<story><title>Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/07/uber-vehicle-reportedly-saw-but-ignored-woman-it-struck/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>GenerocUsername</author><text>And welcome to why self-driving cars will always be 3 years away.&lt;p&gt;I think we should be targeting self driving for long-haul freeway scenarios where the rules are relatively simple and predictable. Trying to control for the infinite number of scenarios in cities is a nightmare which will ultimately bog down the development of any company which makes that its goal.</text></item><item><author>freditup</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m curious what degree of &amp;quot;cultural context&amp;quot; is built into automated cars - I feel that there has to be a lot of locale-specific techniques for driving.&lt;p&gt;For example, in NYC, there&amp;#x27;s nothing at all uncommon about a pedestrian beginning to cross the street in front of you and approaching the area of your lane where you will shortly be. Pedestrians typically then stop about a foot away from your lane, let you drive past them, and then continue walking. If a car slammed on the brakes in this situation, it would likely cause more accidents than not braking would cause.&lt;p&gt;On the contrary, in Tempe, a pedestrian starting to do the exact same thing as above is likely much more a case of them not realizing your car is coming at all, in which case slamming on the brakes is appropriate.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t to defend Uber, clearly their car did do the wrong thing in the Tempe situation (though I make no judgment on who was at fault). And clearly cars need to be able to handle the variety of unwritten, localized driving quirks different regions have. But it seems like a very non-trivial problem to do this correctly.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joncrane</author><text>&amp;gt; And welcome to why self-driving cars will always be 3 years away.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s also possible that human&amp;#x2F;pedestrian behavior will adapt to the consistent behavior of driverless cars.</text></comment>
<story><title>Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/07/uber-vehicle-reportedly-saw-but-ignored-woman-it-struck/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>GenerocUsername</author><text>And welcome to why self-driving cars will always be 3 years away.&lt;p&gt;I think we should be targeting self driving for long-haul freeway scenarios where the rules are relatively simple and predictable. Trying to control for the infinite number of scenarios in cities is a nightmare which will ultimately bog down the development of any company which makes that its goal.</text></item><item><author>freditup</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m curious what degree of &amp;quot;cultural context&amp;quot; is built into automated cars - I feel that there has to be a lot of locale-specific techniques for driving.&lt;p&gt;For example, in NYC, there&amp;#x27;s nothing at all uncommon about a pedestrian beginning to cross the street in front of you and approaching the area of your lane where you will shortly be. Pedestrians typically then stop about a foot away from your lane, let you drive past them, and then continue walking. If a car slammed on the brakes in this situation, it would likely cause more accidents than not braking would cause.&lt;p&gt;On the contrary, in Tempe, a pedestrian starting to do the exact same thing as above is likely much more a case of them not realizing your car is coming at all, in which case slamming on the brakes is appropriate.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t to defend Uber, clearly their car did do the wrong thing in the Tempe situation (though I make no judgment on who was at fault). And clearly cars need to be able to handle the variety of unwritten, localized driving quirks different regions have. But it seems like a very non-trivial problem to do this correctly.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aurailious</author><text>Essentially make the freeways &amp;quot;car trains&amp;quot; as the autobahn implies.  Eventually over time you add automation to other kinds of roads.</text></comment>