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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

#601

Post by londons_explore »

stouset wrote: post #591
minwcnt5 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The city should just start to bill big fleet operators for passenger-less miles.

That would be uber and lyft for all miles driven by their operatives without a passenger aboard, and by waymo and cruise for miles driven without a customer.

By keeping it to the biggest operators, the administrative burden is small (these companies all GPS track their cars already). The fee could probably be pretty small (say 10 cents a mile) to disuade the practice, while not outlawing it entirely.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#602

Post by fhub »

gmassman wrote: post #590
fhub wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current ride pricing feels about 10-20% less than an Uber in SF - but I haven't really checked properly. So don't expect the rideshare product (Waymo One) to be a super cheap option.

This morning my coworkers rode in together in a Waymo. One told me it was $16 while an Uber would have been $35.

From my personal experience they are priced cheaper for all rides. But rarely that much cheaper - perhaps a surge time?

The variable that differs is time to pickup. I've found Waymo is generally pretty good for me in off-peak times - perhaps on average 2-3 minutes further away on average. But I have got the odd "20 minutes away" and I then just order an Uber.

But I will always pick a Waymo over an Uber if they are the same distance away. I love playing my own music and just being in my own world without another human to consider. It is truly a relaxing commute.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#603

Post by stouset »

londons_explore wrote: post #601
stouset wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The city should just start to bill big fleet operators for passenger-less miles. That would be uber and lyft for all miles driven by their operatives without a passenger aboard, and by waymo and cruise for miles driven without a customer. By keeping it to the biggest operators, the administrative burden is small (these companies all GPS track their cars already). The fee could probably be pretty small (say 10 cents a…

Not the worst idea I’ve heard.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#604

Post by microtherion »

tempsy wrote: post #240
bdamm wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you driven in San Francisco or basically any large US city? If cars had to stop like that to give extra space for a jaywalker that had exited the path of travel, someone would rear end the AV, or at the very least the driving experience would be very jarring. If we wanted to legitimize this case then probably large areas of downtown in cities should be redefined to be free-for-all traffic with low speed limits.

I don't know if this was a homeless woman or not but there's plenty of times I've seen in SF of some mentally disturbed homeless person in the middle of the street. In those situations I would 100% stop completely in front of them and/or drive very slowly around them. The difference between a regular jaywalker and someone who is mentally disturbed is the mentally disturbed jaywalker is unpredictable and you have no i…

Slow down to a crawl, definitely, but if you stopped until they got off the street completely, you might never move again in some areas of SF (the accident happened near Market Street).

And it's not a given that doing so would make the situation safer, as other drivers would eventually drive around your car.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#605

Post by londons_explore »

eurleif wrote: post #257
BetaDeltaAlpha wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rare to go out for a trip (foot, bike, bus, or car) and not see at least one. After evening rush hour has concluded, they're a plurality of vehicles on the road.

What do you mean by "plurality" here? That term depends on what other categories you're dividing other vehicles into, so what are the categories?

I was pretty sure 'plurality' was a word made extinct from the english language 50+ years ago, with the exception of patent documents, where its use appears to be compulsory.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#606

Post by leetcrew »

yterdy wrote: post #588
mike_d wrote: 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]

"unable to move and blocking traffic" is not a new failure mode for cars. I get that it's particularly infuriating to be blocked by a car that is, mechanically, in good shape, but I don't find the story particularly damning. I've blocked traffic that long waiting for a tow truck.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#607

Post by BoorishBears »

filoleg wrote: post #595
yterdy wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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.

Realistically, there are a lot of Googlers and Xooglers on Hacker News.

One of the messages in this thread is literally stating they have special knowledge of the behinds the scene workings of Waymo.

I work in the AV space and I honestly don't think there's much of a competitive mentality between the companies in the space, but at the same time there is a tendency of people to psudeo-astroturf these brands: where they know someone working at the company and take great personal pride because "I know so and so who works on self-driving cars!"

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#608

Post by joemi »

yterdy wrote: post #588
mike_d wrote: 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]

Just because some people's opinions differ from yours doesn't mean astroturfing is at play.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#609

Post by notatoad »

fhub wrote: post #277
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…

From my perspective, as a relatively early adopter of Waymo (60+ rides). I have zero gripes with the driving itself. In fact I've seen Waymos do things that no human would be able to do*. Drop-offs and pickups I'd like to see improvements made like getting a bit closer to the curb. Occasionally the route selections make no sense at all. * Waymo made a right turn up a steep hill. Two lanes each way. It then pulled a b…

>Occasionally the route selections make no sense at all.

i'm sure this is sometimes true, but at least sometimes i'd guess that the route selections would make more sense if you saw the conditions and traffic on the route the car didn't take you on.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#610

Post by JamilD »

yterdy wrote: post #588
mike_d wrote: 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]

I feel kinda the same way about Waymo like I did about Apple as a relatively early adopter. The experience is genuinely magical, and there’s a massive gulf between Cruise and Waymo’s capabilities.

A sufficiently good product may produce customer reviews that are indistinguishable from astroturfing.

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