Uber self-driving car crashes into another car in Pittsburgh

Uber self-driving car crashes into another car in Pittsburgh(arstechnica.com)

37 points by trekky1700 8 years ago | 25 comments

mtnygard 8 years ago |

I don't want to get into the particulars of this single wreck.

But it does make me think that we're going to need some new laws as we adapt to a mixed use on the roads:

1. The self-driving car & its operating company must retain all sensor and video data. No "oops we lost it" when going to court.

2. There has to be some way for the human driver to know what legal entity is operating the car. It's pretty easy to imagine driverless hit-and-run accidents.

3. Human drivers have to be able to get insurance information from the automated vehicle. (I have no idea how! But humans are able to work out an ad-hoc protocol to exchange insurance info on the spot. Automated vehicles would need to have something predefined.)

Basically, _when_ an accident occurs, the human and the human's insurance company has to have some way to connect with the insurance company of the automated car and its operator.

dragonwriter 8 years ago | |

#2 and #3 can be resolved, in the worst case, by existing public ownership and insurance registries and making any collision involving a self-driven vehicle without a human representative of the owner who can provide registration & insurance info require police response and identification of that information based on license and/or VIN. (As this potentially increases public expense for that mode of operation, licensing for it may be more expensive.)

c22 8 years ago |

While it sounds like the human driver was likely at fault in this situation I wonder if she made eye contact with the self-driving car's "safety driver" before the collision. If she assumed he was operating the vehicle and could clearly see her she would have expected him to slow down. This is the cultural birthplace of the Pittsburgh Left, after all.

arcticfox 8 years ago | |

After reading up on the Pittsburgh Left, that needs to be eliminated from driving culture ASAP. If there are intersections that require it, simply add a protected left.

nostrademons 8 years ago | | |

In most of the regions where the Pittsburgh Left is common (I grew up in Massachusetts, and thought it was just how you drive until I moved out to California), adding a protected left is not feasible. The roads are single-lane, barely the width of a single car, and property rights extend right up to the side of the road. (Similarly, in many cases sidewalks are infeasible because there's always some homeowner along the road who refuses to cede their land.) The properties themselves are usually residential, and there will be hundreds of them alongside the road.

It's very different from the 3-lane boulevards with wide setbacks, protected turn lanes, and commercial zones all owned by the same developer that you'd find in the West or South. The roads in the Northeast U.S. are former cow paths, and they are about as wide as you would expect a horse-drawn wagon to be. (They also don't form any sort of grid system and frequently meet at 5- or 6-way intersections, which is a whole other issue.)

rahimnathwani 8 years ago |

I don't know what the law says about this in the US, but when I was taught to drive (in the UK), I was told not to assume that someone signalling would actually do what was they were indicating, and that I would be responsible for whatever happened if I took action in reliance of that signal.

Not sure if that's the law in the UK, or just my instructor teaching me to drive defensively.

fred_is_fred 8 years ago | |

It's basically the same here. You'll often see people with a right signal on coming to turn into a shopping center and then they don't either it's the wrong place or they forgot their signal was on. I wait to be sure they are turning first.

UncleEntity 8 years ago | |

I used to get people trying to trick me into turning in front of them all the time in the company car for the last company I worked for.

Usually go like;

Me: making right turn out of a parking lot see a car with their blinker on presumably turning into the place I'm leaving so I creep forwards a few feet.

Other car: sees me creeping forwards and think I'm going to turn in front of them so floors it.

Happened so many times I don't even move until they're already halfway turned.

My favorite one;

Me: making a left turn onto a main street Other car: making a left turn onto the side street I'm on

Other car: waves me out

Me: just looks at him

Other car: backs up a bit and waves me out

Me: just looks at him

Other car: backs up a bit more and waves me out

Me: "I see where this is going..."

Other car: puts it into reverse to continue the dance

Me: floors it as soon as they shift into reverse

Other car: puts it into drive as fast as they can and tries to ram me

A prius is a lot quicker than people think...dude's lucky I was in the company car because I'd have gotten out at the next light and slashed their tires if someone did that to me in my personal vehicle -- can't really do that in a car with the company phone # on the side in big lettering.

tetromino_ 8 years ago | | |

I think I'm missing something, why were you being targeted by these people?

trav4225 8 years ago | | |

I seriously hope you're just kidding around with that last paragraph...

UncleEntity 8 years ago |

Yep, if you make a left turn in front of oncoming traffic it's pretty much always your fault even if the robot was driving the other car.

Though, in this case, it's probably cheaper for Uber to fix the other car than pay all the lawyer fees because you know there's going to be lawyers involved.

adrianmonk 8 years ago | |

There will be legal fees, but if Uber is confident they can win it, it might be a good investment just to defend the reputation of self-driving cars.

If they settle out of court, it leaves room for people to wonder if they settled because they had to. If they proceed to court and win, then they can say, "Our algorithm didn't cause this crash, and an impartial jury confirmed that."

trendia 8 years ago | |

The damage was on the front-right bumper of the left-turning car. The only way I can see the left-turning car being at fault is if the left-turning car was in the leftmost lane, and the right-turning car tried to merge into the leftmost lane as well (rather than the closest lane as required)

pcthrowaway 8 years ago | | |

There was no right-turning car. The uber car was going straight. The woman in the other car (making the left turn) argued they had their right signal on, but it's not apparent if there's any evidence to corroborate that. Uber has stated that the car's left turn signal was on to indicate an upcoming lane change

UncleEntity 8 years ago | | |

> "As I was making my left, he continued to drive straight and slammed directly into the side of my vehicle," she said.

Ignoring the misgendering of the robot car of course...

TipVFL 8 years ago |

According to the article this was a 4 lane road, and she was in the furthest lane to the left of the Uber driver. The Uber driver was in furthest right lane, with a left turn signal on, preparing to change lanes.

So, she cut across two lanes to crash into oncoming traffic. I'm not sure of the Pittsburgh driving laws, but generally you're supposed to get into your left-most lane before taking a left.

I don't think she has a hope in court, especially since Uber definitely has high quality records of everything that occurred.

DrScump 8 years ago |

Later in the story:

"The Cruise car had tried to change lanes, then abruptly aborted the lane change when the space to make the change disappeared"

This sounds a lot like a Google crash in Mountain View awhile back.

fancyfacebook 8 years ago | |

Yeah I've been around enough self driving cars to know that they behave a little weirdly sometimes, in a way you'd never expect a human to. We can keep throwing humans under the bus on some technicality every time this happens because we're engineers and beep boop everything is black and white. period. But in reality there's a social aspect to driving with a lot of unwritten rules that people do not seem to be worrying about as much as they should.