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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

#471

Post by bluGill »

freeone3000 wrote: post #362
freedomben wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the potential future where humans are freed from doing anything for their transportation (no driving, no pedaling, no steering, no danger, no waiting in traffic, etc) is worth some short term pain while we develop the tech? Was the pain and suffering during the industrial revolution days that have led to our current high tech world worth it? (I'm not just asking this rhetorically, I'm really interested i…

I disagree on the endpoint. I think active transit is healthy for humans, and removing it causes people to need to excercise deliberately much more — and people don’t, causing obesity and a ton of health concerns. Walking 2-3km a day would be great for most people, and much better than sitting in an auto-pod.

We should talk about para transit for the few people who cannot walk (or push their wheelchair) 2-3km/day. However this is a minority of people. As you say most people would be better off if they did move 2-3km more/day.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#472

Post by vel0city »

cryptoz wrote: post #70

So much is discussed about self-driving car safety because the implications are really big but also uncomfortable. However, I always get stuck on how little enforcement there is for human drivers who habitually break driving laws and cause dangerous situations. DUIs are one thing sure but honestly most drivers who are bad and dangerous are sober and face no consequences for reckless behavior. Is there something speci…

Automatic enforcement of driving laws should absolutely be a thing. People often argue "but they can't prove who was driving the car!" Its simple answer to me. Whoever registered the car is by default responsible for the actions of the car.

If that car gets found doing something obviously illegal (speeding, running a red light, some kind of "reckless driving" camera review, etc) the registered owner is automatically assigned blame. They can potentially file paperwork to the court to prove someone else was driving (a lease arrangement, some valet ticket along with some proof from the restaurant or whatever at the time, a sworn statement from another individual confessing to it, etc). But ultimately by default the owner of the car is responsible for the safe handling of the vehicle. If you're worried someone is going to break the law with your car, don't give them your keys. If you don't like this, find another form of transportation.

Tag enforcement needs to be stronger. If an automated system sees a tag that doesn't make sense, it should be immediately flagged and enforcement dispatched. Lots of cops already have ALPRs, those should immediately trigger. I see so many cars out there with sketchy paper tags, this whole thing needs to be shut down.

Driving a car on public streets shouldn't be nearly as easy as it is in the US. Far too many people don't treat driving with the respect it needs.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#473

Post by reverius42 »

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.

Doesn't even need to be 5-10x the population density. The "inner ring" of Paris is similar density to San Francisco and supports a metro system that I think most would agree makes car trips unnecessary. But the "rebuild the city" part might still be somewhat necessary.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#474

Post by FireBeyond »

ipqk wrote: post #138
eastbound wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were sold self-driving cars as safer than humans.

No one was sold anything yet. These things don't go from 0 to 100 overnight. We've assumed that self-driving cars will be safer than humans in the future, though that's yet to be determined. And even if their safety record is better than humans, they will be more dangerous in different ways than human drivers, much like this recent incident where the woman was dragged and pinned.

LOL, what?

Musk has repeatedly stated that Teslas on FSD/AP are safer than humans, now.

You can take issue with the veracity of his claims (and I certainly do, on several levels), but let's not pretend like "no-one is selling this, yet" - let's also not forget, "The driver is only in the seat for legal reasons. The car is driving itself" - that was six years ago now.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#475

Post by babl-yc »

Lonestar1440 wrote: post #120

From my perspective as a person who lives in San Francisco and also drives a LOT (10-20k miles per year, and many small drives within the city): Cruise cars do not perform acceptably. They manage to avoid collisions by driving extremely conservatively, but the way they traverse, say, a left turn against traffic is absurd. They slow everyone down, including emergency vehicles and public transit, by performing far belo…

I’ve got 5+ rides with each platform and would agree with this assessment. Cruise rides generally have a few uncomfortable moments per ride with some erratic swerving or sudden unexplained stops.

Waymo rides feel much more predictable and human like.

Although note that “human like” and “smooth” rides do not necessarily mean safer, but qualitatively Waymo feels that way.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#476

Post by cogman10 »

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…

This is just a general problem. Companies very often kill people and get fines. The body count before a company starts to get close to "this might kill the company" is absurdly high.

Consider, the Dalkon shield which had a hospitalization rate of 5 in 1000 and a death toll easily in the 1000s (maybe 10s of thousands). [1] The company went bankrupt but not defunct. It is now a part of Pfizer. Nobody experienced any sort of jail time in association with the deaths (and, after it was banned, they started selling the dalkon shield in poorer regions).

A serial killer killing 10 people gets the death penalty, yet there exist mining companies that have easily killed 1000s of employees with silicosis (and are still operating today, looking at you Dow [2]).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalkon_Shield

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawks_Nest_Tunnel_disaster

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#477

Post by lamontcg »

pj_mukh wrote: post #290
lamontcg wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cruise picked themselves as a loser by screwing up publicly and then trying to hide their problems.

“Screwing up publicly” How else are they supposed to screw up? If the city needs more information from the cars, they should sue for it not indefinitely suspend operations. The city is looking to regulate all this like it regulates new housing (ie out of existence), there has to be consequences for it.

I don't know how to respond to this. If you screw up there needs to be consequences that bite. Suspending their operations is better than some meaningless fine and actually punishes them. If you can't see that, I can't help you.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#478

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

moralestapia wrote: post #194
RC_ITR wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with what you said, BUT From my perspective as a person who lives in San Francisco and also bikes a LOT: human driver also do not perform acceptably. I counted 14 cars without headlights on after sunset on a 2 mile bike ride yesterday. I counted 5 cars parked in either a bike lane or active traffic. 2 cars took blind rights (no stops) onto Polk from various alleyways. This was a good day, FWIW. Cruises have o…

Yes, but replacing something shitty with something shittier will not improve the status quo. The bar for AI should be way higher than just "outperform mediocre humans".

The problem is that the bar for autonomous cars is perfection as far as public perception goes.

Right now, any incident involving a autonomous car is going to immediately be blamed on the autonomous car and not any other party, even if the fault lies entirely on the dickhead running the red light.

It won't be enough for autonomous cars to merely not cause crashes, people will expect them to actively avoid them, even in cases where a human would have failed.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#479

Post by pj_mukh »

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.

" it's you need to completely rebuild the city with 5-10x the population density."

Which..is exactly what is going to happen [1]?

[1] https://www.californiacitynews.org/2021/09/california-says-g...

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#480

Post by andrewia »

hnav wrote: post #447
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,…

This is by design, San Francisco discourages driving that way.

Citation needed. When googling for traffic signal information, all I found was discussions about expanding right-on-red bans to more intersections, and traffic lights with LIDAR. https://www.sfmta.com/blog/smarter-traffic-signals-prioritiz...
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