1 killed 20 injured as 4 runner crashes into Apple store

Interesting comment made to me other day talking about 4Runners a person who wears size 14 shoes said " yeah the only thing I don't like was I once got my foot part way under the brake pedal pushing down on the gas pedal" .

 

i have a push button start, so i can turn the wheel while off in or out of gear

 

ok, but it sounds like he was able to pull it out and not kill 20 people. I also doubt that other guy who caused the accident had size 14 shoes

 

Technically it locks when in park AND when the key is in the first position (not turned, just inserted). In this fashion if you kill the engine with the key in drive or neutral, the ignition won't turn all the way to the first position but will stop in ACC. Because it's in a gear other than park and the ignition isn't in the first position the steering doesn't lock.

Can't speak to the push button versions.

 

i have a push button start, so i can turn the wheel while off in or out of gear

 

Na but he did say he nearly shit is pants

 

20 people?

 

sorry, 20 injured

 

Just for the hell of it on the way to the store I took a second to try something on a back road just because I wanted to know I see 2 things that I never paid that much attention to before.
1. The space between the Gas pedal and the brake pedal is somewhat narrow.
2. I can push the brake and Gas pedal at the same time rather easy to do. No I was not doing the "Toe Heel" that I do with the Manual Transmission my foot is able to bridge the gap and press both because natural position is the foot is on a angle to the right.

 

I saw footage on the news of this guy in court and seemed like he was frazzled looking, with the looks that perhaps he was on Psych medictaions and his reaction time was slowed, this will all come out at trial as his defense team is at work. just a hunch I have, that this guy is and was at the time of the accident a mental mess?

 

I'd think that if he was on medication that would slow his reflexes, the doctor would have told him not to drive.

Could actually work against him, if it was the case.

If he had suffered a medical emergency, like a seizure or something, that might get him out of trouble.

Otherwise, he might be frazzled because of what happened, and facing the consequences.

 

Too late now and unfortunatley he cant claim that stuff after the fact as the cause of the accident.

 

Yeah, obviously if it had been caused by a medical issue, it would have been mentioned right away.

 

As predicted the defense is blaming Toyota for the accident. Here is the story from 2 days ago......
Date: May 01, 2024 07:59PM
Deadly Apple Store car crash was an accident, driver claims

[No, he wasn't driving a Tesla, it was a Toyota 4Runner, 2022 or earlier]

The trial over the Massachusetts Apple Store crash is well underway, and the defense is claiming that bad AI was the culprit, not the driver.
Driver Bradley Rein drove the car into the Apple Derby Street store in November 2022 at about 60 miles per hour, with the vehicle only stopping when it hit the back wall. The incident killed one person and injured 22.

Rein originally claimed it was an accident. That story has now changed.

The defense team filed a motion in court on Tuesday, according to WCVB 5, that claimed that AI software installed in the car caused the unintentional acceleration.

The charges filed in court were upgraded in 2023 from previous charges of reckless homicide by a motor vehicle to second-degree murder, 18 counts of aggravated assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, four counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and motor vehicle homicide by reckless operation of a motor vehicle.

In April 2023, Rein pled not guilty to the charges, and remained free on a $100,000 bail.

In Massachusetts, there is a strong precedent for drivers being held responsible for crashes involving AI. Should the motion be granted, the charges would likely have to be changed, though, to reflect the nature of the incident.

It's not clear what "AI software" was installed in the 4Runner that could cause forced acceleration and prevent the driver from hitting the brakes. It appears that the 2022 and earlier 4runner models lack factory self driving technology, beyond lane-keeping assist and adaptive cruise control.

The driver previously claimed to police on the scene that his foot was stuck on the gas pedal — which would obviously not be AI-related. Observers on the scene didn't see any deceleration, and there was no evidence found during the investigation that the driver tried to brake.

The prosecution has asked for more time to review the claim. Toyota told WCVB that it was not a party to the litigation, and has no comment.

Apple is also being sued over the crash. The suit alleges that Apple didn't do enough to prevent the incident.

"Our experts tell us that this catastrophe was 100% preventable," Sheff & Cook lawyer Doug Shef said at the time. "They simply needed to place a few barriers or bollards between the parking lot traffic, which was busy holiday traffic, and the public."

It's not clear how the suit against Apple is going.

 

Thanks for the update.

It seems kind of weird to change the story now, after originally having claimed his foot got stuck.

 

From what I've read about the case, his 4 runner was a 2019 and did not have TSS. My 2020 was 1st year for TSS pedestrian detection etc.
Correct me if that is wrong

 

I would not trust what any black box might tell you, I had 3 episodes where my main warning light came on and the small dash screen flashed with some warning that didn't last long enough to make out, when this happened while accelerating from a dead stop the truck stalled, like it lost all power then regained itself. 3 trips to the dealer and they couldn't even find a record of the light exceptl where traction control kicked in on the ice. This all happened in the first 1000 miles. I'm at 2500 now and hasn't happened again.

 

Did you mean to say: It seems kind of convenient to change the story now after originally having claimed his foot got stuck.

 

Can't believe that he is suing Apple for not putting bollards up! Especially after taking the blame initially.

 

You should educate yourself more on AI and machine learning. That is absolutely not how it works, also read a little on computer vision.

Also, programmers aren’t making any decisions with regards to what a piece of software should do. Product owners do.

 

Yeah, That’s what I thought as well. Except my 21 doesn’t have lane departure warning or lane keeping assist. I think that started in 22 or 23. Mine has the imminent collision braking as well.

I was being simplistic in giving a basic description of AI as used in self-driving cars. And my point about AI being “fake” is just making the point that something artificial is by definition, is not the real thing (intelligence). That’s hard enough to define for people

I’m sure “AI” is quite a bit more complicated than flow charts. I also would imagine that the complexity makes it difficult to trace the source of erroneous or undesired decision making an AI program might make. I don’t know much technical detail about how AI software is written (or writes itself), but I do know it often times involves a human at the outset to define what the AI is supposed to actually accomplish, and that a fair amount of training is needed for a machine learning product to “get it”. I’ve also read that training is quite expensive to do properly, so apparently a lot of developers are writing AI in order to train AI. I’d imagine there’s a danger in that somewhere.

AI can mean different things to different people, and it’s also used by people trying to sell products or services. So it’s important to define what AI actually is before even having a conversation about it.

Marketing realities (caveat emptor) dictate that any end-users be very very skeptical of how an AI tool/solution actually works for their intended purpose, and also understand how it fails.

My biggest gripe with companies pushing hard with AI solutions is that there seems to be very convenient “magical black box”attitude. It’s very much like they prefer to claim “we don’t truly know how the program made that decision”, as if that absolves them of responsibility for a failure of a product/program they created. Related to the point of “fuzzy accountability” also a tendency for some companies to irresponsibly mischaracterize their AI products and over promise (ie Tesla “full self driving”). It’s not very comforting. For some applications a failure or undesired outcome is no big deal, but in other applications it can have life or death consequences.

Regarding your last point. I wasn’t talking about end user’s decisions on how they decide to *employ or utilize* an AI product. To clarify, I meant to say programmers make decisions about what the software is tasked with doing, and how it should go about doing it. Chatbot for example. Fundamentally, the producers of that product decided to make a language output program to respond to human questions. And they decided that it would use data from the internet for “content
/source material” in the language output it creates. They decided on the language to be used. And they may decide any number of other factors that define the purpose of the AI program, and how it will do it. All of these decisions are part of the design of an “AI” or “machine learning” product. It’s certainly possible, despite all of the complexity of AI that is claimed, to design an absolutely garbage product right at the outset.

edit: do you have any suggestions on reading related to computer vision? I do find that an interesting topic. Particularly, how what aspects of human vision are understood and applied to computer based vision. Human vision and perception is such an incredibly complex thing, so I’m curious as to how it’s even conceptualized and defined for different computer applications. Toyota for example, defines a bit about how it uses information streams from the TSS to make decisions, and also describes limitations.

 

The bottomline here is you should not rely on any AI or automated system in your car to do what you are responsible to do as a driver. If you cant keep control of your car under your own power, you shouldn’t be driving or blame the car/others when you fail to do something reaponsible like drive slowly in a parking lot. And yes, accidents do happen, but don’t blame anyone other than yourself when it happens. Drives me nuts when no one takes accountability.

 

4Runnyaover

 

too funny!

 

Too easy to sue anymore than to have accountability

 

I concur. After reading this thread, I went out to the garage to my 2022 SR5 T4R to see just how I could get my foot “stuck on the gas pedal”. I had normal socks and shoes on. Try as I might, I could not get my foot “stuck on the gas pedal” or otherwise jammed, or trapped, or anything which could cause a problem.

Something really super bizarro happened here, or this guy is some kind of an idiot.

 

yep, something definitely wrong. I did a full test in my driveway A couple pages back on this chat on pg 2. I had no issues with a size 12 hiking sneaker never got my foot stuck, no matter how hard I tried and was able to stop my car.

 

I’ll put $20 on it that the guy had cruise control on and hit resume speed somehow while entering the parking lot and then panic froze.

 

its a mystery, but only he knows. I could be wrong, but I think you have to be over 20 miles an hour to engage the cruise control. Either way, doing 20 miles an hour in a mall parking lot is irresponsible.

 

Well, judging on how the New Englanders driving down here in South Florida enter parking lots, that’s not unheard of.