and, at 60 mph, have time to stop. At the very least, slow and swerve.
This vehicle was moving at 38 mph. Piece of cake. Except the driver — and unless a car is certified level 5 autonomous, it has a driver — was looking down at their phone.
Yeah, the car also totally failed, and Volvo needs to share exactly what went wrong with public. Sure, the lady should have crossed at a crosswalk with the lights. But driving is about expecting the unexpected.
When autonomous vehicles are "perfected," there will still be crashes. Rare, but stuff happens, things go wrong. In the meantime, we can't fault technology, or pedestrians when a human fails to operate a vehicle irresponsibly.
I wrote up a thread on Twitter, so I thought I'd echo my thoughts here.
Whole lot of victim blaming going on with this Uber fatality situation, but having watched the video, it's clear that the driver is at fault. And only the driver.
Autonomous vehicles aren't really my beat, but I do have a lot of experience driving on dark rural roads — 16+ years/1.5 million miles, more or less. I've hit and missed a lot of wildlife. Sometimes there nothing you can do. But that's rare.
If you are watching the road, and it's clear the Uber operator wasn't, you can see deer ambling across an unlit road, or a pedestrian ploddingly pushing a bicycle, and, at 60 mph, have time to stop. At the very least, slow and swerve.
This vehicle was moving at 38 mph. Piece of cake. Except the driver — and unless a car is certified level 5 autonomous, it has a driver — was looking down at their phone.
Yeah, the car also totally failed, and Volvo needs to share exactly what went wrong with public. Sure, the lady should have crossed at a crosswalk with the lights. But driving is about expecting the unexpected.
When autonomous vehicles are "perfected," there will still be crashes. Rare, but stuff happens, things go wrong. In the meantime, we can't fault technology, or pedestrians when a human fails to operate a vehicle irresponsibly.