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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

#481

Post by dheera »

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 live in the Bay Area and I largely agree with this, but I should also add that the design of most San Francisco streets is stupid, turn-only lanes sneak up on you without advance notice, there are too many individual garages and too few parking structures, there are homeless encampments everywhere, there is always the crazy-new-scooter-contraption-of-the-week being ridden everywhere, there are too many construction projects being taken up at once that never finish, instead of concentrating the entire Bay Area's construction forces to do 1 project start-to-finish in 1 day.

Cruise cars do not perform acceptably in SF but they probably would if they deployed in the bazillion mid-sized cities out there with wide streets and ample shoulder space.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#482

Post by bluGill »

fkyoureadthedoc wrote: post #264
cp9 wrote: post #122

if people weren't VC brained they would realize that the way to prevent traffic deaths isn't to build fancy self driving cars, it's to invest in safer, more pedestrian friendly infrastructure and use the boring technology that already exists to get people where they want to go. the future is on buses and trains and bikes and pedestrian friendly 15 minute communities

I don't think it's even VC brained, the average us NIMBY doesn't actually want anything to change with regards to zoning or public transit. They don't care that the closest place to buy anything is a 54 minute walk with 0 sidewalks, because it only takes 8 minutes to get there in their Tahoe.

To be fair to the NIMBYs - most public transit investments have been done wrong.

Transit often doesn't get people where they want to go, when they want to go, in a reasonable amount of time, for a reasonable price. If you are missing any of the above then you don't have a useful transit network and the car starts to look compelling. (cars are expensive, but the marginal cost of a trip is very low once you have one)

Worse, when transit improvements are done, often they are expensive and deliver very little useful changes.

With the above backdrop it isn't hard to see their point. That doesn't make them right, but it means if you want transit you have a lot of evils on your side to fight.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#483

Post by mikebenfield »

bluGill wrote: post #327
fragmede wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is limited to San Francisco, rather than the whole of California, but they do just drive around the city, especially after 9pm. As a rider, the future is here. Instead of just checking Uber and Lyft for prices to get somewhere, now I check the Cruise and Waymo app for prices too. (Well, not Cruise anymore.) But yes, it's a thing . I call a car, sometimes it doesn't have a driver, and it takes me to where I need to…

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.

> Talk to your local politicians about fixing service so that is an option.

Lots of people have been trying to get decent public transit in US cities for decades. There is so much resistance it often seems impossible.

So, yes, obviously public transit would be great. But right now, and for the foreseeable future, it's just not an option for most people. "Talk to your local politicians about fixing service" sounds delusional to be honest.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#484

Post by pj_mukh »

hnav wrote: post #411
pj_mukh wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based purely on city pressure. Background reading will make this clear [1] [1]: https://sfist.com/2023/08/17/sf-city-attorney-files-motion-t...

The city wanted both operators to have their permit pulled, DMV pulled only Cruise.

Which is further making my point. Most of tech should abandon the city...fast.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#485

Post by rangestransform »

xyst wrote: post #81

TxDMV needs to follow this. Fuck these companies. They are testing their garbage in dense urban areas. Too many times their vehicles just stop in the middle of the road. If it rains, vehicle stops. If the light is out, vehicle panics and stops. Somebody puts a cone on the hood, vehicle panics. If a single variable not accounted for in their algorithms shifts beyond expected range, it fucking panics. So much money dum…

Cruise's valuation of $30 billion will get you 12 miles of subway in NYC [1], hardly the public transit revolution necessary to make autonomous driving redundant.

I don't hate public transit or anything, I cycle and subway in NYC all the time, but the level of investment the US needs in public transit is an order of magnitude above the amount that investors have spent on autonomous driving.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-23/in-nyc-su...

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#486

Post by cogman10 »

oatmeal1 wrote: post #461
PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The problem is that you can't punish a car. You can punish the manufacturer of any item that creates an excessive danger to the public. Lawn darts aren't intended to be thrown near people, and don't exist anymore because people used them negligently. Human-driven cars are used negligently and kill 40,000 Americans a year.

> and don't exist anymore because people used them negligently

Lawn darts don't exist because the FDA banned them. Without that happening, they'd still be sold today.

> Kids can hurt themselves with bicycles and archery and rifles, too. Why aren’t they included? I’d rather be hit by a lawn dart than by a horseshoe

-- R. B. Jarts, inventor of lawn darts.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#487

Post by andrewia »

oceanofsolaris wrote: post #349
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 SF is a damn rich city (due to all the tech companies and their employees). Why didn’t they solve or at least tackle these problems? It’s not like Cruise / Waymo could change city planning against the cities will, even if they wanted.

SF politics are notoriously slow about a lot of things. There are actually new, significant lobbying efforts to tackle some issues: https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/tech-rooted-groups...

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#488

Post by bluGill »

huytersd wrote: post #372
fkyoureadthedoc wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's even VC brained, the average us NIMBY doesn't actually want anything to change with regards to zoning or public transit. They don't care that the closest place to buy anything is a 54 minute walk with 0 sidewalks, because it only takes 8 minutes to get there in their Tahoe.

Yes, this but with an appreciation for that paradigm. I get to live away from the city center, in privacy, and can have a bunch of land and room for activities I want to do. This way I get to raise goats, have a woodworking shop, grow my own vegetables and still be 10 minutes away from restaurants/shows/nightlife in the city center. I felt like an animal the few years I lived in an apartment.

Where you live is a compromise. Sometimes I wished I lived downtown - but there are enough things that make it unlivable that I instead choose something else. However many of the things I don't like about downtown would be easy to change.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#489

Post by freedomben »

rurp wrote: post #398
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…

Do you think the patients who got incorrect blood test results from Theranos should suck it up and not complain because all progress is good progress, even if some people have to get sacrificed along the way?

Obviously not. That's an absurd question that's not even remotely based on what I stated or implied anywhere, let alone the question you responded to. This feels more to me like it's directed at some sort insane strawman who lives in an imaginary world of binary thought where everything is either fully good or fully evil, but if I'm wrong and this question is in good faith, I would encourage you to read the existing sibling thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38004007

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#490

Post by andrewia »

beau_g wrote: post #463
hardcopy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The AV detected a collision, bringing the vehicle to a stop; then attempted to pull over to avoid causing further road safety issues, pulling the individual forward approximately 20 feet. Jesus Christ! Good riddance, I'm glad their permits are revoked. Can you imagine witnessing this and watching an autonomous vehicle slowly crushing and dragging someone underneath? That 20 ft must have felt like forever to witness…

If you think that's bad, just wait until you hear about some of the stuff human drivers do

Yes, but the vast majority of human drivers will stop when they hit somebody, and when there's screaming under their car.
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