California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment
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Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment
#2Is there evidence that Cruise is more dangerous than a human driver?
Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment
#3Is there evidence that Cruise is more dangerous than a human driver?
Given they didn't suspend Waymo, I would guess they must have been doing something so egregious that the median driver would not do.
Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment
#4CA DMV statement [1] has some more information:
Today’s suspensions are based on the following:
13 CCR §228.20 (b) (6) – Based upon the performance of the vehicles, the Department determines the manufacturer’s vehicles are not safe for the public’s operation.
13 CCR §228.20 (b) (3) – The manufacturer has misrepresented any information related to safety of the autonomous technology of its vehicles.
13 CCR §227.42 (b) (5) – Any act or omission of the manufacturer or one of its agents, employees, contractors, or designees which the department finds makes the conduct of autonomous vehicle testing on public roads by the manufacturer an unreasonable risk to the public.
13 CCR §227.42 (c) – The department shall immediately suspend or revoke the Manufacturer’s Testing Permit or a Manufacturer’s Testing Permit – Driverless Vehicles if a manufacturer is engaging in a practice in such a manner that immediate suspension is required for the safety of persons on a public road.
Misrepresenting safety seems like a big deal.
[1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/news-and-media/dmv-statement-o...
Edit: This Vice article [2] says Cruise tried to withhold pedestrian injury footage from the DMV.
> In the Order of Suspension, the California DMV said that the Cruise vehicle initially came to a hard stop and ran over the pedestrian. After coming to a complete stop, it then attempted to do a “pullover maneuver while the pedestrian was underneath the vehicle.” The car crawled along at 7 mph for about 20 feet, then came to a final stop. The pedestrian remained under the car the whole time.
> The day after the incident, DMV representatives met with Cruise to “discuss the incident.” During that meeting, Cruise only showed footage up to the first complete stop, according to the Order of Suspension. No one at Cruise told the officers or showed any footage of the subsequent pullover maneuver and dragging. The DMV only learned of that from “another government agency.” When DMV asked for footage of that part of the incident, Cruise provided it.
[2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a3ba3/california-dmv-suspen...
Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment
#5And yet TSLA is allowed to have “Full Self Driving” on the road in hundreds of thousands of cars as a “beta”.
Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment
#6Is there evidence that Cruise is more dangerous than a human driver?
... a human driver doesn't stop in the middle of the road and become fully unresponsive when the cell phone network goes down?
Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment
#7Is there evidence that Cruise is more dangerous than a human driver?
This is the standard to which the builders of autonomous vehicles wish to be held. However, this is unlikely in my opinion. I believe instead they will be held to the more rigorous standard of "is there evidence that this is dangerous?"
Note for example today's suit against Meta for alleged harms against children. No such suit against TV aimed at children or e.g. fashion magazines that are well-known to have deleterious effects on children. Autonomous vehicles are new tech, so the bar will be higher.
Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment
#8Just this morning on my bike ride to work, a Cruise car was sitting in the middle of a road after turning right at an intersection. It was almost blocking the road entirely. The cherry on top was the Waymo that was stuck on the other side of the intersection because of this. People were not happy and had to snake their way around the Waymo.
Having ridden in Cruise cars a couple of times, I am glad I was able to ride one while I had the chance. The novelty factor was very high, and while being hard to hail + very slow, it was a great thing to show to visitors to the city. Hopefully these safety issues can be resolved. As a biker, I feel much safer around a cruise than your average prius.
Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment
#9Is there evidence that Cruise is more dangerous than a human driver?
Specious and reductive. It's qualitative, not quantitative. Even though the latter is easier for people to understand. We have decades of data about human-caused accidents. We know the ceiling is relatively stable. We know an additional 20% of drivers won't wake up tomorrow incompetent or drunk. Anything above zero is bad, but we know and accept the status quo.
But every new model or software update will invalidate what we've observed and know about automated driving.
We're in an era of extreme obfuscation and enshittification by tech companies, even where safety is involved. I'd be more likely to trust self driving tech if I trusted the current form of the tech industry, and trusted that regulatory bodies had the power and ability to oversee them as effectively as when they were first regulating cars.
Of course even that wasn't perfect, but my trust that we can even do that well is nonexistent.
Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment
#10According to Cruise's X(Twitter) account [0], the suspension seems to be related to an incident in which a human driver hit-and-run propelled a pedestrian in front of a Cruise AV and the Cruise vehicle couldn't avoid hitting the person. When that incident was first reported [1], it seemed like a situation where if it was a human driver in the Cruise vehicle, they wouldn't be found to be at any fault. However given this suspension, I wonder if there's more to it than that.
[0] https://twitter.com/Cruise/status/1716877217995894934
[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/woman-run-autono...