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S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

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Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#121

Post by __loam »

Eisenstein wrote: post #94
standardUser wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is a tired argument, but it's not wrong: There is equal or greater cause for concern with cars driven by people, we're just used to those horrors and reluctant to trade them for a different set of horrors, even if they are conclusively less horrible. I lived carless in downtown SF for 10 years, usually with a walking commute, and it was not pleasant. Packed streets full of angry, stressed drivers honking…

Depending on driverless taxis instead of having emotional people who need parking all the time seems to be a win, as long as they are safe and someone is held accountable when they mess up . I am very unwilling to change 'people are flawed but (mostly) held accountable' to 'a corporation owned robot car ran someone over because of a software glitch and it is nobody's fault'. The problems with 'oops we got hacked or l…

It's a lot easier to hold a single corporation accountible than it is for the distributed responsibility of individuals. Uber killed someone and they had to leave the industry. Tesla is being actively investigated for their fly by night approach.

Additionally, when one of these cars fucks up, these companies know exactly what happened because they are collecting data about the cars performance 24/7.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#122

Post by talldatethrow »

saalweachter wrote: post #82
cameldrv wrote: post #49

I've just got to say I'm so impressed with both Waymo and Cruise. Last year they did 4.5 million miles put together in California with zero fatalities. This is an incredible achievement.

The US rate is 0.57 fatalities per 100 million passenger miles.

While OPs statement did make me laugh a bit (I've personally driven almost a million miles myself and I don't think my odds of killing someone were 1 in 4), we do have to realize that MOST miles that make up the 100 million mile stats are done at highway speeds far away from pedestrians. If I had to do 4 million miles in SF, I just might have hit someone by now.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#123

Post by akira2501 »

parl_match wrote: post #3

I'm wary about using public roads to test these, but I think the way the data is presented is misleading. I'm not sure how it's misleading, but separating "incidents" into categories (safety, traffic, accident, etc) might be a good start. For example, I could start coning cruise cars, and cause these numbers to skyrocket. While that's an inconvenience to other drivers, it's not a safety issue at all. By the way, as a…

> I'm not sure how it's misleading, but separating "incidents" into categories

The premise is that these vehicles would be unilaterally "better" than human drivers and that would justify their creation and use. If that's not the case, then perhaps we need to fully reevaluate the value proposition here.

> While that's an inconvenience to other drivers, it's not a safety issue at all.

It hasn't proved to be a safety issue _yet_. We don't actually have enough data to forecast with here. I see this as a safety signal with troubling implications.

> as a motorcyclist (and thus hyper annoyed at bad driving)

This is another safety signal I would be wary of... unless "hyper annoyed" is just hyperbole for it's own sake.

> We should have scrutiny on the safety of these machines, but they're hardly the biggest problem facing SF.

The problem with automation is small problems have a tendency to combine into massive emergent problems once you start scaling your fleet up.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#124

Post by jonathankoren »

idopmstuff wrote: post #90
more_corn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber performed self driving car tests in downtown San Francisco for a bit. I personally saw an error where self driving cars turning right on red failed to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk who had right of way. It was a bug. The driver looped and tried again while I was standing there and it happened again. It was an incident. It was a safety incident. Getting killed by a robot breaking the rules is no less dead…

> Your argument that human drivers suck commits the fallacy of whataboutism. No, it doesn't. Self-driving cars are potential substitutes for human-driven cars. If self-driving cars cause fewer injuries/accidents/etc. per mile driven, then everyone will be safer if we replace human-driven cars with them. If you object to self-driving cars being on the road even if they're safer than human-driven cars, you are implicit…

Wow. This is an argument.

You start with a common, but controversial hypothetical, that in the future self-driving cars may be safer than humans, and then conclude with that opposing self-driving cars today, which of course are not the hypothetical safer than humans car, is advocating for actual humans to be injured or killed.

That’s some real undergrad level bullshit.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#127

Post by _xivi »

My stance have shifted a bit lately, from "concerns/what ifs" to "let's see", I began to look at it through "the sooner the better" lenses.

Advancements like these are inevitable and have been on the radar for a long time. The more people familiar and informed about the tech, the better they are equipped in order to put the right regulations.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#128

Post by tlb »

paxys wrote: post #104
veec_cas_tant wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And why would that not be a valid data point? Cars driving on public roads need to successfully handle all regular day-to-day situations, not just the happy path Are you considering someone putting a traffic cone on a vehicle a day-to-day situation?

What would you do if you were stopped at an intersection and someone put a traffic cone in front of you? Sit there for the rest of your life blocking everyone behind you, or move it/drive around it? Same for literally every example that deviates from the happy path, no matter how minor. Construction work, something fallen on the road, a delivery van stopped on the side, temporary street closures. These cars are nowhe…

They handle some crazy situations. https://twitter.com/kvogt/status/1641123102858919953

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#129

Post by justsomehnguy »

dekhn wrote: post #115

"Skyrocket" is a word people use when they don't have the data to support their claim, but want to make it sound as extreme as possible. When I hear "skyrocket" I think "several orders of magnitude in a very short time". But the source of the quote with skyrocket, basically admits that they didn't have any quantitative evidence to support a massive change in incidents. Remember: reality is banal. Things are far bette…

Yep 200% increase is 'skyrocketing'.

Even if means what 1 became 3.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#130

Post by __loam »

satisfice wrote: post #61

These companies cannot be trusted to be honest about incidents or near incidents. They like to crow about safety, but the safety they want credit for is entirely hypothetical. There is no good reason to believe that autonomous vehicles are actually safer. They haven’t yet been tested enough, and the testing that has been done cannot be generalized to new situations. I believe they would be safer if all roads were ful…

They are already required to report every accident to a public agency in California.

And the safety is not hypothetical. Waymo is driving millions of miles a month in places like Phoenix. They have a ton of data to support the fact that their cars are significantly safer than human drivers.

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