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Comment by zpr | Hacker News Reader

To wit it was not "driverless" as there was a supposed "safety driver" behind the wheel.

What controls does Uber have that the "safety driver" is doing their job? When the computer gets confused or its computed probability drops below a threshold, when and how does it alert the driver. How many of these self driving testbeds have a person in the seat just for CYA and not actual safety ?

I'd like to see Uber's logs of all the other pedestrian and vehicle near misses where the computer took corrective action.

What testing did Uber do on a closed course with adversarial conditions? Ball rolls into road with a child following, pedestrians walking under a flickering street lamp, people dressed in costumes, a parade, a protest, service workers, a pickup truck with a lost load.

Would be cool if the driver had to placebo-drive and the car used that input to assess discrepancies and validate confidence.

When the driver fails to do a task that the computer seems necessary with a high degree of confidence, both get shutdown for further evaluation.

I don't think that would work. Driving is not a fully conscious, deliberate see-analyze-act loop. A lot of your control movements are subconscious, and you expect instant, correct feedback from the vehicle. To see what I mean - if you've ever played a racing game, try opening a racing replay/Let's play video on YouTube, pretend for a while that you're in control (use your WASD keys), and see how your brain complains about your inputs having no impact on reality.

From the video it appears that the safety driver was checking her phone at the time of the incident.

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