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We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

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Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#91

Post by antli35 »

ajross wrote: post #77
antli35 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a pedestrian gets flung in front of your car and then you no longer see them, wouldn't you be inclined to check whether they might have gone under your car? Especially if you're hearing screaming...

Driver behavior after collisions isn't remotely that rational. People do all kind of crazy things in extremis (secondary collisions caused by post-collision drivers mistakenly hitting the accelerator instead of brake are a whole category of accident!). And in any case (again, as I understand the accident) this was stopped traffic and the Cruise vehicle was hit by another vehicle. In that kind of situation I think a h…

From Cruise's statements and news reports, it does not sound like the Cruise car was hit by another vehicle. A nearby vehicle flung a pedestrian in front of a Cruise. The Cruise car stopped on top of the pedestrian, then dragged them as it pulled over. Even accounting for post-crash panic, I find it unlikely that a decent human driver wouldn't have realized that the pedestrian ended up underneath their car.

https://getcruise.com/news/blog/2023/a-detailed-review-of-th...

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#92

Post by [deleted] »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #74

Cruise's death knell was when they were bought by GM. There's something insidious about US Detroit-based car companies that keeps them from innovating almost as a rule. It seems they often deliberately prioritize making their cars worse if it can drive up profit.

[deleted]

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#93

Post by djrobstep »

shipscode wrote: post #73
mrastro wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we (North America) had more walkable streets a lot of these problems would be solved: grocery stores are easier to place in population centers a short distance with less car and more foot traffic and you can rent a car for occasional "off-road" recreational driving. In terms of transportation and city design, the US could learn a lot from Europe if it weren't so addicted to cars. It's better for the environment, m…

Except in the real world this is the opposite case… population centers are full of food desert pockets and the suburbs are the land of plenty.

? Reality is the exact opposite of what you say

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#94

Post by DeIlliad »

comte7092 wrote: post #75
melling wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve?” 40,000 deaths in the United States every year. Hundreds of thousands of costly accidents We can’t get great transportation even in the New York City area. We have 0 miles of high-speed rail, while China built 25,000 it’s great that you want to start building some mass transit, but it’ll take a century if we start now. Let’s start by having trains take you to the…

> 40,000 deaths in the United States every year. Hundreds of thousands of costly accidents Somehow, after a decade of hype, it doesn’t seem like driverless cars are the most direct path to solving that problem. > Let’s start by having trains take you to the airport directly I feel like that exists in a lot of places? Not sure what you mean.

I think "a lot of places" is doing some heavy lifting. There are a few cities in the US that have a train that connects to the airport but not many.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#95

Post by conk »

pcchristie wrote: post #89
polalavik wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of all the tech problems to solve, driverless cars or driverless taxis has always baffled me. It’s a very complex thing to solve with a zillion edge cases. And for what net gain? What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve? Lack of good public transit? Let’s solve that instead. Millions of cars driverless or not are not a great solution to anything.

You've got a lot of answers already but ... wow... Allow me to say first of all that I agree we should have denser cities/towns, better public transport to get around, and we should all use it more. But some stats (no citation, these are rattling around in my memory, feel free to fact check). 90% of cars are not utilised 90% of the time. That is insane wastage for energy intensively manufactured, expensive pieces of…

Who cares if a car is only utilized 10% of the time. At 10% use the car is going to last an average of 20 years. Use it 90% of the time and it’s gonna get junked in 1-2 years.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#96

Post by mikepurvis »

flatline wrote: post #37
polalavik wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of all the tech problems to solve, driverless cars or driverless taxis has always baffled me. It’s a very complex thing to solve with a zillion edge cases. And for what net gain? What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve? Lack of good public transit? Let’s solve that instead. Millions of cars driverless or not are not a great solution to anything.

What do you mean? Cars are a marvelous solution to traveling a medium distance rapidly. They are ubiquitous as a result. I doubt we will ever have effective public transit across the US. It’s just too big and most places have too low a population density to make it cost effective. And the price of convenience would be high. I used to be bullish about autonomous driving but no longer am. Ten years ago it felt like a m…

I'm hopeful that robotaxi services end up teaming up with mass transit agencies so you plug into your app "I'm going to X" and the options are:

- point to point in a private vehicle: x time, $y

- to the RT station: x * 1.2, y * 0.3

- to the bikeshare cluster: x * 1.6, y * 0.1

Governments have a role to play in creating the proper incentives here too, ensuring that congestion is properly paid for— every time any road is moving less than 80% of the speed limit that should be considered a failure of policy that it was too cheap to drive on it that day.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#97

Post by dangus »

melling wrote: post #64
polalavik wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of all the tech problems to solve, driverless cars or driverless taxis has always baffled me. It’s a very complex thing to solve with a zillion edge cases. And for what net gain? What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve? Lack of good public transit? Let’s solve that instead. Millions of cars driverless or not are not a great solution to anything.

“What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve?” 40,000 deaths in the United States every year. Hundreds of thousands of costly accidents We can’t get great transportation even in the New York City area. We have 0 miles of high-speed rail, while China built 25,000 it’s great that you want to start building some mass transit, but it’ll take a century if we start now. Let’s start by having trains take you to the…

It won’t take a century if there’s political will. China built a network larger than the rest of the world combined in less than 20 years. Yes, you heard that right, in 2007 there was only one high speed passenger rail service in the entire country.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#98

Post by piffey »

melling wrote: post #64
polalavik wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of all the tech problems to solve, driverless cars or driverless taxis has always baffled me. It’s a very complex thing to solve with a zillion edge cases. And for what net gain? What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve? Lack of good public transit? Let’s solve that instead. Millions of cars driverless or not are not a great solution to anything.

“What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve?” 40,000 deaths in the United States every year. Hundreds of thousands of costly accidents We can’t get great transportation even in the New York City area. We have 0 miles of high-speed rail, while China built 25,000 it’s great that you want to start building some mass transit, but it’ll take a century if we start now. Let’s start by having trains take you to the…

There are over 30 US cities with trains to the airport. Another half dozen on the way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airport_rail_link_syst...

US also has almost 350 miles of high speed rail, not 0. The Northeast is where it’s all concentrated with Acela being the fastest.

If you live in a major city in the States it’s often way easier and faster to take rail. In Seattle for instance you can beat a driver to the airport every time during traffic. Hell even the LAX station in Los Angeles of all places will be available end of 2024 and that’s the most notorious car centric city in this country. The subway in LA keeps seeing ridership growth. I don’t even rent a car when I visit anymore. Everywhere I want to go is serviced.

Lastly NYC is one of the most serviced by transit areas in the world? Are you living in an alternate universe?

Mass transit is the solution. It’s vastly cheaper to build, moves more people, and far safer. I’ve got a highway interchange by my house that’s taken a decade to finish while they’ve ran rail and built four stations in that time. That’s a perfectly fine pace given our slow building system with environmental review and the like.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#99

Post by dangus »

janalsncm wrote: post #85
melling wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve?” 40,000 deaths in the United States every year. Hundreds of thousands of costly accidents We can’t get great transportation even in the New York City area. We have 0 miles of high-speed rail, while China built 25,000 it’s great that you want to start building some mass transit, but it’ll take a century if we start now. Let’s start by having trains take you to the…

China has 25k miles of bullet trains and China accounted for a third of the cars sold in 2022. A third. This is a country that limits imports and even limits the number of drivers in some cities. So it’s silly to suggest public transit can replace cars. ETA: Replace all cars. So as long as we will have cars, we might as well make them safer. > getting self driving cars that are all electric will be a big win. I will…

> So it’s silly to suggest public transit can replace cars

Ew. This is so flawed.

What is china’s car ownership per capita? Trips taken per day?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_...

China has 2 cars for every 10 people (#99 in the world), while the United States has 9 cars for every 10 people.

While China buys a lot of cars (duh, they have a population of over a billion), they would buy even more if they had the dismal public transit of the US.

Of course public transit replaces cars.

Another fun fact: you would need 15 lanes of highway to handle the same amount of passenger load as a two-track subway tunnel. Manhattan as we know it would be physically impossible to exist if public transit “couldn’t replace cars.”

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#100

Post by nradov »

pcchristie wrote: post #89
polalavik wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of all the tech problems to solve, driverless cars or driverless taxis has always baffled me. It’s a very complex thing to solve with a zillion edge cases. And for what net gain? What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve? Lack of good public transit? Let’s solve that instead. Millions of cars driverless or not are not a great solution to anything.

You've got a lot of answers already but ... wow... Allow me to say first of all that I agree we should have denser cities/towns, better public transport to get around, and we should all use it more. But some stats (no citation, these are rattling around in my memory, feel free to fact check). 90% of cars are not utilised 90% of the time. That is insane wastage for energy intensively manufactured, expensive pieces of…

I don't understand the concerns over vehicle utilization and parking. Even if autonomous vehicles are made to work they will still be idle most of the time in order to have sufficient peak time capacity. Across most of the country, parking isn't really an issue because there's plenty of space. It's only a concern in a handful of dense cities.
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