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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

#331

Post by dron57 »

gcampos wrote: post #320
fhub wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That is actually an interesting question. We track how many accidents the automated cars cause, but I'm not sure how many accidents they prevent are tracked.

The companies do track that data internally. It would be nice if the DMV mandated it's release to the public. But of course this type of data is a counterfactual, so much more subjective.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#332

Post by b33j0r »

bsder wrote: post #268
b33j0r wrote: post #142

I know that the geography of North America and the timing of industrialization basically made this a pipe dream… Yet, trying to create near-peer artificial human driving intelligence—just so cities can continue to be designed around horseless carriages, minivans, and truck nuts—well, that may not have been the best solution to the problem. Ideally, autonomous driving would be for “the edge” of a transportation networ…

> We shot ourselves in the foot because mass transportation in America has failed to impress us as much as a Jaguar XK or Jeep KJ, or whatever your Soul Car is. As much as I'd like to agree with this, the fundamental problem is that most people in the US do not work at a single point in the city anymore. That's the real problem. You don't get to connect existing enclaves. You have to build your mass transit, fund it…

Very true!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path

But like. We can certainly innovate more flexible routing systems of transport that don’t require specific neural training and licensing to use foot pedals to stop it crashing.

(Maybe I could have reserved some of those neurons to be better at drumming!)

What stops us from using modular mass transit systems? Lots of things. But when mountains stopped trains, we exploded the mountains. Built huge bridges over ravines.

Because of the period between 1850 and 1970, I don’t buy the excuses. Unless it’s just “we’re still not there yet.”

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#333

Post by CityOfThrowaway »

hiidrew wrote: post #318
fragmede wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How does the price of these compare to Uber/Lyft?

More expensive

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#334

Post by tapoxi »

spaced-out wrote: post #258
tapoxi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keeping autonomous vehicles on the road will result in thousands of edge cases, and without a clear safety benefit (as opposed to Level 1 systems) its better to stop everything and reconsider. Honestly, I don't think this tech will be able to ever be fully automated without controlling the environment as well (dedicated lanes). There's just too many variables you can't account for, and too much risk.

> Keeping autonomous vehicles on the road will result in thousands of edge cases, and without a clear safety benefit (as opposed to Level 1 systems) its better to stop everything and reconsider. True, but I bet either a Cruise or a Waymo would have stopped rather than hit that woman crossing the street, and they definitely would not have fled the scene like the human driver did.

I mean it did hit her (again), ran her over, then stayed on top of her. That's not a better scenario at all. A Level 1 system can still avoid hitting people.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#335

Post by anigbrowl »

panarky wrote: post #241
moralestapia wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but replacing something shitty with something shittier will not improve the status quo. The bar for AI should be way higher than just "outperform mediocre humans".

> way higher Even 10% less grievous bodily harm would be a massive improvement.

The fastest way to do that is to put size limits on personal vehicles. There has been study after study showing that the larger and heavier cars get the greater the risk to pedestrians. Pedestrian fatalities have almost doubled over a decade.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/08/how-cities-can-stem-the...

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#336

Post by Lonestar1440 »

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…

Eyes and ears open in the city... I think a lot of humans would have spared the skater too.

Waymo vehicles impress me, I've seen them perform skillfully like you describe.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#337

Post by thesz »

gcampos wrote: post #320
fhub wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That is actually an interesting question. We track how many accidents the automated cars cause, but I'm not sure how many accidents they prevent are tracked.

The same applies to regular drivers. We do not track accidents they prevent.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#338

Post by pj_mukh »

skywhopper wrote: post #299
pj_mukh wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“The woman got dragged 20feet” With respect this part is not clear. Only that the woman moved 20feet. The DMV has not made clear whether she moved 20feet from the location of original Collision (ie with the human driver) or she was dragged 20feet as the cruise car kept driving. They’ve let the audience fill in the blanks and we’ve collectively come to the more exciting conclusion.

The Cruise statement is what mentions "pulling the pedestrian forward 20 feet" so it's clear she was dragged for at least that distance.

It’s so painfully obvious to me that the solution here is to not having flying humans because of bad drivers that hit and run and not “actually let’s ban autonomous driving” (the city will inevitably come after Waymo next)

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#339

Post by bonestamp2 »

ryandrake wrote: post #284
bonestamp2 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I counted 14 cars without headlights on after sunset on a 2 mile bike ride yesterday. This one could be fixed tomorrow by adopting regulations that other advanced countries have had for decades.

We have the regulations. What we need is enforcement of existing regulations. The only thing that seems to get enforced around where I live is speeding, and very unevenly: one time a month or so you see them out giving tickets like gangbusters. On all other days and for all other laws, it seems like the highway is a free-for-all: Stop sign rolling, running red lights, playing with your phone while driving, weaving in…

> We have the regulations. What we need is enforcement of existing regulations.

In the case of headlights, I disagree. Many other countries have laws that require always on headlights, or at least daytime running lights (DRLs) in some cases.

For example, I work in the auto industry and the cars that we distribute in America have different light programming than the cars we send next door to Canada. It's stupid. We should at least require DRLs in America and then we'd be on par with countries like Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, etc. who recognize it's safer when every moving vehicle is lit up. There's no day-to-day enforcement needed, the car turns on the lights automatically every time the vehicle is started.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#340

Post by TulliusCicero »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #34

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 befor…

In principle, I agree.

It's just that, in practice, it's almost certainly impossible to reach safe self-driving cars without a period of 'public beta testing', you'll just never get enough data and experience.

Not entirely unlike how there's a period for new drivers where they really aren't safe, but there's no way for them to become safe without going out onto the regular roads and gaining more experience.

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