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San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

latimes.com

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Re: San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

#111

Post by jimt1234 »

whartung wrote: post #58
rurp wrote: post #20

The specific examples listed out in the article are egregious, causing real harm. The fire chief is right to be angry, if anything her response is too measured. From the article: - Running through yellow emergency tape and ignoring warning signs to enter a street strewn with storm-damaged electrical wires, then driving past emergency vehicles with some of those wires snarled around rooftop lidar sensors. - Twice bloc…

There's that scene from a TV show where the fire fighters are at a fire, and a car is in front of the fire hydrant. One of the characters calls out "Car!" and they then proceed to smash the windows, and route the fire hose through the car and connect it to the fire hydrant. Throughout the course of the incident, the hydrant leaks and fills the cars interior with water. If only there was, perhaps, a similar effective,…

When I was a kid back in the late-70s, I saw a handful of firefighters and a few other burly dudes overturn a car that was blocking a hydrant near an active fire. They got the car bouncing, then completely turned it over onto its roof. Then, then sorta scooted it out of the way of the hydrant. It's one of my oldest memories, and it was awesome!

Re: San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

#112

Post by Mordisquitos »

EatingWithForks wrote: post #82
Projectiboga wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time for Zero Tolerance, if one of these do it seize it, and levy the robotaxi company and whomever built it with Huge Fines. Not "oh that will just be another expense", make it that those fines pierce the corporate veil and get to the executives and the millionaire shareholders. And now that I think of it, if there are any passengers, arrest them. That way they can sue the RoboTaxi company too.

I would hesitate to arrest passengers that can't override the taxi. There are knock-on effects that can't be remediated by suing a robo taxi company, such as loss of job, violation of parole, or simply not having any money to begin the suit to begin with. [I know that it's unlikely that someone wealthy enough to hire a robotaxi for a trip may not be wealthy enough to hire a lawyer, but you never know and it would be…

I understand your point, but I can see the reasoning to arrest the passengers. In summary, the robotaxi company's business model and how its cars work is none of the emergency service's business. It's a car, in the way, with people in it.

If an ostensibly normal car were to block an emergency response, would its occupants be off the hook if they all denied having driven the vehicle to its current location, and said they have no ability to move it out of the way? I doubt it. They would be at the very least charged with something.

The same thing should go for alleged robotaxis—“But we don't control the car we're sitting inside of!”... not the city's problem. The car you were in was blocking an emergency response.

Would this be unfair? Yes it would. Would this make people fearful of using robotaxis? Absolutely yes it would. And would that put economic pressure on the robotaxi operators to fix these issues as fast as possible? Damn right it would.

Re: San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

#113

Post by jeffbee »

c00lio wrote: post #93
jeffbee wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL no. Personally I look upon the Swiss "via sicura" regime wistfully. I want people who speed through central cities to go to jail and have their cars crushed.

You won't immediately loose your license for speeding, even in Switzerland. Afaik it'll be expensive until 20km/h over, only after that will the really nasty things like criminal prosecution and car impound start (for first-time offenders, repeat offenders are punished more harshly).

40km/h over in a built-up area in Switzerland is not only an automatic fine and loss of license, it is automatic jail time with no judicial discretion. This is the equivalent of 45MPH in a city, for the American readers.

Re: San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

#114

Post by jeffbee »

masswerk wrote: post #110
jeffbee wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internally your logic is flawless but I don't see how you can ignore the current delays caused by human driver traffic, not to mention the ambulance traffic created by human driver errors.

Please mind that this is about fire fighting. There is reason, why they have the right of way, as this exceeds any individual concerns: would you really rather have another Great Fire, as a single car blocks critical efforts in the name of progress? Also, as it comes to emergencies, there's a certain difference between a human idiot, who can be always coerced into doing the right thing, and a dumb, but inflexible mec…

I guess I am not seeing your point. We know that human drivers severely impede fire response. This has only intensified in the Uber/Lyft era in central cities like SF and NY. The only known solution is to simply take road space away from human drivers, as we have seen with the lowered fire response times in Paris as bike lanes are being expanded. You can't count on human mass action to get out of the way of a fire truck. Anyone who lives in Manhattan has watched an FDNY truck blast its horn for minutes while drivers just stand there.

https://youtu.be/aB5lqUROjT4?t=44

Re: San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

#115

Post by dylan604 »

s1gsegv wrote: post #98
dylan604 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truck drivers are individual people making discrete decisions. A robocar company all uses the same training data to make the same results. Put 10 different human drivers in the same situation, you'd expect a variance of decisions being made. Put 10 robocars in the same situation, you'd expect 1 decision being made. Is this not how they are being tested? Am I crazy to assume this?

Absolutely, however holding the entire fleet responsible for the number of faults that would disqualify a single driver also seems wrong. If a taxi driver drives 8 hours a day, then 10 robotaxis will drive 80 hours in that same day and statistically be subject to perform 10x the number of faults, if we're holding them to the same standard. Now, if 12 points loses your license, you have 10 cars, and rack up 120 points…

If you take 10 exact same calculators and perform the same operation, you're going to get the same result on all 10. Why? It's a program running on the same hardware. If this hypothetical fleet of robocars are all on the same hardware using the same software, they are essentially the same machine. This one of the key things we've been told about how much safer robocars will be compared to humans. These robocars are not sentient making unique decisions. They all have the same set of logic in them. Your logic just does not compute with me.

Edit: also, it's the same as a recall to me. If one part is deployed to thousands of cars, all of them are recalled. Same applies here for me.

Re: San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

#116

Post by 0xffff2 »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #112
EatingWithForks wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would hesitate to arrest passengers that can't override the taxi. There are knock-on effects that can't be remediated by suing a robo taxi company, such as loss of job, violation of parole, or simply not having any money to begin the suit to begin with. [I know that it's unlikely that someone wealthy enough to hire a robotaxi for a trip may not be wealthy enough to hire a lawyer, but you never know and it would be…

I understand your point, but I can see the reasoning to arrest the passengers. In summary, the robotaxi company's business model and how its cars work is none of the emergency service's business. It's a car, in the way, with people in it. If an ostensibly normal car were to block an emergency response, would its occupants be off the hook if they all denied having driven the vehicle to its current location, and said t…

These robotaxis are operating legally with permits from the city are they not? It's nonsensical to suggest arresting the passengers sitting in a licensed robotaxi for something they have no control over. This is entirely on the city (and state?) for authorizing something that clearly isn't ready for use on public streets.

Re: San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

#117

Post by ASalazarMX »

bunga-bunga wrote: post #32
rurp wrote: post #20

The specific examples listed out in the article are egregious, causing real harm. The fire chief is right to be angry, if anything her response is too measured. From the article: - Running through yellow emergency tape and ignoring warning signs to enter a street strewn with storm-damaged electrical wires, then driving past emergency vehicles with some of those wires snarled around rooftop lidar sensors. - Twice bloc…

That list is almost funny, as if they’re already trying to kill us.

It would be funnier without the life endangerment, but it is funny regardless. Practical AI can be so smart and so clueless at the same time, it's like watching a kid grow up.

I don't know if massive fines are the way to go, because they could cripple that technology, but firefighters should have free reign to shove those vehicles around when they misbehave, or some way to signal them to get the hell out of the way.

Re: San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

#118

Post by mint2 »

How do these companies not have a simulator built to help train cars for simulated non-standard scenarios? Have dogs, kids, fire trucks, caution tape etc and run them with 100k variations.

And then do real world staged validation.

Actually why are extensive real world mock scenarios not running 24/7? If a car does something bad, do mock scenarios around it.

Please tell me they are doing these things because it’s crazy if they aren’t.

Re: San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

#119

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

dylan604 wrote: post #76
c00lio wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be per software. Maybe per software version, if the company can conclusively prove that the prior problems that led to points cannot happen again.

How can you prove that without putting them back out on the road first? Surely, you'd agree that more is needed than just unit testing?

Closed course real world testing. I naively expect that you could test most of the listed situations in a small-medium size parking lot.

Re: San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

#120

Post by mindslight »

jeffbee wrote: post #63
c00lio wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this were a human driver, at least half of those would loose you your driver's license. Why are there no such consequences for the companies?

Are you joking? Name any jurisdiction in America where you can lose your license for parking in front of a firehouse. There are no points for that in California.

You mean parking in front of a firehouse, having it open its doors, having a firetruck come out with lights and sirens, and then continuing to sit there blocking its way while twiddling your thumbs? That would most certainly warrant some kind of criminal charges.

We need to stop allowing computational agents (and thus those who deploy them) to escape blame as if they don't exist, or as if their behavior is just nobody's fault. Computational agents need to be viewed as bona fide actors (as people are), with the actions of the computational agent being considered the willful actions of whomever deployed it.

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