[eli]

That's a perfectly reasonable argument that Uber could have made. Instead they lied about what happened. Lying to the public (and regulators?) about how safe your vehicles are is, in my opinion, worse than running the light in the first place.

[freehunter]

Right, but if a cop pulled over a random hypothetical person after they ran a red light, how would we all expect that conversation to happen?

"Do you know why I pulled you over?"

"No" lie #1

"Did you know you ran that red light back there?"

"No, it was yellow when I went through" lie #2

"Here's the ticket"

person shows up to court to fight the ticket by claiming their innocence, lie #3

Again, no excusing Uber's behavior, just pointing to a double standard. We fully expect human drivers to run red lights, and we fully expect them to lie about it. There's no excuse for Uber's response and no excuse for their software running a red light, but there's similarly no excuse for humans doing it. Yet humans do it all the time and no one really cares.

Like if we're going to report headline news every time a Tesla catches on fire, we should have breaking news stop-the-presses coverage every time a gasoline or diesel powered car catches on fire, too. But we don't because it's much more frequent, to the point where we almost expect it.

[frgtpsswrdlame]

Uber's lies affect society. This hypothetical drivers lie only affects his wallet.

[MegaButts]

Red lights aren't there to issue tickets. They're there to direct traffic flow and ensure safety of vehicles/pedestrians going in another direction. The person is endangering others just the same as Uber. I'm sure just about everybody has run a red light, but lying about it afterwards is the problem - that's when you say "the law doesn't apply to me" and you become reckless. Uber just does it at a much larger scale.

[frgtpsswrdlame]

>Uber just does it at a much larger scale.

I disagree. This is a corporation speaking with one voice to attempt to continue to run cars which have just demonstrated an inability to detect a crucial traffic signal. Think of it this way, in one example I run a red light and lie about it. In the other I make arguments in the public sphere to allow the legally blind to drive because it will benefit me financially. That's not scale, that's fundamentally different.

[jayjay71]

You're assuming that because it missed the traffic light once it will do so every time. The real world is a dynamic environment, something odd may have happened that it just missed the light that one instance. I am not condoning Uber and I suspect they have a long way to go with their self-driving technology, but you're making bold conclusions on almost no data.

[frgtpsswrdlame]

>you're making bold conclusions on almost no data.

Then Uber should disillusion me, not lie and cover up. Was it a flash of light off a reflection, a leaf that blew across the light, an odd angle? Then Uber should tell us that. More importantly though is the question of whether Uber even knows why it failed. What if they don't even understand why the car ran the light?

EDIT:

>You're assuming that because it missed the traffic light once it will do so every time.

Where did I assume that?

[freehunter]

I would say every red light runner affects society. The main reason people support self-driving cars is because of how common traffic deaths are. Because of how bad humans are at driving. It's a lot easier to do a software update on a poorly-behaving self-driving car than it is to re-educate poorly-behaving human drivers.

The real question is not "do self-driving cars commit traffic violations?" but rather "do self-driving cars commit traffic violations at a lower rate than humans?". That's what matters. Not that they're perfect, but that they're better in a measurable way.

[frgtpsswrdlame]

>I would say every red light runner affects society.

But we're not talking about the act of running a red light, we're talking about the act of lying about it.

>It's a lot easier to do a software update on a poorly-behaving self-driving car than it is to re-educate poorly-behaving human drivers.

What makes you think this?

>"do self-driving cars commit traffic violations at a lower rate than humans?".

Indeed. So the companies behind self-driving cars should prove it.