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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

#81

Post by qayxc »

pxmpxm wrote: post #74
qayxc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 uncharte…

How is it non-deterministic? If you run the same trained model on the same input data, you should arrive at the exactly identical output.

> How is it non-deterministic?

It's non-deterministic in a practical sense; you cannot reproduce the exact circumstances that caused a certain behaviour. Maybe a bug flew by one of the cameras at a certain moment, or a pedestrian with certain type of clothing passed by. You get the idea.

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

#83

Post by hakuseki »

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?

It does sound silly at first, but I think suspending the one car is actually a rather elegant solution on several counts.

1. Easy to implement

2. Doesn't punish fleet scale (compare: suspending the whole fleet means a fleet that's twice as large would be suspended twice as often)

3. Punishes the fleet owner in proportion to the frequency of the error

4. Is exactly correct when the cause is really a hardware problem specific to the car

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

#84

Post by throwaway0a5e »

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?

History.

Transporting the verb "cruise" makes more sense circa 1915 when foot and mounted patrols are proportionally more common and the steering wheel interface had just recently been ported over from watercraft.

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

#85

Post by fallingknife »

jwr wrote: post #72

I am really worried by the fact that I am the unwilling tester in the Great Driverless Car Experiment. Tradition has it that when you load-test a new bridge, you put the architect underneath. I feel like this, except I didn't design those driverless cars, somebody else did. Being an experienced software engineer, my trust in the software in these cars is pretty low. And yet they are testing them on me, because I can…

You could say the same for regular cars when they first arrived on the road. Saying there should be a higher bar is useless unless you are able to say exactly what that bar should be.

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

#86

Post by tiku »

hakuseki wrote: post #83
logifail wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

It does sound silly at first, but I think suspending the one car is actually a rather elegant solution on several counts. 1. Easy to implement 2. Doesn't punish fleet scale (compare: suspending the whole fleet means a fleet that's twice as large would be suspended twice as often) 3. Punishes the fleet owner in proportion to the frequency of the error 4. Is exactly correct when the cause is really a hardware problem s…

But the software "that did the crime" is all the same..

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

#87

Post by dsr_ »

virgilp wrote: post #77
sseagull wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, most of the time. If the cop feels like it, they can make you have a very bad time. https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/7645474002 “An Arkansas woman says she had no safe place to pull over in July 2020 when a state trooper tried to stop her for speeding, so she turned on her hazard lights and slowed down. Moments later, the officer rammed her vehicle, causing it to flip over and injuring the woman”

I think I saw that video - don't get me wrong, the officer was definitely an asshole; but I can see why he was annoyed, there was in fact plenty of space &time for her to pull over.

Remind us how what the police officer did wasn't vehicular assault and potentially homicide.

Remind us how physical injury is a reasonable response to a traffic violation.

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

#88

Post by IgorPartola »

Being used to riding motorcycles in the US, why are headlights not always on for all vehicles at this point? LED bulbs last a very long time and there is little reason to not have them on during the day. I know, it’s much more fun to anthropomorphize the car in this case, but the simple solution is to just hard wire them.

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

#89

Post by pueblito »

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?

Some of us feel that the death of Michael Hastings was a demonstration of exactly that.

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

#90

Post by MereInterest »

fallingknife wrote: post #85
jwr wrote: post #72

I am really worried by the fact that I am the unwilling tester in the Great Driverless Car Experiment. Tradition has it that when you load-test a new bridge, you put the architect underneath. I feel like this, except I didn't design those driverless cars, somebody else did. Being an experienced software engineer, my trust in the software in these cars is pretty low. And yet they are testing them on me, because I can…

You could say the same for regular cars when they first arrived on the road. Saying there should be a higher bar is useless unless you are able to say exactly what that bar should be.

People did say exactly the same for regular cars. The result was a massive advertising campaign to establish the concept of jaywalking, and to make the street the sole domain of the car.

I can easily imagine a similar campaign to label pedestrians as irresponsible for walking outside without an ultrasonic emitter, or a lidar reflector, or whatever integrates with the self-driving system. Whatever shifts the responsibility away from the car and onto the deceased.

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