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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

#321

Post by tesseract »

mint2 wrote: post #271
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…

They aren’t littered through CA, in CA they are exclusively in SF. In SF they are common and as they seem to drive nonstop, take more road time than a comparable number of normal cars. They don’t stop and wait between fares, they seem to drive aimlessly in routes like ghosts or lost souls.

In the Palo Alto/Mountain View/Sunnyvale area I see Waymo, Nuro, and unmarked-but-we-all-know-it's-Apple autonomous vehicles quite frequently. A few times a week at least.

Cruise specifically operated in SF where I agree they have been a very common sight.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#322

Post by ccooffee »

leni536 wrote: post #179
yieldcrv wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is called achieving a minimal risk condition so pulling over after a collision, which resulted in dragging the human 20 feet is an interpretation of this regulation. sounds like California and Federal AVs regulations are equally not safe for the public's operations which is a good enough reason to revoke permits too, until they fix this together with the private industry

I don't think it's the job of the regulation to cover every possible corner case and to codify the exact behavior of AVs in law.

From my limited understanding, web browsers were improved drastically by the creation of cross-vendor testing (e.g. Acid tests). I wonder if there is a way to do some sort of AV simulator testing that would allow us to test the different manufacturers on data collected from the others.

AVs seem to all have different "mental models" of the external world, so it seems like we've got a lot of work before we can pipe data collected from this Cruise incident into a simulator and test Waymo, Uber, Tesla, etc.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#323

Post by [deleted] »

ceejayoz wrote: post #315
pj_mukh wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dragged 20 feet after she was pinned under the car, or after being hit by the (human) driver? This part is not clear to me, and DMV never makes it clear either.

The DMV makes it perfectly clear. > After coming to a complete stop, it then attempted to do a “pullover maneuver while the pedestrian was underneath the vehicle.”

[deleted]

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#324

Post by ra7 »

Solvency wrote: post #285
tmpz22 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are these autonomous vehicles so littered throughout California that you run into them weekly? In SF yes. Even small amounts of driving in certain areas will have multiple daily interactions with these vehicles.

Where can I see videos (in the wild, not corporate) of this? I've never seen one in my life, though I'm in LA.

Well, Waymo is now giving rides in LA as part of a promotional tour. So you might be able to see one sooner than you think.

https://youtu.be/iNlS1LSDjl8?si=Me-zKKD7g0dPo6tH

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#325

Post by TulliusCicero »

cp9 wrote: post #122

if people weren't VC brained they would realize that the way to prevent traffic deaths isn't to build fancy self driving cars, it's to invest in safer, more pedestrian friendly infrastructure and use the boring technology that already exists to get people where they want to go. the future is on buses and trains and bikes and pedestrian friendly 15 minute communities

This is a very obtuse way of looking at things.

Society is not a monolith. The people and companies choosing to invest into self-driving cars are not the ones who would be able to make communities more pedestrian- or transit- or bike-friendly. As much tech as there is in the bay area, Google is not a local duke that can unilaterally make streets less car-dominant.

The people who can choose to make communities more friendly to other modes of transportation are the citizens who vote for representatives and laws, the citizens who show up at local meetings, and very often they fight against safer streets, sadly enough. Democracy is better than non-democracy, but that doesn't mean voters always make smart decisions.

Personally, I would LOVE it if American streets looked more like Dutch streets, or even German streets. But within US politics, wanting safer streets like those is an extreme position. Most people grew up with car dominance, and they're uncomfortable with or skeptical of the idea of actual choice in transportation modes. There's an enormous amount of cultural momentum behind forcing everyone to drive.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#326

Post by brianbreslin »

fhub wrote: post #277
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…

From my perspective, as a relatively early adopter of Waymo (60+ rides). I have zero gripes with the driving itself. In fact I've seen Waymos do things that no human would be able to do*. Drop-offs and pickups I'd like to see improvements made like getting a bit closer to the curb. Occasionally the route selections make no sense at all. * Waymo made a right turn up a steep hill. Two lanes each way. It then pulled a b…

I rode in an Argo car (RIP) and it avoided an accident where everyone in the car was like "where did that guy come from". It saw at an awkward angle around the corner before any human could have.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#327

Post by bluGill »

fragmede wrote: post #282
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 is limited to San Francisco, rather than the whole of California, but they do just drive around the city, especially after 9pm. As a rider, the future is here. Instead of just checking Uber and Lyft for prices to get somewhere, now I check the Cruise and Waymo app for prices too. (Well, not Cruise anymore.) But yes, it's a thing . I call a car, sometimes it doesn't have a driver, and it takes me to where I need to…

Those sound like trips where you shouldn't call a car at all, but get on the local transit service. Talk to your local politicians about fixing service so that is an option.

Self driving cars are useful to replace various maintenance or delivery trucks in cities, and farm transport. However mass transit is better for most things people are thinking about them for.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#328

Post by hadlock »

Solvency wrote: post #301
mint2 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren’t littered through CA, in CA they are exclusively in SF. In SF they are common and as they seem to drive nonstop, take more road time than a comparable number of normal cars. They don’t stop and wait between fares, they seem to drive aimlessly in routes like ghosts or lost souls.

Why would they keep driving at all times with no passengers? How is that ecologically smart or sensible from a business perspective?

1) collect additional driving data. driving data is the moat for autonomous driving

2) move to a location where you're statistically most likely to pick up your next passenger, to reduce average wait time

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#329

Post by barkingcat »

RC_ITR wrote: post #186
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…

I agree with what you said, BUT From my perspective as a person who lives in San Francisco and also bikes a LOT: human driver also do not perform acceptably. I counted 14 cars without headlights on after sunset on a 2 mile bike ride yesterday. I counted 5 cars parked in either a bike lane or active traffic. 2 cars took blind rights (no stops) onto Polk from various alleyways. This was a good day, FWIW. Cruises have o…

Humans should be the baseline precisely because they aren't very good. Imagine a whole fleet of hundreds of self driving car that are worst than the average human driver (who are already really bad) all making the exact same worst than human mistakes.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#330

Post by [deleted] »

pj_mukh wrote: post #114
moneycantbuy wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently, the human driver responsible for the incident is still at large I welcome our robot overlords.

Amen. Really wish there was a way for tech (especially new AI tech) to wholesale abandon the city. Even just move south to the actual Silicon Valley. The city picking winners and losers like this is untenable

[deleted]
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