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S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

sfchronicle.com

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Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#201

Post by yafbum »

dekhn wrote: post #168
hosh wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may not be data to support this, but on the other hand, informal perceptions -- even if unsupported by data -- matters a great deal with products and systems. But I would ask the people living there what they perceive, not just relying on a news reporter.

informal perceptions are about the last thing you want when making decisions about large-scale technology roll-outs. Instead, people should be informed with the highest quality data, and need to be reminded that informal perceptions are often biased and skewed.

At the end of the day, people always make decisions based on emotion, because every decision involves assessing risk, including the risk of things that were not thought of testing. Data only tells you about the past while decisions only affect your future.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#202

Post by NickM »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #169
NickM wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I hear "skyrocket" I think "several orders of magnitude in a very short time". The article actually has quantitative data that shows reports of "incidents where driverless cars disrupt traffic, transit and emergency responders" rising by a couple orders of magnitude in a year. Yeah, the city officials have to cover their asses and make disclaimers about what they can and cannot conclude, because all they know is…

> they don't have access to Waymo's data. That seems odd. Surely the authority that licenses this sort of activity should have access to all the data that allows proper evaluation of its safety? Access to such data should be a prerequisite for the agreement.

You would think that, but the quotes in the article from the relevant officials seem to imply otherwise.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#203

Post by comfypotato »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #169
NickM wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I hear "skyrocket" I think "several orders of magnitude in a very short time". The article actually has quantitative data that shows reports of "incidents where driverless cars disrupt traffic, transit and emergency responders" rising by a couple orders of magnitude in a year. Yeah, the city officials have to cover their asses and make disclaimers about what they can and cannot conclude, because all they know is…

> they don't have access to Waymo's data. That seems odd. Surely the authority that licenses this sort of activity should have access to all the data that allows proper evaluation of its safety? Access to such data should be a prerequisite for the agreement.

It’s such a new area legally that there aren’t precedents for this. Consider dietary supplements as an example of a product that doesn’t have to provide their own safety data.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#204

Post by Loughla »

throwaway9274 wrote: post #145
dekhn wrote: post #115

"Skyrocket" is a word people use when they don't have the data to support their claim, but want to make it sound as extreme as possible. When I hear "skyrocket" I think "several orders of magnitude in a very short time". But the source of the quote with skyrocket, basically admits that they didn't have any quantitative evidence to support a massive change in incidents. Remember: reality is banal. Things are far bette…

Absolutely right. To situate in terms of recent events, there have been three stages of trying to delay / influence the California CPUC robotaxi expansion approval vote: 1. Tried a politician scare campaign. Failed because it was too transparent it was an attempted distraction from their terrible public safety record. 2. Tried coning and disabling the vehicles. Failed because it was too transparently astroturfed, leg…

My take is that this isn't so much about privately owned cars and/or taxis, but the real politics is in over the road trucking, and these incremental steps are just part of that.

If self driving over the road trucking happens (and that's sort of inevitable), politicians seem to legitimately believe it will collapse our economy. It seems like all self-driving anything gets lumped in with that.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#205

Post by dekhn »

Vecr wrote: post #191
dekhn wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During the height of Critical Mass, bicyclists would surround minivans and keep them from leaving. Drivers don't know what to do because if they push too hard they'll knock over and injure a cyclist. I don't expect self-driving cars to deal any better with cones, or any hostile action towards a car.

That's an ambush, are the self defense laws there that bad?

Uhhh... if you're surrounding by multiple layers of cyclists and try to drive your way out hitting a few cyclists, the cyclists are going to swarm your car and kill you.

To be fair, I think this only happened a few times and it was caused by a small number of bad players, while the majority of Critical Mass participants were ethically (if somewhat inconveniently) demonstrating their collective power.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#206

Post by cashsterling »

throwaway9274 wrote: post #145
dekhn wrote: post #115

"Skyrocket" is a word people use when they don't have the data to support their claim, but want to make it sound as extreme as possible. When I hear "skyrocket" I think "several orders of magnitude in a very short time". But the source of the quote with skyrocket, basically admits that they didn't have any quantitative evidence to support a massive change in incidents. Remember: reality is banal. Things are far bette…

Absolutely right. To situate in terms of recent events, there have been three stages of trying to delay / influence the California CPUC robotaxi expansion approval vote: 1. Tried a politician scare campaign. Failed because it was too transparent it was an attempted distraction from their terrible public safety record. 2. Tried coning and disabling the vehicles. Failed because it was too transparently astroturfed, leg…

I don't know why the other reply to this post got downvoted to hell. THe person has a point.

Fully autonomous cars are cool... don't get me wrong. But electric cars and autonomous electric/gas cars are probably not the right solution to our person transport needs. using energy to move a 4000 lb vehicle to transport one or two 200 lb humans is not energy-efficient... most of the energy is spent just moving the vehicle.

A 60lb e-bike can also transport a 200 lb person whilst using far less resources (both to make the vehicle and to operate it) and space.

Public transport also has better resource metrics than person car-based transport.

But here we are...

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#207

Post by cameldrv »

saalweachter wrote: post #82
cameldrv wrote: post #49

I've just got to say I'm so impressed with both Waymo and Cruise. Last year they did 4.5 million miles put together in California with zero fatalities. This is an incredible achievement.

The US rate is 0.57 fatalities per 100 million passenger miles.

Regardless of whatever the current fatal accident statistics are in the U.S., being able to build a robot that drives that far in traffic without killing anyone is an incredible technical accomplishment. The progress over the past ten years is simply astounding.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#208

Post by what-no-tests »

I worked as a software engineering tech lead on the "Ground Truth" team at GM Cruise for a short period in 2018.

During orientation, the founder (Kyle Vogt) told us all that the cars don't need to be better than a human driver, they only need to be "not worse" than a human driver. In fact, when questioned about it, he said that the sooner we could get robot cars on the streets of SF the sooner the software could improve.

The idea was that the more dangerous, "not worse than a human" era would be a necessary sacrifice of safety (compared to waiting forever until we had 100% perfect driving robot cars) -- so we could fast-forward to major improvements in the robot cars' capabilities.

That (IMO) cavalier attitude, a lack of rigor in the way software for the vehicles was being developed, and the fact that we had constant meetings about "diversity and inclusion" rather than on robustness, safety, ethics and quality pushed me to resign abruptly and go my own way.

Very disappointing experience - as I had hoped to see "The Future" before joining GM Cruise and even a fat paycheck and RSUs weren't enough to sooth my scruples.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#209

Post by projektfu »

dekhn wrote: post #177
Zetice wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exponential growth, several orders of magnitude... these are not what "skyrocketing" means, in actuality. So you are correct, none of those phrases describe the graph here, but none of those phrases matter. It's a sudden, alarming, and seemingly sustained trend, and it's worth writing an article over.

Have you ever looked at the chart of the velocity of a rocket? Rockets accelerate from 0 to 17,000 mph in ~5-6 minutes. the initial phase is exponential. (it's not useful being pedantic here, I think I've captured what people think when they hear the word "skyrocket"; it's intentionally used to frame the discussion)

A skyrocket is a firework. Its most salient feature is that it flies up above other things and calls attention to itself.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#210

Post by efitz »

I am on my 3rd Tesla- been driving them since 2015- and frequently use FSD beta. I’ve watched autopilot develop into FSD.

The thing that baffles me about all current autonomous vehicle efforts is how resistant they are to having any sort of environmental feedback engineered specifically to help driverless cars.

For instance, in addition to flashing lights, what if fire trucks broadcast a “keep away” radio signal? Perhaps engineered specifically to be easy to determine distance and direction. Perhaps driverless car companies would have to pitch in to pay for the transponder refit for every fire truck. This is just an idea from a layperson and probably unworkable in this form but you should get the drift of my suggestion.

Also, reading this story, why didn’t the city place orange cones in addition to caution tape? I seriously doubt any driverless car company is training their vehicles on caution tape; as a driver for 40 years I have never encountered caution tape in a way to influence my driving. If the city is allowing driverless cars maybe they should have rudimentary training and standards for personnel to avoid unsafe situations.

Ditto for the firemen and fire hoses - ORANGE CONES are what tells me not to drive somewhere.

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