Software

Human Driver Could Have Avoided Fatal Uber Crash, Experts Say

Human Driver Could Have Avoided Fatal Uber Crash, Experts Say 0

by • Cars • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

  • Human driver may have avoided impact: forensic crash analysts
  • Self-driving sensors should have detected victim, experts say

The pedestrian killed Sunday by a self-driving Uber Technologies Inc. SUV had crossed at least one open lane of road before being hit, according to a video of the crash that raises new questions about autonomous-vehicle technology.

Forensic crash analysts who reviewed the video said a human driver could have responded more quickly to the situation, potentially saving the life of the victim, 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg. Other experts said Uber’s self-driving sensors should have detected the pedestrian as she walked a bicycle across the open road at 10 p.m., despite the dark conditions.

Herzberg’s death is the first major test of a nascent autonomous vehicle industry that has presented the technology as safer than humans who often get distracted while driving. For human driving in the U.S., there’s roughly one death every 86 million miles, while autonomous vehicles have driven no more than 15 to 20 million miles in the country so far, according to Morgan Stanley analysts.

"As an ever greater number of autonomous vehicles drive an ever greater number of miles, investors must contemplate a legal and ethical landscape that may be difficult to predict," the analysts wrote in a research note following the Sunday collision. "The stock market is likely too aggressive on the pace of adoption."

Zachary Moore, a senior forensic engineer at Wexco International Corp. who has reconstructed vehicle accidents and other incidents for more than a decade, analyzed the video footage and concluded that a typical driver on a dry asphalt road would have perceived, reacted, and activated their brakes in time to stop about eight feet short of Herzberg.

Other experts questioned the technology. The Uber SUV’s "lidar and radar absolutely should have detected her and classified her as something other than a stationary object," Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies self-driving cars, wrote in an email.

Smith said the video doesn’t fully explain the incident but "strongly suggests a failure by Uber’s automated driving system and a lack of due care by Uber’s driver (as well as by the victim)."

The video shows the vehicle driving for about four seconds before ending just as Herzberg is about to be hit by the SUV’s front, right bumper. The woman can be seen taking several steps while visible and appeared to be moving at a normal walking pace as she’s crossing the road outside of a crosswalk and does not look up at the SUV. Police have said the car didn’t slow or swerve to avoid the impact. She later died at a hospital.

Earlier: Picking Out the Pedestrian May Have Foiled Uber’s Robot Ride

"Uber has to explain what happened," said Mike Ramsey, an analyst at researcher Gartner Inc. who focuses on autonomous driving technologies. "There’s only two possibilities: the sensors failed to detect her, or the decision-making software decided that this was not something to stop for."

Uber’s self-driving system includes radar, cameras and lidar, which uses lasers to detect objects. The system is designed to provide a 360-degree virtual view of the environment surrounding the car. Ramsey said it is "mystifying" why the vehicle didn’t react given that lidar systems like the one used on Uber’s SUV have a detection range of at least 100 meters and work better at night than during the daytime.

“The video is disturbing and heartbreaking to watch, and our thoughts continue to be with Elaine’s loved ones,” Uber said in an emailed statement after the video’s release. “Our cars remain grounded, and we’re assisting local, state and federal authorities in any way we can.” The company is cooperating with the investigations. It declined to comment further on Thursday.

Herzberg becomes visible in the car’s headlights as she pushes a bicycle across the road at least two seconds before the impact.

Related: Uber Autonomous Accident Video Shows Car Just Before Collision

"This is similar to the average reaction time for a driver. That means that, if the video correctly reflects visible conditions, an alert driver may have at least attempted to swerve or brake," Smith said.

The comments contrast with those made by the Tempe police chief, who told multiple media outlets that the pedestrian moved suddenly in front of the car and the crash didn’t seem preventable after reviewing footage of the collision.

"It’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode,” Sylvia Moir, the police chief in Tempe, Arizona, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Moore, the forensic engineer at Wexco, said dashcam videos tend to understate what humans drivers can see. While the pedestrian appears from the shadows in the video, a human driver may have had a better view if they’d been watching, he said.

Sean Alexander, of Crash Analysis & Reconstruction LLC, concurred. "Video makes everything in the light pattern brighter and everything out of the beam darker. A human eye sees it much clearer," he said.

Alexander also agreed with Moore’s analysis that a human driver could have avoided hitting Herzberg. "During the time the vehicle should have been braking, the pedestrian would have had additional time and would have cleared without the vehicle actually having to stop," Alexander said.

Tempe police released a statement Tuesday saying that "fault has not been determined in this case" and that a decision on criminal charges would be left to county prosecutors once the investigation is complete.

The video also included footage of the Uber backup driver who monitors the vehicle’s operation from behind the wheel while the computers drive. Out of approximately 13 seconds of that recording, the driver was looking down and away from the road for about 10 seconds. The driver looked up about a second before the recording ends and gasped upon seeing the impending collision.

"Even if the safety driver had been totally paying attention, there’s an awkwardness with the machine if you’re anticipating the machine is going to be able to handle a situation," Ramsey said. "You don’t know when you should jump in."

While it’s too early to say why the car hit the woman, the video doesn’t show the crash was unavoidable, said Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington who specializes in robotics and artificial intelligence.

“The idea that the video absolves Uber is essentially incorrect,” Calo said.

The important question for investigators won’t be whether the woman was visible in the low-definition video, he said. It will be what the car’s sophisticated sensors picked up and how the software interpreted that data.

“Even if the cameras did not perceive her in time, why didn’t the lidar see her and why didn’t the software predict that she would continue on the path she was on?” Calo said.

The video has been obtained by the National Transportation Safety Board and will be examined as part of its probe. The safety board has increasingly used video in its investigations and has a lab in Washington where it examines various recording devices to tease out useful forensic data.

It’s important not to read too much into the video without additional context on how the self-driving system was functioning and the conditions on the road, said Deborah Hersman, president of the National Safety Council.

“Seeing a few seconds of video raises more questions than answers,” said Hersman, who also served as chairman of the NTSB. “We have very little information about the performance of the technology and that needs to be developed in a transparent fashion and shared broadly so everyone can learn from this tragic event.”

Uber said on Monday that it was pausing tests of all its self-driving vehicles on public roads in Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Toronto and the greater Phoenix area. In Boston, self-driving startup NuTonomy Inc. halted its tests after city officials requested a pause following the Arizona crash.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-22/video-said-to-show-failure-of-uber-s-tech-in-fatal-arizona-crash

New Jersey Transits Hidden Danger: Bad Brakes, Bare Wires, Rotten Parts

New Jersey Transits Hidden Danger: Bad Brakes, Bare Wires, Rotten Parts 0

by • Cars • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Federal inspectors found scores of New Jersey Transit train cars riddled with fire risks, faulty brakes and electrical hazards as they scrutinized the troubled railroad that brings 95,000 workers to Manhattan daily.

One engine was so defective it was declared unsafe, documents obtained under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act show. In some cases, NJ Transit’s own checks failed to identify faults brought to light a day or two later by Federal Railroad Administration officials. One was a locomotive with seized air valves and misaligned foundation gear that compromised the braking system’s very core. Another had broken equipment that provides traction on slippery tracks.

While federal regulators regularly inspect railroads, safety failures at NJ Transit led them to conduct a deeper audit in 2016. Though the agency appears to have mostly resolved its findings, the inspectors last year tested NJ Transit equipment with unprecedented frequency, uncovering persistent defects that speak to years of budget starvation and routine risks for more than 300,000 daily riders.

Incurious Inspections

“How do you claim it’s OK for service?" said Richard Beall, a retired railroad engineer and Miami-based train-accident consultant. “It needs to be gone over with a fine-tooth comb every day. If the FRA can find a missing brake clip, I can find a missing clip, too.”

The 400 pages of reports validate riders’ social-media gripes about screeching wheels and rickety suspensions. Passengers have little ability to assess their personal safety. Neither the FRA nor NJ Transit makes the findings readily accessible; NJ Transit took more than five months to fulfill Bloomberg’s public-records request.

In 2017, eight recorders were in use beyond their mandated inspection deadlines, according to the FRA.

“If that lead locomotive is missing its event recorder, now you’re missing the most vital stuff on the train — bells, headlights on,” Beall said. “It’s fine to have another recorder on the train, but it’s not duplicative.”

Nancy Snyder, an NJ Transit spokeswoman, said all recorders now are inspected daily.

Hand in Hand

Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti, the acting New Jersey transportation commissioner and NJ Transit chairwoman, said agency and federal regulators are cooperating closely.

“They’re our partner in this, not our punisher,” she said at a news conference in Trenton on Feb. 15.
 
NJ Transit says it’s addressed many flaws identified by inspectors. The resting engineer in Hoboken wasn’t violating rules because he was on break, according to Snyder. Still, the episode was raised as a cause for concern by the railroad administration, which recommended a fine because all the train’s brakes weren’t applied.

NJ Transit appears to have mostly tackled worn track parts, misaligned switches and unsecured trains discovered in 2016 and 2015, when inspectors recommended fines totaling at least $262,000. In Hoboken, Dover and Little Falls, inspectors in June 2017 found NJ Transit following rules on switches, personal protective equipment, warning bells and hand brakes, problem areas in the past.

Fire Hazards

Staff “has exceeded my expectations in their drive” to fine-tune a safety program in Hoboken, Inspector Douglas E. Johnson wrote on June 28.

In the first nine months of 2017, inspectors documented 140 hazards just on train floors or passageways. Unlocked high-voltage electrical panels were widespread, and 18 contained ticket collectors’ paper seat checks — some touching bare wires. New Jersey Transit conducted an internal investigation, though it wasn’t able to identify who was responsible. Inspectors recommended a fine.

“Detailed instructions have been given to crews and the issue has been resolved,” Snyder said. No more seat checks have been found stashed in the panels, she said.

In a Morrisville, Pennsylvania, yard on March 13, Locomotive 6044 was “not in proper condition and safe to operate,” with complete air-brake reservoir failure. An inspector that day documented 24 defects on 14 vehicles, including missing exit signs and emergency glow-in-the-dark evacuation routes, wheel disc pads that lacked retaining clips and seized air-brake cocks.

Snyder wrote in an email that “all these components/parts are routinely replaced as they get damaged from wear and tear.”

Neglected Engines

Elsewhere, electrical grounding was non-existent on 23 cars, and 60 had suspension problems. Nine locomotives were in use beyond their mandated inspection dates. Eleven had either reduced or no capacity to spread slip-reducing grit on rails.

Democratic Governor Phil Murphy, who took office Jan. 16, has pledged to turn around a model operation that he said became “a national disgrace.” Under his predecessor, two-term Republican Chris Christie, NJ Transit’s annual state subsidy was cut as much as 90 percent, and $3.44 billion of its capital budget was diverted to cover daily expenses.

NJ Transit's Shaky Subsidy

Christie administration cut transit aid by 90 percent.

Source: New Jersey budgets

“If you use capital funds for day-to-day operations, it’s a snowball-type of effect, and it will be severe,” said Robert Halstead, a Syracuse, New York, accident analyst who investigated the Hoboken crash. “You’ve got to spend money or the tougher it gets to ever get back on top. Some railroads never do.”

Pressing Deadline

NJ Transit, a driver of the state’s employment and high property values, faces tremendous pressure to regain efficiency.

Despite a December 2018 federal deadline to install emergency-braking technology, software bugs led the agency to suspend installations on 400 locomotives. The sole rail link to Manhattan, a century-old Amtrak tunnel beneath the Hudson River, is crumbling and President Donald Trump has balked at a federal cost-share to construct a second crossing.

NJ Transit has the nation’s second-highest number of train breakdowns, and operates a fleet that includes 50-year-old locomotives and more than 300 passenger cars built in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2017, inspectors repeatedly cited missing or broken latches that allowed heavy cabinet doors to swing free. One car’s bathroom door was secured with duct tape.

“It is taking us longer to get parts,” Robert Lavell, the NJ Transit rail operations director who’s retiring in March, told lawmakers last month. In earlier testimony before that committee, which is investigating the railroad’s finances and slipping service, NJ Transit management said it was short-staffed throughout the system.

On Feb. 15, a week after Bloomberg obtained the inspection reports, Murphy told reporters that NJ Transit is meeting with suppliers to get more inventory and hiring technicians to step up repairs and inspections.

“The thousands of rank-and-file workers who show up every day at NJ Transit, some of whom are with us today, are not to blame,” Murphy said at the Trenton rail station. “In many ways they are the ones who have kept this system running and safe in the absence of real leadership and vision.”

    Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-21/nj-transit-s-hidden-danger-bad-brakes-bare-wires-rotten-parts

    Ubers Secret Tool for Keeping the Cops in the Dark

    Ubers Secret Tool for Keeping the Cops in the Dark

    by • Cars • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

    In May 2015 about 10 investigators for the Quebec tax authority burst into Uber Technologies Inc.’s office in Montreal. The authorities believed Uber had violated tax laws and had a warrant to collect evidence. Managers on-site knew what to do, say people with knowledge of the event.

    Like managers at Uber’s hundreds of offices abroad, they’d been trained to page a number that alerted specially trained staff at company headquarters in San Francisco. When the call came in, staffers quickly remotely logged off every computer in the Montreal office, making it practically impossible for the authorities to retrieve the company records they’d obtained a warrant to collect. The investigators left without any evidence.

    Most tech companies don’t expect police to regularly raid their offices, but Uber isn’t most companies. The ride-hailing startup’s reputation for flouting local labor laws and taxi rules has made it a favorite target for law enforcement agencies around the world. That’s where this remote system, called Ripley, comes in. From spring 2015 until late 2016, Uber routinely used Ripley to thwart police raids in foreign countries, say three people with knowledge of the system. Allusions to its nature can be found in a smattering of court filings, but its details, scope, and origin haven’t been previously reported.

    Uber Uses 'Ripley' in Times of Panic

    The Uber HQ team overseeing Ripley could remotely change passwords and otherwise lock up data on company-owned smartphones, laptops, and desktops as well as shut down the devices. This routine was initially called the unexpected visitor protocol. Employees aware of its existence eventually took to calling it Ripley, after Sigourney Weaver’s flamethrower-wielding hero in the movies. The nickname was inspired by a Ripley line in , after the acid-blooded extraterrestrials easily best a squad of ground troops. “Nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”

    Other companies have shut off computers during police raids, then granted officers access after reviewing a warrant. And Uber has reason to be cautious with the sensitive information it holds about customers and their locations around the world. Ripley stands out partly because it was used regularly—at least two dozen times, the people with knowledge of the system say—and partly because some employees involved say they felt the program slowed investigations that were legally sound in the local offices’ jurisdictions. “Obstruction of justice definitions vary widely by country,” says Ryan Calo, a cyberlaw professor at the University of Washington. “What’s clear is that Uber maintained a general pattern of legal arbitrage.”

    “Like every company with offices around the world, we have security procedures in place to protect corporate and customer data,” Uber said in a statement. “When it comes to government investigations, it’s our policy to cooperate with all valid searches and requests for data.”

    Uber has already drawn criminal inquiries from the U.S. Department of Justice for at least five other alleged schemes. In February, the exposed Uber’s use of a software tool called Greyball, which showed enforcement officers a fake version of its app to protect drivers from getting ticketed. Ripley’s existence gives officials looking into other Uber incidents reason to wonder what they may have missed when their raids were stymied by locked computers or encrypted files. Prosecutors may look at whether Uber obstructed law enforcement in a new light. “It’s a fine line,” says Albert Gidari, director of privacy at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet & Society. “What is going to determine which side of the line you’re on, between obstruction and properly protecting your business, is going to be things like your history, how the government has interacted with you.”

    About a year after the failed Montreal raid, the judge in the Quebec tax authority’s lawsuit against Uber wrote that “Uber wanted to shield evidence of its illegal activities” and that the company’s actions in the raid reflected “all the characteristics of an attempt to obstruct justice.” Uber told the court it never deleted its files. It cooperated with a second search warrant that explicitly covered the files and agreed to collect provincial taxes for each ride.

    Uber deployed Ripley routinely as recently as late 2016, including during government raids in Amsterdam, Brussels, Hong Kong, and Paris, say the people with knowledge of the matter. The tool was developed in coordination with Uber’s security and legal departments, the people say. The heads of both departments, Joe Sullivan and Salle Yoo, left the company last year. Neither responded to requests for comment.

    Ripley’s roots date to March 2015, when police stormed Uber’s Brussels office, say people with knowledge of the event. The Belgian authorities, which accused Uber of operating without proper licenses, gained access to the company’s payments system and financial documents as well as driver and employee information. A court order forced Uber to shut down its unlicensed service later that year. Following that raid and another in Paris the same week, Yoo, then Uber’s general counsel, directed her staff to install a standard encryption service and log off computers after 60 seconds of inactivity. She also proposed testing an app to counter raids. Workers in Uber’s IT department were soon tasked with creating a system to keep internal records hidden from intruders entering any of its hundreds of foreign offices. They used software from Twilio Inc. to page staffers who would trigger the lockdown.

    The security team, which housed many of Uber’s most controversial programs, took over Ripley from the IT department in 2016. In a letter shared with U.S. attorneys and made public in a trade-secrets lawsuit against Uber, Richard Jacobs, a former Uber manager, accused the security group of spying on government officials and rivals. Jacobs’s letter makes an oblique reference to a program for impeding police raids. A 2016 wrongful-dismissal lawsuit by Samuel Spangenberg, another Uber manager, also references its use during the May 2015 tax authority raid in Montreal.

    The three people with knowledge of the program say they believe Ripley’s use was justified in some cases because police outside the U.S. didn’t always come with warrants or relied on broad orders to conduct fishing expeditions. But the program was a closely guarded secret. Its existence was unknown even to many workers in the Uber offices being raided. Some were bewildered and distressed when law enforcement ordered them to log on to their computers and they were unable to do so, two of the people say.

    Later versions of Ripley gave Uber the ability to selectively provide information to government agencies that searched the company’s foreign offices. At the direction of company lawyers, security engineers could select which information to share with officials who had warrants to access Uber’s systems, the people say.

    Another option was contemplated for times when Uber wanted to be less transparent. In 2016 the security team began working on software called uLocker. An early prototype could present a dummy version of a typical login screen to police or other unwanted eyes, the people say. But Uber says no dummy-desktop function was ever implemented or used, and that the current version of uLocker doesn’t include that capability. The project is overseen by John Flynn, Uber’s chief information security officer.

      BOTTOM LINE – From San Francisco, Uber routinely protected foreign offices from police raids by rendering computers unusable, often shielding evidence from warranted officials.

      Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-11/uber-s-secret-tool-for-keeping-the-cops-in-the-dark