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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.’

#271

Post by dekhn »

llambda wrote: post #239
geraldwhen wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My city doesn’t even have sidewalks. Bikes aren’t happening.

While I understand your point is likely that sidewalks would come before later advancements (like support for bikes) I want to make it clear that bikes do not belong on sidewalks. If you ride a bike please ride it in the street with other vehicles. This is the law in some jurisdictions (such as where I live) but frequently ignored. Failure to do this poses a serious risk to pedestrians. Please do not use sidewalks as…

I've stopped advising people to not ride bikes on sidewalks, especially opposite the direction of traffic, even in situations where it's legally permitted (for example, kids in my area are allowed to ride on sidewalks).

People get really worked up when you ask them to stop, really angry! Which I find so odd because if somebody comes up to me and says something is both illegal and unsafe, I check the laws, and put some critical thought into what the risks could be, and then typically comply if I'm convinced, or simply respond with "I have heard what you are asking, but it's not absolutely required, so I will continue to do so."

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

#272

Post by 8note »

throwaway9274 wrote: post #145
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…

Absolutely right. To situate in terms of recent events, there have been three stages of trying to delay / influence the California CPUC robotaxi expansion approval vote: 1. Tried a politician scare campaign. Failed because it was too transparent it was an attempted distraction from their terrible public safety record. 2. Tried coning and disabling the vehicles. Failed because it was too transparently astroturfed, leg…

> This one is too vital to the revitalization of SF.

Is it? Won't it mean needing to make the city even more car oriented than building out better alternatives than car use?

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

#273

Post by renewiltord »

cashsterling wrote: post #206
throwaway9274 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely right. To situate in terms of recent events, there have been three stages of trying to delay / influence the California CPUC robotaxi expansion approval vote: 1. Tried a politician scare campaign. Failed because it was too transparent it was an attempted distraction from their terrible public safety record. 2. Tried coning and disabling the vehicles. Failed because it was too transparently astroturfed, leg…

I don't know why the other reply to this post got downvoted to hell. THe person has a point. Fully autonomous cars are cool... don't get me wrong. But electric cars and autonomous electric/gas cars are probably not the right solution to our person transport needs. using energy to move a 4000 lb vehicle to transport one or two 200 lb humans is not energy-efficient... most of the energy is spent just moving the vehicle…

We have rental ebikes in San Francisco. I commute daily by them.

My friend has some good footage he'll post today to show you what it's like. The best drivers to share the road with on an e-bike are AVs. They are polite, allow for bike lane to sharrow merges, give room, etc.

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

#274

Post by jeffbee »

kelnos wrote: post #260
jeffbee wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The city assigned a guy to go around and document every time an AV does something. That's why the "skyrocketing". They didn't count them before and now they do. If some SFFD guy just stood around documenting all driver stupidity it would a significantly different report.

> The city assigned a guy to go around and document every time an AV does something Want to provide a citation to back that up? > They didn't count them before and now they do. They've apparently been counting since spring of 2022; the large increase in incidents started a year later. > If some SFFD guy just stood around documenting all driver stupidity it would a significantly different report. Lovely dose of whatab…

> The example of the AV driving through yellow caution tape, hooking a Muni wire, and then continuing to drive another block before stopping is illustrative. We can maybe imagine an unlikely-but-possible scenario where a human driver might do the same thing, but that would be an outlier.

Are you joking? Do you live in SF? People are constantly driving into subway tunnels.

https://www.ktvu.com/news/cars-drive-in-munis-sunset-tunnel-...

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

#275

Post by nerdbert »

jtriangle wrote: post #237
cashsterling wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why the other reply to this post got downvoted to hell. THe person has a point. Fully autonomous cars are cool... don't get me wrong. But electric cars and autonomous electric/gas cars are probably not the right solution to our person transport needs. using energy to move a 4000 lb vehicle to transport one or two 200 lb humans is not energy-efficient... most of the energy is spent just moving the vehicle…

Cool, you have an affordable, tenuously waterproofed, chinese mass produced e-bike, it's your only available mode of transportation, you need to go into the office for a meeting, and it's raining. Welcome to hell. Also, not sure if you've used public transportation recently, but man, it SUCKS. Far less time efficient than a car, often crowded during the times you want to use it, and ZERO enforcement of proper etiquet…

> Cool, you have an affordable, tenuously waterproofed, chinese mass produced e-bike, it's your only available mode of transportation, you need to go into the office for a meeting, and it's raining. Welcome to hell.

It's raining half the time here in the Netherlands. You can stand under a convenient overhang in the banking district of Amsterdam at 8am and watch the bankers pour into the underground bike parking lots. They use cheap and readily available outerwear that covers their clothes - including shoes - and keeps them dry. Suits, skirts, high heels, whatever.

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

#276

Post by II2II »

sroussey wrote: post #218
II2II wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In February they hit 1,000,000 miles cumulative for all previous years. Last week they hit 3,000,000 miles. Cars kill about as many Americans as the Vietnam War, but every year. Aside from guns, I can't think of anything else so deadly that we give to our children as they enter adulthood. It is common, it is not part of the news cycle. We care more about the unlikely terrorist. People are bad with numbers. Personally…

A cumulative 3,000,000 miles is nothing. The US Bureau of Transportation Statistics estimates there are over 3,000,000,000,000 miles of vehicle traffic per year.[1] The estimated number of fatalities is around 50,000. There is no way to assess whether there will be fewer or more traffic fatalities with current AV technology given the limited amount of data.

As for the unlikely terrorist bit, just in case you weren't around when 911 happened: even mathematically inclined people were shocked. Not only was it the most lethal attack on American soil (nearly 3,000 dead), it was a foreign attack. People genuinely didn't know what was going to happen and were living in fear for a while. Unfortunately, some people still carry those fears to this day. Even though the numbers don't back them up, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss their emotions and I certainly wouldn't attack them for the all too human mistake of misattributing risk.

[1] https://www.bts.gov/content/us-vehicle-miles

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

#277

Post by seanmcdirmid »

more_corn wrote: post #45
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…

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…

> turning right on red failed to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk who had right of way.

> Getting killed by a robot breaking the rules is no less dead than if it were a human.

This "fail to yield to pedistrians" happens way way way too much though! At least the bug in the robo-taxi could, in theory of course, eventually be fixed. The bug in the human drivers will certainly never be fixed, since this has been a frequent problem since forever and will continue to be a problem as long as human drives (or maybe the USA can just give up on right turns on red like much of the rest of the world).

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

#278

Post by renewiltord »

jtriangle wrote: post #237
cashsterling wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why the other reply to this post got downvoted to hell. THe person has a point. Fully autonomous cars are cool... don't get me wrong. But electric cars and autonomous electric/gas cars are probably not the right solution to our person transport needs. using energy to move a 4000 lb vehicle to transport one or two 200 lb humans is not energy-efficient... most of the energy is spent just moving the vehicle…

Cool, you have an affordable, tenuously waterproofed, chinese mass produced e-bike, it's your only available mode of transportation, you need to go into the office for a meeting, and it's raining. Welcome to hell. Also, not sure if you've used public transportation recently, but man, it SUCKS. Far less time efficient than a car, often crowded during the times you want to use it, and ZERO enforcement of proper etiquet…

It's not that hard to do. I ride in the rain and fog here in SF (the city under discussion), but you need dry pants. The real thing is that this is not an AV vs. ebike thing. Almost all people who ride bikes/ebikes here are pro-AV. It's mostly people not from SF and people who don't ride who are anti-AV.

AVs are so much safer and predictable than human drivers.

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

#279

Post by kelnos »

dekhn wrote: post #160
Zetice wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I reading the graph wrong? a 3x increase over one month that sustains into the next month qualifies as "skyrocketing" to me...

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…

"Skyrocketing" is not a well-defined term. Nowhere is exponential growth required to qualify. A 300% increase in a month on this sort of metric would absolutely qualify as skyrocketing to me.

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

#280

Post by nerdbert »

wheatzies wrote: post #247
hosh wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may not be data to support this, but on the other hand, informal perceptions -- even if unsupported by data -- matters a great deal with products and systems. But I would ask the people living there what they perceive, not just relying on a news reporter.

I live in SF and have experience taking cruise rides so I can provide some (obviously anecdotal) information. Overall I'm a big fan of the autonomous vehicles companies but there are downsides with their current abilities. Pros: - As mentioned in the article, the cars generally follow traffic laws. I see a lot of drivers run red lights around my apartment, but at this point I'm fairly confident that a Cruise won't ac…

> As mentioned in the article, they can get in the way of first responders. I don't think that's justifiable and should be something that these companies prioritize

However I also don't want them sideswiping a cyclist in a rush to get out of the way of an ambulance.

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