| There is another aspect of this as well that is important to consider. I will 100% bet that the police had to interact with/rely on Uber to provide them with the video and data. With Uber's history, and the importance of this to the company, can we trust they didn't manipulate the video (i.e., make it darker)?. In the end, as much distaste as I have for Uber, this isn't even about them...its about process and chain of evidence. In a non-autonomous accident if there was a fight between two opposing drivers, the vehicle manufacturer is a neutral party and it seems reasonable to rely on them to extract and hand over data. If, however, the fight was between the driver and the manufacturer (e.g., the driver asserted a failure of the vehicle) there is no way that the manufacturer would be allowed to extract the vehicles' data logger. It would be done by an independent third party. As these accidents happen (and no matter your perspective on this one/cars/autonomous vs. human drivers/etc. - they will happen) there needs to be methodology for extracting data and assessing it from the vehicles that does not rely on the manufacturer or any other conflict of interest party. Further, this hole debacle shows how important it is that experts be involved in these decisions, discussions. The police chief has no knowledge or experience with the technical details of autonomous vehicles. His statements have, from the beginning, been irresponsible and inappropriately deferential to Uber at the expense of a citizen of his town. The rush for LIDAR/Radar technology makes clear just how much of autonomous tech relies on the nonvisual range. However, the chief obviously...based on his statements...is judging performance entirely on the visual range. He is not an expert. As an ex-Tempe resident, I doubt Tempe has independent autonomous vehicle experts. I would almost guarantee they are relying on the companies being truthful and open with them. That is bad. |
For the video released so far, not necessarily. It seems to be from an off-the-shelf dashcam, which the police most probably not only know how to download, but also has already done so several times in other accidents. For the rest of the data (and the video from the self-driving cameras, if it's stored instead of just used in the control loop and then discarded), I agree with you that the police (and the NTSB) will probably need the help of the Uber engineers.