We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by melling » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 3:57 AM UTC

piffey wrote: post #98

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…

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…

I’ve taken the train from New York to Boston. While it does go pretty fast for a couple miles, think the average speed is about 82 mph.

My 4 mile commute from Hoboken to midtown took anywhere from 45 minutes to 90, if there was a problem. Try getting to the East Side of Manhattan.

See people fighting congestion pricing for driving? If mass transit was good, few would drive into the island

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

#112

Post by wombatpm » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 3:58 AM UTC

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 still bullish on automated long-haul trucking. I'd much rather share a road with an self-driving semi on I80 instead of a human driver hopped up on speed driving 14 hours a day.

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

#113

Post by decafninja » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 3:59 AM UTC

kdmccormick wrote: post #70

minwcnt5 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If public transit can't be solved in SF, the second densest city in the US, there's no hope for the rest of America outside NYC. On average it takes close to twice as long to get from point A to B in SF using public transit than with Waymo. And for the walking portions you're likely dealing with either hills or sketchy areas.

Public transit can be solved in the US. Plenty of other countries have done it. That's why it's so exhausting that so many of our brightest minds AND the public's imagination of the future are dedicated to turning our unsustainably-car-centric cities into possibly-safer-but-still-unsustainably-car-centric cities instead of, you know, modern cities with good transit.

"Plenty of other countries" isn't the US.

For reasons that have nothing to do with cars, the US will never achieve the clean, safe, reliable systems like you see in Asia that are often heralded as the posterchild of ideal public transit.

Wave a magic wand materialize the Tokyo or Seoul subway system into an American metropolis, and within a short period of time, you'll see it devolve. We just cannot have nice things here.

Ironically, the contingent of people that are most aggressive/ambitious about promoting public transit are often the same that are most against taking the (admittedly, not always the most pleasant) steps needed to sell the idea to the masses.

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

#114

Post by defrost » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 4:01 AM UTC

adrr wrote: post #101

comte7092 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Driverless cars are significantly safer than human drivers. https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2309/2309.01206.pdf

"So far"

With less than 4 million miles of pure rider only data by relatively early Waymo rollouts in two cities it can be argued there's room for the claims per million miles to climb as the number of deployments rise.

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

#115

Post by gnabgib » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 4:02 AM UTC

2 days ago: "California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment" (1167 points, 1221 comments)[0], "California DMV suspends Cruise's driverless testing permit effective immediately" (164 points, 3 comments)[1]

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38002752 [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38003497

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

#116

Post by signatoremo » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 4:04 AM UTC

polalavik wrote: post #17

xnx wrote: post #12

This is a good move on Cruise's part. Cruise is still nowhere near the maturity level that Waymo was at when Waymo first started driving on public roads. On the other hand, we definitely need a real competitor to Waymo. It doesn't seem likely, but hopefully some combination of Cruise, Apple(?), Tesla, or another player will be able to have a feasible alternative to Waymo's Driver.

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.

Did you know that car ownership in the Netherlands has steadily increased over the years? Despite known for its small size, flat terrain, biking and public transport friendly policies? - [1]

Flexibility, comfort and convenience are car’s benefits, and people value that. Despite the disadvantages of higher cost or the burden of parking. The article highlights the older people group, which is only getting larger. I can list many other examples in countries with great public transportation.

Talking as someone who loves train and commutes by train, car will always be an important transport option, and any approach that helps improve safety, increase efficiency, lower emission, is a net gain.

[1] - https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2020/10/car-fleet-growing-fast...

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

#117

Post by seanmcdirmid » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 4:05 AM UTC

piffey wrote: post #98

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…

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…

In Seattle, you can beat a driver to the airport using the train…unless you live in Ballard, or any other place not on the I5 corridor.

I never bothered with taking the train to the Beijing airport either, even though it existed for much of time there. Taxi was still more convenient. If we are talking Tokyo or Paris, ok, no problem, but it doesn’t make sense in a lot of cities for a lot of connections to be made.

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

#118

Post by seanmcdirmid » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 4:07 AM UTC

dangus wrote: post #97

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…

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.

I’ve ridden Chinese HSR trains…and I still needed to take a taxi to get to Beijing South and whatever was on the other end of my trip.

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

#119

Post by pests » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 4:08 AM UTC

jackvalentine wrote: post #110

npunt wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think bigger. "Driverless cars" are a technology that moves atoms without the need for people, a lot like how we move bits around today. There are innumerable benefits to moving the right atoms to the right places at the right time. There are many form factors that moving atoms can take, only one of which looks like a car. The car is a good place to start for many reasons, including everyone needing transportation, e…

> we unlock whole new ways of living Please speculate on what some of these ‘whole new ways of living’ might be. I’m struggling to picture it.

You're house could be mobile and drive itself to new locations every night while you sleep. You wake up in a new location every morning to a new sunset.

I meant this to be sarcastic because we already have this with campers and RV's - but it does sound kind of cool on second thought. Pointless, but cool.

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

#120

Post by vidarh » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 4:09 AM UTC

polalavik wrote: post #17

xnx wrote: post #12

This is a good move on Cruise's part. Cruise is still nowhere near the maturity level that Waymo was at when Waymo first started driving on public roads. On the other hand, we definitely need a real competitor to Waymo. It doesn't seem likely, but hopefully some combination of Cruise, Apple(?), Tesla, or another player will be able to have a feasible alternative to Waymo's Driver.

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.

I tend to agree a driverless taxi is a luxury good for individuals rather than a social major good, and has the potential to be harmful to society in some ways (e.g. encouraging less public transit use if taxi costs drop), but driverless vehicles will make it possible to provide better and cheaper public transit too.

Some quick searches, and I found pricing examples for coaches where even for a 70 person coach in the UK, the driver at near minimum wage added up to a fixed cost per bus in the fleet that made up near 40% of the cost per coach per day in hire.

Having the flexibility of picking vehicle size based on route utilisation without the drag of a fixed cost per vehicle that substantial that is independent of number of seats would make it viable to add bus routes in places where average utilisation would be way too low to make it possible to justify today.