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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

#121

Post by wyldfire »

xadhominemx wrote: post #101
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…

We are all unwilling testers of every new teenage driver who hits the road.

Aside: I'm happy to see that teenage drivers today have a lot more required training than I did when I got my license. At least in this US state, and likely most of them.

I'm also really happy about the continued advances in auto safety technology.

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

#122

Post by Cockbrand »

MathCodeLove wrote: post #106
MereInterest wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 responsib…

You say "advertising campaign" as if it were some conspiracy by the world's big auto manufacturers 1. Do you have any sources? 2. You don't think that roads should be a car only domain? What do you think roads are for?

1: e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaywalking#Origin_of_the_term

2: Roads are also for bicyclists, motorcyclists, and even pedestrians. It's true though that car drivers often think that roads are a car only domain and behave aggressively towards the other mentioned groups

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

#123

Post by bo1024 »

Kye wrote: post #118
xadhominemx wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are all unwilling testers of every new teenage driver who hits the road.

A teenager is worried about: getting killed, killing someone else, hurting someone, wrecking their parents' car, losing their permit. I don't trust engineers working on the models that drive these cars to teach a computer the difference between a human and an open road. A teenager can discern these with no effort. I trust a teenager to care about not hitting me and try their best, and to choose a ditch over hitting s…

To add to your point: it doesn’t bother me so much that the AI system doesn’t share these priorities. What I worry about is that the companies designing them are not incentivized to.

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

#124

Post by KptMarchewa »

unnah wrote: post #52
cdot2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has this law for motorcycles. Maybe we should apply it to driverless cars as well

Yes, every self-driving car should have a row of LED lights at the front. Also, they should indicate that the AI is actively scanning its environment by switching the LEDs on and off in a regular left-to-right pattern.

And a guy with the flag running in front of the vehicle.

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

#125

Post by logifail »

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…

> suspending the one car is actually a rather elegant solution

If the software in a commercial aircraft were to be found defective, would we really be OK if only the individual aircraft in which the fault manifested itself gets grounded (assuming that aircraft isn't itself already on the ground in thousands of pieces spread all over a hillside...)

Surely the FAA (or international equivalents) would issue an airworthiness directive which would apply to every single example of that specific type of aircraft?

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

#126

Post by MathCodeLove »

jeromegv wrote: post #112
MathCodeLove wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say "advertising campaign" as if it were some conspiracy by the world's big auto manufacturers 1. Do you have any sources? 2. You don't think that roads should be a car only domain? What do you think roads are for?

1. https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history The forgotten history of how automakers invented the crime of "jaywalking" (books and more sources are quoted in that article) 2. Roads existed before cars. This is an extremely American view to think that roads should be exclusively for cars. Roads should be for PEOPLE, regardless of which mode of transport they are using.

As for point 2.

Okay, but now cars do exist. Do you think it's reasonable for cars capable of traveling 40mph should be stuck behind pedestrians at walking speed? Our modern transportation infrastructure exists for a reason, and that reason is speed/effeciency. Most areas with heavy pedestrian traffic have sidewalks. If I'm going 60mph down the highway then the presumption that I should be subjected to pedestrians casually strolling across is absurd.

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

#127

Post by notatoad »

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?

Waymo's marketing would imply they think the whole fleet should be suspended in this case. They call their system the driver, and seem to anthropomorphise it.

But more practically: what could a self-driving car do to get it's licence suspended? Afaik That's a pretty rare punishment outside of two cases: drunk driving or street racing.

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

#128

Post by adhesive_wombat »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #80
adhesive_wombat wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because on a narrow road, coming to a stop blocks the vehicle behind you.

If your on a narrow road where you can't safely pull over, you don't stop. You continue until you could safely pull over enough. Stopping would cause more harm than good if they're actually trying to get around you.

Sure, I know that, but does a driverless car? All it can see is blue lights right behind it, which could mean "stop right now or we'll shoot you" or "get a move on to the next passing point you can find" depending on context (probably conveyed by the gesticulating of the driver and maybe a loudspeaker).

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

#129

Post by bin_bash »

IgorPartola wrote: post #88

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.

Mechanics need to be able to turn them off when they work on them or they’ll get blinded. Every car I’ve driven in the last 10 years seems to have an auto mode though.

I’d be surprised if the Chevy’s these are based on don’t have an auto mode. It could be that a fuse blew here.

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

#130

Post by snovv_crash »

wyldfire wrote: post #121
xadhominemx wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are all unwilling testers of every new teenage driver who hits the road.

Aside: I'm happy to see that teenage drivers today have a lot more required training than I did when I got my license. At least in this US state, and likely most of them. I'm also really happy about the continued advances in auto safety technology.

US driving test standards are still a joke compared to overseas.
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