Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

sfgate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 175 posts

Re: Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

#51

Post by andrewmutz »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #28
andrewmutz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.google.com/search?q=humams+driving+in+to+wet+con... It happens all the time

If you want to play that game now we get to compare the number of human operator hours per wet pavement incident vs self-driving cars. A quick google search suggests the estimated number of human drivers on the road today is 1.4 billion. The rest of that calculation is left as an exercise.

If you do a true apples-to-apples comparison between Waymo and humans, the waymo cars are about five times safer.

> Accidents per million miles driven for Waymo self-driving cars are 0.59, compared to the general U.S. rate of 2.98

https://blog.gitnux.com/self-driving-cars-safety-statistics/

Re: Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

#52

Post by addisonl »

olliej wrote: post #36
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #18

What I'd like to know is if the concrete was marked out with cones. If it was then clearly the car's fault, if not then the worker's fault. Cones become more critical with the proliferation of non-human drivers.

Why? The entire argument for self driving cars is that they are safer drivers than humans. If that claim breaks down whenever the driving conditions are anything other than perfect, then self driving cars lose their only supposed benefit. If we have to substantially change everything we do on or around the road to simply help them match human efficacy then (1) what is the point of a "self driving" car that can trivia…

> If that claim breaks down whenever the driving conditions are anything other than perfect, then self driving cars lose their only supposed benefit

False dilemma: value from self driving cars is a sliding scale, not all or nothing.

Re: Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

#53

Post by forgetfreeman »

squokko wrote: post #48
forgetfreeman wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might they? Is that a purely faith-based assertion or is that claim grounded in anything? Because current performance suggests otherwise.

Current performance definitely does not suggest otherwise! Over Waymo's first million miles, it was involved in two collisions, one of them at-fault. The average for human drivers is 5.3 collisions per million miles.

Oh no you don't. Waymo describes it's tech as Level 4 automation. That is an explicit statement that it underperforms human capabilities and has only been greenlit for -very- limited areas and conditions. Industry reports on the subject suggest Level 5 autonomy won't be possible for at least the next 12 years, which is synonymous with saying the industry currently has no idea how to get there.

Re: Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

#54

Post by [deleted] »

benatkin wrote: post #38
forgetfreeman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, it is clearly incumbent upon all other industries to modify their practices to pave over the gross deficiencies of self-driving cars.

It's fine by me if self-driving cars need help and get it, so long as the technology is beneficial. I think it is.

[deleted]

Re: Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

#55

Post by forgetfreeman »

andrewmutz wrote: post #51
forgetfreeman wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to play that game now we get to compare the number of human operator hours per wet pavement incident vs self-driving cars. A quick google search suggests the estimated number of human drivers on the road today is 1.4 billion. The rest of that calculation is left as an exercise.

If you do a true apples-to-apples comparison between Waymo and humans, the waymo cars are about five times safer. > Accidents per million miles driven for Waymo self-driving cars are 0.59, compared to the general U.S. rate of 2.98 https://blog.gitnux.com/self-driving-cars-safety-statistics/

Pfft. How much of Waymo's million was done on unfamiliar roadways or in inclement weather? Does it snow much in Phoenix?

Re: Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

#56

Post by benatkin »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #40
benatkin wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine by me if self-driving cars need help and get it, so long as the technology is beneficial. I think it is.

Ok, on what grounds is technology that performs a job that humans can generally do better at beneficial in the broad sense? That it's benefitting a handful of individuals who profit off eliminating jobs isn't in question, but where's the upside for the rest of us?

For me it's safety (each problem solved gets applied to others, but it could be more profound than that, like chess AIs) and potential to decide on the fly whether to have something similar to a rental car or a much lower rate. For instance maybe I could know a car would be waiting for me and leave my backpack behind while I go on a hike. Plus environmental and city planning hopes.

Re: Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

#57

Post by benatkin »

Manuel_D wrote: post #43
forgetfreeman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, on what grounds is technology that performs a job that humans can generally do better at beneficial in the broad sense? That it's benefitting a handful of individuals who profit off eliminating jobs isn't in question, but where's the upside for the rest of us?

Enormous amounts of time are wasted commuting. The passengers benefit from self driving cars, not just the auto maker.

If they don't end up distracting incessantly with ads

Re: Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

#58

Post by stevage »

jandrese wrote: post #24
stevage wrote: post #20

How badly protected does a piece of fresh concrete have to be for this to be possible? Never heard of this happening before.

People try to drive on wet concrete all the time. It's super bad for the car, especially if you let it dry.

But why aren't there barriers etc around it? Honestly I can't recall ever seeing anything like that.

Re: Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

#59

Post by bryanlarsen »

pshc wrote: post #34
afavour wrote: post #11

This specific scenario doesn’t seem like a damning indictment of the tech, you can absolutely see how it could happen. But on the other hand it speaks to the “death by a thousand cuts”-yness of it all. How many other weird little edge cases exist out there for drivers? Countless. You’re going to struggle to program solutions to every one.

Yeah, the infinitely long tail of exceptional circumstances mean that automated driving is an AGI-complete problem. These exceptions are fairly rare, but once there are many driverless vehicles they’ll be more common. Vehicles will need to learn and problem solve to keep up.

1000s of exceptional circumstances, but once added to training data, is solved forever.

Re: Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

#60

Post by mr_toad »

mminer237 wrote: post #15
mdorazio wrote: post #7

A quick search on Google News shows at least 3 human drivers did the same thing in the last 3 months, so this doesn't bother me all that much.

I'm not saying this is damning evidence, but how many human drivers are on the road versus AI? A quick Google search says there are 300 Cruise vehicles operating at night currently. I am confident I could survey 10 times that many taxi drivers and not find a single one who has accidentally driven into wet concrete.

True, but presumably Cruise can fix this issue. Can we fix human drivers?
Post reply on HN