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Firefighters forced to smash window of driverless Cruise taxi to stop it

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Re: Firefighters forced to smash window of driverless Cruise taxi to stop it

#151

Post by lazyasciiart »

beambot wrote: post #131
jcoder wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a them problem—society won’t change any practices to accommodate these toys that are demonstrating how little value they bring every day.

You mean the same society that built thoroughfares, roads, stop lights, and laws for the benefit of transporting people and goods? Why wouldn't they modify the infrastructure to save a substantial fraction of the costs? Transportation is literally the 2nd greatest household expense [1], and the cost is dominated by labor. I'm not sure how you could conclude that the potential for massive savings is a "toy". https://2…

Because if transportation decisions were driven by total cost to society, we would already have trains and transit. Instead, the costs are split among multiple entities, and weighed by planners and politicians against cost of new things, community preferences and personal preferences and commercial desire for profit.

Re: Firefighters forced to smash window of driverless Cruise taxi to stop it

#153

Post by polygamous_bat »

BurningFrog wrote: post #150
jxf wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But how do we distinguish real emergency scenario from fake one? A car shouldn't make that call. It should err on the side of safety and assuming the emergency is real. When you see flashing lights on the highway coming up behind you, do you think "I bet that ambulance is faking it so they can get home faster", or do you just move over?

To spell it out, if an SDC Taxi stops for anyone waving frantically, how do you prevent robbers and rapists from routinely harvesting their passengers?

Exactly how you stop people from flagging a human driven taxi with plights for help and then robbing or raping the passenger. This doesn't seem like a problem specific to self driving.

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1958/

Re: Firefighters forced to smash window of driverless Cruise taxi to stop it

#154

Post by BurningFrog »

flaque wrote: post #144
alexfromapex wrote: post #47

This is going to slowly evolve into "law enforcement needs a killswitch" which is a scary thought

I'm not sure why this is that scary of a thought. Right now law enforcement already has a "killswitch": a traffic stop. If you don't stop at the traffic stop, the "killswitch" is a chase & spikes on the road. A "killswitch" in which someone can just have the car pull-over seems like objectively safer.

Once there is a killswitch, it can be accessed by people and purposes it wasn't intended for.

Re: Firefighters forced to smash window of driverless Cruise taxi to stop it

#155

Post by goodpoint »

buzzert wrote: post #28
a4isms wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is recognizing that we are nowhere near ready for driverless cars. With "ordinary" software, you can look at all of the use cases and if you solve 5% of them in a really good way, you can be successful, users will self-select whether those 5% of the use cases are valuable for them, and then not use your software for anything else. With driverless self-driving vehicles, you have no such comfort. Even if y…

I really believe that with that attitude, we'll never be "ready" for driverless cars. > We are not curing cancer or feeding the world here, we are trying to make people get rich by eliminating the cost of labour for a human driver. No way this calculus should prioritize investors over human lives in any sane society. How about, we're trying to make transportation cheaper for everyone by eliminating the most expensive…

> Before you mention public transportation, realize that it would benefit from driverless technologies as well (aka, not zero sum).

No, public transportation has completely different technological needs.

Re: Firefighters forced to smash window of driverless Cruise taxi to stop it

#156

Post by SpeedilyDamage »

klyrs wrote: post #113
cowmoo728 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't seem fair to expect self driving vehicles to perform a task that humans can't. It's easy to impersonate a cop and interfere with traffic, and human drivers would be tricked too.

> Doesn't seem fair to expect self driving vehicles to perform a task that humans can't. That is literally the sales pitch. They're supposed to be better at driving than humans. And that actually means all of it, not just lane-keeping on well marked brightly lit highways.

No, they're supposed to be approximately as good at driving as humans.

The whole "sales pitch" is that it doesn't take any human effort to do.

Re: Firefighters forced to smash window of driverless Cruise taxi to stop it

#157

Post by aendruk »

JohnFen wrote: post #50
cuteboy19 wrote: post #3

So what is the solution? Let emergency services have a remote control STOP button? But it would have many implications for passengers too

The solution is to not allow these cars on the road until/unless they can behave properly.

If you must, you can do this when reading: “So what is the solution?” → “So what is the proper behavior?”

Re: Firefighters forced to smash window of driverless Cruise taxi to stop it

#158

Post by rcpt »

wheats wrote: post #123
palijer wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't they already have a kill switch in the fact that they have the authority to stop vehicles? Or us the scary thought that it would be software/hardware and therefore insecure?

The insecurity is an issue, sure, but also just the fact you are turning over a crucial human activity to be far more strictly regulated. A "no fly lists" could be extended to "no drive lists" for instance; turning off the cars that don't pay vehicle registration, etc.

"No drive list" is the default.

Without a current license you should not be driving.

Re: Firefighters forced to smash window of driverless Cruise taxi to stop it

#159

Post by goodpoint »

drdaeman wrote: post #25
nonfamous wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Escalators have big red “Emergency Stop” buttons anyone can press when things go wrong. Why not one for autonomous vehicles, too?

Passenger safety concerns? If anyone would be able to stop an autonomous vehicle, it may be not always in the passenger's best interest. Could be OK if the passenger has an override, though - if they decide to tell the car to not comply with a legitimate stop request, it should be treated as if they'd be driving themselves and refused to stop. And, obviously, emergency stop should initiate stopping, but the vehicle s…

> it may be not always in the passenger's best interest

What is a realistic scenario here? Unless you are in a tank in a warzone...

How is a traditional, non-self driving car protecting you from someone pointing a gun at you? Do you have bullet-proof glass and bodywork?

Re: Firefighters forced to smash window of driverless Cruise taxi to stop it

#160

Post by weavejester »

bmitc wrote: post #71
buzzert wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really believe that with that attitude, we'll never be "ready" for driverless cars. > We are not curing cancer or feeding the world here, we are trying to make people get rich by eliminating the cost of labour for a human driver. No way this calculus should prioritize investors over human lives in any sane society. How about, we're trying to make transportation cheaper for everyone by eliminating the most expensive…

It's not an attitude. It's reality. Self-driving cars, if even attainable (which is questionable), don't solve any real problems besides bolstering the want for cars and thus more roads and highways, which are primary contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. That is, other than creating "cool" jobs and supporting get rich schemes and startups. If we cared about transportation and climate change, we'd be investing in…

> Self-driving cars, if even attainable (which is questionable), don't solve any real problems besides bolstering the want for cars and thus more roads and highways, which are primary contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.

It may be the opposite, as driverless cars can potentially be utilized more efficiently. If I drive to a destination, my car will sit in a parking space doing nothing and wasting space. A driverless car could drop me off, then drive away to taxi other people around. There's much less need for parking lots, freeing up valuable urban land.

It may reduce car ownership overall. I have a car because it's more convenient than public transport, and far cheaper than a taxi. If I could have a self-driving car at my door in, say, 15 minutes, and it was competitively priced, then I probably wouldn't bother owning a car. Another advantage would be that if I needed more seats, or more space, I could order a vehicle to my specifications.

It may increase utilization of roads, as self-driving cars that can communicate with each other can make more efficient use of them. Less need for stopping distances if all cars can brake simultaneously, and being able to slow down in advance reduces the impact of traffic jams.

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