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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

#31

Post by [deleted] »

pseudosavant wrote: post #18
s1mon wrote: post #10

According to Cruise's X(Twitter) account [0], the suspension seems to be related to an incident in which a human driver hit-and-run propelled a pedestrian in front of a Cruise AV and the Cruise vehicle couldn't avoid hitting the person. When that incident was first reported [1], it seemed like a situation where if it was a human driver in the Cruise vehicle, they wouldn't be found to be at any fault. However given th…

While clearly the initial accident was caused by the hit-and-run driver, when the Cruise went to pull over because it detected an accident, it drop on top of the pedestrian AND STOPPED right on her - "hurled her into the path of a driverless taxi that then ran her over, stopping on top of her as she screamed in pain". This poor woman was involved in two accidents really, and it is fair to shut down Cruise until they…

[deleted]

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#32

Post by lacker »

I'm disappointed to hear this news. So many people are killed by cars every year. We just take that for granted. Self-driving cars have the potential to drastically improve this and save many lives. I worry that these regulators are weighing the costs heavily while ignoring the benefits of innovation.

That said, I don't have access to the data and I don't really know if Cruise has been acting inappropriately. I'm glad that Waymo seems to be generating far fewer negative press reports, which seems to be a good proxy for whether regulators are going to clamp down. So I hope Waymo continues to operate successfully (and expands their service to me in particular) and I hope that Cruise improves their system and gets back online.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#33

Post by neom »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #22
s1mon wrote: post #10

According to Cruise's X(Twitter) account [0], the suspension seems to be related to an incident in which a human driver hit-and-run propelled a pedestrian in front of a Cruise AV and the Cruise vehicle couldn't avoid hitting the person. When that incident was first reported [1], it seemed like a situation where if it was a human driver in the Cruise vehicle, they wouldn't be found to be at any fault. However given th…

It seems related to the car not being aware there was an injured person under it. It's not hard to imagine that it's simply unequipped to know something like that, and it does seem fair to require that it become so equipped. Huge supporter of autonomous cars, still feel like this is completely reasonable to require a solution for.

I was just trying to think that through a bit myself! Say this situation happens, the car is on someones legs, it realizes it, drives forward and forward is over the head or chest? It's hard to think how you would want to program it to react even if it was aware something was stuck under it. Interesting situation with AV's I'd not considered before.

Updating my comment to include this:

“When it comes to someone pinned beneath a vehicle, the most effective way to unpin them is to lift the vehicle,” Sgt. Kathryn Winters, a spokesperson for the department, said in an interview. Were a driver to move a vehicle with a person lying there, “you run the risk of causing more injury.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/cruise-driverless-tax...

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#34

Post by ProfessorLayton »

As a pedestrian I'm not a fan of being an unwitting part of a private company's beta testing. Before this devolves into whatboutism vs the safety of human drivers, my opposition is to adding yet another unknown safety layer to walking down the street.

Usually when private companies are developing products that could kill, drugs for example, it is on the company to exhaustively prove the safety and effectiveness before launching it to the public. It seems odd that self driving cars have been skipping this step.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#35

Post by sleepybrett »

starbase wrote: post #2

Is there evidence that Cruise is more dangerous than a human driver?

There is evidence that when a self driving car is stalled in the middle of the street no one can actually figure out what they are going to do from moment to moment. No driver to yell at, doesn't respond to honking... should I go open the door and hit some big 'call mothership' button on the dash...Or will it try and run me over...

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#38

Post by [deleted] »

bluejekyll wrote: post #14
s1mon wrote: post #10

According to Cruise's X(Twitter) account [0], the suspension seems to be related to an incident in which a human driver hit-and-run propelled a pedestrian in front of a Cruise AV and the Cruise vehicle couldn't avoid hitting the person. When that incident was first reported [1], it seemed like a situation where if it was a human driver in the Cruise vehicle, they wouldn't be found to be at any fault. However given th…

To be fair, it’s not like we hold human drivers this accountable when they cause crashes. We should be suspending all bad driver’s licenses, AI and human alike. Today we give people passes for crashing while driving badly, and we should not.

[deleted]

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#39

Post by sleepybrett »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #3
starbase wrote: post #2

Is there evidence that Cruise is more dangerous than a human driver?

Given they didn't suspend Waymo, I would guess they must have been doing something so egregious that the median driver would not do.

I thought i just read that they were just allowed to put a lot more vehicles on the road, maybe because of a promise that they would be better but now we find that they are not?

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#40

Post by kelnos »

thelastgallon wrote: post #24
kelnos wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article you link to says there was more to it! The Cruise vehicle, after running over the woman, stopped on top of her with the rear axle/tires pinning her to the ground, trapping her there. And it just... sat there. I hesitate to believe that a human driver would do something like that. You could, however, argue that staying in place was the right thing to do; continuing to drive to get the woman out from under…

> I hesitate to believe that even a human driver would do something like that. They do! https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/09/why-drivers-in-c...

While appalling, this seems to be because the law has been set up to incentivize that behavior, not because the drivers fail to realize they've hit someone and/or panic and freeze up after doing so. Quite the opposite.

And people getting away with it -- even with video evidence -- seems to be an indication of police corruption. Which creates further incentive to do the wrong thing here.

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