Rob Croson
Elio Addict
Did you read the article?Ok, what was the driver actually looking at? Her right knee??? Why??
She was streaming Hulu on her personal phone, holding it down by her right knee where it was convenient, near the self-driving monitoring systems in the center of the dash, and out of view of the driver-monitoring cameras.
"Police say dashcam footage shows that Vasquez "was distracted and looking down" during the nearly 22-minute drive that preceded the crash. According to police, she "appears to react and show a smirk or laugh at various points during the times that she is looking down.""
She was watching TV, rather than being the safety driver she was hired to be.
This is what happens when you put a half-implemented self-driving system in charge of driving the car, and the human has nothing to do. They lose focus. They don't pay attention. And then when they are needed to urgently act with barely split-second warnings, there's not a chance in hell they can react fast enough. IMNSHO that's what happening with all these Tesla crashes. This "Level 2" or "Level 3" or whatever they are calling it, is ridiculously dangerous. Drivers are lulled into thinking that these partial systems are full-self-driving, but they aren't.
A shitty one. What else would you expect from a shit company like Uber?And you have a Robo driver installed, but didn't hook up the braking system? And no warning for the Driver?
What the hell kind of system is this?
What it points out is how horribly badly managed Uber's self-driving program was. Uber was the only company operating self-driving vehicles with a single safety driver. They also had reduced the number of LIDAR units and cameras on their vehicles, and various other cost-cutting moves. Their software was shit. They had rotating door leadership. They were far behind other self-driving companies, and desperate to catch up. Uber's entire business strategy revolved around getting self-driving ride hailing services going so they fire all of their already-poorly-paid "contractors", and maybe turn a bit of a profit for the first time ever.
Uber had no business developing their own self-driving cars. Lyft is doing it right: back other companies who know what the hell they're doing, and then use their end product.