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California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

reuters.com

591–600 of 1001 posts

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#591
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren’t littered through CA, in CA they are exclusively in SF. In SF they are common and as they seem to drive nonstop, take more road time than a comparable number of normal cars. They don’t stop and wait between fares, they seem to drive aimlessly in routes like ghosts or lost souls.

Waymos do stop between fares. They've gotten grief from people who don't like them parked in front of their house.

I really hope if anything that seeing so many occupant-less vehicles on the streets makes us collectively realize how inefficiently these vehicles are using a scarce, congestion-prone resource in a way that wasn’t as visible with Uber/Lyft.

I’m generally a pretty low-stress person, but seeing traffic issues caused by multiple empty vehicles aimlessly meandering through the city is really starting to get to me.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#592
post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Cruise release the video, its not clear to me a human driver would be better (other than some textual descriptions of the event)? The (human) person who actually caused the crash is still at large, and the bay area (SF + Oakland) still continues to one of the municipalities with negligble traffic enforcement [1] and massively dangerous (human) driving behavior [2]. So the city and DMV focussing their efforts on t…

They lied to the DMV, that alone is enough to ban them.

What was the lie?

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been in this situation, and it's something that seems to get tweaked every week. They definitely pushed the "aggressive" lever up a little over the last month. I think it's one of those cases where it's sort of obvious it can calculate trajectories and speeds much better than a human, so it's a safe manoeuvre in theory, but it "feels" bad as a passenger. Same thing for where it can see that it can squeeze throug…

It's a lose lose situation. I've been reading conversation about self driving cars for years and what you always heard back in the days is that they were way too conservative on these kinds of turns and blocked traffic. Hell even in this very thread people are saying that about Cruise. Yet when they make it more aggressive, people feel unsafe. As you say, this is something they are constantly tweaking to find the per…

Fair point. When I take a passenger in a Waymo and it is there first time I'm hyper aware of the driving. But for myself personally, I'm mostly tuned out. For me it started to feel "normal" as early as about the 4th ride. So they could probably subtly adjust the "middle ground" based on the passenger's experience and feedback (As long as it doesn't create inconsistencies for surrounding vehicles).

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#594
post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most intersections in the Bay Area have magnetic sensors underground to detect cars and expedite a green when appropriate. Where was this mile-long stretch? 3rd street?

Yeah San Francisco has some of the best traffic lights in the Bay Area when it comes to predictive signaling and synchronization

and for a long time you could drive on Great Highway at 35MPH and hit green at every single light. Always enjoyed that except that I would have preferred 50MPH

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#595
post #588
post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

Ah yeah, when something doesn’t conform to your narrative, it surely is an astroturf. All coming from accounts that are many years old and have thousands of karma points that leave meaningful posts on all types of topics. But the second they post about Waymo in a positive light, that instantly means astroturfing and not their true opinion based on their lived experiences.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#596
post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same applies to regular drivers. We do not track accidents they prevent.

Easy, humans prevent nearly 100% of the accidents. A car without a driver invariably crashes in a few seconds. The question is how many accidents (if any) self driving prevents with respect to average human drivers .

Self-driving cars are used in a very controlled environment.

They will not function in high grass, I guess from my experience with different parktronics.

The best "off road" demonstration of self-driving and/or AI assistance I've found is this: https://media.jaguarlandrover.com/news/2016/07/jaguar-land-r...

Note they avoid going into grass. Human can deduce trails from grass profile, AI? I don't think so.

Will you count an inability to reach a lakeside as an accident? I guess, no.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#597
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren’t littered through CA, in CA they are exclusively in SF. In SF they are common and as they seem to drive nonstop, take more road time than a comparable number of normal cars. They don’t stop and wait between fares, they seem to drive aimlessly in routes like ghosts or lost souls.

Waymos do stop between fares. They've gotten grief from people who don't like them parked in front of their house.

Kinda surprised they stop... When you have a self-driving system that costs $200k+, you want to keep it running and collecting data as much as possible - passenger or no passenger.

The added tyre wear is going to be tiny compared to the interest payments on all that expensive hardware and engineers salaries.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#598
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…

I think you compare it to the average as that's who you are encountering when on the road. You have no way of selecting the other drivers to bias toward the doctor.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#599
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren’t littered through CA, in CA they are exclusively in SF. In SF they are common and as they seem to drive nonstop, take more road time than a comparable number of normal cars. They don’t stop and wait between fares, they seem to drive aimlessly in routes like ghosts or lost souls.

Why would they keep driving at all times with no passengers? How is that ecologically smart or sensible from a business perspective?

The whole point of having them on a limited basis is to gather data. No useful data is gathered when they aren't driving.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#600
post #588
post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

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