Silicon Valley is having a bad month. Facebook is being accused of helping sabotage elections, an Uber killed a pedestrian in Arizona, and Tesla was involved in a fatal crash when its autopilot was on.
Based on some quick online research, that ups the total number of global deaths involving self-driving (autonomous) vehicles to four.
That figure isn’t just for this year; it’s the total, as in the all-time number of deaths attributable to self-driving cars.
But from the tech-bashing headlines this week, you’d think Skynet had just gone live and the missile were being launched. Slate’s headline was “Speed Kills.” Forbes called it a “Media Death Watch.”
A New York Times piece quotes an analyst saying that Telsa had been “living on borrowed time.” Now politicians are calling for additional regulations.
'Get real'
I don’t want to make light of the deaths that have occurred, but my immediate reaction to the idea that Silicon Valley is subjecting us to deadly technology is “get real.”
According to the Association for Safe International Road Travel, 1.3 million people died in car accidents last year, and yet no one is talking about shutting down Toyota or Mercedes.
The reporting about the technology involved has not been good.
In the case of the pedestrian who was killed in Arizona, one news story was quick to point out the women was “mowed down” and that the accident was “inevitable.”
Actually, the word Tempe Police Chief Sylvia Moir said “unavoidable,” as in “It’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode (autonomous or human-driven) based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway.”
Blame game
Moir made his statement to the San Francisco Chronicle after viewing the footage of the accident.
No one could have stopped in time, but don’t let that stop the media from blaming the technology.
So far, there is no indication that the technology used by Uber, called LIDAR, was at fault, LIDAR paints a 3-D picture of the surrounding environment using light in the same way that SONAR uses sound. I’ve spent a lot of time reading about LIDAR the last week days, and if one thing is clear, it is a technology that still needs to be significantly developed. Little things can trip LIDAR up, even light fog. But give it some credit. It’s still killed fewer people than faulty transmissions.
The reporting on technology in the Telsa has also been questionable, although some of that can be pinned on Tesla’s marketing team. Most stories correctly point out that the car’s autopilot system was engaged. True enough, but what the stories don’t tell you is Telsa’s “Enhanced Autopilot” seems to be little more than a souped-up cruise control. While Telsa likes to brag about how its cars have all the technology needed to make its vehicles self-driving, what’s actually enabled in the car does little more than make sure you stay in your lane or help you park your car. I’m simplifying here, but not by much.
The driver of the Telsa, according to reports, had his hands off of the steering wheel for about 6 seconds, which Telsa seems to be indicting is longer that advisable. For the record, Telsa doesn’t use LIDAR. Its system is based on cameras, RADAR, and for short distances, ultrasonic sensors.
So before you blame the technology, remember there is another commonality among these accidents: humans. Humans make mistakes, and they do not mix well with big metal boxes traveling at 90km/h. If you really want to bad-mouth technology, I suggest Zuckerberg and Facebook.
