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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

#371

Post by Karrot_Kream »

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…

Asking police officers to enforce traffic violations is a very expensive use of their time. Police offers cost a lot of money to employ, and we have a lot of publicly accessible road space. Having officers even regularly stationed at 50% of the most common routes would probably take up a lot more manpower than they have now and that means more taxes to pay for them. Creating a dedicated traffic enforcement division is probably more doable/cheaper, but again, the amount of people needed is large. The problem is fundamentally that the US has a lot of extremely lightly regulated public space designed for high speed and that's why our pedestrian and auto safety record is so much worse than any other developed country.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#372

Post by huytersd »

fkyoureadthedoc wrote: post #264
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

I don't think it's even VC brained, the average us NIMBY doesn't actually want anything to change with regards to zoning or public transit. They don't care that the closest place to buy anything is a 54 minute walk with 0 sidewalks, because it only takes 8 minutes to get there in their Tahoe.

Yes, this but with an appreciation for that paradigm. I get to live away from the city center, in privacy, and can have a bunch of land and room for activities I want to do. This way I get to raise goats, have a woodworking shop, grow my own vegetables and still be 10 minutes away from restaurants/shows/nightlife in the city center. I felt like an animal the few years I lived in an apartment.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#373

Post by rurp »

alphabetting wrote: post #41
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…

The whole point of AVs is that they are a safety layer.

A safety layer that kills people in novel ways... GPs whole point is that companies should have to prove that they are safe, not just assert that they probably will be and then test on public non-volunteers.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#374

Post by throwaway9274 »

After the CPUC voted to approve the self-driving expansion, the same people that tried to block self-driving cars there pulled two regulatory levers.

First, the California DMV, with result seen here.

The incident that triggered this event happened when a human driver, who is still at large, hit a pedestrian who flew into the path of the Cruise vehicle.

The car executed a maneuver to pull over for a safety stop, but failed to recognize the woman who was dragged some distance.

Second, they reached to the Federal agencies via Nancy Pelosi’s office, with primary focus being the NHTSA, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The request was to gather data, which given the friendly posture of the NHTSA at this time will likely result in the opening of an investigation.

Both of these moves have some bite. The California DMV can suspend licensure as happened here.

But they’re fairly straight-shooter civil service types in the end, and they’ll eventually clear the vehicles for use. You can see this in part because of the action against Cruise only, rather than Waymo.

Some may attribute this to Waymo’s greater political sway in California. But my experience of the products themselves is that Waymo has a higher quality self-driving system.

The NHTSA is a bit trickier to predict.

The NHTSA’s powers are broad in theory and as granted by statute. They could theoretically issue an order to remove a type of vehicle from the road for imminent threat to public safety.

However, their typical modus operandi is to issue recalls and work with the auto companies. They won’t want to test these powers under the current court, so my opinion is that they won’t take much action.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#375

Post by anigbrowl »

robswc wrote: post #306
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

Nobody will want to take public transit if the option of quick and efficient private transport becomes a reality. You can be taken exactly where you need to go in much more comfortable conditions with much less risk of running into anti-social behavior. That's why Uber has a market even in cities like NYC or DC.

That's like saying nobody would ride a bus when taxis exist. Most of the time people don't actually need or especially want door-to-door.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#376

Post by bluGill »

ryandrake wrote: post #267
Lonestar1440 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Humans are flawed drivers. But that makes them an Excellent baseline, because the last thing we want to do is make things even worse. I've observed all the things you did (in fact, all of them on Sunday). But I don't do any of them, and you probably wouldn't either if you ever used a car. I'm comparing self-driving cars to an average Human, who truly does drive acceptably. Over 99% of people drive acceptably. Th…

Further, you kind of assume human drivers are going to do these dangerous things, so you can anticipate them. It's more important to be predictable than to be conservative/safe. Stopping dead on a road with nobody in front of you because your AI detected a hazard might be objectively safe and conservative driving, but it is unpredictable and a driverless car that behaves this way is going to cause problems.

> it is unpredictable and a driverless car that behaves this way is going to cause problems.

Sure, but less problems than if it just kept on going and hit something. While rare regular cars have unpredictable things happen and many of them are a lot worse than a car coming to a controlled stop on the road. As a driver you need to be able to handle that. When there is a catastrophic failure of the vehicle the other vehicles need to safely react.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#377

Post by Karrot_Kream »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #218
RC_ITR wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If humans aren't the baseline then what is?

Public transit. We like to sensationalize every small problem on American buses and trains but they're also a lot safer than cars. Many countries have implemented transit systems around the world and while the US has been designed around the car shortsightedly for decades, transit is a well-understood mode with well-understood safety considerations.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#378

Post by anigbrowl »

alphabetting wrote: post #63
dragonwriter wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the whole point of AVs, like any other product of a for-profit business, is that they make the manufacturers money. A part of the sales pitch for AVs is that autonomy acts as a safety layer. As with any sales pitch, the interest of the manufacturer is often more in getting people to believe the pitch than in it being true, validating that it is true is a concern of outside parties. Insofar as AV adoption requires…

Profitability will be needed for companies to succeed but it's not the point. Do you think Google's main motivation behind starting AV work 14 years ago and incinerating billions on it over the years was really rooted in speculative profit years down the road?

Yes, of course.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#379

Post by alooPotato »

paxys wrote: post #310

I had an epiphany about self driving recently late at night on the streets of San Francisco. It was a somewhat deserted part of town, and the roads were empty. There was a lone Cruise car chugging along and constantly stopping at red lights. The signals were so badly optimized that the car would be the only one waiting at a completely empty intersection for minutes at a time, only to be stopped again at the next one,…

To have the city planning work correctly you kind of need participation from the cars. I.e. if the traffic light infra structure knew the destination of every car it could do things more globally optimal.

So in that sense, driverless cars will actually help because of kind of nuanced reason. My guess is that there will only be a small number of driverless car companies (tesla, waymo, cruise, apple, etc) and it'll be much easier to add regulations that those companies need to send their destination data in realtime to the traffic light infra. I think that would basically be a non-starter for peoples personal cars.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#380

Post by pie420 »

seagullriffic wrote: post #226
epa wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you observed 21 cars with issues out of the 1000 you saw, a marginal hit rate.

This is such a poor use of numbers to prove a point. Any unsafe car - one - could potentially end multiple lives. Therefore, one unsafe car is unacceptable. Look up "Vision Zero". It's possible, and should be expected from our town planners, vehicle manufacturers, and drivers.

Vision Zero is literally the least effective program out there. Almost every metric they track has gotten worse in the past 5 years
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