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SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance

sfstandard.com

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Re: SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance

#101

Post by ryandrake »

slg wrote: post #75
perihelions wrote: post #62

- "blocked a San Francisco ambulance from getting a pedestrian hit by a vehicle" I'm taking no "position" on either "side" of the debate, but I feel it's noteworthy that a *human-driven* car killed a pedestrian (seriously?) here, and that fact is utterly banal and completely unremarkable to the authors—and to us. AI cars are still highly flawed and kill people. Human-driven cars are highly flawed, probably more flawe…

This is an excellent point. There are two independent causes to this person's death. 1. A human driver grievously injured a pedestrian 2. An AI driver delayed medical care for the injured pedestrian That person is potentially still alive if 2 doesn't happen. They are certainly still alive if 1 doesn't happen. Therefore, 1 deserves more of the blame here. Considering these are two independent causes, we can still be u…

I don't think OP is talking about assigning blame in this particular case: The point is that a huge and arguably bigger problem (to the tune of ~40K deaths per year in the US) is buried in one sentence in the middle of the article.

The USA has kind of thrown up its collective hands and declared the danger of car accidents to be unsolvable. We treat it like an inevitable fact of life, now. The most the USA does, regulation-wise, are mild safety regulations on car manufacturers with tons of loopholes. There's relatively little penalty for drivers who accidentally injure or kill with their cars, and almost no liability on the car manufacturer. How does the saying go? If you want to kill someone and minimize your punishment, your best bet is to "accidentally" hit them with your car.

Re: SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance

#102

Post by flandish »

joshribakoff wrote: post #87
flandish wrote: post #52

Corp robotics aside - any of this kind of tech needs to 100% have the ability to get out of the way. By robotic control. Bu human control. Or by being pushed. 90 seconds before ambulance moves is not long at all. Quite fast actually. I’ve seen it be longer for things with an MOI that requires ambulance to landing zone for helicopter transport. With helis waiting. The people in this thread simping for the tech while a…

The only way this will happen (anytime soon) is if they put the safety drivers back in but they will never do that willingly because they have worked for a decade and invested billions to get to this point and it would be difficult to capitulate. There is simply no way to remotely assist reliably in the same way as being physically present (no network has 0 latency and 100% reliability). The AI likely cannot drive “p…

For sure. Us FD (and some police) have what we call “knox box keys” - knox is a brand. They’re locked in the apparatus, and with a pin code or radio signal I can get them unlocked and then from there unlock a little box on a building. That contains the buildings master keys.

Anyway - if apparatus contained corporate keys (fobs, fido, physical, whatever) that allow a FD member to drive the car - I can 100% see that being part of a scene SOP/G. Tell the probie “get the key, move that AV out of the way.”

Or bull bars on my tanker will make it happen..

Re: SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance

#103

Post by mcpackieh »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #33
prosody wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term FUD makes sense in low-risk applications where the benefit of the doubt ought to be given. In safety-critical contexts it should be completely reversed, and confidence, certainty and trust should be looked at extremely critically.

Human drivers kill 30,000+ per year in the US alone. Development of an automated driving option is a safety-critical context, and that requires real-world deployment experience. The precautionary principle is not what is called for here.

Your argument has the form of: "We have to do something. This is something, therefore we have to do this."

You've failed to establish automated driving as a safer alternative, let alone the best practical solution. The fact that these cars can't even move out of the way of emergency vehicles proves they aren't ready for testing on the public now.

> requires real-world deployment experience.

Not at this stage it doesn't. They haven't exhausted the utility of simulated training and training on closed courses. They're testing on the public (human experimentation without informed consent) because it's cheaper and they can get away with it, not because they must.

Re: SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance

#104

Post by spondylosaurus »

slg wrote: post #92
spondylosaurus wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that 1 deserves more of the blame here—a blocked ambulance is blocked from attending to all medical emergencies, not just medical emergencies caused by (human-powered) car accidents. If the robotaxi had blocked the ambulance from reaching someone who'd just had a stroke, blame would rest 100% on the robotaxi. And there's no telling that this won't happen again.

>If the robotaxi had blocked the ambulance from reaching someone who'd just had a stroke, blame would rest 100% on the robotaxi. Yes, but that isn't what happened here. You are no longer assigning blame for a real incident. You are theorizing about the potential damage that AI drivers can cause in similar situations. But once you do that, you also have to consider the tradeoffs between human and AI drivers and all th…

> You are no longer assigning blame for a real incident. You are theorizing about the potential damage that AI drivers can cause in similar situations.

I am! Because I think that's a useful thing to do.

> But once you do that, you also have to consider the tradeoffs between human and AI drivers and all the deaths that human drivers cause.

Also yes—and one factor right now is that we have a robust EMS system designed to respond to medical emergencies, including road accidents. If the near-future tradeoff is that robotaxis (1) coexist alongside human-piloted cars, rather than replacing them outright, which means road accidents will continue to happen, and (2) robotaxis hinder ambulances from reaching humans in need, including (but not limited to) humans who were struck by cars piloted by other humans, I think that's a poor tradeoff.

If it were possible to jump past the messy middle part and immediately get to the "all cars are autopiloted, except ambulances, which aren't hindered by autopiloted vehicles in any way," then of course that sounds great! But it's precisely the messy middle part that worries me.

For better or worse, human drivers aren't going away anytime soon. And you rightfully point out that human drivers are prone to accidents. Which is all the more reason that EMS services are critical in the near-term.

(But also, counterfactually speaking, it is absolutely the robotaxi's fault that the person died. Had the ambulance been unhindered, they would have had a chance at life after receiving proper medical care; since the ambulance was hindered, they didn't get that care and died as a result.)

Re: SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance

#105

Post by jinkiesScoob »

oatmeal1 wrote: post #96
nkrisc wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because why the person needed an ambulance is completely immaterial to whether the ambulance was impeded a self-driving vehicle or not. It could have just as easily been a heart attack and the questions raised about self-driving vehicles would be no different.

GP is criticizing the narrative focus. A robotaxi causing a new, less serious problem is the focus over a commonplace very serious problem caused by conventional cars.

Humans have always lived around danger; and now, for as long as anyone can remember, cars have been possibly the most significant source danger while also being integral in modern life. I would argue reacting to new problems is the rational thing to do.

Sure, cars are dangerous, but they enable a social structure that is far safer than what we had(hospitals, specialized surgeons, first responders, advanced pharmaceuticals, etc) to say nothing of productivity.

Re: SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance

#106

Post by nickthegreek »

88913527 wrote: post #86
perihelions wrote: post #62

- "blocked a San Francisco ambulance from getting a pedestrian hit by a vehicle" I'm taking no "position" on either "side" of the debate, but I feel it's noteworthy that a *human-driven* car killed a pedestrian (seriously?) here, and that fact is utterly banal and completely unremarkable to the authors—and to us. AI cars are still highly flawed and kill people. Human-driven cars are highly flawed, probably more flawe…

Kind of hard to assign liability to some matrix algebra that unfortunately did some computations that were suboptimal given the conditions. If these costs add up, it turns into a tragedy of the commons type of problem. A more modern form of the "corporations can pollute but don't pay the costs".

It’s ‘kind of hard’ to assign liability in all sorts of current situations, but we do. There is a whole industry that does just this.

Re: SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance

#107

Post by bee_rider »

sergers wrote: post #93
bee_rider wrote: post #73

The whole description is pretty confusing, I hope video is shared at some point so we can understand it a little better. I’m sure they (Cruise as well as the city) don’t want to dump it on the general public immediately for good reasons, but hopefully we’ll see it eventually. > A stalled Cruise robotaxi blocked a San Francisco ambulance from getting a pedestrian hit by a vehicle to the hospital in an Aug. 14 incident…

Yea seems a little weird. Here if a ambulance has lights and sirens on, it has right away in every direction (including going opposite of traffic), where everyone pulls over to the shoulder. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/transportation/driving-an... And if there are other first responders, which sounds like firefighters? They usually section off the area with either their vehicle. Sounds like this was multilane…

If it really is a case of “autonomous vehicle can’t pull to the right to get out of the way of the emergency vehicle because there’s traffic flowing there,” then it was just a bad move to roll out autonomous cars in an area with so many malfunctioning human drivers.

Re: SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance

#108

Post by slg »

ryandrake wrote: post #101
slg wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an excellent point. There are two independent causes to this person's death. 1. A human driver grievously injured a pedestrian 2. An AI driver delayed medical care for the injured pedestrian That person is potentially still alive if 2 doesn't happen. They are certainly still alive if 1 doesn't happen. Therefore, 1 deserves more of the blame here. Considering these are two independent causes, we can still be u…

I don't think OP is talking about assigning blame in this particular case: The point is that a huge and arguably bigger problem (to the tune of ~40K deaths per year in the US) is buried in one sentence in the middle of the article. The USA has kind of thrown up its collective hands and declared the danger of car accidents to be unsolvable. We treat it like an inevitable fact of life, now. The most the USA does, regul…

>I don't think OP is talking about assigning blame in this particular case

To be clear, I'm only talking about this specific case in these terms because the coincidence of it being a human driver which caused the medical emergency makes this a great example to highlight all the points you and OP are talking about. We are in agreement on all those points.

Re: SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance

#109

Post by dehrmann »

capableweb wrote: post #5
smugma wrote: post #3

I think SFFD is rightfully worried about robotaxis but this doesn’t seem to be the case. When cameras are recording everything, you can’t just make up facts. “The video captured by Cruise showed that the ambulance parked behind the Cruise and did not attempt to pass the robotaxi in the rightmost unblocked lane. Instead, responders moved a firetruck to allow the ambulance to pass on the left. The video, which Cruise d…

> “The video captured by Cruise showed that the ambulance parked behind the Cruise and did not attempt to pass the robotaxi in the rightmost unblocked lane. Instead, responders moved a firetruck to allow the ambulance to pass on the left. The video, which Cruise declined to share publicly, indicates that 90 seconds elapsed between the patient being put on the stretcher and the ambulance leaving the scene.” Why isn't…

> Video and other surveillance data gathered by Cruise and reviewed by The Standard

The SF Standard might have a tech bias due to its funding, but giving them access and offering the city access seems reasonable enough to not suspect anything fishy.

Re: SF Fire Dept.: Person Dies After Cruise Robotaxi Blocked Ambulance

#110

Post by slg »

spondylosaurus wrote: post #104
slg wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If the robotaxi had blocked the ambulance from reaching someone who'd just had a stroke, blame would rest 100% on the robotaxi. Yes, but that isn't what happened here. You are no longer assigning blame for a real incident. You are theorizing about the potential damage that AI drivers can cause in similar situations. But once you do that, you also have to consider the tradeoffs between human and AI drivers and all th…

> You are no longer assigning blame for a real incident. You are theorizing about the potential damage that AI drivers can cause in similar situations. I am! Because I think that's a useful thing to do. > But once you do that, you also have to consider the tradeoffs between human and AI drivers and all the deaths that human drivers cause. Also yes—and one factor right now is that we have a robust EMS system designed…

If you are talking about these in general terms about a hypothetical future, I don't think one example of medical care being delayed is very strong data compared to the 42,939 motor vehicle deaths the IIHS reported in 2021.

>(But also, counterfactually speaking, it is absolutely the robotaxi's fault that the person died. Had the ambulance been unhindered, they would have had a chance at life after receiving proper medical care; since the ambulance was hindered, they didn't get that care and died as a result.)

I'll take the certainty of life for that pedestrian if they weren't hit by a human driver over the "chance at life" that would have come from quicker medical care.

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