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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

#551

Post by saagarjha »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #506
olex wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That metric is tracked indirectly, by the lower number of accidents that AVs are involved in per distance travelled compared to human-driven vehicles.

Not sure that's fair - the number of accidents in human-driven vehicles varies significantly by the human driving it. Do you compare with the teen that just obtained their license and is more interested in their phone than in driving properly, or the 65-year old doctor who's been driving for work and other purposes every day for the past 40 years? According to https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/age-of…

Teens who’ve just gotten their license are often quite good drivers. It’s after that when they drive poorly. (This also applies to adults, to a lesser extent.)

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#552

Post by mikeryan »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #348
gcampos wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is actually an interesting question. We track how many accidents the automated cars cause, but I'm not sure how many accidents they prevent are tracked.

I’ve had several low-light situations where my Tesla identified a pedestrian and applied the brakes before I did (typically dark clothing on a dark street).

This is low hanging fruit I had this feature in my 2015 Volvo.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#553

Post by riscy »

I feel safer as a cyclist and pedestrian in SF with Cruise and Waymo vehicles driving around than I do any other vehicle.

At least the autonomous vehicles actually follow the rules: they are patient and always watching the bike lane and crosswalks. I've never had one try to cut me off, make an illegal turn, or aggressively turn into me while in the crosswalk. These things are daily occurrences for me with human drivers due to the sheer lack of traffic enforcement.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#554

Post by qeternity »

mike_d wrote: post #540
pbarnes_1 wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a Waymo come to a screeching halt in a split second as a... less than intelligent individual... skateboarded in front of a bus, into the extremely busy road . If it was a human that person would have been dead, no question. Sometimes I'm riding in a Waymo (which I do every single day, 4x) and it does something, and I double take. Then a second later I see whatever it was it reacted to, and I'm like "dang, why d…

Waymo is amazing, knowing some of the stuff they do behind the scenes to ensure safety - I would feel safer riding in a Waymo than driving myself. My biggest fear has always been that Cruise or Tesla would shit the bed so bad we don't get any self-driving, either because of regulatory constraints or ruining the public perception of them.

> knowing some of the stuff they do behind the scenes to ensure safety

Any info on this? I would love to learn more about what they're doing.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#555

Post by jbdoug »

akira2501 wrote: post #524
jbdoug wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well we spend the last 60 years reengineering all our cities to be car-centric, so who's to say we can't undo that? Most of the top 100 US cities existed before cars, we just hollowed out all the urban cores in service of having ample street parking. I currently live in Ann Arbor, MI (the 244th largest city in the US) without a car. If they built a Trader Joes downtown I would have 0 issues being car free. The city h…

> Well we spend the last 60 years reengineering all our cities to be car-centric, We engineered them to be human centric. It's just that the humans had easy and reliable access to affordable cars and fuel. So, naturally, the market did what it does. When you say it's car centric you intentionally ignore any benefits or efficiencies that were created in that decision and equally imply that it was a top down decision.…

Highways (and resulting sprawl) aren't the result of free market economics -- they are a policy decision.

https://www.ibisworld.com/us/bed/government-funding-for-high...

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#556

Post by BytesAndGears »

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.

Living in a European city and relying 100% on public transit and walking, with occasional biking for longer distances, it’s easy. It does not require 5-10x the population density, maybe just 2-3x, at least compared to San Francisco (which is already somewhat dense in parts). It is not a major shift in lifestyle easier. The tallest buildings in some cities in the Netherlands are 2-3 stories, and those cities still have regular buses, trams, and trains.

There are even some suburbs full of single family homes, with yards, which still have buses every 8 minutes all day long, and long-distance commuter train service every 20 minutes.

Yes the US needs more density for this to be feasible. But San Francisco isn’t that far off on the density that it would needs

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#557

Post by mike_d »

FireBeyond wrote: post #468
marcosdumay wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be surprised if it turns out that those self-driving cars don't have object permanence. Making things move around without a physical model looks like a really nasty infinite bug-breeder.

For the longest time, at least the visual representation of trains at a level crossing strongly implied challenges around object permanence for Tesla. I will say that I recognize that the visual representation may not be a 1:1 (in fact quite certainly isn't) mapping of the computer's "world view". But it was quite ridiculous and definitely disconcerting seeing a level crossing with a train going through it and seeing…

> strongly implied challenges around object permanence for Tesla

Anyone who has ever ridden in a Tesla knows they have no real perception of the world around them. Even just driving down the road they show icons of the things around them, which will randomly appear and disappear or change from busses to pedestrians to cars.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#558

Post by aidenn0 »

RC_ITR wrote: post #186
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 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…

> I counted 5 cars parked in either a bike lane or active traffic.

Did the bike lanes have a "no parking in bike lane" sign? Because (and I learned this by getting the question wrong on my CA license test when moving here) it's not illegal to park in bike lanes in CA.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#559

Post by spaced-out »

kelipso wrote: post #528
spaced-out wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Allow enough humans to drive and inevitably some of them will start doing so drunk. It's in our collective nature.

It's illegal and we send people to jail for it. What is this.

Making something illegal doesn't stop some people from doing it, so it's something that should be considered when looking at the overall safety of human drivers. One benefit of robots driving is that they won't get drunk, get distracted because they had a stressful day, get drowsy but still try to make it home, speed because they're late for an appointment, etc...

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#560

Post by saagarjha »

captaincaveman wrote: post #532
tesseract wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Palo Alto/Mountain View/Sunnyvale area I see Waymo, Nuro, and unmarked-but-we-all-know-it's-Apple autonomous vehicles quite frequently. A few times a week at least. Cruise specifically operated in SF where I agree they have been a very common sight.

Wait, I thought Apple had given up on it's car project?

Nope
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