Self Drive

The Self Driving Car accident

As most of you have heard, a few days ago a self-driving test Uber car hit and killed a pedestrian in Arizona. The event is said to have been caused by the women crossing a dark street, out side of a cross walk.

Well... Lets look at this from the science view point. The self-drive cars are equipped with a whole set of sensors, they can detect the road, the curb, other cars parked, other cars driving. And they do this day or night.

The idea that since the accident occurred at night, it is not he car's fault. This is stupid! If the sensors couldn't see the women, then the sensors couldn't see the road or other car. People are thinking the computer driving the car is a person and is limited by sight or the lack there of by night. The computer doesn't see night or day, is is always the same. This means the car should have been able to see a person in the road just like another car or hazard object.

The cars use a combination of radar, infrared and maybe even lidar to scan the environment and create a picture of the road and surroundings. They don't need light to do this, the system bounces energy off the objects around the car and the returned energy provides the image. LIDAR measures distance to a target by illuminating the target with pulsed laser light and measuring the reflected pulses with a sensor.  The result is an image of the road with cars and people. The fast spinning radar units on the roof  are able to pickup movement or quick changes to the environment. The moving person should be no problem for the radar to see.

Also, the car never tried to ovoid the collision, it never slowed or swerved. It shows that the software totally failed. This is a total fail for the self-driving software and hardware. It is totally the cars fault. The self-drive system should have seen the woman and avoided her by stopping. Also the cars don't honk the horn, no visual or audio warning. The simply drove into a person walking across the street.

The rush for self-drive is a simple money grab. Get rid of the driver and the Uber or Lyft or delivery companies just saves a ton of money. Think about it. If a ride costs you $10, the driver gets $8. Now dump the drive and the full $10 goes to the company or if they even cut the price in half, the company still would make 300% more on each ride. That's a huge amount of money and a huge increase in revenue.

Soon all the Uber drivers will be unemployed, soon followed by truck drivers. Driving isn't a great job but it is a job.

Say goodbye to your job...