First driverless car pedestrian death

[Sundancer]

Gad, what an easy system to disrupt, jam, spoof, hack. . .it's gonna be a ton of entertainment watching guvmint stop, stumble, and fall on the way to this one. How's that Nextgen thing going? Combination of a glaciar and Larry Lightbulb, with a bit of three stooges. . .

 

[azblackbird]

Gad, what an easy system to disrupt, jam, spoof, hack

Like I said... great for tractors and combines... city driving... ehhh not so much. I'm low level and can take out a self driving car in about 5 minutes and cause all kinds of mayhem. Imagine somebody like my business associate who does it for a living.

 

[Half Fast]

Has anyone noticed the recent train wrecks? We can't even safely automate trains, which run on tracks and have well-defined schedules and traffic control and controlled crossings that stop automobiles and very specific stop/start stations and .......

I'll believe in driverless cars several (maybe many) years after I see successful implementation of driverless trains.

 

[Palmpilot]

No problem, central command will be choosing whether you can use manual driving based on criteria and measures....

 

[Ken Ibold]

Yeah the new driver thing is changing a little bit, but they still log a lot of time with non-instructors who may or may not teach them correctly.

A friend of one of my kids was "taught to drive" by her parent, who did not allow her to leave her neighborhood behind the wheel. This young woman took and passed her driver test having never driven faster than 25 mph, but of course the driver test doesn't include speeds higher than that either.

Somehow her parents thought they were doing her a favor!! (This was 5 years ago.)

 

[Palmpilot]

Once proven reliable, it will be forced onto everyone to protect the children. Putting your kids in a car and driving is still one of the most dangerous things parents do every day.

Proving it reliable, under the wide variety of conditions and circumstances that drivers face, will be the hard part. The fact that human drivers have a lot of accidents is undeniable, but that does not prove, by itself, that artificial intelligence will do better.

 

[Half Fast]

A friend of one of my kids was "taught to drive" by her parent, who did not allow her to leave her neighborhood behind the wheel. This young woman took and passed her driver test having never driven faster than 25 mph, but of course the driver test doesn't include speeds higher than that either.

Somehow her parents thought they were doing her a favor!! (This was 5 years ago.)

Reminds me of my motorcycle class, done entirely in a large parking lot. At the end of the course, the instructor told us "Remember to ride within your skillset. At the moment, that's 25mph in a parking lot."

 

[wayne]

I suspect a lot of the pressure to switch will be economic.

For example, pay $108/yr for liability insurance for an autonomous vehicle, vs $978 for the privilege of driving oneself.

And a BDR; the review formally known as Biennial Driving Review.

 

[wayne]

I was privy to a presentation by IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety) not too long ago on the subject of autonomous vehicles. I was prepared to be bored stiff for 3 hours but instead was captivated. Some of the things mentioned:

1. It was a challenge to get the government on board with driverless vehicles. Now they're the biggest proponent.

Sure, they can control the computers better than those pesky citizens that think they have rights.

2. It does/will save lives, and that's already happened thousands of times. Everyone is keenly aware that there will be accidents that may have been prevented if a human was behind the wheel, but those are greatly outweighed by the number of accidents prevented by a person not being in control. The computer can predict and react exponentially faster than a person.

Definitely a plus. Except the person paying for the vehicle/ride could be decided by the machine to die if that means less people die. I'm not sure I want to be the payer for a system that will decide it's ok to kill me.

3. As someone else said, there will be a time when we're older and less capable. This is an ideal solution.

Yes. This will be a big plus for the elderly and those with physical limitations that limit or preclude driving.

4. Right now my wife, daughter and I each have our own vehicles. With autonomous vehicles we would really only need two. When one of us is not currently using a vehicle and another wants it we could just summon it.

Yeah, and then wait 15 min for darn thing to show up. Then have to provide directions to where you are because their systems doesn't understand your location. That's happened to me with Uber twice so far this year, and I don't use the service much. We have four vehicles (me, wife, 2 youngest daughters), but the kids are at different colleges in different states and my wife and I have different work travel needs.

5. This is a problem for the insurance, auto and collision repair industries that many companies aren't preparing for. And the changes are coming much faster than most are predicting. Right now insurers are insuring a lot of vehicles, collecting a lot of $ in premiums, and paying for a lot of repairs. In the very near future we'll be building, insuring and repairing WAY fewer vehicles. Currently 70% of the premium dollars collected by P&C insurers come from auto policies. When that number drops substantially it's going to have major effects.

I don't think they'll mind if they don't have to pay out as much. Plus wouldn't those for "car service" be commercial and therefore higher rates?

I'm all for it and I'm sure there will be a time I'll own one. But don't get me wrong. I LIKE driving. And I like driving fast. I want the ability to occasionally zip through traffic, push the envelope on yellow lights, and do other stupid things behind the wheel.

I hope we don't have fully autonomous cars until I'm old and want one. Heck, I had to shop to find a car with a manual transmission last year. So, no, I'm not in a hurry to have an autonomous car.

 

[denverpilot]

Like I said... great for tractors and combines... city driving... ehhh not so much. I'm low level and can take out a self driving car in about 5 minutes and cause all kinds of mayhem. Imagine somebody like my business associate who does it for a living.

Hell drivers who drive the speed limit infuriate most of the speeders here, based on their wailing and gnashing of teeth.

And if we’re going to teach autonomous cars to drive to conditions, can they do 100 MPH whenever they like?

Where will the giant local government subsidy and “job creator” that is called traffic tickets and courts get their money from then?

Will the car refuse to drive if it’s in poor repair? Will the car check the insurance database in the sky and refuse to move if the insurance bill isn’t paid?

All sorts of social issues and unintended consequences coming. Should be entertaining.

Then someday long hence when it’s more automated than drivers are humans...

Identical head on deadly collision coming... quick demographic lookup of the driver... hit the old couple with no money, they’re more likely to die at the scene or not sue anyway... save the software company money by avoiding the lawsuit.

Don’t think that’ll happen? Your insurance company will give a discount for loading their “Death Decision Money Saver 2000” plug in in your car.

 

[RJM62]

Most chip makers agree, Moore’s law fizzled out. Or is in the process of fizzling out. The cost curve turned out to go exponentially upward on dies below 4nm. There’s slow progress but it looks like the next big breakthrough would have to be via quantum physics.

This is why the marketing and engineering switched from faster processors to multiple core processors. Clock speed isn’t King anymore. Now it’s cores, cores, cores!

You also have the very real economic problem of power sources. That’s why much of the compute power did a 180 and went back to the mainframe model in many ways, with virtualization.

Or to put it another way, to do what you’re envisioning you either cram a supercomputer in a car, or you REALLY trust its link back to the big computer in the sky... neither of which is a trivial problem, considering I live where cell coverage dies three times on the way into the city and it’s probably the most robust RF data network anyone has yet built.

It’s probably a lot cheaper, resources wise, to just utilize the full potential custom designed computer in-between one’s ears, the augment it with smaller computers in the car that help make up for its known shortcomings.

Downside is, if the assistance is too good, it triggers one of the human brain’s shortcomings anyway. Inattention. We see it in highly automated aircraft, and we saw it in the Tesla driver’s death.

But for whatever reason, demanding folks actually use the darn thing they’re blessed with, and then TESTING that they know how to use it, in cars anyway, is taboo.

That taboo-ness leads to the idea that self-driving cars are “better” because there’s so many wrecks.

The chess story is a great example. How many people don’t bother to play or learn chess because “the computer can always beat me anyway” even in low level chess games.

Society would get a lot more bang for the buck out of mandatory driver testing and training, but we won’t do it. Because that same brain brings emotional garbage along with it and thinks that would be “mean”.

If we treated airplanes like cars we’d just put someone in an airplane with their parents for 16 years and then six months of scaring the hell out of their parents who aren’t licensed as instructors and then cut them loose in the sky and say, “If they want professional instruction, it’s available...”

Yeah the new driver thing is changing a little bit, but they still log a lot of time with non-instructors who may or may not teach them correctly.

We even have dumb car commercials about it. Montages of dad or mom teaching the spawn and close calls and whew moments and then it’s time for the spawn to drive away in the “all-new Whizzbang 6000 with driver safety features”! Or with Giant Insurance Company Twenty “protecting” them. LOL.

Nobody seems to notice an hour on a skid pad with a real instructor would do them all more good than either product being marketed.

Still, even as bad as many drivers seem to be, I have to question the premise that autonomous vehicles are or can ever be made any safer than an average human driver. Where's the evidence?

I just looked at some records and did some quick math. I discovered that it's been more than 200,000 miles since I got into any sort of accident, and that was a fender-bender with minor damage and no injuries. It's been about 375,000 miles since my last "serious" accident, which wasn't even really an accident because it was an evasive maneuver to avoid hitting the kids on the sled. Before that, my last at-fault accident was in 1980, maybe a million miles ago. I don't have any mileage records going back that far. I've also had two moving violations since I've been driving, and the last one was a sign-behind-the-tree sort of deal. That was about 10 years ago.

That being said, I don't consider myself an extraordinary driver. I think I'm a bit more cautious than most, probably due to my having driven big rigs in and around The City for a while. It makes you paranoid, in the good kind of way. But I'm sure there are many people here with better driving records than my own over as many or more miles.

Have any autonomous cars even been on the road anywhere near as long as most of us have been driving? If not, then what's the basis for the assumption that they're any better at it than an average, experienced human driver?

Rich

 

[wayne]

A friend of one of my kids was "taught to drive" by her parent, who did not allow her to leave her neighborhood behind the wheel. This young woman took and passed her driver test having never driven faster than 25 mph, but of course the driver test doesn't include speeds higher than that either.

Somehow her parents thought they were doing her a favor!! (This was 5 years ago.)

Ugh. Too many people over protecting their kids. I don't want my kids to get maimed, but "stubbing their toe" every now and again helps them learn.

I taught our younger two girls. The oldest was taught by her father as by that age I had become the evil step-dad.

I started them slow, in a mall back parking lot on a weekend morning. Then around the mall. Then in a quiet neighborhood and worked them up to interstate driving. We live in Atlanta. You pretty are getting on an interstate with six lanes or more in each direction if you are going any distance.

 

[Palmpilot]

...Identical head on deadly collision coming... quick demographic lookup of the driver... hit the old couple with no money, they’re more likely to die at the scene or not sue anyway... save the software company money by avoiding the lawsuit.

Don’t think that’ll happen? Your insurance company will give a discount for loading their “Death Decision Money Saver 2000” plug in in your car.

Kinda gives the phrase "death panels" new meaning!

 

[FastEddieB]

Heck, I had to shop to find a car with a manual transmission last year.

It ain’t easy.

Our 2005 Honda Element is a stick. It’s far, far away from being a sporty vehicle, but driving in the local twisties makes it “feel” at least a little sporty. And a few years before discontinuing the model, they removed the manual option.

 

[Larry in TN]

Search YouTube for "Tesla Autopilot Fail". Lots of videos. Looks like it still has a long way to go.

 

[Half Fast]

Eddie, when the driverless Uber has to decide between running into your motorcycle or into a truck, will it be able to recognize that hitting the truck will be less likely to kill somebody even though it will do more damage to the Uber? How will it evaluate your sidecar? Which will it pick to hit between a Can-Am and a Mini?

Being on a motorcycle among human drivers is scary enough. I'm not sure I want a robot deciding that I'm a safer target for it to run into.

 

[Gerhardt]

That being said, I don't consider myself an extraordinary driver.

Rich

You would be an extraordinary driver, statistically. And I can say that with some level of confidence since a good portion of my job involves reviewing automobile accident reports every day.

 

[BigBadLou]

I saw a cartoon in Germany (strip, not animation) - A cement mixer is tail-gating a sedan at high speed; a beach ball bounds out in front of the sedan (equipped with "automatic" braking); brakes engage, sedan is crushed from behind.

Also, if it's my life or taking a chance on whacking three drunks who run onto the freeway naked - bring a mop and some body bags. I don't buy into "saving the most lives" as the most important metric. Stupid, reckless, impaired, incapacity, carelessness, neglect; all should have consequences.

You are using logic and common sense. This is NOT allowed here on PoA. Your gross misconduct has been reported to the mods.

 

[RJM62]

It ain’t easy.

Our 2005 Honda Element is a stick. It’s far, far away from being a sporty vehicle, but driving in the local twisties makes it “feel” at least a little sporty. And a few years before discontinuing the model, they removed the manual option.

Consider a Kia Soul Base. I've had two, including my current one. They have a very nice six-speed manual option.

Rich

 

[FastEddieB]

Eddie, when the driverless Uber has to decide between running into your motorcycle or into a truck, will it be able to recognize that hitting the truck will be less likely to kill somebody even though it will do more damage to the Uber? How will it evaluate your sidecar? Which will it pick to hit between a Can-Am and a Mini?

All those queries assume that at least my motorcycle is seen, with or without a sidecar.

Given that drivers hitting motorcyclists and bicyclists often legitimately claim “I never saw him”, I think a properly designed and implemented autonomous system will be an improvement.

But let’s all stay alive long enough to find out!

 

[FastEddieB]

Consider a Kia Soul Base. I've had two, including my current one. They have a very nice six-speed manual option.

Rich

I like them. But I’m hoping that by the time the wheels fall off our Element*, there will be an adequate electric or hybrid option. Tesla Model 3 or Chevy Bolt or something yet introduced.

*At 18 years and 195,000 miles, the little Element is still bouncing down the road, and to date reliable. Worth very little, so we’re not inclined to throw much money at it if and when something major happens. Been a great little car.

 

[azure]

It ain’t easy.

Our 2005 Honda Element is a stick. It’s far, far away from being a sporty vehicle, but driving in the local twisties makes it “feel” at least a little sporty. And a few years before discontinuing the model, they removed the manual option.

It is definitely hard to find a stick these days. My current car is a Chevy Sonic hatchback, and I had to do some shopping to get in in the manual version. I think it's easier with some European models, but that may only be true for the ones that are actually sold over there. This country seems to have an overwhelming preference for automatic transmissions.

 

[Sluggo63]

I just saw the video of the Uber crash. The police said that she “just popped out of nowhere...” I don’t buy it anymore. Maybe to the camera lens, she just popped out of nowhere, but it just looks like a camera exposure issue. Much like the Tesla accident where the camera didn’t see the white truck on a sunlit background. I can’t see a human driver not seeing her crossing the road with her bicycle in those conditions. And the “driver” was spending more time looking in his lap than he was on the road, so they can’t say that the driver didn’t see her either, because he wasn’t even looking.

 

[RJM62]

I just saw the video of the Uber crash. The police said that she “just popped out of nowhere...” I don’t buy it anymore. Maybe to the camera lens, she just popped out of nowhere, but it just looks like a camera exposure issue. Much like the Tesla accident where the camera didn’t see the white truck on a sunlit background. I can’t see a human driver not seeing her crossing the road with her bicycle in those conditions. And the “driver” was spending more time looking in his lap than he was on the road, so they can’t say that the driver didn’t see her either, because he wasn’t even looking.

That was a he???

In any case, I agree. I think had the human driver been paying attention at all instead of farting around with his/her phone, the accident would have been avoidable.

The video can be found here, at least for now.

In fairness, I also think the woman on the bicycle would have done herself a life-saving favor by walking 10 feet or so to where the lighting was better before crossing the road. Look at 0:02 - 0:03. Had she walked a bit to her right, she would have been within the streetlight's beam. That's not to say the dumb driver would have seen her, being as preoccupied with his/her phone as he/she appears to have been; but bicycle lady's chances would have been much better.

Rich

 

[F01LA]

In fairness, I also think the woman on the bicycle would have done herself a life-saving favor by walking 10 feet or so to where the lighting was better before crossing the road. Look at 0:02 - 0:03. Had she walked a bit to her right, she would have been within the streetlight's beam.

She would have also done herself a favor by not walking directly into the path of a car. Had this not involved Uber's car, it would be a simple case of a pedestrian foolishly walking into traffic in the dark, and we'd never hear about it.

It's hard to say if a human could have stopped in time or not, but this looks pretty bad for Uber and the person behind the wheel regardless.

 

[FormerHangie]

I just saw the video of the Uber crash. The police said that she “just popped out of nowhere...” I don’t buy it anymore. Maybe to the camera lens, she just popped out of nowhere, but it just looks like a camera exposure issue. Much like the Tesla accident where the camera didn’t see the white truck on a sunlit background. I can’t see a human driver not seeing her crossing the road with her bicycle in those conditions. And the “driver” was spending more time looking in his lap than he was on the road, so they can’t say that the driver didn’t see her either, because he wasn’t even looking.

Same here. I think the vast majority of drivers would have been able to make an aggressive lane change and would have missed the pedestrian.

The technology in that car is not ready for the roads, not as a fully autonomous vehicle.

 

[Palmpilot]

Same here. I think the vast majority of drivers would have been able to make an aggressive lane change and would have missed the pedestrian.

The technology in that car is not ready for the roads, not as a fully autonomous vehicle.

And the guy who was supposed to be minding the car apparently didn't realize that.

 

[NoHeat]

The video can be found here, at least for now.

Viewing that, I’d say there were at least five factors; if any one of them was absent the pedestrian might still be alive:

Uber was bad:
- the Uber safety driver was criminally negligent
- the Uber car was driving too fast for the conditions
- the Uber car shows no indication of braking hard

The pedestrian took risks:
- stepped into the street in the middle of a block when a car was coming
- aside from white shoes, she had little to make herself visible, and the bicycle was not equipped with side reflectors that I could see.

 

[SoCal RV Flyer]

Looked like she was walking her bike slowly across the street at night, in a poorly lit area, not in a crosswalk, oblivious to the oncoming car.

It's sad that she was hit and killed, but in the end it was just Darwin doing his job, autonomous car or not.

 

[Lindberg]

The self driving cars don't rely only on standard cameras do they? Surely they have IR, RADAR, etc.

 

[deonb]

Have any autonomous cars even been on the road anywhere near as long as most of us have been driving? If not, then what's the basis for the assumption that they're any better at it than an average, experienced human driver?

Tesla has a few billion miles on autopilot now (not autonomous) and the NHTSA found that to lead to 40% fewer accidents.

Now honestly - my Tesla autopilot drives about as wel as a drunken 14 year old. So it has to make you think about how bad the average human driver is out there for that to show a 40% improvement.

 

[denverpilot]

The self driving cars don't rely only on standard cameras do they? Surely they have IR, RADAR, etc.

Excellent point and the Internet is pretty ticked off at the Tempe Police Chief for exonerating Uber in his initial press conference.

Why? Because they’re using LIDAR.

The lighting form the headlights (other than possibly INTERFERING with the LIDAR — unlikely) literally didn’t matter.

That car had the ability to detect her and never reacted. There’s no reaction at all, not even late braking.

It’s looking like Uber has a serious software or hardware problem on their hands and also probably a very big lawsuit coming as soon as the correct experts are gathered.

The Police Chief’s statement that a human driver wouldn’t have seen her is an excellent example of secondary unintended consequences. Humans don’t have LIDAR.

Uber is screwed on this one. That tech and the code are going to be torn into like a bag of popcorn at a PoA thread. .

Now their software practices are going to be scrutinized to beat hell and will become some sort of CYA government report that will set some standards.

Should be entertaining to watch and see how much they offer family money-wise for her death. And what gooberment does about the error.

Because it’s starting to look like one hell of an error.

And Uber management hasn’t exactly seemed, shall we say, overly moral in the past. Be interesting if they correct the inaccurate PD statement with engineering facts or let it lie knowing there will be a new news cycle and crisis to talk about, soon.

 

[FastEddieB]

I just posted this to another forum on the same topic:


First Google hit:

“Reaction times vary greatly with situation and from person to person between about 0.7 to 3 seconds or more. Some accident reconstruction specialists use 1.5 seconds. A controlled study in 2000 (IEA2000_ABS51.pdf) found average driver reaction brake time to be 2.3 seconds.”

We often think we can react almost immediately. We can’t. And a lot of ground is covered in 1.5 to 2.3 seconds - and that’s just where braking action begins.


1 mile per hour = 1.4667 feet per second
10 miles per hour = 14.7 feet per second
20 miles per hour = 29.3 feet per second
25 miles per hour = 36.7 feet per second
30 miles per hour = 44.0 feet per second
35 miles per hour = 51.3 feet per second
40 miles per hour = 58.7 feet per second
45 miles per hour = 66.0 feet per second
50 miles per hour = 73.3 feet per second
55 miles per hour = 80.7 feet per second
60 miles per hour = 88.0 feet per second
65 miles per hour = 95.3 feet per second

And another factor to consider: the human backup driver in this case would have an additional decision to make - whether to take control or “let George do it”. That mental shifting of gears from being a passive observer to taking control would have to add to the overall reaction time.

 

[FormerHangie]

I just posted this to another forum on the same topic:

First Google hit:

“Reaction times vary greatly with situation and from person to person between about 0.7 to 3 seconds or more. Some accident reconstruction specialists use 1.5 seconds. A controlled study in 2000 (IEA2000_ABS51.pdf) found average driver reaction brake time to be 2.3 seconds.”
<SNIP>
And another factor to consider: the human backup driver in this case would have an additional decision to make - whether to take control or “let George do it”. That mental shifting of gears from being a passive observer to taking control would have to add to the overall reaction time.

The dash cam in the car has poor peripheral vision and its focal area is directly in front of the car. A human driver moving at that speed would be looking much farther ahead and has better peripheral vision, and should have been able to take evasive action. As far as the backup driver's inaction goes, your second statement nails it. If all you are doing is monitoring and almost nothing ever happens, it's nearly impossible to continue to pay close attention. (Although we all know some back seat drivers who can pull that off ).

I do recall reading that the stretch of road in question has very few crosswalks and jaywalking is almost mandatory for people living in the area.

 

[Gerhardt]

Just watched the video of the accident. The person behind the controls wasn't even close to paying attention. Perhaps lazy because of being in an autonomous vehicle. Or maybe wouldn't have been paying attention anyway.

 

[RJM62]

The dash cam in the car has poor peripheral vision and its focal are is directly in front of the car. A human driver moving at that speed would be looking much farther ahead and has better peripheral vision, and should have been able to take evasive action. As far as the backup driver's inaction goes, your second statement nails it. If all you are doing is monitoring and almost nothing ever happens, it's nearly impossible to continue to pay close attention. (Although we all know some back seat drivers who can pull that off ).

It also would have helped if the human driver were actually looking at the road at least most of the time. Reaction times don't even enter the equation if the driver doesn't know there's something to react to until they hear the metal twisting.

As for back-seat drivers or front-seat co-drivers, I have no problem with them. They're more eyeballs to look out for dopey humans and even dopier deer. In fact, it's kind of expected here that when you give someone a lift, they'll help look for deer and point them out. No one takes offense.

I do recall reading that the stretch of road in question has very few crosswalks and jaywalking is almost mandatory for people living in the area.

Yeah, it's like that here too once you get out of the village. No streetlights, either.

Rich

 

[LongRoadBob]

That goes back to my issue with autonomous cars in the first place (at least one of them).

Some of it goes back to the advantage of flying vs. riding a motorcycle. If I die in a plane crash, it was probably my fault and you can bet that I'll be fighting like hell the whole way down to the ground. If I die in an autonomous vehicle crash, then that means that even if the computer didn't screw up, it did something that I might've been able to do differently. It will get programmed to do the "right" decision, but frankly most of the people who are doing the programming probably aren't very good drivers and can't program a vehicle to do the kinds of things a good driver can do with it.

While I agree that an autopilot isn't necessarily a bad thing and I wouldn't mind having one in a car, my concern is that the regulations will try to take away the ability of individuals to drive at all, which I think is a problem. Driving is something that's very satisfying for me. To those of us who are driving enthusiasts, it's no different than clipping our wings as pilots.

I also think of it like...I'm a very defensive driver. I'm not as fast as a computer (unless it is hanging, crashed, glitched) but then again I have experience and am wary of other drivers. I see someone driving erratically (uneven speeds, weaving, just not "right") I stay well away, behind, or when safe make sure to get ahead and put distance between us. I am also a programmer and have seen too much bad programming (in my job AND in what is offered out in the world, smart phones, etc.)

I DO think some of the numbnuts I see driving, I would say were candidates for drivers "licenses" that kept them from "normal" cars, only allow them to use driverless.

But I also know how impossible it is to test complex systems. Also upgrade them. One small change that "ought not" affect anything else, does.
(Ive learned to NEVER make a claim that "it's just a small change, won't affect anything else"). Then you have the sensors themselves. What effect if partially blocked by dirt, snow, rainwater, etc. what about maintenance?

 

[geneseib]

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo...g-tests-after-pedestrian-is-killed-in-arizona
delete if duped.

Watch out for the other guy.........or non-guy.

 

[Matthew]

It will be intersting; if NTSB gets involved, or NHTSA(?), or whatever agency handles this, I'll really be looking forward to the accident data that's been recorded inside the vehicle. I wonder if the pedestrian actually was seen in advance, but because the person was smaller than a vehicle, and had no forward motion (just a lateral motion), the pedestrian was assessed as a low threat until the centerline was crossed. At that point, it was too late to stop. This is where the judgement of a human driver would have come into play. Unfortunately, the human in the vehicle was not driving, in any sense of the word.

 

[Larry in TN]

Human drivers will never do a good job at monitoring an (semi-)autonomous vehicle. Our brains can't maintain attention when no action is involved and the need for making corrections is rare.