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S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

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Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#411

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

Aurornis wrote: post #234
cashsterling wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why the other reply to this post got downvoted to hell. THe person has a point. Fully autonomous cars are cool... don't get me wrong. But electric cars and autonomous electric/gas cars are probably not the right solution to our person transport needs. using energy to move a 4000 lb vehicle to transport one or two 200 lb humans is not energy-efficient... most of the energy is spent just moving the vehicle…

> A 60lb e-bike can also transport a 200 lb person whilst using far less resources (both to make the vehicle and to operate it) and space. E-bikes are great for the situations, climates, and people who can use them. E-bikes are not a substitute for the majority of people’s transportation needs. I think the young, healthy people who live in moderate climates with good weather, short commutes, and little need to haul a…

People’s transportation needs have been built around the existence of the car. The actual needs — commuting, running errands, visiting friends — can be accomplished just as easily on an e bike, if only we built cities without cars in mind.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#412

Post by BirAdam »

AlexandrB wrote: post #372
fragmede wrote: post #306

I will provide a dissenting voice. I was riding a Cruise with a friend the other night, leaving a bar - they only serve a nighttime crowd right now. suddenly a drunk hippie on Haight street started banging on the windows. Rather than get on our way and get us out of there like a Homan driver would, the cruise stopped, powered down - as in unlocked the doors, and called customer service. I shudder to think what would…

There's also the other possibility that it's a firefighter banging on the doors, trying to stop the car from driving into a dangerous area. I'd argue that's the more dangerous scenario too. PCP doesn't magically turn someone into a maniacal killer.

Now that you mention it, this makes me think of all kinds of edge cases and how SDCs should handle them, and how they would detect them... hard problems. Of course, it seems like we humans are requiring the SDCs to be better than we are and not be our equals. I am not sure why. I do not know if that standard is good or bad; just making an observation. For example, a person could be banging on a window screaming for help. Many people would just speed away, some would stop and try to help, and in a few places in this country such aggressive behavior could get the person screaming for help killed.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#413

Post by jeffbee »

isityouyesitsme wrote: post #406
kelnos wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The city assigned a guy to go around and document every time an AV does something Want to provide a citation to back that up? > They didn't count them before and now they do. They've apparently been counting since spring of 2022; the large increase in incidents started a year later. > If some SFFD guy just stood around documenting all driver stupidity it would a significantly different report. Lovely dose of whatab…

Based on personal experience, yes if an AV is susceptible to a problem, then all of them are susceptible on at least the same software and hardware configuration. This is the same in every safety-critical field. The comment is a bit naive though. What is your statistical model for such failures? let's go with the example and assume that from now henceforth forevermore, all AVs will run through caution tape (which is…

> we definitely ought to hold companies' feet to the fire

To clarify my position, even though I oppose SFMTA's reactionary stance on this topic, I do think Cruise should be sent to the penalty box. Most of these incidents and all of the serious ones like driving through the caution tape were Cruise incidents. I think they should produce a public post-mortem report on that and demonstrate in virtual and practical simulation on closed courses that their thing doesn't do that any more. And I am sure Waymo already incorporates Cruises failure scenarios into their simulations. Call me a Waymo partisan but I don't think Cruise is up to Waymo standards.

The Waymo "incidents" are that it stopped somewhere it should not have, which I view as much less serious.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#415

Post by Imnimo »

dekhn wrote: post #106
paxys wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, I could start coning cruise cars, and cause these numbers to skyrocket And why would that not be a valid data point? Cars driving on public roads need to successfully handle all regular day-to-day situations, not just the happy path. It seems like almost every day I run into some Cruise or Waymo (mostly Cruise) vehicle stuck in the middle of the street blocking traffic, and that should not be excused a…

During the height of Critical Mass, bicyclists would surround minivans and keep them from leaving. Drivers don't know what to do because if they push too hard they'll knock over and injure a cyclist. I don't expect self-driving cars to deal any better with cones, or any hostile action towards a car.

You don't expect a human can figure out what to do if there is a cone on their hood?

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#416

Post by Tiktaalik »

throwaway9274 wrote: post #145
dekhn wrote: post #115

"Skyrocket" is a word people use when they don't have the data to support their claim, but want to make it sound as extreme as possible. When I hear "skyrocket" I think "several orders of magnitude in a very short time". But the source of the quote with skyrocket, basically admits that they didn't have any quantitative evidence to support a massive change in incidents. Remember: reality is banal. Things are far bette…

Absolutely right. To situate in terms of recent events, there have been three stages of trying to delay / influence the California CPUC robotaxi expansion approval vote: 1. Tried a politician scare campaign. Failed because it was too transparent it was an attempted distraction from their terrible public safety record. 2. Tried coning and disabling the vehicles. Failed because it was too transparently astroturfed, leg…

> Will fail because national and international media no longer trust our local journalists, and will investigate independently.

I think it's more that the journalism industry has been so throughly destroyed that there is no real capacity to do investigative journalism.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#417

Post by abecedarius »

ketralnis wrote: post #192
abecedarius wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should student drivers not be allowed on the roads either?

I don't take these to be analogous. Even the worst human driver can recognise that they don't recognise a situation.

And Waymo and Cruise are only rolling out gradually into settings they have reason to think they can handle. And unlike for humans, every time they learn a new lesson, the improvement spreads to their whole fleet. Humans lack that ability -- in a sense, we're the ones who are untrainable.

(If you want to point at Uber before they stopped, I agree they were irresponsible.)

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#418

Post by BirAdam »

jhatemyjob wrote: post #163

I miss Uber pool. It was $5 for a ride across town and it was a great way to meet people. Why do we need this self driving Taxi shit? Would much prefer my own car to have that functionality than to rent it out on a per-ride basis

I think it depends upon the person. Owning a car is very expensive and many would rather not if they only need it once or twice each month. Others, like myself, need a vehicle almost every single day. I will definitely prefer to own one.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#419

Post by Tiktaalik »

cashsterling wrote: post #206
throwaway9274 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely right. To situate in terms of recent events, there have been three stages of trying to delay / influence the California CPUC robotaxi expansion approval vote: 1. Tried a politician scare campaign. Failed because it was too transparent it was an attempted distraction from their terrible public safety record. 2. Tried coning and disabling the vehicles. Failed because it was too transparently astroturfed, leg…

I don't know why the other reply to this post got downvoted to hell. THe person has a point. Fully autonomous cars are cool... don't get me wrong. But electric cars and autonomous electric/gas cars are probably not the right solution to our person transport needs. using energy to move a 4000 lb vehicle to transport one or two 200 lb humans is not energy-efficient... most of the energy is spent just moving the vehicle…

electric and autonomous cars were never a solution. An example of continuing the same wrong approach because of lazy status quo thinking and inertia.
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