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We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

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Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#71

Post by polalavik »

xnx wrote: post #57
polalavik wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not like it’s free once it’s solved. you will subscribe to it and pay probably some fraction of a car payment for life.

Absolutely correct. Mobile phone service isn't free either, but it's so much better than land lines that most people have given up their land line. I expect a similar adoption pattern for self-driving car service.

I don’t think that’s a valid comparison. Landlines and mobile solve two different problems and were probably about the same price. If a subscription to a car costs you as much as owning a car over a long period of time, why subscribe ?

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#72

Post by sbmthakur »

polalavik wrote: post #17
xnx wrote: post #12

This is a good move on Cruise's part. Cruise is still nowhere near the maturity level that Waymo was at when Waymo first started driving on public roads. On the other hand, we definitely need a real competitor to Waymo. It doesn't seem likely, but hopefully some combination of Cruise, Apple(?), Tesla, or another player will be able to have a feasible alternative to Waymo's Driver.

Out of all the tech problems to solve, driverless cars or driverless taxis has always baffled me. It’s a very complex thing to solve with a zillion edge cases. And for what net gain? What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve? Lack of good public transit? Let’s solve that instead. Millions of cars driverless or not are not a great solution to anything.

Speaking from observations, lack of good public transit is more of a political problem. There's extremely less chance of progress unless more people start attending city council meetings and start pushing for public transit. Fortunately, there are several initiatives like Strong Towns that are spreading awareness around this topic.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#73

Post by shipscode »

mrastro wrote: post #54
huytersd wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public transit is no good. I don’t want to walk to a station and then share the space with other people. I don’t want to lug grocery bags around. I want to make pit stops. I want to go off road. I want to live in the suburbs or semi rural areas so I can have a lot of land.

If we (North America) had more walkable streets a lot of these problems would be solved: grocery stores are easier to place in population centers a short distance with less car and more foot traffic and you can rent a car for occasional "off-road" recreational driving. In terms of transportation and city design, the US could learn a lot from Europe if it weren't so addicted to cars. It's better for the environment, m…

Except in the real world this is the opposite case… population centers are full of food desert pockets and the suburbs are the land of plenty.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#74

Post by atleastoptimal »

Cruise's death knell was when they were bought by GM. There's something insidious about US Detroit-based car companies that keeps them from innovating almost as a rule. It seems they often deliberately prioritize making their cars worse if it can drive up profit.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#75

Post by comte7092 »

melling wrote: post #64
polalavik wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of all the tech problems to solve, driverless cars or driverless taxis has always baffled me. It’s a very complex thing to solve with a zillion edge cases. And for what net gain? What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve? Lack of good public transit? Let’s solve that instead. Millions of cars driverless or not are not a great solution to anything.

“What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve?” 40,000 deaths in the United States every year. Hundreds of thousands of costly accidents We can’t get great transportation even in the New York City area. We have 0 miles of high-speed rail, while China built 25,000 it’s great that you want to start building some mass transit, but it’ll take a century if we start now. Let’s start by having trains take you to the…

> 40,000 deaths in the United States every year. Hundreds of thousands of costly accidents

Somehow, after a decade of hype, it doesn’t seem like driverless cars are the most direct path to solving that problem.

> Let’s start by having trains take you to the airport directly

I feel like that exists in a lot of places? Not sure what you mean.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#76

Post by xnx »

Foreignborn wrote: post #68
xnx wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I think back to the covid lockdowns and how much nicer and more spacious the city felt with no cars on the roads, that’s what I think cities should be like. Me too! Short of another global pandemic, the best thing to have on the ride beside "no cars" is self-driving vehicles.

I don’t follow why that’s the next best thing. It seems like making cars more convenient would induce demand (i.e. add more cars), opposite of what the parent comments desire.

My expectation (from what I know of Waymo's current behavior) is that cars will be perfectly safe and predictable road citizens, no more threatening or dangerous than a Roomba.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#77

Post by ajross »

antli35 wrote: post #65
ajross wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I'm having a hard time even seeing it as that much of a bug. As I understand the accident, the woman trapped wasn't visible from anywhere in the vehicle or its sensors. Any human driver would likely have done the same thing (pull over after a collision when your vehicle is still drivable). It's a terrible situation for the victim, but it's not something reasonably preventable by safety technology of any kind…

If a pedestrian gets flung in front of your car and then you no longer see them, wouldn't you be inclined to check whether they might have gone under your car? Especially if you're hearing screaming...

Driver behavior after collisions isn't remotely that rational. People do all kind of crazy things in extremis (secondary collisions caused by post-collision drivers mistakenly hitting the accelerator instead of brake are a whole category of accident!). And in any case (again, as I understand the accident) this was stopped traffic and the Cruise vehicle was hit by another vehicle. In that kind of situation I think a human driver would be hard pressed to know a pedestrian was nearby at all.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#78

Post by ZoomerCretin »

stickfigure wrote: post #32
polalavik wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of all the tech problems to solve, driverless cars or driverless taxis has always baffled me. It’s a very complex thing to solve with a zillion edge cases. And for what net gain? What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve? Lack of good public transit? Let’s solve that instead. Millions of cars driverless or not are not a great solution to anything.

Most people don't live in urban centers. Unless you plan on dismantling the suburbs, we're stuck with cars of one form or another. Taxis, driverless or otherwise, are "public transport".

When those suburbs are within the city limits of large cities, yes absolutely they should be dismantled and densified. There's no justification for using government power to create a housing cartel during a housing shortage.

Further, mixed use development like corner stores, restaurants, and grocery stores where people live will eliminate a large fraction of vehicle trips entirely.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#79

Post by kdmccormick »

dmix wrote: post #36
polalavik wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of all the tech problems to solve, driverless cars or driverless taxis has always baffled me. It’s a very complex thing to solve with a zillion edge cases. And for what net gain? What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve? Lack of good public transit? Let’s solve that instead. Millions of cars driverless or not are not a great solution to anything.

Do we have to have this conversation in every single thread that mentions driverless cars? We get it, an extremely vocal subset of reddit/HN who lives` in downtown cities likes public transit more than cars.

Yes, and every time AI comes up, the downsides of AI are also brought up. Because they're important to talk about.

Anyway, the driverless car pilots are happening in our dense city downtowns. If it was all confined to Palo Alto and other techie suburbs then maybe we wouldn't care as much.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#80

Post by gobins »

dmix wrote: post #36
polalavik wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of all the tech problems to solve, driverless cars or driverless taxis has always baffled me. It’s a very complex thing to solve with a zillion edge cases. And for what net gain? What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve? Lack of good public transit? Let’s solve that instead. Millions of cars driverless or not are not a great solution to anything.

Do we have to have this conversation in every single thread that mentions driverless cars? We get it, an extremely vocal subset of reddit/HN who lives` in downtown cities likes public transit more than cars.

It probably is not the same people having that discussion in every thread. Also, people may have views that can change overtime.
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