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Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

sfgate.com

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Re: Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

#151

Post by gwbas1c »

grecy wrote: post #144
gwbas1c wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've all got to learn sometime. The lesson should be that San Francisco isn't the right place to run a highly disruptive experiment. Do these experiments where the potential for disruption is a lot lower, like a smaller city with less congestion.

How many learner drivers do you think hit the streets of San Francisco every week? Should they be banished too?

People are not machines. Machines are not people.

But I'll take your bait:

I grew up close to a city, (Worcester MA,) with plenty of weirdo streets like San Francisco, and had plenty of teenage friends who lived in the city or travelled through it.

Needless to say, we didn't get behind the wheel for the first time in Worcester. We stayed in calmer streets until we were ready. When we drove in Worcester with learner's permits, we had adult supervision. Afterwards, we were only allowed to drive without adult supervision once we passed the driver's test. (I should also point out that, at the time, Worcester had a very serious problem with unlicensed drivers.)

Clearly, Cruise's vehicles aren't ready to drive in San Francisco without adult supervision.

But let's get back to the thesis: It is highly inappropriate to equate a machine with a human. Machines have no rights whatsoever. The "We've all got to learn sometime" attitude doesn't apply to this discussion, because an autonomous car is not a human.

What instead applies to this argument is conventional engineering and business development: Where is it appropriate to run Cruise's early marketing experiments, where bugs (and other unanticipated behavior) is expected? What are the appropriate limitations to put on vehicles when they have no driver? For example, what if the first use of the vehicles was a private resort (like Disney World) where the nature of a malfunctioning vehicle is easier to absorb because there are very few passenger vehicles.

Re: Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

#152

Post by xnx »

mhb wrote: post #147
xnx wrote: post #126

This must've been proposed, but why don't we ticket Cruise as a single "driver"? The number of infractions they've had would certainly get their license suspended.

It depends on your goal. Does aggressively ticketing new teenage drivers lead to better driving? There is a huge potential benefit. If the cars are going to improve they need to be tested in the real world. So maybe some forbearance is justified?

Ticketing and suspension for repeat offenses is an appropriate response to a single teenage driver or single self driving system. Cruise needs to spend more time in simulation. They are at least a few years from being ready for the road.

Re: Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

#153

Post by dotnet00 »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #150
dotnet00 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enhanced signage doesn't mean that the cars shouldn't be able to read regular signage, it just means that future usages of signage will make the task easier and lower risk. As such, locations without the signage aren't "no man's land". Would be similar to how many places aren't outright banning ICE cars, just banning the sale of new ones at some point in the future. Allowing for a comparatively smooth transition. The…

> Would be similar to how many places aren't outright banning ICE cars, just banning the sale of new ones at some point in the future. Allowing for a comparatively smooth transition. This comparison doesn't make much sense. We're highlighting a dangerous failure in capability here, not a desire to change out the engine. Either engine works perfectly fine, it's secondary properties that we care about with transition.…

>We either need the enhanced cones or we don't, but only a fraction of cones being enhanced means they aren't actually that useful or that the situations without them are inherently more dangerous. Are we OK with a situation where autonomous vehicles identify the enhanced cones 90% of the time but the non-enhanced 50%? No, we want both to be very high.

I agree that we should strive to improve the vehicles' ability to detect even unenhanced cones. Doesn't mean that we can't also aim to gradually improve detection accuracy further with enhanced cones. That is, if autonomous vehicles identify regular cones correctly 98% of the time, but enhanced cones can be identified 99.99% of the time, we should be okay with a gradual transition to the latter, even though tautologically it means that the former is less safe.

We already do this with all sorts of things, safety standards improvements often have at least a grace period during which the comparatively less safe things are still allowed to exist and operate alongside the safer ones.

Re: Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

#154

Post by omniglottal »

danielvaughn wrote: post #133
frob wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing something like that takes massive public investments in changing our roads and infrastructure. Given that this money will come from the public, I would argue that it should be spent on publicly accessible tools and services, like enhanced public transit. I do not want to spend public money to build public infrastructure for the gain of massive private companies' experiments.

I mean, maybe? But it could be something as simple as (a) pick a designated color like purple or something, (b) paint a purple line in that lane, (c) make it a law that you can't operate the vehicle yourself while you're in that lane. I don't mean doing this today . I'm talking about a future where most vehicles have a driverless capability. The reason why it would be useful is that a lane of automated cars would be…

Disregard the price of your purple line, for I, a taxpayer, paid for the road you wish to paint. My car registration fees paid for it too. Don't dare assume it's OK to prevent me from driving on this public infrastructure. A couple year ago, politicians reduced a central thoroughfare through our city from two lanes to one, where a dedicated lane now exists for busses. This was profoundly unpopular and has increased congestion. Which of the one remaining lanes would you like to paint purple now?

Re: Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

#155

Post by ericmay »

danielvaughn wrote: post #115
ericmay wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be a dark, sick twist that driverless cars will get their own protected lanes in many American cities before bikes do.

Counterpoint: traffic congestion is almost entirely due to individual driver differences. An automated lane would be vastly more efficient and could potentially lead to fewer lanes being needed for vehicles altogether. This is assuming that most cars would be automated so I'm talking about a more distant future, but I see that as more realistic than convincing America to abandon it's car addiction.

Making it easier to take a car places has always caused an increase in driving. I don't see a reason that this would change with increases in automation. It's an additive solution (like feature bloat, for example) when we need subtractive solutions (better products)

Re: Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

#157

Post by danielvaughn »

omniglottal wrote: post #154
danielvaughn wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, maybe? But it could be something as simple as (a) pick a designated color like purple or something, (b) paint a purple line in that lane, (c) make it a law that you can't operate the vehicle yourself while you're in that lane. I don't mean doing this today . I'm talking about a future where most vehicles have a driverless capability. The reason why it would be useful is that a lane of automated cars would be…

Disregard the price of your purple line, for I, a taxpayer, paid for the road you wish to paint. My car registration fees paid for it too. Don't dare assume it's OK to prevent me from driving on this public infrastructure. A couple year ago, politicians reduced a central thoroughfare through our city from two lanes to one, where a dedicated lane now exists for busses. This was profoundly unpopular and has increased c…

Expand your horizon farther into the future. Imagine a world where the majority of vehicles have driverless capabilities. If you were to reserve a lane for automated traffic, it would significantly improve congestion and could lead to fewer lanes being needed at all.

Re: Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

#158

Post by grecy »

gwbas1c wrote: post #151
grecy wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many learner drivers do you think hit the streets of San Francisco every week? Should they be banished too?

People are not machines. Machines are not people. But I'll take your bait: I grew up close to a city, (Worcester MA,) with plenty of weirdo streets like San Francisco, and had plenty of teenage friends who lived in the city or travelled through it. Needless to say, we didn't get behind the wheel for the first time in Worcester. We stayed in calmer streets until we were ready. When we drove in Worcester with learner's…

> When we drove in Worcester with learner's permits, we had adult supervision. Afterwards, we were only allowed to drive without adult supervision once we passed the driver's test.

Am I to assume you never made a single mistake while doing so?

Of course not. Learner drivers stall, they forget turn signals, they don't keep up well with the flow of traffic. That is fine, that's all part of learning and perfectly normal.

> Clearly, Cruise's vehicles aren't ready to drive in San Francisco without adult supervision.

I don't think that is clear at all. Sure, they're making mistakes, but so did you and I and everyone else that ever learned to drive.

> But let's get back to the thesis: It is highly inappropriate to equate a machine with a human. Machines have no rights whatsoever. The "We've all got to learn sometime" attitude doesn't apply to this discussion, because an autonomous car is not a human.

I don't think that has anything to do with it. Driving a car is not a "right" that all humans have, it's a privilege that can be quickly taken away.

Everyone is afforded the opportunity to learn at some point, and we need self-driving vehicles to have that opportunity too. Fast forward 20 (or whatever it is) years to when self-driving vehicles are much, much safer, they mean long-haul truckers don't have to be away from home in an unsafe and unhealthy profession, they mean less vehicles on the road, etc. etc.

Society NEEDS those benefits, and if we never give the self-driving vehicles the opportunity to learn, we'll never get there.

> What instead applies to this argument is conventional engineering and business development: Where is it appropriate to run Cruise's early marketing experiments, where bugs (and other unanticipated behavior) is expected? What are the appropriate limitations to put on vehicles when they have no driver? For example, what if the first use of the vehicles was a private resort (like Disney World) where the nature of a malfunctioning vehicle is easier to absorb because there are very few passenger vehicles.

Absolutely, those are very important discussions to have. They are being had, by people in a position to make those decisions. Like a million things in our society, if you don't like the decisions they're making, you need to get yourself into that position.

Re: Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

#159

Post by LatteLazy »

shakow wrote: post #116
LatteLazy wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for public transport, and I don't think this will happen but... Because driverless cars are safer, faster and more efficient.

> more efficient. Beg your pardon? How is 2.5 tons of steel to carry a handful of people more efficient than a tram?

Private trams? Sounds worse than private cars to me.

Public trans? I already said I'd support that, but it's not on the menu is it.

Re: Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

#160

Post by ericmay »

fuzzbazz wrote: post #135
ericmay wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be a dark, sick twist that driverless cars will get their own protected lanes in many American cities before bikes do.

Isn't San Francisco very hilly? That's pretty bad for biking, it's a waste to reserve lanes for bikes if nobody will use them.

Meh they're not really bad for biking, and you can also just walk your bike up the hill, take a street car, or since you are probably using a bike with battery assist you can just ride up the hill.

There are plenty of options that negate this as a concern (actually it's not even a concern), especially when the alternative is big government autonomous vehicle welfare shoving ads up your ass and nickel-and-diming every move you make to participate in society.

Want to protest something? Sorry the government shut down your ride. Whoops you were mistaken for a terrorist - straight to jail! Did you forget to pay your Waymo bill? Guess you're stuck at home until you get the funds to pay it. Heading to the airport? Sorry sir you can't exit the car while the car is in motion, 40 minutes ETA until you arrive at your destination. But I can walk, it's right there! Sorry sir for your safety and those around you please enjoy this new Netflix special while you wait. You can purchase this bottle of condensed milk for $7.99 and it'll automatically be deducted from your paycheck.

Car-only infrastructure isn't just a really stupid and expensive way of doing things, it also keeps you under control.

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