Live data from Hacker News

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

theverge.com

431–440 of 504 posts

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

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the tests are just the colors under which bureaucratic red tape just happens to sail. Anything that creates barriers to entry will result in people being older before they get their licenses and that is where the bulk of the benefit comes from.

Is there any evidence that young drivers are dangerous due to age rather than inexperience?

Teenagers aren't known for not putting themselves in dangerous situations.

I don't think teenagers are any less safe than an person with equivalently little experience in normal traffic situations but they are definitively more likely to be less conservative when they do decide to push the limits. There's a difference between navigating a complex intersection and knowing how fast you can/should go on an empty highway.

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

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With that many examples, it should be simple to post just one example to make your point. But unsubstantiated contrarianism typically does not contribute to a conversation.

No one else provided examples nor asked for any. Perhaps you should ask for examples instead of assuming I'm acting out of malice. Here's a link to the full video for probably the most widely recognized case in the history of police brutality, the killing of George Floyd. Does the context this video provides make the officers actions okay? No, I don't think so. Does it make those actions appear much, much more reason…

> Does the context this video provides make the officers actions okay? No, I don't think so.

I understand and appreciate that social media can (and has) exaggerated things, which you've demonstrated, but I don't see how this demonstrates that police brutality is not a problem, or is an exaggerated problem. Ultimately you agree the police officer's actions were not okay.

The Verge article which I referred to originally: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/31/21276044/police-violence-...

For example, there were multiple videos showing police cars literally running into protesters, ramming into groups of them. What additional context could ever make that okay? Under what circumstances would that be a reasonable response?

Or as another example, police use tear gas on protesters, even though it's banned in war.

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

#433
post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that airplane software standards are by far the most rigorous in the world and so rigorous that most software developers are shocked at the level of rigor employed where as driverless cars have exactly zero software standards with respect to their safety or fitness for purpose. Comparing the processes in play is a outrageously fundamental category error; the systems have standards that are like 6 or…

> The difference is that airplane software standards are by far the most rigorous in the world and so rigorous that most software developers are shocked at the level of rigor employed... You mean the standards set by the FAA, which regularly defers to the private industry to regulate itself, due to complexity that it can't afford to keep up with? Those standards?

Yes, those standards that produced a safety regime of 20 years of flights without software being even implicated in a single fatality. Literally trillions if not quadrillions of passenger-miles per software-related fatality. Those same standards which result in a system like the 737 MAX rightfully being excoriated for only being 10% safer than driving and resulted in successful demands for grounding of the entire fleet.

As you note, unfortunately the standards as employed in practice have recently regressed dramatically to allow a system as unsafe as the 737 MAX to fly. So it seems only prudent to go back to the historical, far more rigorous, process which did result in the amazing historical safety regime. And, since self driving cars are a even harder and more dangerous technology with far more downside risk, they should use a standard even more rigorous than the historical airplane standards which are still by far better, from a safety perspective, than any other consistently applied software process, such as cars, by multiple orders of magnitude.

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

#434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of a moot point though. You can't really stop anyone from doing anything, the best we can do in a free society is create laws that deter undesirable behavior.

Or maybe we can hurry up with driverless cars so that we can take the wheel out asap for people who have DUIs.

[deleted]

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

#435
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That teenage driver goes through a training and certification process, and we have ways of stopping them from driving if they fuck up too badly. This is a complete aside, but not having a license doesn't really prevent you from getting in a car and driving it. I was just reminded of this when a buddy's parked car was struck by a drunk driver who was not legally licensed to drive because their license was revoked from…

Kind of a moot point though. You can't really stop anyone from doing anything, the best we can do in a free society is create laws that deter undesirable behavior.

In general, most of our cities (in the US) are very car-centric. Better than passing a law and hoping for the best while waiting to punish people, we can give people realistic alternatives to drunk driving to prevent it in the first place. Likely, these would have a second order effect of giving everyone realistic alternatives to driving too. If driving yourself isn't the norm, then drunk driving becomes more rare.

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

#436
post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of a moot point though. You can't really stop anyone from doing anything, the best we can do in a free society is create laws that deter undesirable behavior.

In general, most of our cities (in the US) are very car-centric. Better than passing a law and hoping for the best while waiting to punish people, we can give people realistic alternatives to drunk driving to prevent it in the first place. Likely, these would have a second order effect of giving everyone realistic alternatives to driving too. If driving yourself isn't the norm, then drunk driving becomes more rare.

> we can give people realistic alternatives to drunk driving to prevent it in the first place

Such as?

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

#437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife's 96 year old grandfather still has a driver's license because he passes some ridiculous vision test with 1 of his eyes. He can't read a newspaper or see a television well enough to enjoy sports (previously his favorite thing). He says he's memorized the vision test at his doctor's office and when asked the doctor refuses to file a report (or whatever procedural thing is required to remove his driving abiliti…

A huge percentage of elderly drivers shouldn't be on the road. We (the US) seem, as a society, to have decided to just live with that rather than trying to make it easier to live here without a car.

It's more that they vote more than young people and no politician is going to change the driving standards in their state only to be antagonized by the AARP.

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

#438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of a moot point though. You can't really stop anyone from doing anything, the best we can do in a free society is create laws that deter undesirable behavior.

Or maybe we can hurry up with driverless cars so that we can take the wheel out asap for people who have DUIs.

Driverless cars aren't anywhere near being able to prevent DUIs on a statistically meaningful scale. If lives are what you care about you'd be better off having the government subsidize uber rides.

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

#439
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…

Previous articles mention that the cars provided rides to Cruise employees before the general public.

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

#440
post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, most of our cities (in the US) are very car-centric. Better than passing a law and hoping for the best while waiting to punish people, we can give people realistic alternatives to drunk driving to prevent it in the first place. Likely, these would have a second order effect of giving everyone realistic alternatives to driving too. If driving yourself isn't the norm, then drunk driving becomes more rare.

> we can give people realistic alternatives to drunk driving to prevent it in the first place Such as?

Off the top of my head, public transportation, ride sharing, making streets more pedestrian friendly, denser zoning.

I had a great bar that was less than a mile from where I used to live. I rarely went because there was no way to walk there. No sidewalks in the neighborhood, no traffic lights, no bus that stopped near it. It's a shame. It closed shortly after I moved away after away. In the paper they said they just didn't get a lot of people coming in.

Post reply on HN