Uber Self-Driving Car Hits and Kills Arizona Pedestrian [View all]

[MineralMan]

But, see, it's OK, because she was jaywalking. She broke the law. How would an Uber self-driving car have anticipated that someone might be jaywalking? People never jaywalk, see.

That's the argument some are making. I call bullshit on that argument. I cannot even count the number of times I have stopped for a jaywalker, even some who have suddenly stepped out from between two parked cars. See, I'm a human, and I know that people do that, so I watch out for people standing between cars. Kids chasing balls, too. Dogs running out into the street.

In 55 years of driving, I have never hit anyone. Not a pedestrian. Not another car. Not a dog or a deer. I've avoided all of those things and way more than once. Way.

The human brain has excellent heuristic capabilities. An alert driver is always watching for the unexpected. I'm an alert driver. I'm human. So far, I've had zero accidents that involved collisions with anything. Heuristics. Human heuristics.

I don't want to kill a jaywalking woman. So, I watch for people who might do that. It's a thing. It happens.

Uber cars, apparently, can't see the woman who is going to walk out into the street in the middle of the block. That isn't apparently in it's AI heuristic model.

Screw that. That jaywalking woman is dead because she was killed by a machine that supposedly had AI. Not very bright AI, apparently..