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0 pointsdanso8y ago0 comments

Please don't accuse me or other commenters of spreading "rumors and speculations", without evidence or logical arguments.

I didn't state a bunch of claims, I linked to a NYT published article. If it turns out that the NYT depicted the incorrect lane, then I expect we'll see a correction. But they published this graphic staked on their reputation for accuracy, not on just "rumors".

Moreover, it does not contradict what the police chief said; here is her initial and only interview:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Exclusive-Tempe...

> Pushing a bicycle laden with plastic shopping bags, a woman abruptly walked from a center median into a lane of traffic and was struck by a self-driving Uber operating in autonomous mode.

“The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them,” said Sylvia Moir, police chief in Tempe, Ariz., the location for the first pedestrian fatality involving a self-driving car. “His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision.”*

The police chief also said a number of things that have subsequently been changed. In the Chronicle article, she's reported to have said that the Uber was driving 38 in a 35mph zone. The NYT graphic and other stories from today have said it was a 45mph zone.

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8 comments · 3 top-level

pharrington8y ago· 4 in thread

"It's very hard to imagine a scenario in which a 49-year-old woman walking her bike manages to cross 3 lanes of traffic so quickly that the Uber AV, moving at 40 mph, had no time to react, in a location with good street lighting and with clear weather. I would think most humans would be able to at least hit the brakes, if not completely avoid a collision."

Imagining an approximate version of the scenario and thinking that most people would be able to do what the known unimpaired driver could not is literal speculation. You are reading more into the graphic than can be reasonably derived from the graphic, and the -text- of the graphic is itself explicitly uncertain about the victim's location before and after the collision. Your comment expresses more credulity than the very source you linked to.

If you want to speculate that the Uber driver and police are covering up negligence, that's fine. Trying to claim some sort of logical high ground in a known uncertain scenario is not.

shanghaiaway8y ago

The parent didn't say that he is imagining anything. Read the post again.

They are saying that based on the information in the NYT article it does not seem credible that the woman came out of nowhere, that there was no time to react, and that the first thing the driver noticed was the sound of hitting the woman before even seeing her. The driver is a party in this story and may well be at fault for causing her death.

jack98y ago

> It's very hard to imagine a scenario in which a 49-year-old woman walking her bike manages to cross 3 lanes of traffic so quickly that the Uber AV, moving at 40 mph, had no time to react, in a location with good street lighting and with clear weather

Explaining the imagining, is the salient issue.

> The parent didn't say that he is imagining anything

Splitting hairs over the phrasing is not compelling. The poster was proposing a scenario as the most reasonable interpretation while couching it to minimize criticism (the equivalent of the "just sayin" trope).

The premise is flawed. It never sounded reasonable to assume the pedestrian did not see the vehicle at all. I can imagine a perfectly reasonable scenario where the pedestrian tried (and failed) to clear the vehicular path before being struck on the attempted destination side of the road.

2 more replies

dansoOP8y ago

Literally every discussion of note involves reading more into the original article, so yes, I guess you have me there, I am speculating. I didn't realize that was against the rules of HN discussion to bring in evidence external to the OP and state our premises?

Is it speculation to point out that the police and OP misidentified the gender and name of the driver (it's Rafaela Vasquez, not Rafael)? Or that newer articles have disputed the 35 mph limit?

edit: I'm not reading too much into the graphic by stating explicitly what it shows. I'm making the assumption that the NYT designer isn't being loose on the facts here and that the Uber vehicle was in the right lane.

So why can't I claim a logical basis based on the other agreed facts, such as the victim being a woman who is walking her bike across the street, and our general observation of how fast people are able to cross a lane of traffic? What set of physical laws and constants should we be using here?

pharrington8y ago

"If you want to speculate that the Uber driver and police are covering up negligence, that's fine" - the conclusion of the comment you're replying to.

My beef is with 'Please don't accuse me or other commenters of spreading "rumors and speculations", without evidence or logical arguments.' The problem is fooling ourselves into being more certain than we can be. While this is common human behavior, especially in emotionally fraught situations, as people attempting to engage in reasonable discussion on a discussion board, we need to do better. Acknowledging our biases and limited perspective while researching and before replying improves the discussion for everyone.

addendum: what everyone agrees and states is uncertain - where on the road the victim was hit. Another area of uncertainty among us non-witnesses is the immediate traffic at the time of collision.

4 more replies

lhorie8y ago· 1 in thread

News articles frequently post artistic renditions of far-away star systems but it would obviously be foolish to try draw any scientific conclusions from those graphics.

As far as I know, there hasn't been any official acknowledgement that the accident occurred in the right lane (or any specific lane for that matter). In fact, IIRC, there was a mention of the accident happening at around 100 yards from a crosswalk, whereas the stretch of road depicted in the picture is around 200ft away. The graphic also uses weasel words like "somewhere in this area". I mean, somewhere where? 100ft south? 10ft to the left? Only someone who has seen the actual video would be able to make an informed comment, and so far the police has not released it to the public.

I'm not convinced this picture can be reliably used for armchair forensics.

orangecat8y ago

Agreed. As I mentioned in an earlier thread, it would make a lot more sense if the pedestrian was crossing from the right side (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16625829). But it's all speculation until we see the video, or at least get more detailed and reliable reports.

Maybestring8y ago

>I didn't state a bunch of claims, I linked to a NYT published article. If it turns out that the NYT depicted the incorrect lane, then I expect we'll see a correction. But they published this graphic staked on their reputation for accuracy, not on just "rumors".

My experience with the NYT (and basically every news outlet) on technical no issues that I'm familiar with, is that they are not particularly concerned with getting the details 100% correct.

I don't expect better from them in the discipline of auto accident reconstruction.

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