Quote:
Originally Posted by GuidoK
Thats the fault in Arizona. But the implications are far greater.
Uber is doing this milliondollar research (probably 100+million dollar research, as they ordered 24000 XC90's at volvo alone, not counting the tech, personell and companies they bought to develop this tech...) not for using autonomous driving in Arizona, and not even for the US alone. They want to become world leader in autonomous driving transport. And in a lot of places a pedestrian has more legal protection. (where I live, when hitting a pedestrian or cyclist while driving a car is at the start always 50% your fault as pedestrians and cyclists are considered weak traffic participants and motorists arent. (the difference between a motorist and a cyclist or pedestrian is also that the motorist is a schooled traffic participant), so that gives extra responsibility to motorists. Who's 'truely' at fault is only important for this incident, but not for the globalized process of implementing autonomous driving imho.
Also who is really/truely at fault is not clear to me. I mean the car WAS speeding from what I understand of all the info around this. (how that car could be speeding is beyond my comprehention, its dead easy to program a car to follow the maximum speed limit within 0,1mph based on gps data alone, so if that car was speeding, it would be a deliberate programming decision)
And the pedestrian was hit on the front right of the car, so she was almost on the other side of the road. Depending on how fast she was moving with her bike and stuff, so how long she had been crossing that road, it could be the case that if the car wasnt speeding, she would have reached the other side of the road in time. You can wonder if someone can estimate or calculate a crossing of a road on that level of accuracy, but thats not the point here if the issue is who's 'truely' at fault. If there's a lawsuit, there will be experts that will be pointing out this issue.
What also is important is that the car didnt stop where experts say that it should have stopped based on the sensorarrays and hardware that the car is equipped with. That would mean its likely a software error. Software is very much an intellectual product, so its very difficult to measure software performance as in this case software has to interpret something. If hardware cant detect something, its due to physical parameters, like the range has to be extended or light sensitivity has to be increased to a certain lumen or other physical parameter. But interpretation performance is a more subjective scale.
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I have read more on this last night than most here I suspect. Not comment blogs but LOCAL news accounts from the local papers and TV stations etc.
The Phoenix New Times States there is a 45 MPH about 1/4 mile away on Mills Avenue. Personally, I do not see how a Dual Lane limited Access road such as that with a median is 35 MPH either.
Considering the Phoenix New Times actually went out and found this speed limit sign and states as such, perhaps a reduced speed limit sign to 35 MPH is missing, if that is indeed the Speed Limit.
The car most likely read the last speed limit sign on the road (45 MPH) and was driving at 38 MPH accordingly or 2) was slowing from a 45 to MPH zone to 35.
In most States, 5 MPH isn’t chargeable to err on the side of caution.
But regardless, 3 MPH would have made no difference here.