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

sfchronicle.com

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

#461

Post by 8f2ab37a-ed6c »

fnimick wrote: post #380
1024core wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A 60lb e-bike can also transport a 200 lb person whilst using far less resources (both to make the vehicle and to operate it) and space. Have you ever ridden bikes in SF? I have. Even though I was an occasional rider, I got into 2 accidents that could have seriously hurt me (just through pure luck I didn't end up with hospitalization-worthy injuries). Both not my fault (one a dooring; another a driver turning into…

The solution to that is to build better infrastructure to remove bicycle/vehicle conflict points, not put everyone in cars so they can be "safe".

SF can't build a public toilet without it turning into a national debacle. I wouldn't be holding my breath for city-wide infrastructure for biking improving anytime soon with the amount of grifting and NIMBYism in the city.

Uber and Cruise are the market's response to public infrastructure not meeting the population's needs due to politics, rent-seeking et al. The media love to disparage them, but as consumers they are exactly what many of us needed in this city.

A more civilized solution might be possible elsewhere, but not here in SF.

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

#462

Post by elif »

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…

In terms of 911 and 311 calls:

"in that month of March, dangerous self-driving car incidents increased more than 300% over the previous month (30 such incidents in February, 96 in March)."

Skyrocket does not seem hyperbolic.

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

#463

Post by themaninthedark »

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.…

And thus contributing to the PSAF/forever chemical problem.

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

#464

Post by lotsoweiners »

jarjoura wrote: post #251
pawelmurias wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can drive people and goods around without having a human waste his time driving stuff around. Not wasting money paying people to do stupid stuff is gigantic gain.

The person the tech is replacing will still need to work and earn a wage to afford the goods the system that replaced them is delivering. It's not replacing a relatively high risk job or allowing that driver to scale themselves and improve their efficiency in any way. It's just eliminating their job, because. As a passenger in a driverless taxi, instead of having someone in the car who might improve the journey sligh…

> As a passenger in a driverless taxi, instead of having someone in the car who might improve the journey slightly by being an interesting person to chat with, I'll likely sit in the car all alone.

This sounds like a feature to me. Include a minibar and it’ll be my own personal limo.

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

#465

Post by InSteady »

cmdli wrote: post #308
nerdbert wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They work for the majority of people of all ages who live in cities where the infrastructure has been properly built to accommodate bikes. Most people rarely need to haul anything and can use carshare when they do. I've demoed a multistory house down to the bricks and re-built it from the outside in without a car. Hired someone to haul off a dumpster several times. For major materials deliveries, like beams or window…

Considering that the vast majority of US cities were built with cars in mind, we probably aren’t in a position to use bikes anytime soon. And this isn’t just about the availability of bike lanes, but also things like the density of housing, the location of shopping, the infrastructure for big box stores, etc. These things will take decades to change, at best, so improving cars in the meantime is worthwhile.

This is true, but ROI on improving infrastructure and city-planning to revolve more around bikes and other alternative forms of transportation is going to be way higher in the long run if done thoughtfully. Especially as e-bikes continue to get better and more affordable. It's definitely a "porque no los dos" situation.

And while I'll grant you I'm no expert, some things I've read strongly suggest that improvements to city planning that making it more friendly for bikes, pedestrians, and transit commuters also tend to benefit the vast majority of drivers in various ways.

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

#466

Post by BeefWellington »

hadlock wrote: post #100
Barrin92 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is equal or greater cause for concern with cars driven by people No there isn't. Driverless cars drive under a fraction of the conditions and in self selected locations precisely because the tech is still shoddy. Not to mention they only function at all because they're vastly outnumbered by humans who know how to respond to them. Let's do an actual experiment to compare. 100% driverless cars with current tech,…

Given the millions of miles driven since the start and a single pedestrian death in 2018, I would hesitate to call the tech shoddy. SF alone has 20-30 pedestrian deaths per year despite their well funded and almost completely ineffectual "vision zero" program. If there's been a second pedestrian fatality since I can't find it online.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, millions of miles for autonomous vehicles is a miniscule drop in the vast ocean of miles driven per year in just the US. It's essentially where you'd round the number to.

In 2020, a very down year, the Bureau of Transportation stats[1] give 1,934,743 MILLION miles driven. This Verge article[2] shows for 2020 autonomous vehicles drove 1.99 million miles in California. Let's be generous and assume across the rest of the US it's equal to double that, given Cali is the hotbed of testing at the moment. That puts us up to basically 6 million miles driven.

You're attempting to compare:

    1,934,743,000,000 to 
            6,000,000
The data is not in yet on current generation autonomous vehicles.

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

[2]: https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/11/22276851/california-self-...

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

#467

Post by aantix »

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…

The better solution is autonomous taxi airplanes.

Easier algorithm for navigation, less obstructions, large amount of airspace.

Much more direct routes.

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

#468

Post by microtherion »

martythemaniak wrote: post #42

Beware: the State sent a letter accusing the city of manipulating data in order to make AVs looks more dangerous than they were: https://twitter.com/annatonger/status/1673403230804385813 > In the 4 Waymo traffic collisions SF cited to prove driverless cars are less safe, 3 were the Waymos being rear-ended and 1 didn't even involve any cars touching, CA says. https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Published/G000/M512/…

> 3 were the Waymos being rear-ended

While technically this makes them not at fault, it may represent some evidence of erratic braking behavior. Anecdotally, drivers have reported Waymo cars having a propensity for "brake checking" — not with ill intent of course, but risking accidents anyway.

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

#469

Post by hedora »

efitz wrote: post #210

I am on my 3rd Tesla- been driving them since 2015- and frequently use FSD beta. I’ve watched autopilot develop into FSD. The thing that baffles me about all current autonomous vehicle efforts is how resistant they are to having any sort of environmental feedback engineered specifically to help driverless cars. For instance, in addition to flashing lights, what if fire trucks broadcast a “keep away” radio signal? Per…

There are laws regarding traffic markers. Cities can’t just do arbitrarily obscure things and expect drivers to figure out what they want.

One could easily argue that the liability associated with hitting caution tape is just the cost of replacing the caution tape itself (and not additional fines for driving through whatever poorly marked area you went into).

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

#470

Post by doktrin »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #378
Aurornis wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A 60lb e-bike can also transport a 200 lb person whilst using far less resources (both to make the vehicle and to operate it) and space. E-bikes are great for the situations, climates, and people who can use them. E-bikes are not a substitute for the majority of people’s transportation needs. I think the young, healthy people who live in moderate climates with good weather, short commutes, and little need to haul a…

> I think the young, healthy people who live in moderate climates with good weather, short commutes, and little need to haul anything The old dutch people riding their bakfietsen around in the snow show this is much more a cultural thing than a hard fact of weather and human nature - and culture can change as the need arises. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQhzEnWCgHA As far as short commutes - that's as much a fact…

You are giving culture an awful lot of credit while completely omitting geography. Culture is locally adapted, and countries that are flat as literal pancakes are particularly logical places for a bike friendly culture to develop.
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