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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

#281

Post by toast0 »

notatoad wrote: post #127
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?

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.

Many (most?) states have a point based system for suspending licenses based on moving violations. You tend to collect points for things like speeding, failure to follow traffic signals, or illegal turns. Get enough points and your license is suspended for some period. Other states give you a number of points, and you lose points for infractions, get to zero and suspension.

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

#282

Post by ghaff »

tremon wrote: post #239
dylan604 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The teenager's ability to drive safely isn't just a mechanical ability of driving a car or of just being aware of the laws/rules. Safe driving comes from years of experience on being able to decide how long it will take to stop at certain speeds in certain conditions. Being able to recognize their car's brakes are a little soft and might not stop on a dime any more. Being able to recognize that the driver in front of…

experience vs book learning Why would you assume that a driver's education is a matter of book learning? Is that how you were taught?

To a first approximation, I'm skeptical that anywhere in the world a learning supervised driver gains sufficient on-road experience to to count as a skilled experienced driver. Clearly, different places make somewhat different tradeoffs with respect to licensing. However, I'll go out on a limb and say the majority of drivers with 5 to 10 years experience are better drivers than newly licensed drivers.

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

#283

Post by Cockbrand »

MathCodeLove wrote: post #167
Cockbrand wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

2. No, sidewalks and bike lanes are for pedestrians and bicyclists. Bike lanes are less common than sidewalks so I think it's reasonable to include them on low-speed/highly congested stretches of road, but to assume they should have a full access to, e.g. and interstate or highway is ridiculous and would hinder literally thousands of people.

OK, let's all take a deep breath here - we might just have a different understanding of the word "road". My definition of "road" is not restricted to interstates and highways, but it includes any larger road, err, street. Of course, nobody wants pedestrians or cyclists on highways. It looks like we agree there.

But I refuse the popular notion that roads (as in larger streets, or any street between villages/towns/cities) should be for cars only. The usual examples of Copenhagen, Amsterdam or recently Paris show that shared roads lead to a higher quality of living. I personally appreciate this, and I'd prefer a world where this sharing would be more common.

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

#284

Post by dfxm12 »

ISL wrote: post #258
argiopetech wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I caution against age as a sole proxy for driving ability. As a contradictory datum, my 80+ year old grandmother (in the USA) maintains a 100+ acre farm. She daily drives a (impeccably maintained) 2006 3/4 ton pickup, to include multiple yearly 10+ hour trips hauling a 10k+ lbs trailer. She almost always brings a passenger on these trips for companionship and safety. I've never heard any complaints, and never persona…

Triggering testing/education after traffic violations might be a middle-ground.

This seems too reactive. I agree it is better than nothing, but if someone is going to have the wherewithal to put a law in place around this, I think the goal should should be more about preventing violations than punishment. Maybe you should have to re-take the test when your license expires instead of the license being a lifetime certification. That would be every four years in my state. Not sure if it is different state to state.

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

#285

Post by ocdtrekkie »

eru wrote: post #260
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers often fail to realize you can't cheese a judge and if you try to, the law will come down much, much harder on you. Either one of two things will be the case with this approach: 1. The algorithm will be too imperceptibly different to be treated as a different program. Adding some tiny decimals somewhere won't make it unlikely to make the same mistakes, and the entire class of algorithms will be treated as on…

Judges are human indeed. But things like tax dodges still exist and other loopholes. You just need good enough lawyers to structure things for you. Your second point would lead to a ban on all but one self-driving car systems, when taken seriously?

I don't know about that. I do think that if, say, Google operated a spectrum of 1,000 self-driving algorithms, and knew that some were safer than others, a judge would take a very dim view to knowingly deploying less safe cars than others. And even from a business standpoint, it wouldn't be good business to have less safe (aka, higher liability) cars on the road.

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

#286

Post by datadata »

gtirloni wrote: post #14

Imagine if every failure in a traditional car became news.

I feel this will happen at the end of the adoption curve, should we reach it. Media will begin to shame legacy drivers and accidents will become newsworthy curiosities. Sort of like the last known cases of a pathogen that becomes eradicated.

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

#287

Post by carabiner »

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 didn't design the aircraft that you fly on, which are incredibly computerized. Also the drugs that your doctor prescribes. Etc.

You put your faith in myriad bureaucracies and trust networks that you have no hope of understanding. Driverless cars are just one more added to the list.

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

#288

Post by ThatGeoGuy »

causi wrote: post #270
snovv_crash wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The US has lower per-kilometer vehicle fatalities than South Korea, Mexico, the Czech Republic, and Belgium, and is similar to Japan and New Zealand.

It's difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison with this statistic because the US has more sprawl.

Like sure, per-kilometre fatalities may be down, but that says nothing of:

1. The number of non-fatal crashes

2. How much of this incorporates driving on large highways

3. When not on a highway, the degree of traffic in which fatal crashes can't occur (can't get in a high-speed accident in high traffic in New York, for example)

Needless to say, the roads of Japan and New Zealand are so different from the US that it isn't exactly clear that this statistic is really informing us of much, really.

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

#289

Post by pie42000 »

sseagull wrote: post #65
DennisP wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily, if you make your intentions clear, e.g. by slowing down and putting your hazards on.

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”

Ah yes, "one time in Arkansas" is now applicable to the situation at large. You'd think the HN crowd would be intelligent enough to not do this. This is akin to saying "this website doesn't load on the Nintendo DS web browser therefore..."

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

#290

Post by pie42000 »

lubujackson wrote: post #247

The real surprise here is that SF police pulled over a car at all. Have been here for more than a decade and I can count the times I have seen a car pulled over in SF on one finger - meanwhile, I have seen numerous cars blow through red lights, speeding, U-turns in the middle of the street etc. in front of police with no response.

Yeah, this was my impression as well. In Chicago you have police actively pulling people over all the time. In SF i have literally not seen a single person pulled over in the year I've been here. For context, in Chicago i would see about 1 per day, and double that in Wisconsin.
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