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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.’

#311

Post by inferiorhuman »

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…

Two points of contention:

No, autonomous cars don't work particularly well. Anecdotally, I saw some crap stuck in the high tension wires atop a utility pole the other day. So I called PG&E and reported it. On my way back from the store I saw the lineman had arrived and was doing his thing. This street had two lanes and was a one way street, and the PG&E bucket truck occupied one of those lanes. Shortly after a Cruise car pulled up behind the truck and stopped. At various points the turn signals and four way flashers were on with no rhyme or reason. Eventually it decided to pass the truck so it navigated into the other lane and just stopped. So now both lanes were blocked, various turn signal incantations went on, and the blocked traffic started honking.

After that… I watched as another Cruise car go full tilt through another intersection and stop a few feet from a pedestrian in the crosswalk. Way too close for comfort. Autonomous cars aren't inherently bad but they shouldn't be beta tested on public roads.

Second point – no, more cars will not revitalize anything. More cars will contribute to more decay no matter what is driving. Take a look at the Embarcadero now versus when it was designed to prioritize cars over people and had an interstate running along it.

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

#312

Post by II2II »

pushedx wrote: post #265
AlbertCory wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone quoting "miles driven" is being disingenuous. How many of those miles were in the Bay Area plus Arizona?

How does the location have anything to do with the total number of miles driven?

Driving condition matter since they vary from place to place. It matters for people, and it most likely matters for autonomous vehicles (either due to training data sets or direct programming of traffic regulations). To choose a mundane example, that is admittedly more likely to affect people, consider how many people try to make a left turn into a (North American) roundabout or who park in a bike lane. (Sometimes it is deliberate, but sometimes it is an out of town person who has never dealt with it before.)

That said, I would expect a San Fransisco decision to be based upon San Francisco data.

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

#313

Post by sitkack »

nerdbert wrote: post #275
jtriangle wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

No! It is impossible, simple untrue and cars are the only solution. /s

If you come up with more evidence, I’ll move the straw goal post.

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

#314

Post by mustacheemperor »

paxys wrote: post #92
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…

> 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…

If you start putting cones on the hoods of human driven taxis at red lights, that will also cause traffic diversions. The tendency of humans to pester the driverless taxis more than the drivered ones doesn’t seem like any metric related to the technology’s performance. Someone putting a traffic cone on the hood of your car is more than a typical deviation from the happy path.

As to your personal anecdote, all I can say is it’s different from my own experience driving in SF or riding in my partner’s car. We see plenty of driverless vehicles, and generally they’re behaving smarter than the average SF Saturday morning driver, not worse. I don’t live in a cruise-populated neighborhood so I’m sure your experience may vary elsewhere.

On that note, my neighborhood doesn’t have much transit at all. It’s a 30m walk to a grocery store or 25 to the 3rd st muni. We only get limited bus service. So I would be very happy to see additional transit options in SF.

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

#315

Post by worik »

I lost count of how many times there was a comment about a lack of data

> The city is left in the dark about the exact number of driverless taxis operating in its streets, and the miles they’ve traveled.

> city transportation leaders this time around informally collect their own incident data using 911 and 311 calls

> Friedlander said the city can’t make definitive conclusions because it doesn’t have detailed data.

Yet Google and GM say things like

> “Every single day of delay in deploying this life-saving autonomous driving technology has critical impacts on road safety,” Waymo said in a statement.

On the face of it Google and GM are lying

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

#316

Post by 9991 »

jrmg wrote: post #219
medellin wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending where someone put a cone on my car i would possibly just run them over or drive off unsafely if i felt that it was an attempt to rob me or steal my car. Having things like that categorized differently makes sense because it’s caused by humans being dicks. But maybe you are right and that is the new reality we live in where none of us get to advance because of a small group of angry and stupid people.

Man, and further up this post there was someone talking about running over groups of cyclists if they maliciously surrounded their car. Try to remain calm. You’re generally not allowed to just _murder_ people who attempt to inconvenience, detain, or rob you, even though they are ‘being dicks’. That’s not how crime is dealt with in a stable society. It’s not a ‘new reality’. I really hope we’re not devolving into a pl…

How far gone are you to think that kidnapping and robbery aren't violent acts that justify violent responses? If you try to detain me illegally (also known as false imprisonment) you're just asking for a face full of lead. But 'Murder' is unlawful killing. This would be self-defense.

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

#317

Post by evandale »

sitkack wrote: post #301
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and little need to haul anything often forget The dutch created the cargo bike for this very reason. But they have the climate and biking infrastructure to support that kind of lifestyle. We (Americans) don't, I wish we did.

And that is a new thing, they paved the canals are going down the route America did and reversed it. America got conned into a car, suburbia, new construction scam that benefited a small number of rich people. A bike lane is a street you don’t let cars drive on.

> A bike lane is a street you don’t let cars drive on.

This is the reason why motorists lose their minds over bike lanes. It takes up space on THEIR roads and they hate when they can't use roads they personally paid for with THEIR taxes.

I personally find it hilarious they think their taxes cover the maintenance of even 1/10th of a km of a road let alone all of them they drive on all year.

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

#318

Post by clsec »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #95
laweijfmvo wrote: post #24

What seems odd to me is that hardly anyone in SF seems to want them there (citizens, officials) yet it keeps getting pushed through?

Everyone I know in SF is excited it's really only the officials and some news stories. The wait list to join the App is crazy long demand outpaces the number of cars they have on the road. You're just seeing a very skewed narrative.

I guess we hang in different circles because I don't know anyone who supports them.

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

#319

Post by sfpotter »

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…

The problem here is your attitude: it sucks. I’d elaborate on this, but it’s enough to read your post. Instead of baselessly concluding that everything you dislike and feel inconvenienced by will suck forever, have you considered feeling hope and optimism instead?

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

#320

Post by [deleted] »

jeffbee wrote: post #266
saalweachter wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The national average rate has a denominator that is bloated up with easy freeway miles. Cruise and Waymo never leave SF city streets.

[deleted]
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