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San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming

washingtonpost.com

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Re: San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming

#41

Post by alex7734 »

standardUser wrote: post #35
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you take all human driven cars off the road, you’re not going to get nearly the efficiency and safety you describe. I, for one, don’t want to live in a world where my ability to go anywhere is decided by Google and Uber. Big Tech has way, way too much power already. Please don’t give them any more of it.

That is what government regulations are for. No one freaks about about Amtrak suddenly deciding who can and can't ride their trains.

MasterCard can and does decide who can or cannot take payments and nobody gives a damn either

Re: San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming

#42

Post by mlyle »

supermatt wrote: post #26

They should simply be held to the same standard as any other road user. Whoever is ultimately responsible for these cars should also be responsible for the traffic offenses. Prosecute them. Revoke their drivers license. Impound the vehicles. Im not against driverless cars, but I am against unbalanced treatment of road users, legal persons and natural alike.

> Revoke their drivers license. Impound the vehicles.

> Im not against driverless cars, but I am against unbalanced treatment of road users, legal persons and natural alike.

OK, well, ... surely we need to have some kind of not-exactly-equal treatment. If I commit 4 traffic offenses in a year, I'll get a suspended license. If Google commits 4 traffic offenses in a year across, say, 5,000 cars and 50,000 vehicle hours, they probably should not have operations suspended.

Re: San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming

#43

Post by LeafItAlone »

mlyle wrote: post #28
MostlyStable wrote: post #15

It's entirely possible that this tech isn't yet ready for an expansion, but this article does a shit job of demonstrating that. The alternative is not perfect drivers. The alternative is real human drivers who make all kinds of mistakes every day. I completely believe that these incidents are real, but without comparison to the actual alternative, it's useless information.

My guess is that the self-driving cars are a bit safer against injury/death per mile (we don't have enough data to know either way), but make stupid mistakes that inconvenience emergency services a lot more. But we don't know how to make human drivers any better, and self-driving cars are steadily improving (even if that's slowing down a little).

> make stupid mistakes that inconvenience emergency services a lot more

Maybe. But human drivers already do this way more than I would expect. I’ve seen emergency vehicles stopped and blocked by human drivers who are either paralyzed with uncertainty of what to do or selfishness (no way of knowing what’s going through their minds).

Re: San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming

#44

Post by BaculumMeumEst »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #16
jseliger wrote: post #5

I think this is just complacency and a bias towards how things are; imagine a world in which biking is safe, pedestrians are safe, and huge amounts of the city don't have to be devoted to parking. That's what 24/7 driverless cars can enable.

Unless you take all human driven cars off the road, you’re not going to get nearly the efficiency and safety you describe. I, for one, don’t want to live in a world where my ability to go anywhere is decided by Google and Uber. Big Tech has way, way too much power already. Please don’t give them any more of it.

> I, for one, don’t want to live in a world where my ability to go anywhere is decided by Google and Uber.

Great news! If you join the tens of thousands of people who die from driving related deaths every year in the US, you won’t have to.

Re: San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming

#45

Post by jeffbee »

z0mghii wrote: post #4
jmclnx wrote: post #2

With these driverless cabs, will a person still be behind the wheel ? Or is no one there. If not, what happens if an accident occurs and the cab keeps on driving due to a software bug ?

There's already driverless cabs with no one behind the wheel running. Just not 24/7. If some accident or bug occurs, they currently just stop completely until a person comes out

Waymo already operates around the clock. Their application to CPUC will only allow them to charge for the service.

Re: San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming

#46

Post by fairity »

I took one of these in Phoenix, and realized how easy it would be to rob/kidnap/assault someone in a SDC. If you simply surround the car on all four sides, the car will refuse to move.

All it would take is 4 thugs to surround the vehicle and you would have to give up all your belongings. In the current world, you’d just run one of them over but that’s not an option in SDC’s.

This combined with the fact that the cars are easily identifiable and trackable via the app seems like a disaster waiting to happen. I'm not sure what you could do other than arming vehicles.

Re: San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming

#47

Post by mlyle »

LeafItAlone wrote: post #43
mlyle wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that the self-driving cars are a bit safer against injury/death per mile (we don't have enough data to know either way), but make stupid mistakes that inconvenience emergency services a lot more. But we don't know how to make human drivers any better, and self-driving cars are steadily improving (even if that's slowing down a little).

> make stupid mistakes that inconvenience emergency services a lot more Maybe. But human drivers already do this way more than I would expect. I’ve seen emergency vehicles stopped and blocked by human drivers who are either paralyzed with uncertainty of what to do or selfishness (no way of knowing what’s going through their minds).

They're both guesses based on incomplete data. But it sure looks like self-driving cars are still a fair bit worse on the second. The whole "fail safe" thing is great for overall safety but bad for doing something reasonable in these edge situations.

Re: San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming

#48

Post by esrauch »

skepticATX wrote: post #23
jseliger wrote: post #5

I think this is just complacency and a bias towards how things are; imagine a world in which biking is safe, pedestrians are safe, and huge amounts of the city don't have to be devoted to parking. That's what 24/7 driverless cars can enable.

Why will self driving cars enable this though? It seems to me that an equally plausible outcome is that we move even further towards cities built solely around the car.

Driverless cars won't ever road rage / deliberately drive close to bikers to freak them out at least.

Re: San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming

#49

Post by ChatGTP »

fairity wrote: post #31
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you take all human driven cars off the road, you’re not going to get nearly the efficiency and safety you describe. I, for one, don’t want to live in a world where my ability to go anywhere is decided by Google and Uber. Big Tech has way, way too much power already. Please don’t give them any more of it.

> I, for one, don’t want to live in a world where my ability to go anywhere is decided by Google and Uber. Seems like a red herring. I think it’s safe to assume that you will be able to own your own SDC, and the faster Google gets this tech scaled, the sooner you can affordably purchase one.

Would I be purchasing it from Google ? Android Car (tm)?
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