If the vehicle can't detect objects in the non visible spectrum (even just IR) at least as far away as a human can in the visible spectrum then that is a showstopper right there for the technology. Additionally if it can't then it shouldn't be traveling at a speed where it can't react in time.
My question is given it could detect the jaywalking object (regardless of visible light) within the very very short timeframe at those speeds, on what looks like a highway, I'm curious if it's rational to expect even the future ideal machines (say 5yrs from now) to have been able to react in that situation.
It's not as obvious as people here are pretending it is.
Yet even then we now have a previously unknown model to test our machines on to prevent it from happening again. Given a human would 99%+ of the time not have seen this woman in time, then I believe we'll at a very minimum be better off as a society as a result of this... as wrong as that sounds, because it's now a high-priority dataset, not just a sad story in the local news (if even) we'll forget about tomorrow as it would be with a human driver.
> Given a human would 99%+ of the time not have seen this woman in time
I'm far from convinced that a human would not have seen this woman in time.
See all the comments in this thread about how the dashcam footage is much worse than reality, and even one person who drives that road regularly saying it's not that bad visibility-wise.
I think if I had seen that lady slowly walking her bike onto the road in my adjacent lane, I would have slowed down for sure. And from seeing my own nighttime dashcam videos, I think I would have seen her. She's the only object nearby, on a fairly straight road with no adverse weather conditions. I would have seen someone pushing a bike onto the next lane.
Maybe I would have hit her still, but I would have slowed down for sure.
So the speed limit on Mill Avenue, where the crash took place is 35 mph. The uber was traveling at 40 mph. The reason Mill’s speed limit is 35 instead of 45 (like most Arizona’s major roads) is because it’s got much heavier pedestrian traffic than typical.
If an autonomous vehicle cannot detect pedestrians crossing a slower-than-typical road with enough time to at least not kill them, it shouldn’t be on the road. If that means uber can’t drive autonously at night, too bad for them.
To be fair, the law currently is very permissive to drivers, and a human may not have been deemed at fault. Despite going 40 in a 35 zone, when (due to reduced visibility) they actually should have been going 25. You are supposed to go only as fast as you can stop, given current visibility. Regardless of the speed limit.
