[SystemSafety] Autonomously Driven Car Kills Pedestrian

John Howard jhoward at roboticresearch.com
Mon Mar 26 16:35:40 CEST 2018


Perhaps I am misunderstanding.  Is this your perception of the 
self-driving car industry?  If so, on what basis?

I cannot speak for other companies, but I can assure you that none of 
these statements apply to any of the autonomous vehicle project I am 
involved with.

-- 
John Howard, Sr. Systems Engineer
Robotic Research, LLC
22300 Comsat Dr.
Clarksburg, MD 20871
Office: 240-631-0008 x274

On 3/25/2018 1:39 PM, Steve Tockey wrote:
>
> 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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>
>
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