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San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

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Re: San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

#31

Post by em500 »

markdown wrote: post #23
em500 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scalable solution would be that law enforcement will be given a direct override/pull-over button for any driverless car. I expect this to happen in the future if driverless cars reach large volumes. Maybe I haven't thought this through enough, but I can't imagine a circumstance where you would want a driverless car to be able to ignore stopping directions from law enforcement.

> I can't imagine a circumstance where you would want a driverless car to be able to ignore stopping directions from law enforcement. Funny, I can't imagine a circumstance where I would want "law enforcement" to be able to override my directions and take control of my car.

Ok, I'm guessing you're American. I've read that the relationship between the police and the public can be a bit .. antagonistic. And I know that fugitives are disproportionately romanticized in fiction.

But police officers giving you stopping directions are already overriding your directions and taking control of your car, fully backed by law and and force if necessary. Only with a very inefficient implementation.

Re: San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

#32

Post by usrusr »

mobilio wrote: post #20
cdot2 wrote: post #17

"Cruise vehicles are only authorized to drive from 10PM to 6AM, which obviously makes headlights pretty important." So why rely on the automatic headlights at all? Why not just set the headlights on manually?

In EU there is a law that you should drive with headlight all time. Old cars drive with low beam, new cars comes with daytime running lights (DRLs). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daytime_running_lamp#European_...

EU has a regulation requiring new cars to be equipped with DRL capability, that's all. Laws requiring the use of lights in daytime that exist in some countries are completely unrelated to EU.

Re: San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

#33

Post by adhesive_wombat »

brigade wrote: post #19
shafyy wrote: post #3

How do you pull over an autonomous car? Like, how does it know that it needs to pull over?

Same way humans do? It needs to recognize flashing lights and emergency vehicles to obey the law to get out of their way, and from there add code to fully pull over and remain stopped as long as there’s a cop car with flashing lights staying behind you.

I assume it's more complex that that, but I can't see how a driverless car can reliable distinguish between being pulled over and an emergency vehicle is trying to get past on a narrow road.

Re: San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

#34

Post by logifail »

bmitc wrote: post #2

I remain confused on how these cars are allowed on the road. Did they pass a driver's license check? Who's responsible? Who gets the ticket? In this instance, you can see that the car performed a dangerous maneuver by running from the cops, with its lights still off, and crossing an intersection, which is then spun by the company as finding a "safer" spot to pull over at. Even though, it found a spot essentially iden…

> Did they pass a driver's license check?

Thought experiment: imagine a particular self-driving algo were to do something that would warrant a human driver getting their driving licence suspended, would that mean all the cars with that same algo would be simultanously suspended, or just that one car?

Re: San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

#35

Post by asah »

thematrixturtle wrote: post #4
shafyy wrote: post #3

How do you pull over an autonomous car? Like, how does it know that it needs to pull over?

"We work closely with the SFPD on how to interact with our vehicles and have a dedicated phone number for them to call in situations like this.” And yes, that seems thoroughly impractical at scale.

Actually, I'd expect driverless cars to rarely get pulled over by police, so in fact this scales fine.

Re: San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

#36

Post by justsomehnguy »

soco wrote: post #12
hericium wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> double standard vs a human driver who needs to pull over immediately when instructed by the police or face potentially grave consequences Especially where Police is so hasty to use their cruisers as weapons[1] [1] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/06/10/arkansa...

On an unrelated note: why are the US police cars called "cruisers"? Are they a different category so to say?

The best description is on the first result from search:

> Police cars are called cruisers because that is what they do. They cruise about town, looking for trouble, and responding to those requiring assistance.

Doubt the original poster meant any irony there, but...

Still, Webster:

> cruiser, noun:

> 1 : a vehicle that _cruises_: such as

> a : squad car

> cruise, verb:

> 1 : to sail about touching at a series of ports

> 4 a : to go about the streets at random but on the lookout for possible developments

So probably it is the origin.

Wonder if there are similar designations in other languages. In my native one the term 'cruise' is restricted only for sail (as in v., 1 definition in Webster), so it could never be applied to a police car roaming the streets.

Re: San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

#37

Post by boondaburrah »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #33
brigade wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same way humans do? It needs to recognize flashing lights and emergency vehicles to obey the law to get out of their way, and from there add code to fully pull over and remain stopped as long as there’s a cop car with flashing lights staying behind you.

I assume it's more complex that that, but I can't see how a driverless car can reliable distinguish between being pulled over and an emergency vehicle is trying to get past on a narrow road.

It might not, but the behaviour would be the same, so the effect is achieved.

Re: San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

#38

Post by qayxc »

logifail wrote: post #34
bmitc wrote: post #2

I remain confused on how these cars are allowed on the road. Did they pass a driver's license check? Who's responsible? Who gets the ticket? In this instance, you can see that the car performed a dangerous maneuver by running from the cops, with its lights still off, and crossing an intersection, which is then spun by the company as finding a "safer" spot to pull over at. Even though, it found a spot essentially iden…

> Did they pass a driver's license check? Thought experiment: imagine a particular self-driving algo were to do something that would warrant a human driver getting their driving licence suspended, would that mean all the cars with that same algo would be simultanously suspended, or just that one car?

That is a very intriguing scenario indeed. Due to the non-deterministic nature of many self-driving systems, I'd reckon a broader investigation would have to follow.

Should that investigation reveal a reproducible behaviour, a recall or general suspension of vehicles running that particular software version would seem like a reasonable response. Otherwise suspending just that one car could be an option.

It's uncharted territory both in terms of the legal system and w.r.t accountability so I guess no one has an answer to that yet.

Re: San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

#39

Post by boondaburrah »

barry-cotter wrote: post #29
em500 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scalable solution would be that law enforcement will be given a direct override/pull-over button for any driverless car. I expect this to happen in the future if driverless cars reach large volumes. Maybe I haven't thought this through enough, but I can't imagine a circumstance where you would want a driverless car to be able to ignore stopping directions from law enforcement.

Wouldn’t it be great to give the government the power to cause a traffic accident for anyone they didn’t like?

They already can. Police will simply crash your car if they feel like it by using their car.

Re: San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

#40

Post by rvnx »

gambiting wrote: post #28
brigade wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parking citations attach to the car (as does civil collision liability generally), but moving violations can only be levied against the driver. Which is how some red light camera fines are avoided, if the driver isn’t clearly identifiable by the camera.

Here in UK it's always the owner of the car who is responsible, unless they can say who was driving the car at the time. If they can't then the fine defaults to them - the assumption being that they are responsible for knowing who is using their vehicle. In other countries with similar laws(Poland) it has been argued in front of court that it cannot be the owner's responsibility to know who is driving their car at an…

It's quite logic and an easy rule to take responsible the driver no matter whether they have a driver assist feature on or not.

Then the driver could sue the manufacturer for any defect or if the manufacturer misled the user into thinking the system was safe and didn't need human attention.

This way, if a system is unreliable, users will start blaming the system and stop using the feature or buying this car. Also, it allows manufacturers to roll-out features faster and learn faster from the real world.

If the manufacturer is directly responsible when driver assist features are engaged, but not the driver, then the manufacturer will get scared to roll anything, and progress will be much slower, and there will be more victims because the drivers think "I don't care, I'm not responsible, it's even better if the auto mode is on, even if less safe, cause I won't be responsible"

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