[SystemSafety] Autonomously Driven Car Kills Pedestrian

[Tom Ferrell]

Pretty damning article and certainly looks like a case of gross negligence to say the least.  Your last assertion "seems as though all of these statements would equally apply..." is a bit much however.

We may have significant technical concerns on the claims by which autonomous vehicles are being sold and pursued with haste, but it does not help the engineering community as a whole and the safety community, in particular, to paint with this broad a brush.  We absolutely must stay focused on the technical questions that need to be answered for autonomous systems from a safety POV IMHO.

From: systemsafety [mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] On Behalf Of Steve Tockey
Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2018 1:39 PM
To: Matthew Squair; Peter Bernard Ladkin; systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] Autonomously Driven Car Kills Pedestrian


FWIW, I found some interesting quotes in the following article:

http://time.com/5213690/verruckt-slide-death-schlitterbahn/


Could  these be applied in cases involving self-driving cars?

"was never properly or fully designed"

"rushed it into use and had no technical or engineering expertise"

"complied with "few, if any" longstanding safety standards"

"the . . . death and the rapidly growing list of injuries were foreseeable and expected outcomes"

"desire to "rush the project" and . . . designer's lack of expertise caused them to "skip fundamental steps in the design process.""

"not a single engineer was directly involved in . . . engineering or . . . design"


It seems as though all of these statements would apply equally to any case involving self-driving cars.


Cheers,

- steve




From: systemsafety <systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de<mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de>> on behalf of Matthew Squair <mattsquair at gmail.com<mailto:mattsquair at gmail.com>>
Date: Friday, March 23, 2018 at 5:03 PM
To: Peter Bernard Ladkin <ladkin at causalis.com<mailto:ladkin at causalis.com>>, "systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de<mailto:systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de>" <systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de<mailto:systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de>>
Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] Autonomously Driven Car Kills Pedestrian

I think Uber will come unglued in civil court.

If say the driver is legally deemed to not be in direct control but 'supervising' by the court then Uber is still liable for devising a method of supervision of an unsafe device that demonstrably doesn't work, and it could be argued they could have reasonably known this in the circumstances*. If the argument turns that the driver is solely the culpable agent then as he's also a Uber employee/contractor they're still responsible for his actions. So, which ever way it turns Uber will carry the can, at least in a civil prosecution which is where this will get thrashed out I'd guess.

'Move fast and break things' indeed...

*As the conversation on this thread would indicate.


On 24 March 2018 at 4:16:49 am, Peter Bernard Ladkin (ladkin at causalis.com<mailto:ladkin at causalis.com>) wrote:


On 2018-03-23 17:40 , Michael Jackson wrote:
>
> So the responsibility in overseeing autonomous driving is worse than that of an old-fashioned
> driving instructor in a dual-control car, teaching an untrusted learner-you can't even order
> the software to slow down: in short, it is far more demanding and stressful than driving the
> car yourself.
Spot on, as usual.

Woods and Sarter, in their seminal study of pilots using A320 automation, found it was worse than
that. When the situation got odd, rather than cutting out the automation and taking control ("first,
fly the airplane"), they found the crew inclined to try to debug the automation.

PBL

Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Bielefeld, Germany
MoreInCommon
Je suis Charlie
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319 www.rvs-bi.de<http://www.rvs-bi.de>





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