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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.’

#191

Post by Vecr »

dekhn wrote: post #106
paxys wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, I could start coning cruise cars, and cause these numbers to skyrocket 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. It seems like almost every day I run into some Cruise or Waymo (mostly Cruise) vehicle stuck in the middle of the street blocking traffic, and that should not be excused a…

During the height of Critical Mass, bicyclists would surround minivans and keep them from leaving. Drivers don't know what to do because if they push too hard they'll knock over and injure a cyclist. I don't expect self-driving cars to deal any better with cones, or any hostile action towards a car.

That's an ambush, are the self defense laws there that bad?

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

#192

Post by ketralnis »

abecedarius wrote: post #158
ketralnis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at some point don't you have to get this stuff out in the wild to see how it behaves or else we are resigned to not making progress on this It's not my problem whether Waymo makes progress on their technology, but they make it my problem when they hit me with their car. I do have sympathy for wanting to make the progress: we might make better pacemakers faster by testing out 20 designs on 20 people. But nobody want…

Should student drivers not be allowed on the roads either?

I don't take these to be analogous. Even the worst human driver can recognise that they don't recognise a situation.

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

#193

Post by AtlasBarfed »

II2II wrote: post #185
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…

The numbers they gave is more than a doubling, while they were quite clear about the limitations of their data. That includes not knowing how many AVs are on the road, which is something that the companies should be able to provide. Also look at the claims that AVs have not caused death or serious injury. (I noticed that they did not claim that AVs have not caused injury.) That is great, except I would not expect any…

Anyone seen the rushing dash cam videos where pedestrians are throwing themselves at cars in order to get legal liability payouts. Not that I'm accusing all of the reports here of being something like that, but I wonder if robotaxis are going to result in something like that and actually make the entire driving world a lot less ethical.

Then again it'll all be on camera so maybe not

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

#194

Post by learn-forever »

Zetice wrote: post #166
dekhn wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've commented elsewhere I don't think the chart is informative (and listed several good reasons why). But all you're describing is a 300% increase, not several orders of magnitude increase. If you look at Google's QPS chart (maintained in crayon by the original engineers!) you will see that they frequently had to rescale the chart by factors of ten because their growth rate in the early days was exponential. The cha…

Exponential growth, several orders of magnitude... these are not what "skyrocketing" means, in actuality. So you are correct, none of those phrases describe the graph here, but none of those phrases matter. It's a sudden, alarming, and seemingly sustained trend, and it's worth writing an article over.

Hard to get alarmed without knowing what the rate is. If the growth in miles driven is outpacing the growth in incidents, it's cause for the opposite of alarm.

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

#195

Post by Zetice »

dekhn wrote: post #177
Zetice wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exponential growth, several orders of magnitude... these are not what "skyrocketing" means, in actuality. So you are correct, none of those phrases describe the graph here, but none of those phrases matter. It's a sudden, alarming, and seemingly sustained trend, and it's worth writing an article over.

Have you ever looked at the chart of the velocity of a rocket? Rockets accelerate from 0 to 17,000 mph in ~5-6 minutes. the initial phase is exponential. (it's not useful being pedantic here, I think I've captured what people think when they hear the word "skyrocket"; it's intentionally used to frame the discussion)

Now imagine making a chart that adds a 100x multiplier to that rocket's data! Only that chart now can be called "skyrocketing" then, because it dwarfs the rocket's original data...

The fact that more "skyrocketing" things exist doesn't invalidate that the word "skyrocketing" could apply to what's presented here, and it does accurately frame the discussion around the sudden, alarming trend of self driving car incidents over time.

The various causes of the data jump/spike/skyrocket/whatever are fairly discussed in the article, and based on what's there it seems reasonable to conclude that there are much more complicated forces at play here other than, "self driving cars bad". The chart illustrates the sudden change, but explicitly tries to provide a number of very different possible explanations for the data.

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

#196

Post by DragonStrength »

fishtoaster wrote: post #150
DragonStrength wrote: post #14

I left SF a year ago but had Cruise and Waymo cars in my neighborhood constantly. They were a total nuisance. They'd jerk towards pedestrians in crosswalks leading to this uncomfortable standoff where no one in the neighborhood would ever step in front of one. I'd wager any stats here are way lower than real incidences as I was nearly hit multiple times and never got to the "report it" stage as there are so many barr…

For what it's worth, my own anecdata is the opposite. My neighborhood (alamo square / wester addition) is rife with Cruise cars and I usually pass 2-3 every night while walking my dog for 30 minutes. They've been, without fail, polite and normal "drivers." I've not felt any concern walking in front of them in crosswalks or biking alongside them when leaving the neighborhood.

My issues were mostly between Divisadero and Masonic north of the Panhandle, so different strokes. I was doing two half-hour walks per day during most of the pandemic, either to GGP or Alamo Square, so that's the context of my anecdata. Of course, no discounting they're just better now :)

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

#197

Post by dekhn »

__loam wrote: post #176
dekhn wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your numbers are wrong: https://sfgov.org/scorecards/transportation/traffic-fataliti... In 2022 (the year with the most), there were 40, not hundreds. Please try to keep your stats as honest as possible.

My bad. Still 40 more than self-driving cars.

It looks like neither Waymo or Cruise has driven enough miles (>70M miles driven per fatality) to really expect to see a fatality if the SDCs are roughly the same as an average driver?

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

#198

Post by DragonStrength »

rubyron wrote: post #159
DragonStrength wrote: post #14

I left SF a year ago but had Cruise and Waymo cars in my neighborhood constantly. They were a total nuisance. They'd jerk towards pedestrians in crosswalks leading to this uncomfortable standoff where no one in the neighborhood would ever step in front of one. I'd wager any stats here are way lower than real incidences as I was nearly hit multiple times and never got to the "report it" stage as there are so many barr…

They need a fake hand to rise up and wave over the steering wheel so pedestrians will know they’re waiting for them.

A visual indicator the car sees a pedestrian would be helpful.

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

#200

Post by [deleted] »

learn-forever wrote: post #194
Zetice wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exponential growth, several orders of magnitude... these are not what "skyrocketing" means, in actuality. So you are correct, none of those phrases describe the graph here, but none of those phrases matter. It's a sudden, alarming, and seemingly sustained trend, and it's worth writing an article over.

Hard to get alarmed without knowing what the rate is. If the growth in miles driven is outpacing the growth in incidents, it's cause for the opposite of alarm.

[deleted]
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