Embarrassing and really bad, also the state could have a unit test, Nevada has one for all of its gambling games so there is precedent of a state granting a license based on that arbitrary higher threshold
Back testing however is possible. You could collect all recorded data from all driverless orgs, and require any new deploy be run over it. Plus a simulation.
For example, creating a standards body that collected this data and certified and release could be done by industry.
Unit testing is one technique used in autonomous vehicle verification, and that I think that includes the image classifiers and path planner, though I am less familiar with exactly how that is broken down, and how much is done in integration test like simulators vs unit test.
However, if you are saying that exhaustive unit testing of neural network based units is not possible, then I agree.
Of course they were. Almost no one is capable of staying totally focused on a task they have no input in and is incredibly unstimulating. Even if they were looking at the road their thoughts would be "Oh, someone is crossing the road. The car will slow down for this. Oh shit it didn't and now its too late"
The car either drives itself with no user input required at all or it needs constant user input.
My first thought was that the other companies don’t use two drivers for an extra set of eyes on the road but to have an extra set of eyes on the driver.
The system should have detected and braked and if was incapable of this it shouldn't be on public roads. This is a very simple case of the car failing to detect an object in the road and should be the most basic functionality of a driverless vehicle. I have sympathy for the driver who Uber's PR team has thrown under the bus (excuse the turn of phrase) when it was obviously was a basic engineering and management failure.
That doesn't stop the fact that you first have to identify that the car will not make an action automatically and by that time it is too late for a human to take manual controls back. That also doesn't stop people who are looking out the window but not really focused on what is going on since they likely spend hundreds of hours looking and nothing ever happens.
Human brains were not designed for this kind of task. Everything about the task prompts a resting mindset but the task requires 100% full concentration for hours.
You and I may disagree on this but my assumption is that it’s not the drivers job to determine whether the car will take the right action, but to do whatever is necessary to prevent any sort of accident.
Regardless my point was more related to the fact that an additional driver likely would have prevented the primary driver from watching a movie on there phone as opposed to watching the road.
Whatever they’re supposed to do in this instance the driver wasn’t doing it.
It’s not really relevant what we think the safety’s job is, but what he thinks Uber thinks his job is. I suspect he suspects Uber wouldn’t keep him employed long if he kept interrupting the car if there might be an accident. And, of course, he’s screwed if there is an accident, too. It’s a shit job they gave to a felon because they needed a warm body in a seat that they could blame or things went south.
Re: second driver, I agree, but that costs twice as much.
1. Uber tests immature self-driving software on public roads.
2. Uber reduced number of safety drivers from 2 to 1.
3. Uber hired a convicted felon (attempted armed robbery) to do this job.
4. Single, convicted felon safety driver is watching Hulu instead of looking out the window.
Sure, being a safety driver is a boring job, but there are lots of boring jobs that require careful attention, and people manage to do them.
It's not reasonable to expect the general public to reliably monitor their self driving car, but it is very reasonable to expect a professional safety driver in a prototype car to not watch Hulu.
Because the job is boring yet safety critical, you need someone who is conscientious. You need someone who follows the rules and tries their best to live up to their responsibilities. Committing an armed robbery is basically the exact opposite of this.
You see the result. It's not that she was looking out the window and zoned out and started daydreaming accidentally. She deliberately made the choice to watch TV on her phone. The car was not legal nor safe to drive without a safety driver monitoring, but she was incapable of providing any monitoring because she was watching TV.
So what about all of the careless, lazy people I’ve worked with over the years who didn’t have armed robbery convictions? Maybe a past crime isn’t a good predictor of future work ability.
I didn’t say “hire everyone who isn’t an armed robber.” I said “don’t hire armed robbers for this job.” Unfortunately past crimes can be good predictors of future work unreliability.
No. The key point is that Uber engineers under the orders of management disengaged automatic breaking systems to make the car provide a smoother ride. If these had remained on then the pedestrian would be alive whether the driver was distracted or not.
‘Jaywalkers’ is such an offensive concept. ‘People trying to cross a road.’ Someone told me you can actually be ticketed for crossing a road in the US? In the UK it is always the fault of the car driver if they hit a pedestrian as pedestrians are more vulnerable (code rule 204, but doesn’t apply to motorways.)
Not guilt - but the presumption is that drivers should be able to stop, rather than that the person should not be trying to cross the road. People can cross roads wherever they please in the UK, except motorways. They should ensure it is safe, but they can cross.
Is it? The driver was the one who decided to make the situation dangerous. A walker on their own would find it impossible to harm someone by walking. If you are driving in a place where people are walking (Anywhere not a highway) you must be driving at a speed where you could stop very quickly (30-40km/h).
If you were driving at 30km/h it would be almost impossible to seriously hurt someone even if they stepped out in front of you.
In this case, however, it was a posted 56 km/h - 72 km/h zone on a 4 lane road. At that speed you can't react to a person that steps out in front of you. Particularly at night.
Regardless of speed, a pedestrian who "stepped out in front" of a car is pretty clearly the one with a better view and much more manuverable -- that's the action that made the situation dangerous. Not a car driving within the posted speed.
Because ALL road user (pedestrians and bikes included) have an unspoken understanding that they will not behave in ways that deviate too far from the norms.
We do not (yet) live in a zero trust society. Pedestrians do not wait for far off cross traffic to come to a complete stop before crossing and drivers do not assume any pedestrian is going to dart out without some sort of body language warning. This allows both groups to accomplish their goals faster than if they had to verify the other wasn't going to do something dumb. It mostly works out as long as at least one party holds up their side of the bargain.
Well ok, but that point of view leads to 4x more dead people per capita than our way of doing things. If that works for you, then good for you. That’s a big pile of dead bodies, but ok.
Are you suggesting we set the max speed limit everywhere to 30km/hr so that in the event a pedestrian chooses to jump in front of a car, the car has time to react? Or what exactly are you advocating?
How do you think the UK manages to do it? People drive more carefully because they know people could want to cross anywhere. Sometimes 40 or 60 works depending on the terrain and visibility and design of the road, but you need to know people can cross so you keep that in mind, instead of thinking ‘only a criminal would try to cross my path and if they do it's not my fault.’
Not being from the UK, I'm not sure of the exact details of the law over there, but from a quick read it appears that pedestrians don't have the right of way except at marked pedestrian crossings. And certainly on a 4 lane 70km/hr posted road they would be expected to exercise good judgement and not step out in front of a car that they could clearly see coming.
https://travel.stackexchange.com/a/123110 is the closest I could find from a UK native. You clearly can't just barrel through a pedestrian that has stepped into the roadway without trying to stop, but there's also no expectation that a car must drive slower than posted on the off chance that somebody jumps out. A car should try to stop if somebody steps in front, but a pedestrian also should be aware of their surroundings and shouldn't step in front.
Unless you can show a UK LAW reference that peds have right of way on a 4 lane road without a pedestrian crossing? Do you have local knowledge or are you just making assumptions about a foreign country?
"children and older pedestrians who may not be able to judge your speed and could step into the road in front of you. At 40 mph (64 km/h) your vehicle will probably kill any pedestrians it hits. At 20 mph (32 km/h) there is only a 1 in 20 chance of the pedestrian being killed. So kill your speed"
There's no rule saying that a pedestrian should not cross a road, except for a motorway.
"find a safe place to cross and where there is space to reach the pavement on the other side. Where there is a crossing nearby, use it."
So if a crossing is safer use it, but they have every right to try to cross the road, using common sense. That's different to the US, where if you try to cross the road at all, outside of a crossing, you're a 'jaywalker'.
"That's different to the US, where if you try to cross the road at all, outside of a crossing, you're a 'jaywalker'."
This is incorrect. In the United States you can generally cross at any intersection if there is no marked crossing available. In low traffic areas, people often cross the road at will, after checking to see if any cars are coming. 'Jaywalking' is barely a crime and is only rarely enforced.
Drivers don't have right of way either. Both are expected to take care, and expect hazards[1][2]. In the case of a junction, where a car has turned onto a road a pedestrian is crossing, and at marked crossings the pedestrian does have right of way. There is no such thing as jaywalking in the UK.
If a car hits a pedestrian the starting presumption is a) driver is at fault and b) avoiding action should have been taken.
There are many other parts of the Highway Code that reference pedestrians, in multiple contexts. The general tone is "expect the unexpected and to find a pedestrian, or child chasing their football, everywhere except motorways and restricted carriageways (e.g. some dual carriageways)".
I don't think it's logically valid to take a statistical difference between two places and attribute it entirely to one policy or cultural difference. The US has twice the vehicles per-capita than does the UK which might also have quite a bit to do with this stat. I'm sure there are other confounders as well.
Of those that are driven over by a car speeding at 30km/h 10% die, at 50km/h 80% die. (Source: drivers education Sweden). Reducing your speed just a little helps a lot.
Thanks for your comment. I didn't know that jaywalking doesn't exist as an offense in the UK. Goes to show how commercial interests can get something ingrained in society to the point where you actually think of it as "the natural state of being". Apparently jaywalking as a negative term was promoted by auto interests in the US in the early 20th century, according to Wikipedia.
The big difference is the ‘default state.’ The default state in the UK is that as a pedestrian you are completely entitled to stride out confidently into any road to cross. The default state in the US is that you shouldn’t be there. Both parties should apply common sense, but by default you are entitled to cross the road.
No, they don't ticket everyone who jaywalks, but they certainly can. The arbitrary nature of enforcement (there is plenty of evidence for racial disparities in jaywalking enforcement in some locales, easily Googleable) is in my mind a great argument for getting rid of jaywalking laws - they can still keep traffic obstruction laws.
I’d be very surprised if the “default state” is that pedestrians can be wherever they want. Can you cite the UK law that shows this? (I once came upon two guys duking it out in the street. I can’t believe their only crime would be fighting in the UK.)
In California (other states vary to varying degrees) there is a crosswalk at every intersection whether marked or not (as well as some marked crosswalks in other places). These are the only places a pedestrian may legally cross a road. Here cars must yield “right-of-way” to pedestrians, but pedestrians also have a “duty of care” for their own safety and others. Cars must yield but pedestrians can’t just step right out and damn the physics. On the road, pedestrians are confined to walking against traffic on the left side of the road if there is no sidewalk. Otherwise they should not be on the road. But, if they are on the road, drivers have a duty of care for their safety. Pedestrians can’t be there but if they are cars can’t just mow them down.
In practice, pedestrians generally don’t get tagged for jaywalking. (Walking in my neighborhood without jaywalking would be a death sentence because of blind corners. You have to cross the road often to be seen.) Where the law mostly comes into play is when pedestrians are struck by vehicles. A jaywalking pedestrian will likely be found legally responsible for the accident unless the driver was speeding or otherwise acted irresponsibly, in which case a percentage of responsibility will be assigned to each.
The point is, there isn’t a law otherwise. It isn’t illegal. Can you point at the law that says you may wear a sweater in the US? No, there’s just no law otherwise. It’s the default state.
> These are the only places a pedestrian may legally cross a road.
That’s crazy. Why restrict pedestrians like that?
> I once came upon two guys duking it out in the street. I can’t believe their only crime would be fighting in the UK.
Well I think you can be obstructing the highway, but crossing normally isn’t doing that.
Those things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. Yes in the US you can be ticketed for jaywalking, but at least in my experience it's more used on busy highways, where you are also endangering drivers who may have to swerve to avoid you. At least within cities I haven't seen it used when crossing a small street when no cars are coming, but it may be different in different places.
Not sure about drivers being at fault, but fault in an accident is a weird concept anyway. For the most part, if you get hit by a car the driver isn't going to suffer serious consequences (they probably won't be convicted of manslaughter, for instance).
But, this whole car centered system we have is pretty screwed up there's no denying that. Something like 50,000 people die in car accidents every year in the US and it's just business as usual.
Illegal in Australia too, and they absolutely will fine for you for it. Not only that, but they do "safety blitzes" where they stick cops near major pedestrian areas and just hand out tickets all day to people who cross on the pedestrian red, or cross more than 'x' metres from the crossing, whether there's cars coming or not.
Meanwhile red lights seem to be option for cars, and i've (very regularly) seen cars blow through proper red lights (not late-orange) right in front of cops who do absolutely nothing about it. Wife and kid had to quite literally dodge a car while they were crossing on their pedestrian green, right next to a cop, and when she got his attention he just shrugged and ignore her.
Cars can't cross the road on a divided highway either, so it's fair. If the person in question was running along the road not across it, this wouldn't have happened.
Self-driving car companies really need to perform more testing outside of "car culture" areas. Jaywalking is super common in Chicago. This vehicle would probably rack up a vehicular homicide charge within 30 minutes here.
There are no details in this article but I can't imagine building a car that does not have a prediction system that constantly updates the car's belief about where other objects in the environment are going to be every few milliseconds. Calling it "Was not programmed to detect jaywalkers" makes it sound like it was the victim's fault only. If the car couldn't detect humans and other moving objects and plan its course accordingly it was a a dumb waypoint follower programmed to look at traffic lights only. It could have run into something or someone else if traffic light detection didn't work correctly even once.
What I remember seeing at the time is that it was programed specifically to ignore them since it is unable to detect if an object on the side of the road is just a stationary postbox or a person about to jump out.
To be able to safely handle pedestrians the self driving car would have to limit itself to much slower speeds or place fences around every road. I guess we will find out in a few years which option was preferable.
This raises a second question to me- as a motorcyclist, other drivers can be somewhat of a problem because you look like a pedestrian from the waist up, and they aren't mentally looking for pedestrians.
A self-driving car could have similar (albeit not the same) issues.
As a motorcyclist you would be on the road. If they run into objects already on the road, then that’s a problem, and I’d be concerned for your safety and the safety of bicyclists.
They should at minimum lose their license to drive as would a human being who committed the same crime. They should also be "imprisoned" by way of losing their right to exist in society for a period of 3-15 years like a human being.
This is what happens when we let criminally minded sociopathic corporations flaunt the law. They flaunt more and more laws until someone dies.
It's wrong and I am not shocked in the least that Uber would let something like this happen.
This should be an existential crime. How many laws must they break until we stop them?
A lot of non self-driving cars already handle this situation well as a safety feature, despite the responsibility being the driver's. It seems like any AV should have this as a baseline requirement.
Jesus, the language they use. Jaywalkers are people.
Uber's self-driving car wasn't programmed to not hit people.
The fact that the person was in front of the machine at a part of the road that the machine didn't know to be a pedestrian crossing is irrelevant here.
FWIW, that person could've been a construction worker, and would've been hit by Uber just the same.
Human drivers aren't taught to look out for people only at pedestrian intersections. Those are the places where drivers have to be extra cautious because the people are more likely to cross the road there. But people (and animals, and other drivers) could be anywhere on the road.
Imagine this thinking applied to other machinery:
"I'm sorry, we only made a machine that doesn't kill people wearing blue pants. That person wore a skirt, so our machine was rightfully confused. We've made many improvements since".
"Jaywalker" is a word that was invented to shift the responsibility to victims of car accidents, and it's still being used that way. It's a deliberate usage of language to spin a narrative.
Mind your words. “Jaywalking” is not illegal or wrong or even inappropriate in most jurisdictions. Here in Ontario, it is only illegal if you are crossing the street near an intersection and deliberately trying to circumvent a light or other control on pedestrian crossing.
Crossing anywhee else is perfectly legal, and it’s a driver’s responsibility to avoid pedestrians doing perfectly normal things like crossing the fucking street.
Nothing inappropriate about crossing the street. What’s inappropriate is trying to blame the victim and make everyone in the world adjust their behaviour to coddle a few crooks trying to pump and dump the shares of their company that doesn't have a viable business model.
What’s inappropriate is deciding to cut costs by only putting one human in the test car, so they are responsible for monitoring the vehicle and safety, instead of splitting the job between two or more people, which is standard in the industry for test vehicles.
I’m blaming the company. The list of ways they made this happen is a kilometre long. Are you ignoring all that or unaware of it?
Are you here to be provide the opinion that pedestrians need to dodge companies doing their alpha testing on public streets?
And why the fuck should jaywalking be illegal? I’m sitting in my car. You’re on foot. Why should I have some almighty right to drive around without looking for you?
Streets are for all citizens, and crossing streets should be safe for everyone, even distracted pedestrians. It’s 2019. Crossing the street should not be a life-or-death proposition.
It’s ridiculous that capitalism gives us battery powered scooters to rent by the trip, and rockets that can land themselves on a barge, but somehow the idea that we can make streets safe for cyclists and pedestrians is too difficult or ideologically impossible.
Well, if you look outside of America, you can see that other countries get this right.
I sincerely wish you to lose your driver's license, if only for a brief period of time, so that you could appreciate just how much our infrastructure is unsuitable for pedestrians.
We barely have sidewalks in most places. And you suggest outlawing "jaywalking"?
And all of that is happening on taxpayers' dime.
Don't get me wrong, I'm driving everywhere too - but I'm taking advantage of the infrastructure my non-driving friends have chipped in for (some of them - gasp - walk to work in SF!).
Sorry, but your perspective is not American. Just entitled.
>if you can find a way that is not restricting the car driver.
And why not the other way around? What is it about driving a vehicle that should give one priority?
I don't necessarily disagree with your vision. But in practice, that means blocking off cities for cars. Drive all you want on the highways, nobody will restrict you there.
The idea that drivers should not be "restricted" by pedestrians is the entitlement I am talking about.
The idea is that not everyone can own and operate a car (the killed woman was one of them).
The idea is that in a vehicle-pedestrian collision, the driver is going to be unharmed, and the pedestrian is likely to die.
The idea is that cars already have plenty of pedestrian-free infrastructure: the highway system, but pedestrians are nearly always forced to share the road with cars in the US (sidewalks are disconnected by roads).
The idea is that roads and sidewalks are constructed with tax money, and the pedestrians are not getting their fair share. A lot of people drive because, as you noted, they have to, not as preference.
The idea is that the cities don't belong to people with cars, and the convenience of moving around in a vehicle should not come at the expense of lives of pedestrians.
The idea is that if you are not on a highway, you go slow and look out for people.
>either learn to drive, find a way to get a car, use public transportation, walk/cross only in appropriate place etc.
Your inability to put yourself in someone else's shoes is staggering.
Yes, my whole point is that it is too much for some people.
Cars aren't an option for everyone. As for "walking in appropriate places" and using buses - how many times do I need to say that these simply don't exist in most of the US (are you from here?).
>The benefit for pedestrians should not come at the expense of vehicle. Is that too hard to grasp?
Frankly, it is. What expense (to an inanimate object) are you talking about? Slowing down and paying attention to the road? Cry me a river.
The expenses for pedestrians is risking lives just to get to places.
Yes, it is hard to grasp that you think it's comparable.
Again: we aren't living in your fantasy land where sidewalks and pedestrian crossings and public transportation is available. Saying "use those or drive" is not an option for people who can't drive. The killed woman was one of them.
>It maybe be unimportant for you but not for others.
Surely "not slowing down" and "not dying" are not on the same scale of importance, don't you think?
>Again: if those are not available, then the fix is to make it available.
Sure! If I could wave a magic wand and make sidewalks appear, I would. Do you have one?
And between now and that magic time (which, mind you, might never come in the US), you're saying that pedestrians should die because tough luck, get a car.
Meanwhile, it is entirely within your power to go slower and be a cautious driver (as is your responsibility).
Let's have a deal: I'll work on making sidewalks happen. Until then, you do your best to avoid killing people (go slow / pay attention), because non-drivers literally don't have any other option other than being on roadways to get to places.
Typical example: going to a movie theater requires walking on highway frontage[1].
You might say, don't go to a movie theater, but that's just one example; you can't walk to DPS in that city either (nor take a bus there, at least when I lived there). The bus can only drop you off on the feeder road (where cars go 60mph, and no sidewalk).
Do you understand my point? I accept the solution, but it's not feasible in the short term. We all have to compromise until it happens (which might be never, given how these things work).
>If these does not exist or not adequate then the fix is to make it available or improve it.
Well, OK, we are on the same page here.
But they surely do not exist in most of the US, and will not be available overnight. Until we have that, we should be mindful of people who have to deal with inadequacies of the infrastructure.
Uber is not a solution for most people. Call it what it is: a taxi. And you wouldn't expect someone too poor to have a car to take a taxi everywhere (same applies for children, international students, etc, etc).
=========================================
Personal anecdote: I petitioned the city of College Station, TX to construct sidewalks on Harvey Rd, where a lot of international grad students who don't have cars live. The street was missing sidewalks for a full block on both sides. I've seen a wheelchair being rolled on that road, where cars go 50mph, because there was no alternative.
The city's answer? It's in the development plan, but there's "no money" for it.
In the meantime, the Highway 6 ramp on Harvey Rd was redone two or three times. The ramp was fine, I saw no gain from that.
In my 7.5 years of living in the area, I never figured out a way to get to DPS by public transportation. I heard that there is a city bus, but I have not witnessed it. You'd think that people who need to get a license should have means of getting to the place that gives them out without having to drive, but no.
There was no way to get to most of the places without having to walk on the street where cars were driving. The sidewalk on College Main street (the main is in the name) was completed in 2016, and was an exception.
You literally couldn't walk to a movie theater, for example: the walking directions on Google Maps would take you on a highway frontage (exactly where you wouldn't want to be as a pedestrian).
So, if you have $10 for a movie ticket, but not another $20 for a taxi there and back (the idea that there could be a bus is laughable, of course there is no bus), you are SOL.
Not to mention that before Uber, even taxis were not a thing in many suburbs.
You know that people without cars are screwed, because you'd be very afraid to lose your license. It would be a disaster for your life. But it shouldn't be, because (as your driver's manual surely says) driving is a privilege that not all of us enjoy.
==============================
PS: I say this as someone who accumulates at least 10K non-commute miles every year, and who considers 200 miles a "short" drive. I am very much pro-driving, and think that having a personal vehicle is very liberating.
But at the same time, not having a vehicle should not be a death threat. In the US today, it is.
Like anything in life, you have to adapt or die, the city are build for car, you either adapt to it or at worse case die.
Why are city build for car ? Apparently enough people/entity whatever want it to be that way.
Good for you to, to fight for you cause, which is what you should be doing. If it were me, If I care enough I would petition to have more road and less sidewalks.
No, I do not expect the situation would be ideal for everyone. You can't never have a situation where everyone is happy, that is simply impossible.
Well, you correctly describe the current state of affairs. Certainly building cities for cars benefited the people who built them, as well as the automobile manufacturers.
And while we can't make everyone "happy", we definitely can definitely improve on things like, dunno, needlessly killing people.
OK, I guess trying to spin "hey, maybe we could care just a tiny bit" about other people isn't going to work here, so how about this:
The less people drive, the better it is for the drivers. Where I live, the 23-minute drive on Hwy 101 becomes up to a 1hr45m drive in the morning hours. Making the area pedestrian- and transit-friendly would likely cut down the peak commute time by half, saving car commuters a spare hour or two each day, judging by the experience in LA[1].
PS: "Adapt or die" is a shitty attitude to have, my friend.
A good friend of mine and I were living on Long Island, NY. We were students, and couldn't afford to have a car. Insurance in NY is hella expensive.
I moved out to grad school in TX, and "adapted": got a car and a license. It was cheap to live there, I could afford it.
My friend didn't get the chance. He couldn't afford a car on a grad student stipend in NY. One day, he got hit by a car and died.
I hold the Suffolk County - and people who say words like "adapt or die" regarding pedestrian deaths - personally responsible for the death of my friend, a PhD student who could have been working on self-driving cars now.
You must be young to hold this attitude, and I sincerely hope you change it. There's always a bigger fish. "Adapt or die" is great when it doesn't concern you.
Likewise, maybe you should care just a tiny bit about people who support car then. You easily dismiss their concern, deemed it as unimportant. Regardless, I still acknowledge your position, its just fact of life that every issue has some supporter and hatters.
There are few solution for congestion, build more road, elevated road, underground road, tunnel. Elon Musk has interesting idea with his boring company.
"Adapt or die" is not shitty attitude its the reality of life.
>A good friend of mine and I were living on Long Island, NY. We were students, and couldn't afford to have a car. Insurance in NY is hella expensive
For some people, its just mean you have to work harder/smarter to find the way to get it.
Whatever solution I purpose, you will just counter it with, what about this other group of people, an so on.
No I don't have all the solution for all kind people, no one is, at some point these people have to figure out themselves.
Yes at the very worse case, if you can't adapt you die, thats the reality of life.
Similarly, there are tons of other situation where current environment is not what I prefer, nonetheless I have to adapt or I'll die.
Exactly, even though nobody can claim that auto-industry and an evil cabal of drivers had any power in the USSR it still had anti-jaywalking laws. Ergo, the claims here that the only possible reason to outlaw jaywalking is pandering to drivers and auto-industry are false.
You seem to be the only person making this claim here and without any serious arguments. Russian does not have single words for many other traffic violations too, nevertheless they remain illegal. Anyways, that was not the point I argued.
>You seem to be the only person making this claim here
There's an entire thread[1] up here where people from the UK are saying the same thing:
>>‘Jaywalkers’ is such an offensive concept
>> "jaywalking" as a negative term was promoted by auto interests in the US in the early 20th century
etc.
>and without any serious arguments.
My argument is simple: try translating "jaywalker" into literally any other language. You can't. "Jaywalker" as a concept only exists in the US.
In other places, the law varies, but you can't call someone a "jaywalker" because there's no concept for it.
And the law varies, too, but in most European countries it is not a thing; see Wikipedia[2].
As for the invention of the word and its usage to shift the blame to pedestrians: it's a well-known historical fact. See Wikipedia again on the origin and use of the word[2].
(To wit, in Russian, the best you could do for "jaywalker" would translate back as "a person who has crossed the street in a place not designated for it", which bring street into the debate: specifically, whether/why the point of crossing was not designated as such. There is no automatic negative connotation, because we all know how much streets layouts can suck.
On top of that, you literally can't label a person as a "jaywalker" in Russian. Mind-blowing, right? Languages are fun.
Even funner thing that it doesn't make sense in the UK English either, see the above thread[1].)
>There's an entire thread[1] up here where people from the UK are saying the same thing
Yeah, they are talking about the infraction, not the word. The point I had been making
>My argument is simple: try translating "jaywalker" into literally any other language. You can't. "Jaywalker" as a concept only exists in the US.
I can translate into Russian: "пешеход, совершивший переход проезжей части в неположенном месте". Don't know other languages but I am sure not every country is like a UK, where, according to comments here, everyone can just walk into traffic at any moment so everyone drives at 30kmh :)
>On top of that, you literally can't label a person as a "jaywalker" in Russian. Mind-blowing, right? Languages are fun.
You cannot label a person a "speeder" or "tailgater" in Russian too. Wow! Languages are fun indeed.
> "пешеход, совершивший переход проезжей части в неположенном месте"
Isn't that what I wrote? :) Anyway, doesn't have the same ring to it, does it? Compare the title of the article with
"Self-Driving Uber in Crash Wasn't Programmed to Spot Pedestrians Crossing the Street Anywhere Except Crosswalks".
Which one makes Uber look less competent?
>You cannot label a person a "speeder" or "tailgater" in Russian too. Wow! Languages are fun indeed.
Well, yes! These aren't actions that warrant labeling a person in Russian. That tells you something indeed.
However, as verbs, the do have direct translations: превышать (to speed), висеть на хвосте (to tailgate).
Claim: "Jaywalking" does not translate to anything but literal dictionary definition like the one you provided in any language other than English, where it also has a clearly negative connotation.
Etymology: early 20th century: from jay in the colloquial sense ‘silly person’ + walk.
From Wikipedia: The term "jaywalking" is primarily a North American concept where laws restrict pedestrian use of public roads. In other countries such as the United Kingdom, the word is not generally used and there are no laws limiting how pedestrians can use public highways.
Also from Wikipedia: The word jaywalk is not historically neutral.[5] It is a compound word derived from the word jay, an inexperienced person and a curse word that originated in the early 1900s, and walk. Automobile interests in the US took up the cause of labeling and scorning jaywalkers in the 1910s and early 1920s, by then the earlier term of "jay driver" was declining in use.
I mean, it's all right there, with references. Again, what specifically are you arguing? That Wikipedia is wrong?
You wrote that I cannot translate it to any other language. I translated it to Russian, Russian is another language so it is what you wrote. Translating "проезжая часть" as "street" and then complaining that nobody knows what "street" means does not have the same ring to it, sure.
>Well, yes! These aren't actions that warrant labeling a person in Russian. That tells you something indeed.
I am now really curious. What does it tell? That speeding and tailgating are also invented by the auto-industry?
>However, as verbs, the do have direct translations: превышать (to speed), висеть на хвосте (to tailgate).
So? Jaywalking also has a direct translation as a verb "нарушать (правила перехода)".
>I mean, it's all right there, with references. Again, what specifically are you arguing? That Wikipedia is wrong?
I am arguing that jaywalking as a punishable offense exists outside the US, that's all. It's right there, in Wikipedia. Even in UK it's forbidden on "motorways" according to Wikipedia.
Motorways are what we'd call highways here. Specifically, they are not streets. The concept of "crossing a street being a thing to lampoon" doesn't exist in the UK.
I am not going to argue about the origins of the derogatory term anymore: the history is there.
My point is that other countries don't have a derogatory term for people crossing the street.
For Russian, that'd be like "мудак", but specifically and only applicable to people crossing the street. Like "мудоход".
We don't have "мудоход", we don't fine for "мудоходство".
That's the difference in language I am trying to highlight.
Have you ever been to the US? Nobody uses "jaywalker" as an insult. It's as insulting as Russian "разиня" with the exception that it's actually a word used in the law. Just imagine Russian code of law with articles for "мудоходство" or "распиздяйство"...
I never claimed it's neutral, breakin the law is not and should not be neutral in this country. So I don't see the point you are making any more and, I am sorry to say that, not interested to learn it.
I just think that "Self-driving Uber wasn't programmed to detect people outside of crosswalks" would have been both a more precise title and more respectful to the victim.
Sorry for dragging this out for so long!
On the off-topic, I highly recommend Orwell's brilliant essay "Politics and the English Language"[1]
It deals with the subject of how choice of words affects thought, and on the danger of canned phrases.
A parallel work, in Russian, is Канцелярит[2], by Чуковский (a chapter from his book).
If you've already read both, would love to hear your thoughts; if not, then hope that this would be a good thing you could get out of this conversation :)
(I think you'd enjoy reading both as someone who speaks both languages)
If I'm nowhere near a crosswalk, how do you suggest I get to the other side of the street?
(I'm thinking of a road near where I went to college where I would have had to walk a solid ten minutes to get to a crosswalk and back. Most people just had cars, but I didn't, and I had to cross to get to the mall.)
>Right, You find a way to get a car. If you can't or don't want to then you have to figure out yourself.
Right, because screw poor, disabled, elderly, children, international students (most of whom don't drive when they arrive here), and so on.
You know what, fine. The way pedestrians will "figure it out themselves" is by simply banning cars from cities, because, apparently, there can be no compromise.
As your response indicates, asking the drivers to go slow and look out for people in the suburbs is apparently too much. (I guess you also oppose spending money on constructing sidewalks, because why can't everyone get a car instead? – but that's beside the point of the argument).
Saying "get a car, or GTFO" is the entitlement I was talking about.
My position: in cities, cars and pedestrian are sharing the environment that is predominantly hostile towards pedestrian (lack sidewalks and crossings), but are well-designed for cars. In exchange for getting the car-friendly infrastructure (instead of having speed bumps and 15mph speed limits), the drivers are asked to drive cautiously and attentively, and be mindful of pedestrians, who might not always cross the street in places that are convenient for drivers (because the infrastructure is so broken that they are forced to do this merely to get to places).
When an accident happens, it is the pedestrian who will die. Driving is a privilege that comes with the responsibility to avoid this.
Your position: nah.
----------------
Asking to go slow and pay attention to the road where pedestrians can be is not "entitlement", it's the law, it's the traffic rules, and it's your responsibility as a driver that you volunteer for in exchange for getting the privilege of driving.
Anyway, "just go slow" is not comparable to "just stop being poor / unable to drive". I hope you can see the difference.
Yes cities are designed for cars, as it should be, at least from my perspective.
It also the law for a pedestrian to not jaywalk, or walk on areas of a highway or road where pedestrian traffic is not permitted. And if its not the law then it should be the law.
Anyway, I acknowledge that not all people will agree and I expect both side to fight for their cause. I just hope they don't win.
Furthermore, sometimes not even self driving car employees understand what is or is not a legal place for a pedestrian to cross a street, let alone their cars:
This isn't really accurate; according the report it was not programmed to stop for jaywalkers because it was causing too many false positives. The Volvo's built in pedestrian detector had also been disabled. The test driver was evidently not aware of this.
They need to do a complete verification of releases on core requirements.
My understanding is that the vehicle that killed the pedestrian was configured in a way that allowed it to fail in a very basic way.
What they need is a way to ensure that the actual vehicle configuration is translated fully to the simulator, and to run through a set of basic scenarios with every release configuration. The equivalent of end-to-end tests that run as part of a continuous integration process.
I assume they have something like that, but some configuration aspect is not properly integrated into the simulation tests, or they sometimes skip the full test suite. Or somehow their test suite did not include jaywalkers.
That is what needs to be in place, and there should be employees of an actual federal agency verifying that process, not people who are in any way paid by Uber.
That actually should be applied to all self-driving companies. And down the line, there should be government-run simulations that verify releases pass basic scenarios. Which is going to be very difficult to build, but the government can get funding through taxes or something from the self-driving car companies. They could even mandate that Google and Tesla provide their simulation software to the federal government, and create interfaces that are compatible, and make every release run through both simulators.
I mean, at every level, this is just fucking beyond any kind of word for stupid.
So, cars can just blast into people now. Cars have the right of way by default, because faceless corporations can mandate that self driving cars simply MUST happen, on all public roads. There are no direct consequences for criminal negligence to a large business with a multi-million dollar legal department, even if fines bankrupt the company, even if the corporate veil is pierced.
This will happen again. More people will die in the face of simple profiteering arms races. Nothing new; consider Blackwater in Iraq.
Okay fine. But programming a car to drive itself, and what... You're telling me they forgot to have it avoid solid objects?
Really? Hazard avoidance and collision detection for obstacles is not a thing?
Listen. If this must happen, why, why, why do these inept brad and chad companies just have to reinvent the wheel? Haven't we had terrain following radar in aviation, cruise missiles and nuclear programs for many multiple decades?
I cannot help but be disgusted by the bootleg budget machine learning snake oil that these morons throw at this problem in the grand race for the prize. "Image processing only because people are neural nets too, and that how we do it, so it obviously must be possible for it to work that way."
Enough rhesus monkeys slamming their hands on type writers will eventually form the words artificial intelligence, but that doesn't mean neural networks are destined to become idiot savant race car drivers.
This is the saddest fucking fantasy land Juicero gambit yet. Far worse than anything the internet of things has ever promised or tried.
High level C-suite executives should face capital punishment for the loss of life in circumstances like these. The French Revolution should serve as adequate warning for their willingness to flout fatal penalties the public encounters for their actions or omission thereof.
In doesn't matter that people die every day from typical car accidents or even gun accidents or other devices put into the hands of common citizens and small businesses. It is very obvious that this is potentially criminal in the same way that the opioid epidemic is criminal. There are large companies creating public hazards and courting disaster by way of far reaching goals and abuse of existing systemic realities.
Automation cannot be trusted with open arms in this way. In doesn't matter how ubiquitous high speed wireless broadband connectivity becomes. The back end is not there yet, neither is onboard guidance, nor will it be if brad and chad continue to rub sticks together in their quest for fire.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 239 ms ] threadFor example, creating a standards body that collected this data and certified and release could be done by industry.
However, if you are saying that exhaustive unit testing of neural network based units is not possible, then I agree.
The car either drives itself with no user input required at all or it needs constant user input.
Human brains were not designed for this kind of task. Everything about the task prompts a resting mindset but the task requires 100% full concentration for hours.
Regardless my point was more related to the fact that an additional driver likely would have prevented the primary driver from watching a movie on there phone as opposed to watching the road.
Whatever they’re supposed to do in this instance the driver wasn’t doing it.
Re: second driver, I agree, but that costs twice as much.
Seems pretty obvious who to blame to me.
1. Uber tests immature self-driving software on public roads. 2. Uber reduced number of safety drivers from 2 to 1. 3. Uber hired a convicted felon (attempted armed robbery) to do this job. 4. Single, convicted felon safety driver is watching Hulu instead of looking out the window.
Sure, being a safety driver is a boring job, but there are lots of boring jobs that require careful attention, and people manage to do them.
It's not reasonable to expect the general public to reliably monitor their self driving car, but it is very reasonable to expect a professional safety driver in a prototype car to not watch Hulu.
You see the result. It's not that she was looking out the window and zoned out and started daydreaming accidentally. She deliberately made the choice to watch TV on her phone. The car was not legal nor safe to drive without a safety driver monitoring, but she was incapable of providing any monitoring because she was watching TV.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/ped...
Can’t say I haven’t seen this kind of lazy management before.
The car is the guest in the pedestrian’s space.
If you were driving at 30km/h it would be almost impossible to seriously hurt someone even if they stepped out in front of you.
Regardless of speed, a pedestrian who "stepped out in front" of a car is pretty clearly the one with a better view and much more manuverable -- that's the action that made the situation dangerous. Not a car driving within the posted speed.
So why are you going that fast where there are pedestrians?
We do not (yet) live in a zero trust society. Pedestrians do not wait for far off cross traffic to come to a complete stop before crossing and drivers do not assume any pedestrian is going to dart out without some sort of body language warning. This allows both groups to accomplish their goals faster than if they had to verify the other wasn't going to do something dumb. It mostly works out as long as at least one party holds up their side of the bargain.
https://travel.stackexchange.com/a/123110 is the closest I could find from a UK native. You clearly can't just barrel through a pedestrian that has stepped into the roadway without trying to stop, but there's also no expectation that a car must drive slower than posted on the off chance that somebody jumps out. A car should try to stop if somebody steps in front, but a pedestrian also should be aware of their surroundings and shouldn't step in front.
Unless you can show a UK LAW reference that peds have right of way on a 4 lane road without a pedestrian crossing? Do you have local knowledge or are you just making assumptions about a foreign country?
I also said everyone was expected to use common sense.
But, https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/road-users-requ... says
"The most vulnerable road users are pedestrians"
And
"children and older pedestrians who may not be able to judge your speed and could step into the road in front of you. At 40 mph (64 km/h) your vehicle will probably kill any pedestrians it hits. At 20 mph (32 km/h) there is only a 1 in 20 chance of the pedestrian being killed. So kill your speed"
There's no rule saying that a pedestrian should not cross a road, except for a motorway.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-pedes...
"find a safe place to cross and where there is space to reach the pavement on the other side. Where there is a crossing nearby, use it."
So if a crossing is safer use it, but they have every right to try to cross the road, using common sense. That's different to the US, where if you try to cross the road at all, outside of a crossing, you're a 'jaywalker'.
This is incorrect. In the United States you can generally cross at any intersection if there is no marked crossing available. In low traffic areas, people often cross the road at will, after checking to see if any cars are coming. 'Jaywalking' is barely a crime and is only rarely enforced.
...but it's there, ready to use against you in a headline when a car hits you and you're killed.
'Jaywalker killed' - your fault.
'Person trying to cross the street mown down by car' - different kettle of fish.
If a car hits a pedestrian the starting presumption is a) driver is at fault and b) avoiding action should have been taken.
[1] Pedestrians - general: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-pedes...
[2] Drivers (Rule 146): https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/general-rules-t...
There are many other parts of the Highway Code that reference pedestrians, in multiple contexts. The general tone is "expect the unexpected and to find a pedestrian, or child chasing their football, everywhere except motorways and restricted carriageways (e.g. some dual carriageways)".
[3] Right of way crossing at junctions https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/using-the-road-...
In California (other states vary to varying degrees) there is a crosswalk at every intersection whether marked or not (as well as some marked crosswalks in other places). These are the only places a pedestrian may legally cross a road. Here cars must yield “right-of-way” to pedestrians, but pedestrians also have a “duty of care” for their own safety and others. Cars must yield but pedestrians can’t just step right out and damn the physics. On the road, pedestrians are confined to walking against traffic on the left side of the road if there is no sidewalk. Otherwise they should not be on the road. But, if they are on the road, drivers have a duty of care for their safety. Pedestrians can’t be there but if they are cars can’t just mow them down.
In practice, pedestrians generally don’t get tagged for jaywalking. (Walking in my neighborhood without jaywalking would be a death sentence because of blind corners. You have to cross the road often to be seen.) Where the law mostly comes into play is when pedestrians are struck by vehicles. A jaywalking pedestrian will likely be found legally responsible for the accident unless the driver was speeding or otherwise acted irresponsibly, in which case a percentage of responsibility will be assigned to each.
The point is, there isn’t a law otherwise. It isn’t illegal. Can you point at the law that says you may wear a sweater in the US? No, there’s just no law otherwise. It’s the default state.
> These are the only places a pedestrian may legally cross a road.
That’s crazy. Why restrict pedestrians like that?
> I once came upon two guys duking it out in the street. I can’t believe their only crime would be fighting in the UK.
Well I think you can be obstructing the highway, but crossing normally isn’t doing that.
Physics.
Not sure about drivers being at fault, but fault in an accident is a weird concept anyway. For the most part, if you get hit by a car the driver isn't going to suffer serious consequences (they probably won't be convicted of manslaughter, for instance).
But, this whole car centered system we have is pretty screwed up there's no denying that. Something like 50,000 people die in car accidents every year in the US and it's just business as usual.
Meanwhile red lights seem to be option for cars, and i've (very regularly) seen cars blow through proper red lights (not late-orange) right in front of cops who do absolutely nothing about it. Wife and kid had to quite literally dodge a car while they were crossing on their pedestrian green, right next to a cop, and when she got his attention he just shrugged and ignore her.
Of course, not simply crossing but specifically crossing at inappropriate place.
I think the UK should also ticket the jaywalkers.
However, just because you have the right of way doesn't mean you can't be ticketed for not crossing in the designated areas.
The company that doesn't give a fuck if they maim or kill you. That is unless it turns into a PR issue.
To be able to safely handle pedestrians the self driving car would have to limit itself to much slower speeds or place fences around every road. I guess we will find out in a few years which option was preferable.
A self-driving car could have similar (albeit not the same) issues.
They should at minimum lose their license to drive as would a human being who committed the same crime. They should also be "imprisoned" by way of losing their right to exist in society for a period of 3-15 years like a human being.
This is what happens when we let criminally minded sociopathic corporations flaunt the law. They flaunt more and more laws until someone dies.
It's wrong and I am not shocked in the least that Uber would let something like this happen.
This should be an existential crime. How many laws must they break until we stop them?
https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/cars-make-progres...
Uber's self-driving car wasn't programmed to not hit people.
The fact that the person was in front of the machine at a part of the road that the machine didn't know to be a pedestrian crossing is irrelevant here.
FWIW, that person could've been a construction worker, and would've been hit by Uber just the same.
Human drivers aren't taught to look out for people only at pedestrian intersections. Those are the places where drivers have to be extra cautious because the people are more likely to cross the road there. But people (and animals, and other drivers) could be anywhere on the road.
Imagine this thinking applied to other machinery:
"I'm sorry, we only made a machine that doesn't kill people wearing blue pants. That person wore a skirt, so our machine was rightfully confused. We've made many improvements since".
"Jaywalker" is a word that was invented to shift the responsibility to victims of car accidents, and it's still being used that way. It's a deliberate usage of language to spin a narrative.
Crossing anywhee else is perfectly legal, and it’s a driver’s responsibility to avoid pedestrians doing perfectly normal things like crossing the fucking street.
Nothing inappropriate about crossing the street. What’s inappropriate is trying to blame the victim and make everyone in the world adjust their behaviour to coddle a few crooks trying to pump and dump the shares of their company that doesn't have a viable business model.
What’s inappropriate is deciding to cut costs by only putting one human in the test car, so they are responsible for monitoring the vehicle and safety, instead of splitting the job between two or more people, which is standard in the industry for test vehicles.
Jaywalker is not the correct term.
Then it should be.
It is also a pedestrians responsibility to avoid cars doing perfectly normal thing like using the road.
Likewise its inappropriate to blame the car driver and make everyone in the world adjust their behavior.
Are you here to be provide the opinion that pedestrians need to dodge companies doing their alpha testing on public streets?
And why the fuck should jaywalking be illegal? I’m sitting in my car. You’re on foot. Why should I have some almighty right to drive around without looking for you?
Streets are for all citizens, and crossing streets should be safe for everyone, even distracted pedestrians. It’s 2019. Crossing the street should not be a life-or-death proposition.
It’s ridiculous that capitalism gives us battery powered scooters to rent by the trip, and rockets that can land themselves on a barge, but somehow the idea that we can make streets safe for cyclists and pedestrians is too difficult or ideologically impossible.
Well, if you look outside of America, you can see that other countries get this right.
Because it can endanger the car driver too.
Yes streets is for all citizen, including for car driver.
Yes thats why designated crossing place is made, to make it safer for the pedestrians.
>Well, if you look outside of America, you can see that other countries get this right
Sure, from your perspective. But from mine, America is the right one. Even in America sadly they don't enforce it as much as I like.
We barely have sidewalks in most places. And you suggest outlawing "jaywalking"?
And all of that is happening on taxpayers' dime.
Don't get me wrong, I'm driving everywhere too - but I'm taking advantage of the infrastructure my non-driving friends have chipped in for (some of them - gasp - walk to work in SF!).
Sorry, but your perspective is not American. Just entitled.
Pedestrians should not be allowed to walk anywhere they want, but the penalty for an infraction should not be death.
And why not the other way around? What is it about driving a vehicle that should give one priority?
I don't necessarily disagree with your vision. But in practice, that means blocking off cities for cars. Drive all you want on the highways, nobody will restrict you there.
The idea that drivers should not be "restricted" by pedestrians is the entitlement I am talking about.
The idea that pedestrian to have priority, is in itself entitlement too.
The idea is that in a vehicle-pedestrian collision, the driver is going to be unharmed, and the pedestrian is likely to die.
The idea is that cars already have plenty of pedestrian-free infrastructure: the highway system, but pedestrians are nearly always forced to share the road with cars in the US (sidewalks are disconnected by roads).
The idea is that roads and sidewalks are constructed with tax money, and the pedestrians are not getting their fair share. A lot of people drive because, as you noted, they have to, not as preference.
The idea is that the cities don't belong to people with cars, and the convenience of moving around in a vehicle should not come at the expense of lives of pedestrians.
The idea is that if you are not on a highway, you go slow and look out for people.
Is that last thing too hard to grasp?
Your response indicate that these are too much.
Car driver pay for the tax as well.
>The idea is that the cities don't belong to people with cars
Then that need to be changed. The benefit for pedestrians should not come at the expense of vehicle.
Is that too hard to grasp?
Your inability to put yourself in someone else's shoes is staggering.
Yes, my whole point is that it is too much for some people.
Cars aren't an option for everyone. As for "walking in appropriate places" and using buses - how many times do I need to say that these simply don't exist in most of the US (are you from here?).
>The benefit for pedestrians should not come at the expense of vehicle. Is that too hard to grasp?
Frankly, it is. What expense (to an inanimate object) are you talking about? Slowing down and paying attention to the road? Cry me a river.
The expenses for pedestrians is risking lives just to get to places.
Yes, it is hard to grasp that you think it's comparable.
Again: we aren't living in your fantasy land where sidewalks and pedestrian crossings and public transportation is available. Saying "use those or drive" is not an option for people who can't drive. The killed woman was one of them.
Then the solution is to make these exist.
>What expense (to an inanimate object) are you talking about?
Yes, slowing down for one.
>Cry me a river
Your response indicate, inability to put yourself in someone else's shoes. It maybe be unimportant for you but not for others.
Again: if those are not available, then the fix is to make it available.
Surely "not slowing down" and "not dying" are not on the same scale of importance, don't you think?
>Again: if those are not available, then the fix is to make it available.
Sure! If I could wave a magic wand and make sidewalks appear, I would. Do you have one?
And between now and that magic time (which, mind you, might never come in the US), you're saying that pedestrians should die because tough luck, get a car.
Meanwhile, it is entirely within your power to go slower and be a cautious driver (as is your responsibility).
Let's have a deal: I'll work on making sidewalks happen. Until then, you do your best to avoid killing people (go slow / pay attention), because non-drivers literally don't have any other option other than being on roadways to get to places.
Typical example: going to a movie theater requires walking on highway frontage[1].
You might say, don't go to a movie theater, but that's just one example; you can't walk to DPS in that city either (nor take a bus there, at least when I lived there). The bus can only drop you off on the feeder road (where cars go 60mph, and no sidewalk).
Do you understand my point? I accept the solution, but it's not feasible in the short term. We all have to compromise until it happens (which might be never, given how these things work).
[1]https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Harvey+Road+%26+Scarlett+O'H...
Surely if the pedestrian does not walk at inappropriate place, less likely they would be dying.
Nah, If anything I would petition on making less sidewalks and more roads.
I don't have all the solutions for people who refuse/can't find a way to use vehicle. Thats for those people to figure out.
Who gets to define what is an "inappropriate place"?
Pretty much anywhere in the word crossing the road like that woman did would be "appropriate".
You just want to define traffic laws to your maximum convenience, all else be damned.
Clearly, you see nothing wrong with that: bringing harm to people if you can get away with that.
Something tells me you won't think it's fair if someone else gets to decide rules in a way that benefits them at your expense.
Whoever has the power in charge.
>Pretty much anywhere in the word crossing the road like that woman did would be "appropriate".
Then it should not be, I don't have to necessarily agree with whatever other country did.
>Something tells me you won't think it's fair if someone else gets to decide rules in a way that benefits them at your expense
Life is not fair. I will either fight the rules, try to change the rule or find a way to adapt the rules to benefit me.
Which is the same as what you are trying to do, trying to change the rules to fit your preference.
Reminder: driving is a privilege, not a right. So, no.
Most of the country isn't walkable. Getting around on foot practically means walking on roadside and crossing where the isn't a pedestrian crossing.
Again, most of suburban streets don't even have sidewalks or pedestrian crossings.
You seem to be missing that point, which is why I'm suggesting you try getting around on foot for a month.
Great, simply great.
As I said, that's not an option for:
* people who can't afford a car
* the disabled
* children
* very old people
* etc
You're literally requiring everyone else to drive so that's driving is a bit easier for you because you'll have to pay less attention to the road.
OK. That kind of makes you look like a shitty driver, though.
Or use public transportation.
> people who can't afford a car, the disabled, children, very old people
Public transportation or uber or in the future, self driving car.
If these does not exist or not adequate then the fix is to make it available or improve it.
Well, OK, we are on the same page here.
But they surely do not exist in most of the US, and will not be available overnight. Until we have that, we should be mindful of people who have to deal with inadequacies of the infrastructure.
Uber is not a solution for most people. Call it what it is: a taxi. And you wouldn't expect someone too poor to have a car to take a taxi everywhere (same applies for children, international students, etc, etc).
=========================================
Personal anecdote: I petitioned the city of College Station, TX to construct sidewalks on Harvey Rd, where a lot of international grad students who don't have cars live. The street was missing sidewalks for a full block on both sides. I've seen a wheelchair being rolled on that road, where cars go 50mph, because there was no alternative.
The city's answer? It's in the development plan, but there's "no money" for it.
In the meantime, the Highway 6 ramp on Harvey Rd was redone two or three times. The ramp was fine, I saw no gain from that.
In my 7.5 years of living in the area, I never figured out a way to get to DPS by public transportation. I heard that there is a city bus, but I have not witnessed it. You'd think that people who need to get a license should have means of getting to the place that gives them out without having to drive, but no.
There was no way to get to most of the places without having to walk on the street where cars were driving. The sidewalk on College Main street (the main is in the name) was completed in 2016, and was an exception.
You literally couldn't walk to a movie theater, for example: the walking directions on Google Maps would take you on a highway frontage (exactly where you wouldn't want to be as a pedestrian).
So, if you have $10 for a movie ticket, but not another $20 for a taxi there and back (the idea that there could be a bus is laughable, of course there is no bus), you are SOL.
Not to mention that before Uber, even taxis were not a thing in many suburbs.
You know that people without cars are screwed, because you'd be very afraid to lose your license. It would be a disaster for your life. But it shouldn't be, because (as your driver's manual surely says) driving is a privilege that not all of us enjoy.
==============================
PS: I say this as someone who accumulates at least 10K non-commute miles every year, and who considers 200 miles a "short" drive. I am very much pro-driving, and think that having a personal vehicle is very liberating.
But at the same time, not having a vehicle should not be a death threat. In the US today, it is.
Why are city build for car ? Apparently enough people/entity whatever want it to be that way.
Good for you to, to fight for you cause, which is what you should be doing. If it were me, If I care enough I would petition to have more road and less sidewalks.
No, I do not expect the situation would be ideal for everyone. You can't never have a situation where everyone is happy, that is simply impossible.
And while we can't make everyone "happy", we definitely can definitely improve on things like, dunno, needlessly killing people.
OK, I guess trying to spin "hey, maybe we could care just a tiny bit" about other people isn't going to work here, so how about this:
The less people drive, the better it is for the drivers. Where I live, the 23-minute drive on Hwy 101 becomes up to a 1hr45m drive in the morning hours. Making the area pedestrian- and transit-friendly would likely cut down the peak commute time by half, saving car commuters a spare hour or two each day, judging by the experience in LA[1].
PS: "Adapt or die" is a shitty attitude to have, my friend.
A good friend of mine and I were living on Long Island, NY. We were students, and couldn't afford to have a car. Insurance in NY is hella expensive.
I moved out to grad school in TX, and "adapted": got a car and a license. It was cheap to live there, I could afford it.
My friend didn't get the chance. He couldn't afford a car on a grad student stipend in NY. One day, he got hit by a car and died.
I hold the Suffolk County - and people who say words like "adapt or die" regarding pedestrian deaths - personally responsible for the death of my friend, a PhD student who could have been working on self-driving cars now.
You must be young to hold this attitude, and I sincerely hope you change it. There's always a bigger fish. "Adapt or die" is great when it doesn't concern you.
[1]https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2013/04/public-transp...
Likewise, maybe you should care just a tiny bit about people who support car then. You easily dismiss their concern, deemed it as unimportant. Regardless, I still acknowledge your position, its just fact of life that every issue has some supporter and hatters.
There are few solution for congestion, build more road, elevated road, underground road, tunnel. Elon Musk has interesting idea with his boring company.
"Adapt or die" is not shitty attitude its the reality of life.
>A good friend of mine and I were living on Long Island, NY. We were students, and couldn't afford to have a car. Insurance in NY is hella expensive
For some people, its just mean you have to work harder/smarter to find the way to get it.
Whatever solution I purpose, you will just counter it with, what about this other group of people, an so on.
No I don't have all the solution for all kind people, no one is, at some point these people have to figure out themselves.
Yes at the very worse case, if you can't adapt you die, thats the reality of life.
Similarly, there are tons of other situation where current environment is not what I prefer, nonetheless I have to adapt or I'll die.
JFYI - Jaywalking was illegal in the USSR too.
And I'm not aware of a single city in the USSR where lack of sidewalks would be a problem, or where one would struggle to get to places without a car.
It was very hard to get a car in the USSR. The country was optimized for non-drivers.
There is no such word in Russian.
There's an entire thread[1] up here where people from the UK are saying the same thing:
>>‘Jaywalkers’ is such an offensive concept
>> "jaywalking" as a negative term was promoted by auto interests in the US in the early 20th century
etc.
>and without any serious arguments.
My argument is simple: try translating "jaywalker" into literally any other language. You can't. "Jaywalker" as a concept only exists in the US.
In other places, the law varies, but you can't call someone a "jaywalker" because there's no concept for it.
And the law varies, too, but in most European countries it is not a thing; see Wikipedia[2].
As for the invention of the word and its usage to shift the blame to pedestrians: it's a well-known historical fact. See Wikipedia again on the origin and use of the word[2].
(To wit, in Russian, the best you could do for "jaywalker" would translate back as "a person who has crossed the street in a place not designated for it", which bring street into the debate: specifically, whether/why the point of crossing was not designated as such. There is no automatic negative connotation, because we all know how much streets layouts can suck.
On top of that, you literally can't label a person as a "jaywalker" in Russian. Mind-blowing, right? Languages are fun.
Even funner thing that it doesn't make sense in the UK English either, see the above thread[1].)
Really, do read[1] and tell me where I am wrong.
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21459085
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaywalking
Yeah, they are talking about the infraction, not the word. The point I had been making
>My argument is simple: try translating "jaywalker" into literally any other language. You can't. "Jaywalker" as a concept only exists in the US.
I can translate into Russian: "пешеход, совершивший переход проезжей части в неположенном месте". Don't know other languages but I am sure not every country is like a UK, where, according to comments here, everyone can just walk into traffic at any moment so everyone drives at 30kmh :)
>On top of that, you literally can't label a person as a "jaywalker" in Russian. Mind-blowing, right? Languages are fun.
You cannot label a person a "speeder" or "tailgater" in Russian too. Wow! Languages are fun indeed.
Isn't that what I wrote? :) Anyway, doesn't have the same ring to it, does it? Compare the title of the article with
"Self-Driving Uber in Crash Wasn't Programmed to Spot Pedestrians Crossing the Street Anywhere Except Crosswalks".
Which one makes Uber look less competent?
>You cannot label a person a "speeder" or "tailgater" in Russian too. Wow! Languages are fun indeed.
Well, yes! These aren't actions that warrant labeling a person in Russian. That tells you something indeed.
However, as verbs, the do have direct translations: превышать (to speed), висеть на хвосте (to tailgate).
Claim: "Jaywalking" does not translate to anything but literal dictionary definition like the one you provided in any language other than English, where it also has a clearly negative connotation.
Etymology: early 20th century: from jay in the colloquial sense ‘silly person’ + walk.
From Wikipedia: The term "jaywalking" is primarily a North American concept where laws restrict pedestrian use of public roads. In other countries such as the United Kingdom, the word is not generally used and there are no laws limiting how pedestrians can use public highways.
Also from Wikipedia: The word jaywalk is not historically neutral.[5] It is a compound word derived from the word jay, an inexperienced person and a curse word that originated in the early 1900s, and walk. Automobile interests in the US took up the cause of labeling and scorning jaywalkers in the 1910s and early 1920s, by then the earlier term of "jay driver" was declining in use.
I mean, it's all right there, with references. Again, what specifically are you arguing? That Wikipedia is wrong?
>Well, yes! These aren't actions that warrant labeling a person in Russian. That tells you something indeed.
I am now really curious. What does it tell? That speeding and tailgating are also invented by the auto-industry?
>However, as verbs, the do have direct translations: превышать (to speed), висеть на хвосте (to tailgate).
So? Jaywalking also has a direct translation as a verb "нарушать (правила перехода)".
>I mean, it's all right there, with references. Again, what specifically are you arguing? That Wikipedia is wrong?
I am arguing that jaywalking as a punishable offense exists outside the US, that's all. It's right there, in Wikipedia. Even in UK it's forbidden on "motorways" according to Wikipedia.
I am not going to argue about the origins of the derogatory term anymore: the history is there.
My point is that other countries don't have a derogatory term for people crossing the street.
For Russian, that'd be like "мудак", but specifically and only applicable to people crossing the street. Like "мудоход".
We don't have "мудоход", we don't fine for "мудоходство".
That's the difference in language I am trying to highlight.
And yes, jaywalking is not a neutral word, and neither is "разиня" (I have exaggerated the translation, of course).
Compare:
Мой научный руководитель перешёл улицу в неположенном месте.
Мой научный руководитель - разиня.
Don't you see a difference between that two? You wouldn't say the latter within the earshot of the person in question, perhaps.
Sorry for dragging this out for so long!
On the off-topic, I highly recommend Orwell's brilliant essay "Politics and the English Language"[1]
It deals with the subject of how choice of words affects thought, and on the danger of canned phrases.
A parallel work, in Russian, is Канцелярит[2], by Чуковский (a chapter from his book).
If you've already read both, would love to hear your thoughts; if not, then hope that this would be a good thing you could get out of this conversation :)
(I think you'd enjoy reading both as someone who speaks both languages)
[1]https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli...
[2]http://vivovoco.astronet.ru/VV/BOOKS/LANG/LANG_6.HTM
(I'm thinking of a road near where I went to college where I would have had to walk a solid ten minutes to get to a crosswalk and back. Most people just had cars, but I didn't, and I had to cross to get to the mall.)
Right, because screw poor, disabled, elderly, children, international students (most of whom don't drive when they arrive here), and so on.
You know what, fine. The way pedestrians will "figure it out themselves" is by simply banning cars from cities, because, apparently, there can be no compromise.
As your response indicates, asking the drivers to go slow and look out for people in the suburbs is apparently too much. (I guess you also oppose spending money on constructing sidewalks, because why can't everyone get a car instead? – but that's beside the point of the argument).
Saying "get a car, or GTFO" is the entitlement I was talking about.
You can try to ban cars from cities but of course, I would not support it and I hope it be challenged.
"Just go slow" is in itself an entitlement too.
When an accident happens, it is the pedestrian who will die. Driving is a privilege that comes with the responsibility to avoid this.
Your position: nah.
----------------
Asking to go slow and pay attention to the road where pedestrians can be is not "entitlement", it's the law, it's the traffic rules, and it's your responsibility as a driver that you volunteer for in exchange for getting the privilege of driving.
Anyway, "just go slow" is not comparable to "just stop being poor / unable to drive". I hope you can see the difference.
It also the law for a pedestrian to not jaywalk, or walk on areas of a highway or road where pedestrian traffic is not permitted. And if its not the law then it should be the law.
Anyway, I acknowledge that not all people will agree and I expect both side to fight for their cause. I just hope they don't win.
https://twitter.com/zoox/status/1115622929192980480?s=21
My understanding is that the vehicle that killed the pedestrian was configured in a way that allowed it to fail in a very basic way.
What they need is a way to ensure that the actual vehicle configuration is translated fully to the simulator, and to run through a set of basic scenarios with every release configuration. The equivalent of end-to-end tests that run as part of a continuous integration process.
I assume they have something like that, but some configuration aspect is not properly integrated into the simulation tests, or they sometimes skip the full test suite. Or somehow their test suite did not include jaywalkers.
That is what needs to be in place, and there should be employees of an actual federal agency verifying that process, not people who are in any way paid by Uber.
That actually should be applied to all self-driving companies. And down the line, there should be government-run simulations that verify releases pass basic scenarios. Which is going to be very difficult to build, but the government can get funding through taxes or something from the self-driving car companies. They could even mandate that Google and Tesla provide their simulation software to the federal government, and create interfaces that are compatible, and make every release run through both simulators.
So, cars can just blast into people now. Cars have the right of way by default, because faceless corporations can mandate that self driving cars simply MUST happen, on all public roads. There are no direct consequences for criminal negligence to a large business with a multi-million dollar legal department, even if fines bankrupt the company, even if the corporate veil is pierced.
This will happen again. More people will die in the face of simple profiteering arms races. Nothing new; consider Blackwater in Iraq.
Okay fine. But programming a car to drive itself, and what... You're telling me they forgot to have it avoid solid objects?
Really? Hazard avoidance and collision detection for obstacles is not a thing?
Listen. If this must happen, why, why, why do these inept brad and chad companies just have to reinvent the wheel? Haven't we had terrain following radar in aviation, cruise missiles and nuclear programs for many multiple decades?
I cannot help but be disgusted by the bootleg budget machine learning snake oil that these morons throw at this problem in the grand race for the prize. "Image processing only because people are neural nets too, and that how we do it, so it obviously must be possible for it to work that way."
Enough rhesus monkeys slamming their hands on type writers will eventually form the words artificial intelligence, but that doesn't mean neural networks are destined to become idiot savant race car drivers.
This is the saddest fucking fantasy land Juicero gambit yet. Far worse than anything the internet of things has ever promised or tried.
High level C-suite executives should face capital punishment for the loss of life in circumstances like these. The French Revolution should serve as adequate warning for their willingness to flout fatal penalties the public encounters for their actions or omission thereof.
In doesn't matter that people die every day from typical car accidents or even gun accidents or other devices put into the hands of common citizens and small businesses. It is very obvious that this is potentially criminal in the same way that the opioid epidemic is criminal. There are large companies creating public hazards and courting disaster by way of far reaching goals and abuse of existing systemic realities.
Automation cannot be trusted with open arms in this way. In doesn't matter how ubiquitous high speed wireless broadband connectivity becomes. The back end is not there yet, neither is onboard guidance, nor will it be if brad and chad continue to rub sticks together in their quest for fire.