Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 1001 posts

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#381

Post by rurp »

alphabetting wrote: post #56
bobthepanda wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are theoretically a safety layer when we have proven they work. If they do not work well, then they aren't actually safer.

I haven't seen anything that indicates they don't work well. My anecdotal experience is feeling much safer inside and around them in comparison to vehicles with humans behind the wheel.

There are plenty of anecdotes of AVs behaving terribly, but anecdotes are beside the point. Normally when a company wants to introduce a dangerous new product on the market the burden of proof is on them to prove that it's safe enough. For various reasons tech companies have gotten to do this in reverse by testing on the public to find out how safe they are.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#382

Post by LegitShady »

ccooffee wrote: post #353
tczMUFlmoNk wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same thought about the name. They also didn't refer to the name again in the rest of the article, so it wasn't even setting up a convenient name to refer to the vehicle and distinguish it from other AVs; it was entirely superfluous.

"Cruise gives the cars cutesy names" is typical of fast turnaround journalism. The reporter doesn't have the time or resources to investigate the details to determine if this is indicative of a casual culture at Cruise. Instead, they can drop the easily verified vehicle name and let the readers fill-in-the-gaps. It doesn't exactly line up with CA DMV suspending the AV permit, but it adds so-called depth to the story.…

I didn't get it from "Fast turnaround journalism", I got it from Cruise's official statement, which was linked in the post I replied to.

So basically nothing you said is relevant.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#383

Post by bombcar »

ironman1478 wrote: post #237
mips_avatar wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This woman got dragged 20 feet by the car after the collision, and then the car rolled over her leg and left her pinned to the ground until the fire department came and removed the wheel to get her out. The cruise vehicle wasn't at fault for the initial accident, but the subsequent damage it caused was entirely the fault of the autonomous vehicle. A person would have stopped and helped the pedestrian.

The person who hit and run the woman in the first place shows this is obviously not true. You think they didn't notice?There was a muni bus who hit a pedestrian a few weeks ago and didn't even notice.

If the Cruise had hit and run it might have been better than parking on the woman's leg.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#384

Post by paxys »

oceanofsolaris wrote: post #349
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,…

But SF is a damn rich city (due to all the tech companies and their employees). Why didn’t they solve or at least tackle these problems? It’s not like Cruise / Waymo could change city planning against the cities will, even if they wanted.

Because smart people who work in tech are above silly things like urban planning and getting involved in local politics.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#385

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

bluGill wrote: post #327
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…

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.

If the bus had dynamic routing, so it could show up where I am when I’m ready, and take me where I want to go, I’d be a huge fan. I don’t mean this ironically! I think dynamically dispatched, self-driving buses and vans will eventually save public transit. They’ll enable a much higher quality of service than current bus systems. Which drive around mostly-empty stopping every few blocks so it takes forever to get anywhere.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#386

Post by brightball »

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 finally decided to turn on the Tesla full self driving this month and it’s been a mixed bag.

Some over-cautious stuff like mentioned above but also some lane changes and adjustments that were better than what I would do.

I still prefer to drive myself so I’ll probably turn it back off at the end of the month, but I’ve got high hopes for when I’m older.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#387

Post by pj_mukh »

alooPotato wrote: post #356
bluGill wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

this is satire right?

Are people this incredulous about public transit?

I love autonomous cars, but its not scalable at all. Its obvious to me that public transit is the real future as the population grows.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#389

Post by minwcnt5 »

bluGill wrote: post #327
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…

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.

It's pure fantasy to think public transit can replace all/most car trips in American cities, even in most of SF.

It's not just a matter of "fix service", it's you need to completely rebuild the city with 5-10x the population density.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#390

Post by bluGill »

barkingcat wrote: post #329
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…

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.

I don't want imagination, I want real numbers! Several groups must have them, but so far nobody is talking, except those who have reason to conceal the truth. (Average drivers includes those driving drunk, which isn't a useful compare for someone who doesn't do that)

It is not hard to imagine that self driving cars are normally better except for some situation. If we can know those situations we can also talk about hybrid where we don't allow humans to drive where they are bad, and don't allow cars to drive where they are bad. However someone with real numbers needs to talk.

Post reply on HN