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

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#461

Post by oconnor663 » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 4:55 PM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #312

oconnor663 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's a cause for concern. It's a perfectly reasonable concern. It's just about certain that early fleets will have big outages for dumb reasons, just like major websites do. The question will be how frequent those are, how dangerous they are, and how effective the mitigations will be as everything matures. As with many of things related to self-driving cars, the target doesn't have to be "perfection" so muc…

> As with many of things related to self-driving cars, the target doesn't have to be "perfection" so much as "better than people on average". I have an issue with that argument, because it's typically being used together with highly disingenuous statistics (like Teslas our FSD has less accidents per mile than normal drivers) to give the impression that autonomous driving is anywhere close to being "better than people…

> I have an issue with that argument, because it's typically being used together with highly disingenuous statistics

Agreed. I think the argument is ultimately true, but it's also easy to abuse with bad stats, and being skeptical of each new claim that we've "crossed the line" is a good idea.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#462

Post by shagie » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

varjag wrote: post #419

la64710 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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.

Gonna recommend Car Wars by Cory Doctorow - https://web.archive.org/web/20170112064813/http://this.deaki...

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#463

Post by oconnor663 » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 4:59 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #280

oconnor663 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's a cause for concern. It's a perfectly reasonable concern. It's just about certain that early fleets will have big outages for dumb reasons, just like major websites do. The question will be how frequent those are, how dangerous they are, and how effective the mitigations will be as everything matures. As with many of things related to self-driving cars, the target doesn't have to be "perfection" so muc…

>>the target doesn't have to be "perfection" so much as "better than people on average". You see, I completely disagree with this assumption. They should be perfect or they shouldn't be allowed on the road at all. You wouldn't accept a bread slicer that sometimes erroneously slices off your fingers, as long as it does so less frequently than people slice their own fingers on average, would you?

> You wouldn't accept a bread slicer that sometimes erroneously slices off your fingers, as long as it does so less frequently than people slice their own fingers on average, would you?

I'm not sure I understand where you're coming from here. Are old fashioned injuries with old fashioned knives preferable to newfangled injuries with newfangled equipment? It seems pretty straightforward to me that fewer injuries would be better, all else equal.

Maybe you're imagining all else will not be equal? Maybe the new injuries are more severe, or more likely to happen to innocent bystanders, or something like that. It could be. But I think it's important to be specific about what we're worried about here. Otherwise "fewer is fewer" is all we have to go on.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#464

Post by jvanderbot » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 5:13 PM UTC

enriquto wrote: post #214

jvanderbot wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't get in the car with a new teenage driver, nor will I enable self-driving on my cars for a long, long time. And I work in robotics.

Yet every day you get in the road with new teenager drivers (and drunk people, and idiots of all sorts). Doesn't that scare you? Driving is terrifying.

Yes, it does. Luckily, I can drive defensively against other actors since my vehicle is essentially a bunch of armor, safety gear, and also an escape means.

But how does one defend themselves when the vehicle does not want to do so due to inexperience or negligence? Best you can do is hope it doesn't decide for you that your infant's carseat is the best place to collide with a semi it just noticed because it was gray in fog, and oh by the way the CEO decided not to use lidar or radar, and oh this particular ice patch was not in the training set. If you don't trust lvl 5 in those conditions, you don't really trust lvl 5.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#465

Post by chitowneats » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 5:16 PM UTC

arrrg wrote: post #415

ghusbands wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 st…

Does it? For a time, perhaps. China's high speed rail network, built largely in the way you describe, is nearly a trillion dollars in debt.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Caixin/China-looks-to-slow...

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#466

Post by Fricken » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 5:16 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…

A friend of mine is a quadruple amputee. He can't drive a car, but he can use bike lanes and public transit just fine.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#467

Post by jvanderbot » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 5:17 PM UTC

al_borland wrote: post #251

enriquto wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet every day you get in the road with new teenager drivers (and drunk people, and idiots of all sorts). Doesn't that scare you? Driving is terrifying.

Every time I hear people say they don't trust anyone, I wonder if they drive, as it requires an insane level of trust in the rest of humanity.

I am the person I trust the most in my immediate vicinity. Removing me sounds like a downgrade in trust in the overall experience. To my selfish self.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#468

Post by LeoPanthera » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 5:20 PM UTC

jen20 wrote: post #244

LeoPanthera wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a used car and the dealer was not Tesla.

So? If advertised with a feature, it is incumbent on the seller to provide a product with that feature.

"So" it is not the story that people keep repeating. Tesla do not remove AP from resold cars.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#469

Post by LeoPanthera » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 5:21 PM UTC

astrange wrote: post #340

lelanthran wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cause the post implied that it's right to be mad at Tesla, Of course it's right to be mad at Tesla - they resolved a property dispute by force. > Also, being livid is probably bad for your health. Might get high blood pressure. I wouldn't be livid in that situation, but I would consider criminal charges against Tesla in my jurisdiction. After all, the dealer is only on the hook for civil claims, Tesla is on the hoo…

Oh, I missed that AP was enabled at the dealer but then disappeared - thought the dealer had just claimed it was there. That raises a lot of questions about how it could even happen. I'd understand if it was sold as some kind of "user license", but it's on the car, so I assumed it was a permanent extra hardware addition.

No, all Teslas have the same hardware. (At least, all Teslas made in the past few years. Older ones can indeed lack required hardware.)

Whether you have AP or FSD is a software bit.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#470

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan » Fri, Jul 01, 2022, 6:26 PM UTC

ecshafer wrote: post #400

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…

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…

> The zoning laws and car centric development of cities is the issue.

Well, the main issue is that most of the cars on the road during the busiest hours have just 1 person in them.

I think when the dust finally settles, the main form of passenger transit in urban-ish areas will basically be something that looks like autonomous vans.

Unlike public transit today, they won't have predefined timetables, nor predefined startpoints and endpoints. They'll pick you up wherever you are, whenever you want, and drop you off wherever you want, but they might take a roundabout way to get there to pick up and drop off other passengers too.

If they usually have 2+ people in them at a time, we'll be able to use our existing infrastructure (roads) at a much higher throughout.