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San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

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Re: San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

#331

Post by kylecordes »

jwr wrote: post #72

I am really worried by the fact that I am the unwilling tester in the Great Driverless Car Experiment. Tradition has it that when you load-test a new bridge, you put the architect underneath. I feel like this, except I didn't design those driverless cars, somebody else did. Being an experienced software engineer, my trust in the software in these cars is pretty low. And yet they are testing them on me, because I can…

Maybe now is the time to start raising the bar on human and upcoming automated drivers.

Both could have to pass a driving test that includes challenging, difficult situations. Day, night, rain, snow, fog, heavy traffic, missing lane lines, simulated pedestrians (including small children) leaping out between parked cars, and more.

For further difficulty, both kinds of drivers could have to pass this within a x% margin of the fastest safe speed at which the maneuvers can be completed; no cheating by slowing down to traffic-disrupting speeds.

Re: San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

#332

Post by DavidPeiffer »

IgorPartola wrote: post #88

Being used to riding motorcycles in the US, why are headlights not always on for all vehicles at this point? LED bulbs last a very long time and there is little reason to not have them on during the day. I know, it’s much more fun to anthropomorphize the car in this case, but the simple solution is to just hard wire them.

Headlights always being on was the biggest thing I noticed when I visited Iceland. It is so much easier to see vehicles even during a sunny day, they simply stand out much more. As a result, I always turn my lights on right after I get into a vehicle.

Re: San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

#333

Post by tremon »

pempem wrote: post #248
tremon wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the typical teenager's mind, that would be after , not if

Was it an "if" in yours when you were a teenager? There are lots of strong statistical differences that are visible in the teenage population and trickle their way into insurance tables. Basically we could do a better job engendering concern from teenagers, its not some kind of inherent mental lack of capability.

My point was that worrying about hypothetical outcomes is not usually at the forefront of a teenager's mind. Sure, they will regret wrecking their parents' car, but that doesn't mean that they will avoid actions that might wreck said car.

Re: San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

#334

Post by JaimeThompson »

WindyCityBrew wrote: post #317
carapace wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. These robots are massive and fast, they are killers. Yet as long as they look like cars we let them run loose on public streets. It's kinda nuts. (Arguably car traffic as it's set up now is kinds nuts too, but that's a different argument.) The obvious thing to do is start with something like a golf cart that is limited to, say, 5mph top speed, and work your way up.

Lol. Drunk drivers are killers. People that text and drive are killers. People that get kicked by their kid and turn around for a second to yell at them are killers. I'll take an unfatigable, indistractable, computer that literally has eyes in the back of its head, and on the side of its head, and the front, and can bounce radar under cars, etc over the pitiful example of a "safe (human) driver" we have now.

>unfatigable, indistractable

memory leaks, priority inversions, dropped packets / data. Lots of ways systems can act strangely.

Re: San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

#335

Post by chasd00 »

jwr wrote: post #72

I am really worried by the fact that I am the unwilling tester in the Great Driverless Car Experiment. Tradition has it that when you load-test a new bridge, you put the architect underneath. I feel like this, except I didn't design those driverless cars, somebody else did. Being an experienced software engineer, my trust in the software in these cars is pretty low. And yet they are testing them on me, because I can…

> I am really worried by the fact that I am the unwilling tester..

stay inside in front of FANNG. You'll be safe there ( yet still an unwilling tester ).

Re: San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

#336

Post by AlotOfReading »

nkingsy wrote: post #279

Just my anecdote, saw a cruise car trying to turn left from the middle lane on Franklin. Came to a complete stop, bringing traffic to a halt, and waited for the cars on its left to clear out, including anyone who went around, then cautiously moved into the left lane and turned. Some kind of rude, selfish programming I’d be yelling at a person for.

The intention is for the car to be a very boring, unremarkable driver.

This sort of behavior has been noted before and most incidents were thought to have been fixed by a merge ~6 months ago, but there can always be missed scenarios/interactions. Was this more recent?

Re: San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

#337

Post by njarboe »

kylecordes wrote: post #330
slg wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, at this stage the driverless cars are unlikely to be creating demand. These are replacing human drivers. Most of us have no hand in verifying the safety of other drivers on the road. I happen to believe it is bonkers that we generally test drivers once at the age of 16 and somehow that earns a person driving privileges for at least 50 years before being retested if not their entire life.

Imagine if cars were invented today. The bar would be much higher, probably halfway to how pilot licensing works. (Of course this had some substantial downsides.)

If cars were invented today, they would be too dangerous to be allowed to exist. Almost nothing has been invented since 1970 that can cause any harm. Safety first and all that.

Re: San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

#338

Post by gothungry »

There are a lot of things concerning about these cars driving themselves around the city -- most of which are typically covered in these comment threads -- but here are a few questions that seem relevant to this particular incident:

How are police officers trained to deal with these machines? Hopefully its more than "call this number"; are Cruise support lines required by law to be open when their cars are on the streets? What mechanism to police or city officials have to control these machines? Do they have some interface to put the vehicle in neutral and roll it away? Assuming no, why not? What's the right protocol if a car gets a flat tire or is driving around with a door open? Would a driverless car by a different manufacture follow all the same protocols?

I'm sure there are clear answers to similar questions -- for example -- for the BART or Muni. It is preposterous that something this significant and potentially dangerous can be deployed on streets in a city with tens of thousands of pedestrians, and no messaging to the public about these details.

Re: San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

#339

Post by woah »

ethanbond wrote: post #299
carabiner wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't design the aircraft that you fly on, which are incredibly computerized. Also the drugs that your doctor prescribes. Etc. You put your faith in myriad bureaucracies and trust networks that you have no hope of understanding. Driverless cars are just one more added to the list.

Neither aircraft nor drug development norms look anything like the norms of software development. I actually find a substantial difference in my trust level between a traditional car company that's building self-driving capabilities (e.g. Mercedes) than a company that fashions itself as a software company that happens to build cars (e.g. Tesla) for exactly the reason of the norms and behaviors that each org would enc…

Didn't aircraft development norms lead to several planes plunging out of the sky with zero mechanical issues, due to software failure?

Re: San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on

#340

Post by ShakataGaNai »

bmitc wrote: post #2

I remain confused on how these cars are allowed on the road. Did they pass a driver's license check? Who's responsible? Who gets the ticket? In this instance, you can see that the car performed a dangerous maneuver by running from the cops, with its lights still off, and crossing an intersection, which is then spun by the company as finding a "safer" spot to pull over at. Even though, it found a spot essentially iden…

> Did they pass a driver's license check?

Yes. That would be the AV permit that the cars operate under. Also as they are programmed to obey all road laws, it's exceedingly unlikely they will cause any moving infractions.

> Who's responsible? Who gets the ticket?

Cruise. Their name is on the AV permit, it's their insurance.

> spot essentially identical to where it was.

Before it was in a lane of traffic next to a parklet, after it was pulled over partially into what looks to be a parking spot. The SFPD officer also was no longer next to the vehicle.

> how these cars are allowed on the road

At the end of the day the argument is that these cars are safer than the average driver. Having spent a lot of time in SF, I've seen a lot of these cruise vehicles moving about. I remember watching them in the early days in the Dogpatch, when an errant cone would end up with them being stuck until manual action was taken. Slowly they got better and smarter.

Yes, it's a hard transitional time. Mistakes may happen, but the same is true for humans. And not all AV technology is the same. Cruise has limited itself a great deal so it doesn't try to take on the entire world at the same time. Just the streets of SF, which are hard enough.

How many Cruise traffic accidents have you read about? How many people injured or killed?

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