Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco • Hacker News Board

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#411

Post by bee_rider » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 12:35 PM UTC

carlmr wrote: post #264

bee_rider wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or I could be pessimistic about GPS -- these things are, albeit in limited numbers, on the road and actually being used by customers, right? I guess I'm surprised GPS is so reliable that this isn't a widespread, constant issue, if this is the normal "I lost GPS" behavior.

It could be a middle ground kind of thing. The cars have to trust something . For position you have GPS + some interpolation based on your movement sensors + some buildings/streets and maps (also unreliable since construction etc changes a lot, a lot of buildings and intersections look the same, etc). Computers are very far away from understanding where they are from context alone. Hell most humans don't know where t…

Yeah, I sort of expected a lizard brain/mammal brain split: features like object avoidance and the ability to pull over don't require the car to know where on Earth it is, and if the car can't identify to side of the road and drive to it safely with local sensors, then it just isn't fit to be on the road. That sort of stuff needs to be operate with an antilock-breaking/"fire the airbags?" level of reliability.

"Where on Earth am I" on the other hand is basically irrelevant to safety. Run it on the entertainment console or whatever. Interpolate position, come up with heuristics, whatever. I mean, it should be like two reasonably competent people on a road-trip -- if you are the driver and I'm the map guy, you aren't going to just stomp on the brakes when I inevitable lose track of where we are (I'm bad at navigating). You'd probably just go along the road while I worked it out, unless I was really confused, in which case you'd presumably pull over somewhere.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#412

Post by bee_rider » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 12:40 PM UTC

elpescado wrote: post #352

Flankk wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously there is no failsafe that pulls the car over, otherwise you would see that the cars had pulled over. This might be annoying on city streets but imagine if it were on the highway. An almost guaranteed 50 car pileup. If history is any guide, this will actually happen in the next few years and be followed by a lawsuit and regulation.

That's assuming that there's a space to pull over, which is often not the case on city streets. Especially, when every AV wants to pull over.

I mean, if we were driving together -- you have the steering wheel, I have the map -- and I say "woah I have no idea where we are," what would you do? I guess you would just drive around until I figured it out, or found a safe spot to pull over...

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#413

Post by MayeulC » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 12:43 PM UTC

pembrook wrote: post #399

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You ever wonder where the food you eat gets grown and how it gets delivered" the argument is strange, they don't exactly deliver 40 tons of wheat to the bakery with a taxi. Noone is arguing against cargo and utility vehicles unless they can be substituted by railway (which could be better designed, etc) https://www.tescoplc.com/updates/2021/how-tesco-is-turning-t...

When public-transport-as-panacea folks create laws to disincentivize vehicles, they typically don't make distinction between cargo/utility and personal travel. Gasoline and vehicle import taxes, and anti-vehicle urban design and laws hit all forms of vehicular travel equally. But again we're still stuck talking about cities. In any area where food is grown (or literally anywhere on earth outside of the .0001% of land…

Most pedestrian areas I know (and I've lived in some) are also accessible to at least light cargo trucks. I've also seen semi trucks in larger streets, and (large) cargo bikes in narrow ones.

In my experience, shops and businesses tend to get deliveries early in the morning, when the streets are nearly empty. On the contrary, delivery vehicles tend to get exempted from "anti-car" rules, or regulated to some designated time slots.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#414

Post by jokteur » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 12:46 PM UTC

Bromeo wrote: post #384

moffkalast wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cheap > well developed > reliable Speaking as a guy in Europe where we generally have "good" public transport, I think you can only ever have ONE of those at the same time, with some exceptions. Cheap fares? You get decrepit busses from the 80s and the timetable's just a suggestion (what my city used to have) Well developed? Development isn't cheap so fares get expensive, busses are Mercs that run on CNG and the ti…

> so 2/3 for them I suppose In Zürich, a monthly city ticket is around $50, and a monthly country wide public transport ticket is $340 (and really gets you almost everywhere). Annual tickets are slightly cheaper. I would argue while not "very cheap", the prices are still reasonably cheap, especially when compared to reoccurring car costs.

Also, the median salary in Switzerland is high enough such that $50 per month is absolutely affordable.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#415

Post by arrrg » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 12:54 PM UTC

ghusbands wrote: post #410

ecshafer wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

40k people are dying a year from cars, and the problem is that driverless electric cars are not the solution. They are the faster horse kind of innovation. If we were serious about reducing fatalities, improving health, and reducing pollution, the solution would be to drastically reduce the amount of miles driven per year and the number and the size of the cars. We need to encourage people to bike and walk and use pu…

None or few of those options are particularly accessible (EDIT: for people who cannot walk/cycle long distances). Public transportation often is quite inaccessible while still claiming to be accessible (like the London Underground and the New York Subway). Central management of driverless cars could solve the problem in a more inclusive fashion and isn't just more of the same idea. We should still reduce the size of…

If we could reduce car infrastructure to the point where only people who need a car for the transportation to be accessible would use it that would be a dream.

I don’t get the accessibility angle at all. It’s a non-issue because you will have a very hard time finding people who have issues with exceptions for accessibility. That would still reduce the need for car infrastructure massively.

The thing is, we need to start building the future right now, right here and massively. That means public transportation centric development (= building public transport to nowhere and letting the area develop alongside the walksheds with appropriate mixed use zoning) and actually being brave enough to re-structure existing solutions along those lines. That all isn’t magic, we just need to do it. We know it works, it doesn’t require any technological breakthroughs.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#416

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 12:56 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #388

I am just wondering how many people have to die before it finally dawns on on us that the current approach is idiotic. The supposed smart cars can't even talk to each-other directly 'without internet' to warn of a car pileup! They can't report to city traffic control about their condition. We should be innovating in infrastructure instead - create standardised computer readable infrared road markings, equip each traf…

[deleted]

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#417

Post by amq » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 1:08 PM UTC

moffkalast wrote: post #375

bjoli wrote: post #316

The promises of self driving cars have always seemed weird to me. Sure, I would love to have a world where all cars are self driving. The security benefits seem large. But decreasing congestion? We already know how to do that, and in many ways it seems like a safer bet than some kind of technogy with large problems and even larger unknowns; public transport. Cheap, well developed, reliable public transport will beat…

> cheap > well developed > reliable Speaking as a guy in Europe where we generally have "good" public transport, I think you can only ever have ONE of those at the same time, with some exceptions. Cheap fares? You get decrepit busses from the 80s and the timetable's just a suggestion (what my city used to have) Well developed? Development isn't cheap so fares get expensive, busses are Mercs that run on CNG and the ti…

Vienna, Austria: public transport costs 1 EUR per day without any limits. It is also extremely well developed and reliable. Most people, especially without kids don't even consider getting a car.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#418

Post by rsynnott » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 1:10 PM UTC

pembrook wrote: post #399

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You ever wonder where the food you eat gets grown and how it gets delivered" the argument is strange, they don't exactly deliver 40 tons of wheat to the bakery with a taxi. Noone is arguing against cargo and utility vehicles unless they can be substituted by railway (which could be better designed, etc) https://www.tescoplc.com/updates/2021/how-tesco-is-turning-t...

When public-transport-as-panacea folks create laws to disincentivize vehicles, they typically don't make distinction between cargo/utility and personal travel. Gasoline and vehicle import taxes, and anti-vehicle urban design and laws hit all forms of vehicular travel equally. But again we're still stuck talking about cities. In any area where food is grown (or literally anywhere on earth outside of the .0001% of land…

> When public-transport-as-panacea folks create laws to disincentivize vehicles, they typically don't make distinction between cargo/utility and personal travel.

... Wait, I mean they absolutely do. Pedestrianised streets are usually open to goods vehicles early in the morning for delivery, etc.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#419

Post by varjag » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 1:11 PM UTC

la64710 wrote: post #407

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #388

I am just wondering how many people have to die before it finally dawns on on us that the current approach is idiotic. The supposed smart cars can't even talk to each-other directly 'without internet' to warn of a car pileup! They can't report to city traffic control about their condition. We should be innovating in infrastructure instead - create standardised computer readable infrared road markings, equip each traf…

>>The supposed smart cars can't even talk to each-other directly 'without internet' to warn of a car pileup! They can't report to city traffic control about their condition. - This by far in my opinion is the single most important attribute of any autonomous fleet of vehicles that is needed. There should be first of all a standard of communication via RFC defined for autonomous vehicles and drones. Any vendor manufac…

I think this is a bad idea. The potential for a malicious/incompetent/malfunctioning actor to wreck havoc becomes enormous.

Vehicles should assess and plan driving from first principles and physical sensory inputs. Networked inputs could be helpful as augmentation but it's not something one should rely on at all. Kind of like you shouldn't take a human showing/not showing a turn for a reliable signal of intent.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#420

Post by amq » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 1:11 PM UTC

natch wrote: post #298

jjulius wrote: post #96

With all of the talk, usually around Teslas but I suppose it applies to all EVs, that I've seen over the years akin to, "Just imagine how safe driving will be when every vehicle is FSD and can talk to one another," I have to ask... shouldn't we anticipate seeing similar issues to this in that scenario? I mean yeah, there will be different manufacturers so it's not like every car in a city could come to a standstill.…

I suspect these cars having problems in SF are using a centralized solution, so they are dependent on some server. The better approach is decentralized, with each car built to always fend for itself without a server, imho.

Blockchain for the rescue! /s