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Having watched that crash, I think crappy street lighting killed that person. Any human is going to hit that person, and it appears that an automated car will hit them as well.

Having watched it and read more about it, I've come to the decision that crappy software killed that woman. The car uses Lidar and did not need street lighting, it should have seen the woman entering the street much earlier. The video seems to have been taken by a weak camera or was edited to look darker, I've seen footage of that stretch at night that looks a lot less dark. Apparently Uber has relatively bad technology compared to some of its competitors.

 Just Tony wrote:
Sort of my point, in the end. Say that the 5 robots on the finish end of my line "replaced" 8 human work stations, which may or may not be accurate, we have 3 people still watching those work stations, the obligatory floater, and the other four were moved to either another line to run a different machine OR to a spot on the line that isn't automated yet.

Unless you have infinite demand for your product, you aren't going to keep using productivity improvements to increase production. At some point further increases in supply will be unprofitable. The return from productivity improvements will start to come, at least in part, from reducing your wages expense - from making people redundant.

In the past this has been absorbed by other industries that were still in growth and increasing their employment. But right now its really hard to see where those new industries are. If we are moving to a stage where many industries could leverage AI to increase productivity and reduce their employment, and we have no new industries to absorb displaced workers... hoo boy.

Will it take over ALL jobs like this mythical force of nature that some tout it as, where most of the human populace will sit around doing nothing while the government pays us free money? Not even close.

Sure, but just because there will need to be some human work doesn't mean there isn't a massive issue with displacing a very large portion of the population.

Look at the issues with coal mining, where productivity meant that from 1970 to today production of coal increased while the total workforce dropped by 2/3. Imagine that happening to a total economy.

I'd be willing to bet it'd be at least a century until we get to the point that self driven vehicles outnumber manned... sorry, personed vehicles.

I agree there's a lot of really awful futurism around automated cars right now. I listened to some supposed experts on the radio talking about how a pool of a million vehicles in a city could be cut down to 200,000 because people only use their cars for a small part of each day, so we could go to a fleet of automated cars that you book for the parts of the day you actually need them. This whole big theory, that completely ignored the reality that drivers only use their cars for a small part of the day, but about half of them need that car at the exact same two points in the day, to and from work.

We're certainly at the Trip to the Moon stage of the tech development, where imagination is running well ahead of practical reality.

Prestor Jon wrote:

And the suburbs aren’t going away. There isn’t enough housing in the cities for all of the people who commute to jobs there consequently driving up the price of what housing is in the cities so when housing is available it’s far too expensive for the majority of commuters anyway. Hence the problem that suburbs don’t have the proximity or population density to make mass transit viable compounded by decades of urban sprawl without adequate transit planning. Fixing this problem will not be easy, fast or cheap which is why there is never a lot of political will to do it and the projects that are done to address it like The Big Dig are epic boondoggles because the easiest way to get political support for them is to turn the projects into corruptive cash cows that don’t do enough to help the actual commuters.

So what would happen if goverment would launch aggressive campaign to help spread out jobs from cities toward suburbs? If succesfull that would mean there would be more even spread of jobs and houses so there wouldn't be all the jobs here, all the houses there, good luck navigating between them.

I'm starting to really like the concept of the hive city, and having layers of street so as to have traffic be slowed less. TONS of infrastructure needed to make that dream a reality, but if they can pull in off in some place like Manhattan, then we're looking at a viable alternative.

Interesting question: who came up with the idea of the hive city? Asimov used to concept in Caves of Steel, but I don't know where else it was used, or possibly before that.

 Just Tony wrote:
I'm starting to really like the concept of the hive city, and having layers of street so as to have traffic be slowed less. TONS of infrastructure needed to make that dream a reality, but if they can pull in off in some place like Manhattan, then we're looking at a viable alternative.

Interesting question: who came up with the idea of the hive city? Asimov used to concept in Caves of Steel, but I don't know where else it was used, or possibly before that.

Earliest example of the concept I could find through my google-fu is the 1912 novel 'The Night Land' by William Hope Hodgson, where the last remnants of humanity survive in two massive self-contained pyramids.

I suspect the concept has been around for ages, however building technology has likely held it back until more recent times as a practical potential project. The underground in London was likely the first step toward the concept of a layered city with potential movements of goods and people underneath the main superstructure of the city. And it wouldn't shock me if a few other civilizations had used large underground networks in the past as well to move people and goods around.

The issue has always been cost, technology and the fact that in most situations it was cheaper and easier just to build further out. Plus don't forget in the past we had far less transport going on; people lived much nearer their homes and settlements were setup so that many things needed for daily life were within walking distance.


Today we accept 30min to 1 hour commutes being part of life for many people and with the idea of living quite a long way from not only work, but also shops and basic services; with many choosing to travel further for lower prices.

Ontop of that is the vast explosion in population which heaps the pressure on those networks many times over. To the point where the concept of a city going up/down starts to become more attractive than just sprawling further and further outward. However cost is still a huge barrier and there are other factors too.

Underground passes and such require air, cleaning and investment in lighting and policing otherwise they can fast become a hotbed of crime and trouble. A breakdown in air filtration systems isn't just an inconvenience but a risk to health,


Personally I'd welcome cities going up and layering themselves in order to significantly reduce sprawl. It batters the countryside to bits and is heavily destructive; and once built its much harder to get rid of it and tear it down

Doing a layered city just reminds me of the Kowloon Walled City, and that.. is something else when it comes to such thoughts.

tneva82 wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

And the suburbs aren’t going away. There isn’t enough housing in the cities for all of the people who commute to jobs there consequently driving up the price of what housing is in the cities so when housing is available it’s far too expensive for the majority of commuters anyway. Hence the problem that suburbs don’t have the proximity or population density to make mass transit viable compounded by decades of urban sprawl without adequate transit planning. Fixing this problem will not be easy, fast or cheap which is why there is never a lot of political will to do it and the projects that are done to address it like The Big Dig are epic boondoggles because the easiest way to get political support for them is to turn the projects into corruptive cash cows that don’t do enough to help the actual commuters.

So what would happen if goverment would launch aggressive campaign to help spread out jobs from cities toward suburbs? If succesfull that would mean there would be more even spread of jobs and houses so there wouldn't be all the jobs here, all the houses there, good luck navigating between them.

Some jobs might be able to be enticed to relocate with tax breaks or whatever benefits the government is offering to encourage relocation but some jobs can't be moved. My wife is a nurse, the hospital she works at isn't going to move, so all the jobs that are created directly by the hospital, plus all the support role jobs that exist in close proximity to the hospital plus the jobs that are created by businesses that feed off the hospital area jobs (restaurants, stores, hotels) can't relocate.

My employer has a pretty progressive telecommuting policy that allows for a good chunk of my coworkers to work from home at least part of the week but the ability to do that varies depending on the job.

Municipalities could do more to encourage business development in the suburbs in regards to zoning and taxes but they'd also have to contend with the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) backlash. People want convenience and jobs but they usually don't want stores and office parks in their neighborhoods.

I was reading an article about automation lowering the male-female wage gap. (the gap itself if vastly overstated, but hey). The jobs that are being automated are primarily in the male-dominated sector, and eating into jobs that pay above average.

It won't be that women are earning more, just that the average male wage will be less.

 Just Tony wrote:
I'm starting to really like the concept of the hive city, and having layers of street so as to have traffic be slowed less. TONS of infrastructure needed to make that dream a reality, but if they can pull in off in some place like Manhattan, then we're looking at a viable alternative.

Honestly, the idea that we'd spend trillions on enormous infrastructure upgrades rather than just shift large numbers of jobs out of the CBD and in to secondary hubs is kind of funny.

To clarify, I'm not saying it won't happen, I'm just saying its really crazy.


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Prestor Jon wrote:
Some jobs might be able to be enticed to relocate with tax breaks or whatever benefits the government is offering to encourage relocation but some jobs can't be moved. My wife is a nurse, the hospital she works at isn't going to move, so all the jobs that are created directly by the hospital, plus all the support role jobs that exist in close proximity to the hospital plus the jobs that are created by businesses that feed off the hospital area jobs (restaurants, stores, hotels) can't relocate.

Weird example, hospitals are decentralized already. We don't have 5 out of 6 major hospitals in a city all within a stone's throw of each other in the CBD. Instead they're spread out among the population centers.

Whereas major corporate headquarters are almost all located right next to each other in the city. And even more ridiculously most government departments are right there next to them. There's no reason an insurance company or a bank must have its corporate hq in the city centre, other than prestige.

Municipalities could do more to encourage business development in the suburbs in regards to zoning and taxes but they'd also have to contend with the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) backlash. People want convenience and jobs but they usually don't want stores and office parks in their neighborhoods.

A lot of the problem is NIMBY. A lot of the rest is even more cynical, with local residents controlling zoning laws to create artificial scarcity. What is happening in places like the Bay area with zoning being used to almost completely shut down new housing development, so existing homeowners can see their house prices sky rocket is a disgrace.

 sebster wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
I'm starting to really like the concept of the hive city, and having layers of street so as to have traffic be slowed less. TONS of infrastructure needed to make that dream a reality, but if they can pull in off in some place like Manhattan, then we're looking at a viable alternative.

Honestly, the idea that we'd spend trillions on enormous infrastructure upgrades rather than just shift large numbers of jobs out of the CBD and in to secondary hubs is kind of funny.

To clarify, I'm not saying it won't happen, I'm just saying its really crazy.

Another facet to look at is the fact that the further we spread out, the less area we have for agriculture. If population isn't controlled, that'll provide a REAL nasty situation and lead to that massive conflict I mentioned before. So spreading out is not viable, euthanizing the populace isn't viable, currently colonization isn't viable, so we're looking at expanding up instead of out. THAT would also create thoroughfares for automated vehicles with less human traffic on them, plus the massive sanitation/maintenance staff needed for a hive city to give work to all those displaced by automation. It hits pretty much EVERYONE'S prediction buttons.

 Just Tony wrote:
Another facet to look at is the fact that the further we spread out, the less area we have for agriculture. If population isn't controlled, that'll provide a REAL nasty situation and lead to that massive conflict I mentioned before. So spreading out is not viable, euthanizing the populace isn't viable, currently colonization isn't viable, so we're looking at expanding up instead of out. THAT would also create thoroughfares for automated vehicles with less human traffic on them, plus the massive sanitation/maintenance staff needed for a hive city to give work to all those displaced by automation. It hits pretty much EVERYONE'S prediction buttons.

There's about 14 million square kilometres of urban development on earth. That sounds like a lot, until you realize there's a bit over 200 million square kilometres of farming land (about 40% of the land on earth). The former is not going to consume the latter in any meaningful quantity. This isn't to say there aren't problems with urban sprawl and with pressures on agricultural land, but the two issues aren't really linked.

Nor is the issue about spreading out, it is about redirecting. A city with 2 million people where about 500k of them all work in the centre of the city is going to have enormous pressures twice every day. Because it is a lot of people all moving from the outside to the inside, they're all heading in the same direction, all putting pressure on a small group of roads.

But that same city, with say 6 secondary commercial districts averaging 50,000 workers each would mean you've only got 200,000 people heading in to the city, which is far less pressure. The city would have the same population and take up the same amount of space, but you have redirected traffic to take pressure away from the chokepoints.

 sebster wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
Another facet to look at is the fact that the further we spread out, the less area we have for agriculture. If population isn't controlled, that'll provide a REAL nasty situation and lead to that massive conflict I mentioned before. So spreading out is not viable, euthanizing the populace isn't viable, currently colonization isn't viable, so we're looking at expanding up instead of out. THAT would also create thoroughfares for automated vehicles with less human traffic on them, plus the massive sanitation/maintenance staff needed for a hive city to give work to all those displaced by automation. It hits pretty much EVERYONE'S prediction buttons.

There's about 14 million square kilometres of urban development on earth. That sounds like a lot, until you realize there's a bit over 200 million square kilometres of farming land (about 40% of the land on earth). The former is not going to consume the latter in any meaningful quantity. This isn't to say there aren't problems with urban sprawl and with pressures on agricultural land, but the two issues aren't really linked.

Much of that land has poor yields because of outdated farming practises.

Arable land is in regression in most countries (mostly because urban expansion and road/rail building is eating at it while mass deforestation is no longer a thing), the key is to increase yields without increasing surface.

Build vertical farms.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Build vertical farms.

It's my understanding that they tried with factory style farming, the idea being that they could keep plant root systems in water solutions with minerals and fertilizer. It failed, but from that they started to gain a greater understanding of the importance of the plant/fungal interaction at the root level and that many plants require certain types of fungus growing on their roots (and thus the fungus being present in the soils) in order to fix/release the nutrients that the plant requires.

Personally I'd love vertical farm structures as a means to produce more off the same parcel of land, but also as a fixed means to control run-off of pollutants from farming. High yield farming only works by adding fertilizers and other chemicals which leach into our natural ecosystems.

 sebster wrote:



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Prestor Jon wrote:
Some jobs might be able to be enticed to relocate with tax breaks or whatever benefits the government is offering to encourage relocation but some jobs can't be moved. My wife is a nurse, the hospital she works at isn't going to move, so all the jobs that are created directly by the hospital, plus all the support role jobs that exist in close proximity to the hospital plus the jobs that are created by businesses that feed off the hospital area jobs (restaurants, stores, hotels) can't relocate.

Weird example, hospitals are decentralized already. We don't have 5 out of 6 major hospitals in a city all within a stone's throw of each other in the CBD. Instead they're spread out among the population centers.

Whereas major corporate headquarters are almost all located right next to each other in the city. And even more ridiculously most government departments are right there next to them. There's no reason an insurance company or a bank must have its corporate hq in the city centre, other than prestige.

Municipalities could do more to encourage business development in the suburbs in regards to zoning and taxes but they'd also have to contend with the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) backlash. People want convenience and jobs but they usually don't want stores and office parks in their neighborhoods.

A lot of the problem is NIMBY. A lot of the rest is even more cynical, with local residents controlling zoning laws to create artificial scarcity. What is happening in places like the Bay area with zoning being used to almost completely shut down new housing development, so existing homeowners can see their house prices sky rocket is a disgrace.

That's true about hospitals but the same problems can crop up with other examples. Wall St doesn't have to be in NYC but relocating it would be a PITA so all of the ancillary jobs that stem from Wall St are difficult to move as well.

My town used to a textile mill town back in the day. While there are plenty of negatives about those old company towns that we would want to avoid the idea of pushing mixed use developments into the mold of residential neighborhoods for workers adjacent to office parks has merit. A lot of new developments put apartments in or adjacent to retail and commercial space to increase convenience and desirability for the development. I think the city planning issues in the US are more rooted in the need to redevelop existing areas than new developments being unplanned urban sprawl (aside from notorious problem cities like Houston). New developments are better/smarter than ever in a lot of instances but redeveloping existing urban areas only get more difficult and expensive over time.

I think Prestor is right on that count. There's plenty of planning in how we build things. The problem is that the modern American living space is a giant cluster of fresh booming residential and economic areas interspersed with tired, dying, and outright dead neighborhoods and shopping spaces with little to no interest put into redevelopment of older spaces because it's always cheaper to just develop something undeveloped.

 sebster wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
Another facet to look at is the fact that the further we spread out, the less area we have for agriculture. If population isn't controlled, that'll provide a REAL nasty situation and lead to that massive conflict I mentioned before. So spreading out is not viable, euthanizing the populace isn't viable, currently colonization isn't viable, so we're looking at expanding up instead of out. THAT would also create thoroughfares for automated vehicles with less human traffic on them, plus the massive sanitation/maintenance staff needed for a hive city to give work to all those displaced by automation. It hits pretty much EVERYONE'S prediction buttons.

There's about 14 million square kilometres of urban development on earth. That sounds like a lot, until you realize there's a bit over 200 million square kilometres of farming land (about 40% of the land on earth). The former is not going to consume the latter in any meaningful quantity. This isn't to say there aren't problems with urban sprawl and with pressures on agricultural land, but the two issues aren't really linked.

Actually, a lot of Urban development is swallowing up agricultural land. Largely because a good amount of Agricultural land, and developed agricultural land, is right next to cities and there is overlap between what makes good agricultural land and what makes land good for building cities on.

http://www.westernfarmpress.com/management/influence-urban-areas-farmland-values

Just take where I live in the North Bay. The cities around here are growing at a crazy pace, while every year farms disappear into urban developments of some kind. Especially the local Dairy farmers who are struggling with massive running costs and low prices for product(even the organic dairies). They're barely scraping by selling milk, but then they look at what their land is worth they could become massively wealthy if they just sold the land to developers. And if a farmer retires or dies and leaves the dairy to family who have no interest in keeping a slowly dying business afloat they're just going to sell it.

There is of course a lot of "agricultural land" which isn't anywhere near cities. But that land also tends to have poor water availability, meaning it is only useful for growing crops which have low water needs, or for grazing. But being a few hours away from a transportation hub also creates problems.

This could be solved if we began building cities in places where cities aren't traditionally built, areas with little to no agricultural value, while simultaneously tearing down developments on prime agricultural land. But thats basically a pipe dream.

 LordofHats wrote:
I think Prestor is right on that count. There's plenty of planning in how we build things. The problem is that the modern American living space is a giant cluster of fresh booming residential and economic areas interspersed with tired, dying, and outright dead neighborhoods and shopping spaces with little to no interest put into redevelopment of older spaces because it's always cheaper to just develop something undeveloped.

I think this is doubly true when you look at the "bad" perception that the term gentrification brings up. . . Im not saying that ALL redevelopment goes this route, but there are certainly some very real problems with redevelopment and gentrification (I think I'd argue that gentrification specifically is cheaper than full on redevelopment, just because most of the gentrifiers (not sure that's a word, but hey) want to use the existing, historical structures for new purposes as much as possible).


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 Grey Templar wrote:


This could be solved if we began building cities in places where cities aren't traditionally built, areas with little to no agricultural value, while simultaneously tearing down developments on prime agricultural land. But thats basically a pipe dream.

You mean like, Vegas and Phoenix?

 Overread wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Build vertical farms.

It's my understanding that they tried with factory style farming, the idea being that they could keep plant root systems in water solutions with minerals and fertilizer. It failed, but from that they started to gain a greater understanding of the importance of the plant/fungal interaction at the root level and that many plants require certain types of fungus growing on their roots (and thus the fungus being present in the soils) in order to fix/release the nutrients that the plant requires.

Hydroponics is a thing, even combo aquaculture/hydroponics facilities crop up every now and then.

They have their own set of intrinsic problems (basically not being suitable to all crops and power needs) that's why they're just a small fraction of agricultural production.

Prestor Jon wrote:
That's true about hospitals but the same problems can crop up with other examples. Wall St doesn't have to be in NYC but relocating it would be a PITA so all of the ancillary jobs that stem from Wall St are difficult to move as well.

I agree that it is a pain to move whole sectors, but that doesn't mean we can't do it. The trick is not to move to existing business, but lure new business to start in some other area.

To use your Wall St example, no major financial company is going to leave the financial district. They'd be announcing themselves as small time, no tax incentive on Earth could offset the reputation impact of not having an office in the district. But most of the jobs in these places are backroom jobs, they don't have to be on Wall St. So when a fund is planning to set up an enormous block of computers to run its algorithmic HVT, it makes sense for the city to offer up commercial space with high speed cabling outside of the financial district. If it was just the retail arm of these financial companies set up in Wall St and everything else got moved to outlying areas, it'd be an enormous shift of jobs and a massive improvement in transport pressures.

All that said, NY isn't the best example, because they have a large and highly used subway system. So the economics there are wildly different. But the general example still holds.

Trick is to look to evolve this over time, luring new business away from pressure points, rather than shift established business.

My town used to a textile mill town back in the day. While there are plenty of negatives about those old company towns that we would want to avoid the idea of pushing mixed use developments into the mold of residential neighborhoods for workers adjacent to office parks has merit. A lot of new developments put apartments in or adjacent to retail and commercial space to increase convenience and desirability for the development. I think the city planning issues in the US are more rooted in the need to redevelop existing areas than new developments being unplanned urban sprawl (aside from notorious problem cities like Houston). New developments are better/smarter than ever in a lot of instances but redeveloping existing urban areas only get more difficult and expensive over time.

Definitely, the mixed developments are a great trend.


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 LordofHats wrote:
I think Prestor is right on that count. There's plenty of planning in how we build things. The problem is that the modern American living space is a giant cluster of fresh booming residential and economic areas interspersed with tired, dying, and outright dead neighborhoods and shopping spaces with little to no interest put into redevelopment of older spaces because it's always cheaper to just develop something undeveloped.

I read an amazing piece a couple of years back that I might have linked to here on dakka back in the day... anyhow, the piece was saying that the way we now plan cities has had a major impact on income inequality and social mobility. Thing is, a poor person once would have been in a crappy inner city apartment, it wasn't a nice place but he was within walking distance or short public transport of a lot of potential jobs. But these days he's more likely to be in low income housing a in the outlying suburbs, with very few jobs in the area.

It isn't the whole of the issue, but it is a part of it, I think.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
Actually, a lot of Urban development is swallowing up agricultural land. Largely because a good amount of Agricultural land, and developed agricultural land, is right next to cities and there is overlap between what makes good agricultural land and what makes land good for building cities on.

None of that is remotely sufficient to explain the simple reality of scale - 14m is just so much smaller than 200m.

There is of course a lot of "agricultural land" which isn't anywhere near cities. But that land also tends to have poor water availability, meaning it is only useful for growing crops which have low water needs, or for grazing. But being a few hours away from a transportation hub also creates problems.

You wildly misunderstand the yield difference of 'good' and 'bad' agricultural land. There is a difference, but it isn't so massive that it will make a meaningful dent in the difference between 14m and 200m.

Getting back to the original point of the thread, it seems that the Uber car which ran over a pedestrian had the factory-installed automatic braking system disabled. The sensor system was tested using the dashcam footage, and it would have triggered one second before impact. Not much, but; a) that's using the dashcam video, which is of a lower quality than the actual cameras fitted to the car and b) would have at the very least reduced the speed of the collision, perhaps to a survivable level.

http://europe.autonews.com/article/20180327/ANE/180329697/uber-disabled-volvo-suvs-safety-system-before-self-driving-fatality

In fairness to Uber I can see why they might turn that off if the auto stop system was simply a car feature and separate from the actual AI of the car driving. Ergo so that the car was driving itself without "driver aids" and assuming that the Uber AI had its own detection and auto-stop features.

It would likely make it easier to review test data from its use if they only have to check their own AI systems and not other auto detection/control systems within the car. It wouldn't surprise me if other car aid features might have been turned off as well.

That said if the safety feature works better than Ubers own then I can't see why they'd want to turn it off or at least not release the car to the wilds until they'd made their own as good as the driver aid feature. Of course it might be that Ubers own internal testing proved otherwise under test conditions (ergo that Ubers system was as good or better than the cars own driver aid) so how much Uber tested that and compared them and thus what they based their choice of turning the aid off on would be something I'd expect to be reviewed during the investigation.


That said I'm unsure if, legally speaking, there is any requirement to keep such driver aids on in standard use of a car (I can see turning them off being a benefit and a need if going off-road for example). Ergo if there's no legal requirement to keep such aids running for a normal person can we then give Uber blame if their self driving system also had the aids turned off (which leads us back into that comparison aspect - as well as debate on suitable testing practice - whcih brings us back to putting those self driving cars back into testing facilities instead of unleashing them on the roads just yet)

Uber settles with family of woman killed by self-driving car

That was quick. Clearly they want to put this behind them.

 sebster wrote:


You wildly misunderstand the yield difference of 'good' and 'bad' agricultural land. There is a difference, but it isn't so massive that it will make a meaningful dent in the difference between 14m and 200m.

There is. The difference between irrigated and non irrigated alone can make a five-fold difference in yield everything else being equal.

Average yield for almonds in Spain is around 300Kg/ha, in California you're looking at anything between 2.000/2.500Kg/ha. Why? Irrigated crops in good soils vs non-irrigated in marginal soils. Farmers in both countries make money, btw. It takes more to get more.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Uber settles with family of woman killed by self-driving car

That was quick. Clearly they want to put this behind them.

I suspect the family wants to put it behind them and the car company wants to resolve it fast. Something like this can turn into a huge situation legally speaking and can be the sort of thing that sparks the creation of new laws and suchlike. So it can fast snowball into something huge that, I suspect, the family might not want to get dragged through and which the car company certainly don't want to have to defend against.

Does a private settlement preclude the possibility of a criminal liability prosecution?

Overread wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Uber settles with family of woman killed by self-driving car

That was quick. Clearly they want to put this behind them.

I suspect the family wants to put it behind them and the car company wants to resolve it fast. Something like this can turn into a huge situation legally speaking and can be the sort of thing that sparks the creation of new laws and suchlike. So it can fast snowball into something huge that, I suspect, the family might not want to get dragged through and which the car company certainly don't want to have to defend against.

Either that, or the number the family requested was lower than Uber was anticipating and paid out cuz they thought "wow, that's cheap, hells yeah we'll pay you!"

Kilkrazy wrote:Does a private settlement preclude the possibility of a criminal liability prosecution?

According to the professor of the ethics class I'm in (in which we've spent plenty of time talking about Uber as a whole), who is a lawyer, what he's said is that *usually* civil suits come after criminal cases. While I'm no lawyer, I would imagine that criminal cases may still be on the table, if there's a legal team working on it, and a prosecutor is sold on that work.

Might be a tough sell to get a criminal case going, though. The video clearly puts at least some of the fault on the woman for walking out into traffic.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43604440

Tesla car involved in fatal crash while on auto-pilot.