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California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

reuters.com

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Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#191

Post by solveit »

cp9 wrote: post #122

if people weren't VC brained they would realize that the way to prevent traffic deaths isn't to build fancy self driving cars, it's to invest in safer, more pedestrian friendly infrastructure and use the boring technology that already exists to get people where they want to go. the future is on buses and trains and bikes and pedestrian friendly 15 minute communities

I agree with the sentiment, but given America's, uh, great affinity for cars and car-centric infrastructure, nailing self-driving seems easier....

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#192

Post by annexrichmond »

tschellenbach wrote: post #107

43k deaths per year due to human drivers. DMV should stop sticking their heads in the sand. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state... .

How many of those deaths per year are human drivers driving the same routes at the same hours in the same weather as Cruise vehicles? Without any normalization this comparison seems moot.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#193

Post by dv_dt »

vel0city wrote: post #77

Will California ban all human drivers next? After all, the pedestrian was first hit by a human driver, and was probably the but for cause.

If an individual driver did what the cruise vehicle did, then I would expect a suspended license during investigation. It just happens the AI diver is the singular “driver” for an entire fleet.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#194

Post by moralestapia »

RC_ITR wrote: post #186
Lonestar1440 wrote: post #120

From my perspective as a person who lives in San Francisco and also drives a LOT (10-20k miles per year, and many small drives within the city): Cruise cars do not perform acceptably. They manage to avoid collisions by driving extremely conservatively, but the way they traverse, say, a left turn against traffic is absurd. They slow everyone down, including emergency vehicles and public transit, by performing far belo…

I agree with what you said, BUT From my perspective as a person who lives in San Francisco and also bikes a LOT: human driver also do not perform acceptably. I counted 14 cars without headlights on after sunset on a 2 mile bike ride yesterday. I counted 5 cars parked in either a bike lane or active traffic. 2 cars took blind rights (no stops) onto Polk from various alleyways. This was a good day, FWIW. Cruises have o…

Yes, but replacing something shitty with something shittier will not improve the status quo.

The bar for AI should be way higher than just "outperform mediocre humans".

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#195

Post by panarky »

eastbound wrote: post #105
carbocation wrote: post #79

This is just anecdote, but having taken trips in both Waymo and Cruise in SF, I feel very comfortable in Waymo: it drives carefully but confidently. It alerts me when cyclists are near when I'm getting out. It navigates coned-off work areas. Cruise required a lot of (remote) human intervention during my trips.

We were sold self-driving cars as safer than humans.

This action is about one specific brand, not the entire product category.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#196

Post by jowday »

labrador wrote: post #163
carbocation wrote: post #79

This is just anecdote, but having taken trips in both Waymo and Cruise in SF, I feel very comfortable in Waymo: it drives carefully but confidently. It alerts me when cyclists are near when I'm getting out. It navigates coned-off work areas. Cruise required a lot of (remote) human intervention during my trips.

I have a friend who interviewed at Waymo to be a safety driver. He told me they have a human at command central monitoring the car and the safety driver, talking back and forth. I see no reason why they would remove the human monitor after no longer using safety drivers. For liability reasons at least. My point is I'm not sure Waymo cars can actually be considered self- driving since they have a remote human standing…

Any actually-deployed driverless car has the same setup with remote operators - Cruise, Waymo, Zoox (if they've managed to deploy yet).

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#197

Post by freedomben »

tivert wrote: post #189
freedomben wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or more succinctly: "You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. Sorry, eggs [regular people]. I'm not trying to make a statement or a point with the question. The original question is all that is part of the question. Please don't try to read more in than what is there. > Ends justify the means thinking leads to some dark places. For sure, but if we try to avoid any and all pain then we could still be n…

> For sure, but if we try to avoid any and all pain then we could still be nomadic people. Maybe life satisfaction then was higher, but certainly life expectancy wasn't. Just the death rate of babies and women alone was pretty dangerous. You're presenting a false dichotomy. Giving self-driving car companies free reign to cheaply experiment on the public is not the same as "avoid[ing] any and all pain" or avoiding all…

> You're presenting a false dichotomy. Giving self-driving car companies free reign to cheaply experiment on the public is not the same as "avoid[ing] any and all pain" or avoiding all technological progress.

I'm not presenting a dichotomy at all (unless you think the spectrum is binary and is only zero pain or non-zero pain, which I don't), let alone a false one. I'm not talking about just self-driving car companies. This is a broader philosophical discussion about technology in general, and how much pain is tolerable for progress. If you believe zero is tolerable in the case of self-driving, then do you believe that in general for all tech? If not, why is self-driving so different?

Do you disagree with the premise that on the other side of self-driving cars is a world where humans don't have to labor for their transportation?

Edit: to clarify because people seem incapable of non-binary thinking, I'm not making an argument that Cruise (or any other tech company or car company or whatever) should be able to have "free reign to cheaply experiment on the public." That's not something I said or implied. I don't think they should and I think this California decision is probably a good one. There, can we talk about the higher philosophical issue now?

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#198

Post by epa »

RC_ITR wrote: post #186
Lonestar1440 wrote: post #120

From my perspective as a person who lives in San Francisco and also drives a LOT (10-20k miles per year, and many small drives within the city): Cruise cars do not perform acceptably. They manage to avoid collisions by driving extremely conservatively, but the way they traverse, say, a left turn against traffic is absurd. They slow everyone down, including emergency vehicles and public transit, by performing far belo…

I agree with what you said, BUT From my perspective as a person who lives in San Francisco and also bikes a LOT: human driver also do not perform acceptably. I counted 14 cars without headlights on after sunset on a 2 mile bike ride yesterday. I counted 5 cars parked in either a bike lane or active traffic. 2 cars took blind rights (no stops) onto Polk from various alleyways. This was a good day, FWIW. Cruises have o…

So you observed 21 cars with issues out of the 1000 you saw, a marginal hit rate.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#199

Post by stfp »

sergiotapia wrote: post #115
reset2023 wrote: post #69

[flagged]

- No more traffic - No more car insurance - Cheap transportation to work/school - Less deaths on the road There is plenty to gain from having true driverless vehicles accessible to the public.

Meanwhile in reality: - More traffic due to induced demand as sitting in traffic becomes comfortable - Self-driving subscription in addition to all other car costs - More car-centric infrastructure needed as we realize that self-driving cars can't be made fast and safe for mixed street use with pedestrians, bikes etc.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#200

Post by nonameiguess »

vel0city wrote: post #77

Will California ban all human drivers next? After all, the pedestrian was first hit by a human driver, and was probably the but for cause.

Commenters like this understand that doing a hit-and-run does result in a human losing their license, right? We don't revoke all human licenses because humans are unique individuals, not a hive mind controlled by a shared common program. Similarly, the DMV is not revoking the license for all self-driving cars. It's only revoking Cruise.
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