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

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

#261

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

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.

> Lack of good public transit? Let’s solve that instead

"Lack of good public transit" is code for "crazy, violent and antisocial people in American cities", which is not a problem USA is willing to solve.

The rest of the world doesn't care much about driverless cars.

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

#262

Post by lars512 »

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.

They might be an excellent solution for the last mile of mass transit, and a boon for the increasing elderly population in many countries.

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

#263

Post by huytersd »

mrastro wrote: post #54
huytersd wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public transit is no good. I don’t want to walk to a station and then share the space with other people. I don’t want to lug grocery bags around. I want to make pit stops. I want to go off road. I want to live in the suburbs or semi rural areas so I can have a lot of land.

If we (North America) had more walkable streets a lot of these problems would be solved: grocery stores are easier to place in population centers a short distance with less car and more foot traffic and you can rent a car for occasional "off-road" recreational driving. In terms of transportation and city design, the US could learn a lot from Europe if it weren't so addicted to cars. It's better for the environment, m…

Again you’re talking about dense population centers. Americans for the most part don’t want to live like that. They want stand alone houses with large yards in the suburbs. Those are not densely populated enough to make walking to all the businesses you need feasible.

Rental cars are a pain in the butt. Spend an hour getting one. You need someone to come with you to drive the vehicle you arrived in back or pay for expensive parking or an Uber. Repeat for when you drop it off. They kill all spontaneity.

That being said I would love to have a better train network in the US, just not at the expense of roads.

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

#264

Post by junon »

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.

This isn't Cruise's move. The DMV revoked their testing permits such that they're no longer street legal, within the last week. This is a PR piece, trying to save some face.

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

#265

Post by TheDong »

decafninja wrote: post #195
kdmccormick wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making big assertions without giving any details. > 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. Like what?

For example - ensuring there aren't crazy drug addicted homeless persons raging about murdering everyone on the train. When issues like that are brought up, common responses from the pro-transit crowd include: "The psycho is completely harmless, just let him be. He has every right to be on the subway too." "Cars kill people!. The psycho will never hurt anyone!" "We have to pass Medicare-for-all and pass unconditional…

It seems like such a bizarre jump to say "if we build trains, simply riding the train will drive people to drugs and mass murder, causing a new problem outweighing the benefits of the train".

If the train is not what is driving people to these heinous conditions, then it seems like this imagined problem is some unrelated thing.

Should we not build any shopping malls or parks or roads until we can somehow be certain there won't be a "crazy drug addicted mass-murderer" who goes there? Should we halt the plan to build apartments on the chance a purple dragon might take up residence and burn the town down?

For whatever it's worth, I've personally ridden busses in the US for years, taken subways and trains in no less than half a dozen US cities, and I've been murdered zero times so far. I don't see any reasonable path to "building more trains" leading to my odds of getting murdered going up.

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

#266

Post by djrobstep »

mrshadowgoose wrote: post #237
djrobstep wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not trying to win anybody over. Agoraphobia is a real disease. Look it up.

Yeah, believe it or not I'm familiar with that word. Is it really that hard to understand that other people simply might not like the same things as you?

Fear of public spaces or even being in the same space as strangers isn’t “liking different things”, it’s a psychological problem - albeit one that a lot of people experience due to modern society being very atomised.

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

#267

Post by guenthert »

melling wrote: post #64
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 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…

> “What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve?”

> 40,000 deaths in the United States every year. Hundreds of thousands of costly accidents

If reducing traffic death would be a priority, we could reduce the speed limit (would also help with resource consumption and climate change). We could also have smart phones go into sleep when in motion. That's a trivial technical problem. A much bigger challenge would be to allow smart phone usage for passengers while in moving vehicles, but until that is solved, cry me a river. Using a smart phone in a moving vehicle isn't a god-given right.

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

#268

Post by latexr »

solarkraft wrote: post #248
coldtea wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some do it because others are offended if they see them in full print. Others do it because in many places you wont pass moderation without it.

I'm more offended by having to guess which word is meant.

It doesn’t matter what the word is. It’s [expletive], it’s grawlix, it’s whatever swear word you want, in whatever language you speak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grawlix

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

#269

Post by dontlaugh »

dmix wrote: post #36
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.

Do we have to have this conversation in every single thread that mentions driverless cars? We get it, an extremely vocal subset of reddit/HN who lives` in downtown cities likes public transit more than cars.

Most people on earth live in cities. Most of those cities have working public transport.

Focusing on cars so much is to the detriment of all of humanity, hence the common pushback.

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

#270

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

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.

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