I think most of us probably assumed that the test driver would have been someone from an engineering/transport background with proven credentials in a testing capacity perhaps? I certainly thought along those lines but look at the ■■■■■■■■■■■■■ they put in charge! The Public Carriage Office would have ■■■■■■ that off straightaway! 
[quote="Juddian
On a slight tangent but no doubt destined for the next generation of lorries, i didn’t know until a couple of days ago via another forum that cars now interfere with the steering when ‘‘lane departure warning’’ fires up.
I can state absolutely for the record, that they can stick this garbage where the sun doesn’t shine, i shall never own a car that is programmed to interfere with the steering, nor one that has any control of the brakes either, i’ll stick with my old trustworthy Japanese stuff so long as i can find them, if necessary i’ll grey import an older Japanese model when the ones here get too rusty and have to be scrapped.[/quote]
Couple of years ago I had a Nissan Qashqai (15 plate) with all the bells and whistles, including park assist. Its a bit of a gimmick as you’re still operating the pedals, and it couldn’t get closer than 6 inches to the kerb. One time I tried to help it and it literally yanked the steering wheel out of my hand. Worrying, and a bit scary to think that electronics are in control of the steering wheel. Would not fancy that in a truck, unless they come up with a 100% failsafe system (yeah, right)
Great post Freight Dog. 
Having viewed the on board video several times even a normal car/driver would have been lucky to aviod the woman .
Crossing the road at night in an unlit section without lights and without reflective clothing did not give much chance of being spotted in time even if the attendant was fully alert .
A sad way to end a life .
Sent from my SM-G903F using Tapatalk
''Couple of years ago I had a Nissan Qashqai (15 plate) with all the bells and whistles, including park assist. Its a bit of a gimmick as you’re still operating the pedals, and it couldn’t get closer than 6 inches to the kerb. One time I tried to help it and it literally yanked the steering wheel out of my hand. Worrying, and a bit scary to think that electronics are in control of the steering wheel. Would not fancy that in a truck, unless they come up with a 100% failsafe system (yeah, right)
[/quote]
‘’
Yes, i’d completely forgotten about cars with a parking facility, obviously they’ll have access to the steering, not for me ta.
grumpyken52:
Having viewed the on board video several times even a normal car/driver would have been lucky to aviod the woman .
Crossing the road at night in an unlit section without lights and without reflective clothing did not give much chance of being spotted in time even if the attendant was fully alert .
A sad way to end a life .Sent from my SM-G903F using Tapatalk
I thought the point of these things was that they didn’t rely on just one method for viewing the road ahead. Using just visible light is a recipe for disaster, camera lenses can be fooled very easily as any photographer will tell you.
Infra red or radar should be installed and either would have picked up a pedestrian. Or are these things worse than I actually thought.
grumpyken52:
Having viewed the on board video several times even a normal car/driver would have been lucky to aviod the woman .
Crossing the road at night in an unlit section without lights and without reflective clothing did not give much chance of being spotted in time even if the attendant was fully alert .
A sad way to end a life .
Pundits have pointed out though that the car works on “lidar” - that is, it illuminates it’s targets in order to range them (the same as radar). There is no question that the computer ought to have seen the woman, even if a human driver could not.
But pundits have countered further that the on-board video does not accurately represent the visibilty of the road in that area, and that a human driver would indeed have seen the pedestrian and reacted. It can be clearly seen that it is a brightly-lit urban area, and that the road was fully and normally illuminated at the time of the crash.
If the on-board video released by Uber has not been filtered or otherwise tampered with in order to artificially darken it, then it is apparent that the camera involved is not fit for it’s purpose in a night-time setting.
Probably what has happened is that the woman crossing the road has looked up the road, misjudged the speed slightly given that she was crossing three wide (American-style) lanes pushing a bike, but has not felt that there was much at stake on the judgment given the otherwise empty two-lane dual-carriageway road, where any sensible driver would have eased off slightly in order to forgive her misjudgment, or would simply have driven around her using the outer lane.
Captain Caveman 76:
grumpyken52:
Having viewed the on board video several times even a normal car/driver would have been lucky to aviod the woman .
Crossing the road at night in an unlit section without lights and without reflective clothing did not give much chance of being spotted in time even if the attendant was fully alert .
A sad way to end a life .Sent from my SM-G903F using Tapatalk
I thought the point of these things was that they didn’t rely on just one method for viewing the road ahead. Using just visible light is a recipe for disaster, camera lenses can be fooled very easily as any photographer will tell you.
Infra red or radar should be installed and either would have picked up a pedestrian. Or are these things worse than I actually thought.
Even if they spot the hazard and react correctly the braking distances are still what decides if you make contact or not . Judging by the frontal damage on the car the impact speed was not very high but a fairly flat fronted heavy car doesn’t need a great deal of force to do critical damage to the human body .
Sent from my SM-G903F using Tapatalk
Rjan:
grumpyken52:
Having viewed the on board video several times even a normal car/driver would have been lucky to aviod the woman .
Crossing the road at night in an unlit section without lights and without reflective clothing did not give much chance of being spotted in time even if the attendant was fully alert .
A sad way to end a life .Pundits have pointed out though that the car works on “lidar” - that is, it illuminates it’s targets in order to range them (the same as radar). There is no question that the computer ought to have seen the woman, even if a human driver could not.
But pundits have countered further that the on-board video does not accurately represent the visibilty of the road in that area, and that a human driver would indeed have seen the pedestrian and reacted. It can be clearly seen that it is a brightly-lit urban area, and that the road was fully and normally illuminated at the time of the crash.
If the on-board video released by Uber has not been filtered or otherwise tampered with in order to artificially darken it, then it is apparent that the camera involved is not fit for it’s purpose in a night-time setting.
Probably what has happened is that the woman crossing the road has looked up the road, misjudged the speed slightly given that she was crossing three wide (American-style) lanes pushing a bike, but has not felt that there was much at stake on the judgment given the otherwise empty two-lane dual-carriageway road, where any sensible driver would have eased off slightly in order to forgive her misjudgment, or would simply have driven around her using the outer lane.
That in car video certainly doesn’t give the impression of a well lit urban highway and gives the impression that the poor woman emerged from a particularly dark patch .
I do know of certain areas where the street lighting is more like marker lights than illumination.
The onboard scanning and aviodance systems were certainly not fit for purpose in this intance .
I personally feel that driverless or autonomous vehicle systems are nowhere near ready for general use and should never be used in a situation where they interact with anything but others of the same type .
Sent from my SM-G903F using Tapatalk
I thought the headlights of the car were very poor considering they only illuminated the woman when the car was practically on top of her !
Computers will never replace people as computers will only work on logic. People are not always logical and often act in an illogical manner.
grumpyken52:
Rjan:
[…]That in car video certainly doesn’t give the impression of a well lit urban highway and gives the impression that the poor woman emerged from a particularly dark patch .
I do know of certain areas where the street lighting is more like marker lights than illumination.
The onboard scanning and aviodance systems were certainly not fit for purpose in this intance .
I personally feel that driverless or autonomous vehicle systems are nowhere near ready for general use and should never be used in a situation where they interact with anything but others of the same type .
Agreed. There is no question that either the video has been fiddled or the on-board camera was not fit for purpose.
As the ArsTechnia link shows, the highway is brightly lit with sodium lights, and it is clear by comparison that all street lights were working on the Uber video.
We all know from experience that a sodium-lit road in dry conditions does not cast those sorts of shadows when seen through a human eye - it would be contrary to the very purpose of lighting the road if you couldn’t see things in the road directly ahead (it would be more sensible not to light the road at all and force the car’s main beam to be used).
If you look at the building (or maybe a multi-storey car park) in the background also, the windows/interior clearly glows with the interior lighting and the signage is outstandingly bright (as you’d expect from any corporate setup in an urban area), whereas on the Uber version it’s dull, muddy, and you can barely see it.
Frankly, on the Uber version it appears to be a completely unlit rural road during a new moon, whereas that is clearly not the case.
I personally think it’s an utter deception released to discredit the lady who was killed, because the computer is not dependent on video visuals but on radar principles that can “see” equally well in the dark or through adverse weather, and even if the road had been pitch black, the car should have automatically slowed down within the distance that could be seen (especially if the human occupant was being expected to provide some residual supervision of the driving task).
Even if we accept that it exonerates the driver, because he/she (gender is not clear!) could not have been expected to see the pedestrian clearly, it would then simply show that the computer was driving the car far too fast both for it’s own limitations and that of its human supervisor.