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California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

reuters.com

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Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#251

Post by cozzyd »

RC_ITR wrote: post #213
Lonestar1440 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Humans are flawed drivers. But that makes them an Excellent baseline, because the last thing we want to do is make things even worse. I've observed all the things you did (in fact, all of them on Sunday). But I don't do any of them, and you probably wouldn't either if you ever used a car. I'm comparing self-driving cars to an average Human, who truly does drive acceptably. Over 99% of people drive acceptably. Th…

>Cruises have obvious problems, but my hope is we don't use humans as a baseline, because they're not very good either. Yeah we agree? The point is human drivers aren't a proportions problem. It's that any unsafe driver is bad. Adding more safe drivers doesn't lower the risk of unsafe drivers, even if they're a smaller proportion of drivers.

yes, but wouldn't it be easier to remove the unsafe drivers? All of this AI would be really great at automatic traffic enforcement.

Of course the US has dug itself in a hole where many places require being able to drive to get around, putting unsafe drivers in a bit of a bind...

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#252

Post by thejarren »

I took one ride in a cruise car in San Francisco. A person on a moped in front of me accidentally dropped their phone on the road. The person stopped their moped in the middle of the road but the cruise car insisted on continuing and started jerking around.

Later, the car in front of me was going down the hill and my cruise car kept accelerating and then braked very hard once its sensors were able to see that something was in front of it.

It was an okay experience, but I’ll be honest, I don’t think I would be willing to take myself in it again or my family anytime soon. And honestly, I can’t believe that moped driver didn’t get hit/I didn’t get whiplash.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#253

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

RC_ITR wrote: post #224
PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If humans aren't the baseline then what is?

IDK, no fatalities caused by cars?

you're describing a goal or a requirement, not a baseline.

baseline in this case means minimum to be considered acceptable. We have been allowing humans to drive vehicles for as long as there have been vehicles.

Why would we not use that as the baseline? Do autonomous vehicles need to be absolutely perfect before they're allowed on our roads? or just be as good as humans, with the possibility of being better?

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#254

Post by stickfigure »

RC_ITR wrote: post #224
PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If humans aren't the baseline then what is?

IDK, no fatalities caused by cars?

Cars are large masses moving at high velocity. If there are humans in the vicinity, "no fatalaties" is simply not an option.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#255

Post by darkerside »

seagullriffic wrote: post #226
epa wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you observed 21 cars with issues out of the 1000 you saw, a marginal hit rate.

This is such a poor use of numbers to prove a point. Any unsafe car - one - could potentially end multiple lives. Therefore, one unsafe car is unacceptable. Look up "Vision Zero". It's possible, and should be expected from our town planners, vehicle manufacturers, and drivers.

Vision Zero is being used to justify some of the dumbest, most shortsighted traffic changes I've seen

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#256

Post by riffic »

RC_ITR wrote: post #209
epa wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you observed 21 cars with issues out of the 1000 you saw, a marginal hit rate.

Yeah - same thing as only 30k /300mn Americans dying in car accidents per year, right? A rounding error? The point is human drivers aren't a proportions problem. It's that any unsafe driver is bad. Adding more safe drivers doesn't lower the risk of unsafe drivers, even if they're a smaller proportion of drivers.

"accident" is a word specifically mentioned by George Carlin as a soft language euphemism for crash or collision.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37976566

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#257

Post by eurleif »

BetaDeltaAlpha wrote: post #235
Waterluvian wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are these autonomous vehicles so littered throughout California that you run into them weekly? I realize I don’t have a real concrete sense of just how many of these there are. Like is this a whole thing already? Edit: thanks for the responses…. Good gravy…

It's rare to go out for a trip (foot, bike, bus, or car) and not see at least one. After evening rush hour has concluded, they're a plurality of vehicles on the road.

What do you mean by "plurality" here? That term depends on what other categories you're dividing other vehicles into, so what are the categories?

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#258

Post by spaced-out »

tapoxi wrote: post #42
elromulous wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a wild edge case though. So we think the vehicle should do what, keep driving, potentially causing more damage? It's highly situation specific, and I'd expect the emergency personal to make the judgement call on how to free the person (potentially by taking control of the vehicle, or other means).

Keeping autonomous vehicles on the road will result in thousands of edge cases, and without a clear safety benefit (as opposed to Level 1 systems) its better to stop everything and reconsider. Honestly, I don't think this tech will be able to ever be fully automated without controlling the environment as well (dedicated lanes). There's just too many variables you can't account for, and too much risk.

> Keeping autonomous vehicles on the road will result in thousands of edge cases, and without a clear safety benefit (as opposed to Level 1 systems) its better to stop everything and reconsider.

True, but I bet either a Cruise or a Waymo would have stopped rather than hit that woman crossing the street, and they definitely would not have fled the scene like the human driver did.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#259

Post by dekhn »

Waterluvian wrote: post #208
Lonestar1440 wrote: post #120

From my perspective as a person who lives in San Francisco and also drives a LOT (10-20k miles per year, and many small drives within the city): Cruise cars do not perform acceptably. They manage to avoid collisions by driving extremely conservatively, but the way they traverse, say, a left turn against traffic is absurd. They slow everyone down, including emergency vehicles and public transit, by performing far belo…

Are these autonomous vehicles so littered throughout California that you run into them weekly? I realize I don’t have a real concrete sense of just how many of these there are. Like is this a whole thing already? Edit: thanks for the responses…. Good gravy…

I only drive to the city about once a week and I typically see 0.5 AVs per trip.

On the most recent drive, I was in the right lane on the freeway and an AV was merging from the on ramp. It was driving extremely slowly and did not react to me (IIUC I have "right of way" and it should either speed up or slow down) so I basically had to change lanes to avoid it merging into me.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#260

Post by marcosdumay »

mumblemumble wrote: post #215
mariusmg wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This looks like Cruise's fault Imagine having to write the code that "detects" if a pedestrain is caught underneath the car

It's not clear to me that this is purely a software problem; it might be a "the car doesn't even have the sensors necessary to detect this kind of situation" problem. It could also be a "the software can't anticipate that this would be happening the way a human can because it doesn't have object permanence" problem. That's probably at least part of how a human would do it. But I have a suspicion that we're very, very…

I would be surprised if it turns out that those self-driving cars don't have object permanence. Making things move around without a physical model looks like a really nasty infinite bug-breeder.
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