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Self-driving Uber cars kills pedestrian


Netzer

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Last week's post from the other site...

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Tempe PD lies on behalf of Uber... shocking. Not. Their head honchos most likely got paid a nice little bribe by the company to allow the tests on their roads. The same way private traffic cam operator Redflex bought themselves into Paradise Valley (and later Phoenix) by bribing then Chief of Police, John Wintersteen. Everything is for sale in Arizona.

Turns out that wasn't too far off...

"Arizona governor and Uber kept self-driving program secret, emails reveal"

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Arizona’s Republican governor repeatedly encouraged Uber’s controversial experiment with autonomous cars in the state, enabling a secret testing program for self-driving vehicles with limited oversight from experts, according to hundreds of emails obtained by the Guardian.

The previously unseen emails between Uber and the office of governor Doug Ducey reveal how Uber began quietly testing self-driving cars in Phoenix in August 2016 without informing the public.

Uber offered workspace for Ducey’s staff in San Francisco, praised the governor lavishly, and promised to bring money and jobs to his state. Ducey, meanwhile, helped Uber deal with other officials in Arizona, issued decrees that were friendly to the company, tweeted out an advert at the company’s request, and even seems to have been open to wearing an Uber T-shirt at an official event.

One of Ducey’s first acts as governor was to instruct officials not to pursue ride-share drivers over taxi licensing rules.

 

Further juicy details on the corruption: theguardian.com.

Edited by Netzer
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Turns out Uber disabled the Volvo's built in collision avoidance system.

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Aptiv PLC, the company that makes the collision-avoidance technology, told Bloomberg that Uber disabled the software in the self-driving SUV that killed Elaine Herzberg, 49, as she was crossing a street in Tempe on March 18.

“We don’t want people to be confused or think it was a failure of the technology that we supply for Volvo, because that’s not the case,” Aptiv PLC spokesman Zach Peterson told Bloomberg. “The Volvo XC90’s standard advanced driver-assistance system ‘has nothing to do’ with the Uber test vehicle’s autonomous driving system.”

uber-disabled-safety-component-in-self-driving-car-before-fatal-crash-company-alleges

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2 hours ago, Eldodroptop said:

That is absolutely insane. To cut a check that quick? The body wasn’t even cold yet.

 

 

So to the guy that laughed when I said the family was going to get paid on the old board. Boom roasted. 

If they settled that quick it wasn't a small number either. 

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They needed to stop the negative PR quickly and settled. Too bad their shady relationship to the Arizona governor came to light. Yesterday they fired the executive responsible for their autonomous vehicles program. And the company's revenue situation doesn't exactly smell like roses either...

Uber's loss jumped 61 percent to $4.5 billion in 2017

The company lost $4.5 billion last year, up from $2.8 billion in 2016...

However, in the fourth quarter, which was CEO Dara Khosrowshahi's first full period at the helm, Uber's loss narrowed to $1.1 billion from $1.46 billion in the third quarter. Gross revenue during that period climbed about 14 percent to $11.1 billion from $9 billion.

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  • 2 months later...

bumping this because the NTSB released the preliminary findings....

we all knew the fucking driver was using her phone, but now we know why Uber settled so quickly

the safety driver was streaming TV.     

I get that the driver most likely spent maybe hundreds of hours riding in the car, and got complacent in her job of making sure the computer didnt fuck up.... but to be watching fucking TV while being a safety driver...   just mind bottling.

and it sounds like they may actually end up charging her with vehicular manslaughter.

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-selfdriving-crash/uber-driver-was-streaming-hulu-show-just-before-self-driving-car-crash-police-report-idUSKBN1JI0LB

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I think UBER also turned off some of the volo safety features that would have stopped the car.  The lady was dumb, but manslauter seems a bit harsh seeing as how she expected the car to be “driving”. 

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21 minutes ago, SDG said:

I’m not a lawyer, but proving she wasn’t watching the road may be tough.  Example: I have DTVnow and use it all the time for free streaming even though I’m not watching. 

There are cameras inside the car showing her on the phone not even looking at the road. Her streaming tv is just insult to death 

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  • 10 months later...

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