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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

#431

Post by alooPotato »

minwcnt5 wrote: post #389
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.

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.

well said

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#432

Post by dbwastedspace »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #363
dkarl wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it ironic that the human driver is still at large Ironic but completely expected. We have normalized and accepted the awfulness of human drivers to a degree that people just don't comprehend. Human would be terrible drivers even if you ignored the fact that many of them are chemically impaired, even if you ignored the fact that they are prone to rage and aggression. As we consider the safety of self-driving…

The problem is that you can't punish a car. If a human being had done that they would have absolutely had the book thrown at them. There was a case where a woman was drunk driving and hit a man, he came up over the hood and into her windshield. He was alive but bleeding. She drove home and parked her car in the garage. He bled out through the night. NO ONE was sympathetic towards that woman. But if an automated vehic…

[dead]

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#433

Post by alooPotato »

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #385
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.

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 anyw…

we've had uber pool for a while. if that's your definition of public transit then sure, self driving pooled cars would obviously be good.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#434

Post by wsinks »

alooPotato wrote: post #379
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…

I don't think that's true. Often times at night, there are long times for certain lights so the bigger throughput street can have more time on there. Human drives know about this, and will take different routes to get there. It's unclear that Cruise is mapping out light timings and their changes, although you would think they would.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#435

Post by alooPotato »

paxys wrote: post #426
alooPotato wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah they aren't talking to city infra now . My point was that it will become easier to make that happen once a larger % of the cars on the road are self driving.

When will it become easier? After all these companies have gone bankrupt?

why do you think they will go bankrupt?

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#436

Post by ajross »

brightball wrote: post #386
fhub wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's my experience, having been on FSD beta for almost two years now. It's still "un-human-driver-like" in a bunch of surprising ways, but the actual meat and potatoes "does it do more or less stupid stuff" is I think ahead of my own driving at this point.

At this point I trust its microdriving (lanekeeping, distance management, speed control, collision/obstacle avoidance, etc...) more than my own for sure. The higher level stuff is still a mixed bag (will it get stuck at that merge, can it make this lane change in time, does it understand that this other car is going to yield or will it stop, etc...).

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#437

Post by alooPotato »

wsinks wrote: post #434
alooPotato wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think that's true. Often times at night, there are long times for certain lights so the bigger throughput street can have more time on there. Human drives know about this, and will take different routes to get there. It's unclear that Cruise is mapping out light timings and their changes, although you would think they would.

yes lights let higher throughput roads have more time. i don't see why it makes my statement not true.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#438

Post by hnav »

paxys wrote: post #211
solveit wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the sentiment, but given America's, uh, great affinity for cars and car-centric infrastructure, nailing self-driving seems easier....

That's what we all initially thought, but with a decade and a half of constant engineering effort and tens (maybe hundreds) of billions of dollars poured into the space with basically nothing to show for it, I wonder how true that assessment still is.

The cars are driving themselves, how is that nothing to show? Ultimately self driving will allow smaller buses and improve the pedestrian experience that way.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#439

Post by oatmeal1 »

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 a VC would rather set that money on fire to have a small chance at a 100x return.

Blaming VCs for public policy failures is fair when they lobby to create those public policy failures. In this case, it seems like their efforts (lighting money on fire) are likely to improve pedestrian safety, so it doesn't seem fair to blame them.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#440

Post by jfim »

pj_mukh wrote: post #338
skywhopper wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Cruise statement is what mentions "pulling the pedestrian forward 20 feet" so it's clear she was dragged for at least that distance.

It’s so painfully obvious to me that the solution here is to not having flying humans because of bad drivers that hit and run and not “actually let’s ban autonomous driving” (the city will inevitably come after Waymo next)

Why not both? We shouldn't have flying humans, nor cars rolling over and dragging people.
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