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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

#691

Post by __loam »

choppaface wrote: post #354
fhub wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’ve been nearly hit by a Waymo as a pedestrian when the thing could see me well before it passed. I hate that they use giant SUVs, really inappropriate car for small city streets even if people love SUVs.

Waymo uses pretty small jaguar crossovers. Zoox uses suvs.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#693

Post by andbberger »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #34

As a pedestrian I'm not a fan of being an unwitting part of a private company's beta testing. Before this devolves into whatboutism vs the safety of human drivers, my opposition is to adding yet another unknown safety layer to walking down the street. Usually when private companies are developing products that could kill, drugs for example, it is on the company to exhaustively prove the safety and effectiveness befor…

tesla next

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#694

Post by wolverine876 »

__loam wrote: post #690
gerdesj wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good grief, two skateboarders lives saved by a Waymo in two consecutive comments. A couple of weeks ago I came across a biker partially lying in the road, trapped by his bike. I parked my van at an angle, so if it was hit from behind it should roll past him. I jumped out and performed an assessment (I'm a qualified, OK: certificated first aider). I diagnosed "pissed" and ascertained he was unharmed. We got his bike i…

They have multiple radars, lidars, and cameras. They're far more capable of detecting obstacles than people are.

They have different capabilities, but it doesn't follow that such technology is better than the built-in tech in homo sapiens.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#695

Post by __loam »

lmm wrote: post #643
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…

> 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 below the level of most Human drives. Are they performing worse, or are they just making a better risk tradeoff? Human drivers kill a lot of people every week.

I've seen multiple cruises strand just walking around the city. I've never seen a waymo strand. Anecdotally I've heard the ride quality of cruise is a lot worse.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#696

Post by tempestn »

ironman1478 wrote: post #642
bombcar wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Cruise had hit and run it might have been better than parking on the woman's leg.

Except it didn't immediately do that. Cruise released a report today saying that the car actually drove 20 feet and dragged the woman. There is no simple answer as to what to do. It's simply difficult and acting like there are easy answers to this is unproductive and imo not in the spirit of hackernews.

It's difficult to program an autonomous vehicle to handle this correctly, sure. That doesn't mean an average human driver wouldn't have done better. Of course a human driver wouldn't just keep driving to pull over after hitting a pedestrian and not being able to see where they went.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#697

Post by wolverine876 »

fhub wrote: post #550
fhub wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Another fun anecdote. When a Waymo is in the vicinity of another Waymo they acknowledge each other in a whimsical/cute way - the windshield wipers swipe once (I'm not sure they still do this). But it wasn't implemented very well at some point since the Waymo I was in was behind another one for many blocks. The wipers went at least 17 times. As an earlier adopter I provided lots of feedback. Even little things like I…

> Another fun anecdote. When a Waymo is in the vicinity of another Waymo they acknowledge each other in a whimsical/cute way - the windshield wipers swipe once (I'm not sure they still do this).

What is your motivation here? I can see why some think it looks like promotional material.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#698

Post by lucubratory »

This has got to be a huge relief for Waymo. Cruise's atrocious safety was bad press for Waymo every single time it hit the news, and would be a significant contributor to local sentiment against all AVs. It's like OpenAI; when you're leading in a product category and your name is synonymous with the tech, other people's failures with the technology make you look bad.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#699

Post by minwcnt5 »

dheera wrote: post #481
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…

They're deployed in Austin and there have been a lot of complaints there too, although no serious injury accidents as far as I know.

Wide fast streets come with their own set of problems. For instance, stopping in the middle of an intersection is much riskier, the car needs to see objects farther away, etc.

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