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Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

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Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#141

Post by hikarudo »

JetSpiegel wrote: post #119
mabbo wrote: post #87

For those nay-sayers pointing out the incidents where the cars had to have manual control taken, I think you're missing the forest for the trees. When there's an incident of a car needing a human to take control, what happens next? Cruise will record the incident, and add it to the training data set. Now, the system will learn what it should have done instead and that same kind of incident becomes less likely to occu…

Paraphrasing Tolstoi, every accident is different in its own way. I see that approach as unscalable as current antivirus companies. Making a blacklist of every possible accident condition is as foolish as making a blacklist of every possible harmful Turing-complete program.

On the contrary, there are more common types of accidents and learning from those will prevent future incidents with some probability.

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#142

Post by aphextron »

bogomipz wrote: post #133
vkou wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hatchbacks are not mini-SUVs, and many people can't afford to own a mini-SUV. $36,000 with no trims is pricy for a new car. I've been adamant that owning an EV would be a non-starter for me, but having seen the Bolt, if I were shopping for a new car, I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

I didn't say that hatchbacks were SUVs, it was simply a comp as the sedan market is giving way to the compact SUV in the US. $36K is pretty close to average car price in the US now: https://www.edmunds.com/about/press/average-vehicle-transact... I think you are right that there are many people who can't afford a $35K car which is why leasing is seeing such an uptick: https://www.edmunds.com/about/press/automotive-lea…

>$36K is pretty close to average car price in the US now:

You have to keep in mind that $36k 'average' number is highly inflated by luxury purchases. Most people end up spending closer to $20k. I think when they hit below that magical $19,995 number we will see massive adoption.

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#143

Post by spikels »

phkahler wrote: post #90
Fricken wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of 2016 all companies testing autonomous vehicles in California filed their disengagement reports. Waymo reported 1 unplanned disengagement every 5000 miles, and GM reported 1 every 180. Nobody else was even in the running. These metrics are crude, but it's currently the only benchmarking system we've got, and we'll see in December where Cruise is really at when they report their 2017 numbers. Cruise does…

>> Cruise does distinguish itself by driving mostly on busy downtown SF streets, a challenging environment, and they've released impressive videos showing off their capabilities. I don't doubt that it's a challenging environment, but there are many, many different kinds of challenges that are not even present in that city.

Driving is SF is actually quite challenging. It is quite congested with cars as well as pedestrians and cyclists. Due to lax enforcement many traffic laws are routinely ignored particularly by cyclists, pedestrians and transit vehicles. On top of this there is lots of construction, poorly maintained roads and frequent traffic flow changes.

Not sure what you are imagining but SF is free of winter driving conditions. Other than that it is as challenging as any city in the US, Europe or Japan.

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#144

Post by spikels »

sloppycee wrote: post #32
guyfawkes303 wrote: post #4

This makes me so excited. I can't wait until the interiors of cars can change completely due to the safety brought by self driving cars. If all cars were self driving and communicated with each other, the risk of crash would be almost nonexistent (obviously there would still be wildlife and other issues). Given a near 0% chance of crash however, we could remove many of the annoying 'features' of a current car, like s…

A public 'bed car' sounds gross.

Think of hotels or airline/train sleeper seats not public transit.

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#145

Post by spikels »

pmichaud wrote: post #39
delegate wrote: post #18

Self-driving cars will slowly (or quickly) make car ownership redundant. Why own a car (pay taxes, insurance, parking), when you can have one at your door in a couple of minutes ? When you arrive at the destination, just exit the car - no need to look for parking or anything like that, let the car figure it out. If technology can do that, then owning a car becomes more of a hobby than necessity. I hope GM's strategy…

I used to think this, and I still think it'll happen in urban centers, but there are pretty big swaths of rural or just low density areas that wouldn't be well served by this, so it'd take a while (a couple decades extra maybe) to get local rideshare hubs going, and in some more remote places it maybe would never happen.

While obviously density improves the efficiency of almost any transportation system I don't understand why driverless vehicles would ever be less efficient than traditional cars. Sure they will initially cost more due to additional sensors and computers there will also be saving from removing unneeded human controls. Lastly accident/fatality rates are several times higher in rural areas so the potential safety gains are larger.

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#146

Post by spikels »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #43
mFixman wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still do that with Uber. Why own a car today?

Because Humans quickly change your rider review from 5 stars to one when you do not tip.

Drivers have to rate you before they see your tip unless you give a cash tip.

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#147

Post by Retric »

abalone wrote: post #102
Retric wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo (Google) is not that far from level IV. Average U.S. driver has one accident roughly every 165,000 miles and disengagements is not 1:1 with crashing. I suspect drunk drivers would probably be safer handing over control which could make a huge difference. Most interesting is the Disengagements by location. (page 9) https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/946b3502-c959-4e3b... Interstate 0 Freeway 0 Highway 12…

Sounds like you're assuming level 4 merely means parity or better with human error. Lots of problems with that. For instance if it's Google's negligent bug that kills the family of 4 instead of a driver, Google gets sued. Google has much deeper pockets than the driver who would typically declare bankruptcy, effectively capping the damages. No real cap for Google, every time. So that explodes the cost of autonomous ve…

Medical errors kill on the order of 700 people per day in the US (high error bars on that number though). And yes, insurance is a major cost in the medical field, but even large scale negligent deaths are regularly dealt with by the US legal system.

Yes, anyone putting out such a system is going to get sued, but so does every car company that exists today. It's just the cost of doing business and ultimately just get's passed on to consumers.

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#148

Post by mtourne »

drawnwren wrote: post #138
JshWright wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm not understanding the scenario. A car was stopped in your lane waiting to turn. Presumably you should wait until they have turned, or make a safe lane change to another lane to move around them?

Yeah, I don't know if you're in SF - but on the one lane roads, traffic doesn't stop for people turning left at lights. Again, I don't know the legality - but I've seen police and government workers do it as well. Because the streets are made w/ enough space for vehicles to park next to the lanes of traffic - there is enough room to pass on the right in an intersection.

I understand that part. But not the one about the cruise car almost hitting you.

So: one lane street, person in front of you turning left, you pass them to the right in the space where there might be street parking which extends into the intersection. During that time, the car trying to turn left is finally able to do so and the car immediately behind it is the cruise car. Cruise-car is now able to go straight and almost hits you as you're both competing for that one lane?

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#149

Post by JshWright »

drawnwren wrote: post #138
JshWright wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm not understanding the scenario. A car was stopped in your lane waiting to turn. Presumably you should wait until they have turned, or make a safe lane change to another lane to move around them?

Yeah, I don't know if you're in SF - but on the one lane roads, traffic doesn't stop for people turning left at lights. Again, I don't know the legality - but I've seen police and government workers do it as well. Because the streets are made w/ enough space for vehicles to park next to the lanes of traffic - there is enough room to pass on the right in an intersection.

Passing on the shoulder (over a white line), or in a designated parking lane is indeed a violation (obviously I'm not sure of the specifics of the intersection, so I don't know if either of those apply).

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#150

Post by hobls »

denvercoder904 wrote: post #134
adrianmacneil wrote: post #100

Hi HN, engineer at Cruise here. I just wanted to point out that most people are surprised when I tell them we're hiring a ton of backend/full stack/android engineering positions (mostly go/node/react), and you don't need prior robotics or machine learning experience to apply (although we like those too). So, if you're interested in working on AVs or the systems that support them, please take a look at our careers pag…

Hi, I applied on the website. I have a solid background in embedded systems and C++ but I immediately received a rejection email. I wish I could have chatted with an engineer first :-(

Sounds like there was some disqualifying factor you're not aware of. (Citizenship, willingness to relocate, whatever.) No one sends out immediate rejection emails to experienced engineers unless they really have to.
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