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San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

latimes.com

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Re: San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

#31

Post by dylan604 »

pixel3234 wrote: post #28
dylan604 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you suggesting this on a per car basis, or all cars working off of the same point system? accruing enough points to unlock "suspended license" achievement would seem appropriate to be applied to the entire fleet since it's the same "AI".

Per driving license. It already works like that with truck driver and other professional drivers. They may have 5x more accidents than normal person, but they drive 20x more miles.

Truck drivers are individual people making discrete decisions. A robocar company all uses the same training data to make the same results.

Put 10 different human drivers in the same situation, you'd expect a variance of decisions being made. Put 10 robocars in the same situation, you'd expect 1 decision being made. Is this not how they are being tested? Am I crazy to assume this?

Re: San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

#32

Post by bunga-bunga »

rurp wrote: post #20

The specific examples listed out in the article are egregious, causing real harm. The fire chief is right to be angry, if anything her response is too measured. From the article: - Running through yellow emergency tape and ignoring warning signs to enter a street strewn with storm-damaged electrical wires, then driving past emergency vehicles with some of those wires snarled around rooftop lidar sensors. - Twice bloc…

That list is almost funny, as if they’re already trying to kill us.

Re: San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

#33

Post by Sharlin »

dopylitty wrote: post #24

It’s absolutely insane that automated driving is allowed on public streets. It should be completely banned until such time as there exists a comprehensive testing regime for validating that the automated system functions in all the scenarios it might be expected to face including emergency vehicles, construction, pedestrians, bad weather, and damaged sensors.

To be fair, human drivers are not validated either to function correctly in those scenarios. Though it would certainly be nice if they were.

Re: San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

#34

Post by jeffbee »

These articles always conflate all industry participants but when you dig into it, it's always Cruise that is causing the problem. SFMTA's complaint to the state about Waymo cites 13 incidents in Appendix B involving Cruise cars. The very best thing Waymo could do is lobby the state government to establish strict rules so their own reputation doesn't get diluted by Cruise.

There are a quarter million vehicle crashes in the DataSF Fire Department Calls For Service. Self-driving cars will prevent these. It's the systematically better way to go.

Re: San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

#35

Post by jokoon »

It's weird, I'm a developer, and I really want AI to work, but it just doesn't, so I'm just generally against AI in general. And it seems it's far, far from working properly.

It's difficult to see domains where AI can really improve productivity without having major drawbacks.

I'm not against research on AI, but as long as science cannot define what intelligence really is, I guess AI will not make major advances.

Re: San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

#37

Post by nordsieck »

I do think that, as long as someone hasn't yet invented the sufficiently smart self driving car, that robo-taxis will be required to have some sort of override mode, either cell or satellite based; something where a remote human operator can take over, using the sensor data to drive the car until it can get back to situations where it can actually handle.

I understand that lag can be an issue, but if speeds are limited to 5-10 mph, that should be less of a problem.

Re: San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

#38

Post by crote »

Sharlin wrote: post #33
dopylitty wrote: post #24

It’s absolutely insane that automated driving is allowed on public streets. It should be completely banned until such time as there exists a comprehensive testing regime for validating that the automated system functions in all the scenarios it might be expected to face including emergency vehicles, construction, pedestrians, bad weather, and damaged sensors.

To be fair, human drivers are not validated either to function correctly in those scenarios. Though it would certainly be nice if they were.

If a human did this, they would probably be arrested and lose their driver's license. Stuff like this is something you just can't do.

But self-driving cars get away with it because we haven't figured out how to hold them responsible yet.

Re: San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

#39

Post by jb12 »

This past weekend in SF, I saw a driver slow and stop to reverse parallel park on Bush Street at Fillmore. An automated Cruise car stopped right behind him, blocking the driver from reversing into the parking spot. The guy got out to yell at the driver to back up, but then saw that it was driverless.

He drove off, and someone else got the spot.

Re: San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks

#40

Post by phpisthebest »

dopylitty wrote: post #24

It’s absolutely insane that automated driving is allowed on public streets. It should be completely banned until such time as there exists a comprehensive testing regime for validating that the automated system functions in all the scenarios it might be expected to face including emergency vehicles, construction, pedestrians, bad weather, and damaged sensors.

it is clear to me that most if not all of Human Progress will cease to advance as we have gone to the extreme with safety culture.

if we were still using Horse drawn carriages for travel, and someone invented the first Horseless Buggies today it would be banned and never allowed to advance at all. The amount of death and injury from the inception of the automobile would never be allowed in a new industry today. We have rationalized and assimilated the everyday human automobile into our lives, but refuse to accept any risk for something new

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