Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco • Hacker News Board

Re: Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco

#41

Post by ars » Fri, Jul 08, 2022, 11:33 PM UTC

AlotOfReading wrote: post #10

37ef_ced3 wrote: post #3

From a customer's perspective, it isn't clear that a hardware/software taxi driver is in any way better than a human taxi driver, particularly with (human) driver assist preventing collisions and all the other warnings provided by a modern car. In both cases someone else is driving for the customer. With a human driver (plus driver assist braking and collision warnings) you have the most flexible, sophisticated intel…

There's a couple misunderstandings here. > The robotaxi can only compete on price because that's its only advantage. That's one advantage. Another is that that it's a third option to the traditional dichotomy of driving yourself or be driven by a stranger. It's worth taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture. Robotaxis aren't the end-all-be-all for anyone. It's just a bounded problem domain with some promi…

People seem to completely forget how valuable having a secure place to store your things is.

If you travel to the White House using public transportation with a baby carriage - well, you can't. There is no place to leave it, and they won't let it in. (Same for your purse, or a backpack, or even a water bottle.)

If you take a car you can leave all that in your car. Of course it's not easy finding a place to put your car near the White House. What I did is drive almost all the way, to a parking lot, then take a train for the last couple miles.

Re: Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco

#42

Post by salmonfamine » Fri, Jul 08, 2022, 11:36 PM UTC

syntheweave wrote: post #37

salmonfamine wrote: post #8

Self-driving cars are a solution for a problem that has already been solved. Build trains. But of course, this doesn't benefit automakers, requires a move towards high-density housing that NIMBY's and certain classes of investors oppose, so instead we'll create an entirely new class of problems by allowing these companies to unleash their insufficient technology on public roads.

I hate seeing this premise. It is railfan navelgazing. I like rails and ride them frequently. Rails are not the future for passenger commuting, outside of the middle-long distances that heavy rails serve. What AV addresses is primarily a last-mile problem. Last mile is all about the personal transport solution, and cars are just the largest of those. The physics and geometry of cars means that they are more expensive…

There is no reason that self-driving will create a transit modality that is more conducive to smaller vehicles. That is an energy cost “problem.”

Re: Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco

#43

Post by mrshadowgoose » Fri, Jul 08, 2022, 11:47 PM UTC

salmonfamine wrote: post #8

Self-driving cars are a solution for a problem that has already been solved. Build trains. But of course, this doesn't benefit automakers, requires a move towards high-density housing that NIMBY's and certain classes of investors oppose, so instead we'll create an entirely new class of problems by allowing these companies to unleash their insufficient technology on public roads.

Build trains...on every single road in existence?

Neither my house or workplace is adequately serviced by public transport, and even if they both were, I wouldn't use it unless legally or financially forced to. I enjoy proceeding directly from point A to B in the comfort of a private space, and so do very many other people.

The waste of personally-owned automobiles is admittedly abhorrent. Electrification and self-driving systems (and the resulting fleets of cheap automated taxis) will go a long way towards reducing the waste inherent to automobiles.

Re: Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco

#44

Post by maccam94 » Fri, Jul 08, 2022, 11:48 PM UTC

syntheweave wrote: post #37

salmonfamine wrote: post #8

Self-driving cars are a solution for a problem that has already been solved. Build trains. But of course, this doesn't benefit automakers, requires a move towards high-density housing that NIMBY's and certain classes of investors oppose, so instead we'll create an entirely new class of problems by allowing these companies to unleash their insufficient technology on public roads.

I hate seeing this premise. It is railfan navelgazing. I like rails and ride them frequently. Rails are not the future for passenger commuting, outside of the middle-long distances that heavy rails serve. What AV addresses is primarily a last-mile problem. Last mile is all about the personal transport solution, and cars are just the largest of those. The physics and geometry of cars means that they are more expensive…

The last mile is only a problem because people live in single-family housing zones, where there is not enough density for mass transit. We created this type of land use for several mostly not good reasons. Trains are far more efficient than car infrastructure. Why do commuters need a self driving car if there are trains that run by your block every 5 minutes, and get you to your office block in 10-20?

Re: Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco

#45

Post by wizofaus » Fri, Jul 08, 2022, 11:51 PM UTC

mrshadowgoose wrote: post #43

salmonfamine wrote: post #8

Self-driving cars are a solution for a problem that has already been solved. Build trains. But of course, this doesn't benefit automakers, requires a move towards high-density housing that NIMBY's and certain classes of investors oppose, so instead we'll create an entirely new class of problems by allowing these companies to unleash their insufficient technology on public roads.

Build trains...on every single road in existence? Neither my house or workplace is adequately serviced by public transport, and even if they both were, I wouldn't use it unless legally or financially forced to. I enjoy proceeding directly from point A to B in the comfort of a private space, and so do very many other people. The waste of personally-owned automobiles is admittedly abhorrent. Electrification and self-dr…

Can you give an example of a large metropolis anywhere in the world where it's realistic for a significant percentage of the population to all be able to enjoy "proceeding directly from point A to B in the comfort of a private space" without any significant externalities? Or are you suggesting we need to massively decentralise?

Re: Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco

#46

Post by maccam94 » Fri, Jul 08, 2022, 11:52 PM UTC

sterlind wrote: post #36

tmcw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, so I’m from a tiny town in New Jersey. I was used to having to drive 30 minutes to the train station as a kid, and there are no buses there, so car ownership is mandatory. Took a long time to realize that next to one of the buildings in town was a train station. And twenty years ago there were buses, too. Anyway, solve the last mile by funding transit and rebuilding trains. We had them before, we should have th…

it sounds like that'd work where you're from, probably because it's a tiny town. you can probably walk to restaurants, coffee shops, grocery stores and pharmacies, right? so you mostly need transit for commuting to the city, which is cake. the suburbs are hell. everything's far. walking is dangerous and unpleasant. the city's sprawled, so everyone commutes to a diffuse cloud of points between the cities. I hate livin…

The suburbs were designed around car ownership and home ownership. They are often isolating and inefficient. We need to change our zoning system to allow for more mixed use, mixed density zones which can allow more affordable and transit-connected homes to be built.

Re: Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco

#47

Post by forgotloginonp4 » Fri, Jul 08, 2022, 11:52 PM UTC

ROTMetro wrote: post #30

37ef_ced3 wrote: post #3

From a customer's perspective, it isn't clear that a hardware/software taxi driver is in any way better than a human taxi driver, particularly with (human) driver assist preventing collisions and all the other warnings provided by a modern car. In both cases someone else is driving for the customer. With a human driver (plus driver assist braking and collision warnings) you have the most flexible, sophisticated intel…

Don't forget hygiene. Robot taxis are going to be much grosser because you won't have a human watching to make sure the person in the back seat isn't spilling coffee/having sex (with self or others)/throwing up/hawking luggies (sorry I'm from the 80s, what's the right term?). Though I am sure we will all also at some point grab one whose previous occupant didn't quite make it to the hospital in time for the childbirt…

Do they not have passenger monitoring aicctv?

Re: Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco

#48

Post by opportune » Fri, Jul 08, 2022, 11:55 PM UTC

mrshadowgoose wrote: post #43

salmonfamine wrote: post #8

Self-driving cars are a solution for a problem that has already been solved. Build trains. But of course, this doesn't benefit automakers, requires a move towards high-density housing that NIMBY's and certain classes of investors oppose, so instead we'll create an entirely new class of problems by allowing these companies to unleash their insufficient technology on public roads.

Build trains...on every single road in existence? Neither my house or workplace is adequately serviced by public transport, and even if they both were, I wouldn't use it unless legally or financially forced to. I enjoy proceeding directly from point A to B in the comfort of a private space, and so do very many other people. The waste of personally-owned automobiles is admittedly abhorrent. Electrification and self-dr…

You could probably put a streetcar on every other street in many dense locales. In fact historically that’s how they were set up

The problem is after the 50’s, in much of the country, development consists of large residential-only suburban developments feeding into highways. So streetcars won’t work for that

Re: Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco

#49

Post by babl-yc » Fri, Jul 08, 2022, 11:56 PM UTC

recursivedoubts wrote: post #4

if you want a vision of the future, imagine an ambulance stuck behind an automated vehicle trying to update its firmware when AWS is down, forever

If that's the future, then engineers of the future are making poor choices. It'd be best to save OTA for a vehicle that is parked and charging.

I'm surprised Cruise cars aren't configured to pull over with the server being down (maybe max X seconds of offline driving). Seems better than parking in the middle of a crosswalk/intersection and something that can be done safely offline.

Re: Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco

#50

Post by onionisafruit » Fri, Jul 08, 2022, 11:58 PM UTC

salmonfamine wrote: post #8

Self-driving cars are a solution for a problem that has already been solved. Build trains. But of course, this doesn't benefit automakers, requires a move towards high-density housing that NIMBY's and certain classes of investors oppose, so instead we'll create an entirely new class of problems by allowing these companies to unleash their insufficient technology on public roads.

I’m not sure what real problem self driving cars are supposed to solve aside from some people aren’t able to drive. Some might say that self driving cars would be safer than human driven cars, but that fails to account for the fact that any safety improvements from self driving cars can be built into active safety features in regular cars.