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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

#31

Post by qbasic_forever »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #4

At least going by the r/selfdriving cars subreddit, it seems like Cruise cars get into a lot more 'incidents' than Waymo cars. Especially getting randomly stuck because they don't know what to do.

One of the articles about this past weekend's Cruise traffic jams mentioned the company blamed a flakey cell phone signal as the root cause. Now why would having perfect access to cell networks be required to keep the car driving... I suspect because Cruise is relying much more heavily on remote human drivers. It would not surprise me to find out Cruise is just a big scam and the self driving algorithm fails so often the cars are basically just remote piloted taxis.

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

#32

Post by stickfigure »

mdorazio wrote: post #7

A quick search on Google News shows at least 3 human drivers did the same thing in the last 3 months, so this doesn't bother me all that much.

"car stuck in concrete" on google image search shows a lot of human-driven carnage.

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

#33

Post by melling »

kube-system wrote: post #25
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #18

What I'd like to know is if the concrete was marked out with cones. If it was then clearly the car's fault, if not then the worker's fault. Cones become more critical with the proliferation of non-human drivers.

We expect human drivers to attempt to avoid accidents which are not their fault (see: legal duty to lookout/avoid), why shouldn't we do the same for non-human drivers? To not do this seems like a step backwards in safety expectations.

But human drivers have similar accidents.

The good news is they can fix the self-driving software then replicate the solution forever in millions of cars.

Now, how to prevent the small number of humans who do the same thing?

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

#34

Post by pshc »

afavour wrote: post #11

This specific scenario doesn’t seem like a damning indictment of the tech, you can absolutely see how it could happen. But on the other hand it speaks to the “death by a thousand cuts”-yness of it all. How many other weird little edge cases exist out there for drivers? Countless. You’re going to struggle to program solutions to every one.

Yeah, the infinitely long tail of exceptional circumstances mean that automated driving is an AGI-complete problem. These exceptions are fairly rare, but once there are many driverless vehicles they’ll be more common. Vehicles will need to learn and problem solve to keep up.

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

#35

Post by forgetfreeman »

elif wrote: post #10
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s called “primal fear”

I dunno I've been using FSD over a year now and I still get giddy like I'm watching a DARPA challenge car in the university computer lab every time. Some of us are just excited and not scared by the future?

It's pretty trite to try to frame individuals healthy skepticism of self-driving tech as fear of some nebulous future outcome. The tech continues to demonstrate deficiencies -right now-, in this time. All evidence (and the industry's own reporting) suggest that parity with human drivers capability is nowhere on the horizon, and may not be credibly possible with current implementations. That being the case proponents now get to explain on what grounds drivers are supposed to celebrate introduction of additional mediocre operators to our streets.

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

#36

Post by olliej »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #18

What I'd like to know is if the concrete was marked out with cones. If it was then clearly the car's fault, if not then the worker's fault. Cones become more critical with the proliferation of non-human drivers.

Why? The entire argument for self driving cars is that they are safer drivers than humans. If that claim breaks down whenever the driving conditions are anything other than perfect, then self driving cars lose their only supposed benefit. If we have to substantially change everything we do on or around the road to simply help them match human efficacy then (1) what is the point of a "self driving" car that can trivially encounter breaking conditions and (2) if these changes would be beneficial safety why haven't we already done them for human drivers?

Also the picture in the article shows both cones and workers, the presence of either would generally cause a human to alter how they drive.

What we see consistently is self driving cars that randomly stop in perfectly reasonable driving conditions, and similarly we see repeated cases of them driving through clearly unsafe areas. If a single human driver repeatedly made these same mistakes they would lose their license, but for some reason we allow it from these unsafe self driving systems. If a car manufacturer ships a car that is found to operate unsafely, the manufacturer is required to recall them, and isn't allowed to return the car to market until the problem is demonstrably fixed.

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

#37

Post by kube-system »

melling wrote: post #33
kube-system wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We expect human drivers to attempt to avoid accidents which are not their fault (see: legal duty to lookout/avoid), why shouldn't we do the same for non-human drivers? To not do this seems like a step backwards in safety expectations.

But human drivers have similar accidents. The good news is they can fix the self-driving software then replicate the solution forever in millions of cars. Now, how to prevent the small number of humans who do the same thing?

If you are saying that the car bares some responsibility for avoiding this, and should be fixed, then we agree.

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

#38

Post by benatkin »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #23
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #18

What I'd like to know is if the concrete was marked out with cones. If it was then clearly the car's fault, if not then the worker's fault. Cones become more critical with the proliferation of non-human drivers.

Ah yes, it is clearly incumbent upon all other industries to modify their practices to pave over the gross deficiencies of self-driving cars.

It's fine by me if self-driving cars need help and get it, so long as the technology is beneficial. I think it is.

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

#39

Post by forgetfreeman »

melling wrote: post #33
kube-system wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We expect human drivers to attempt to avoid accidents which are not their fault (see: legal duty to lookout/avoid), why shouldn't we do the same for non-human drivers? To not do this seems like a step backwards in safety expectations.

But human drivers have similar accidents. The good news is they can fix the self-driving software then replicate the solution forever in millions of cars. Now, how to prevent the small number of humans who do the same thing?

We can entertain that second hypothetical once the first one's been covered yeah?

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

#40

Post by forgetfreeman »

benatkin wrote: post #38
forgetfreeman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, it is clearly incumbent upon all other industries to modify their practices to pave over the gross deficiencies of self-driving cars.

It's fine by me if self-driving cars need help and get it, so long as the technology is beneficial. I think it is.

Ok, on what grounds is technology that performs a job that humans can generally do better at beneficial in the broad sense? That it's benefitting a handful of individuals who profit off eliminating jobs isn't in question, but where's the upside for the rest of us?
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