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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

#741

Post by xnx »

stouset wrote: post #543
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.

Although things are changing, the overwhelming majority of AV miles are generally-safer miles on protected highways. And yet their statistics are typically compared against vehicle miles on all road types. Further, most AVs explicitly disengage when they encounter situations beyond their understanding. So again, we’re selecting AV statistics based on generally favorable conditions, but we don’t track human-operated m…

It's not too useful to lump Tesla, Cruise, and Waymo together here. Tesla is years behind Cruise and cruise is years behind Waymo in terms of driving capability. Waymo doesn't even drive on highways, so we don't know how safe it would be (probably very safe).

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#742

Post by mumblemumble »

marcosdumay wrote: post #260
mumblemumble wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear to me that this is purely a software problem; it might be a "the car doesn't even have the sensors necessary to detect this kind of situation" problem. It could also be a "the software can't anticipate that this would be happening the way a human can because it doesn't have object permanence" problem. That's probably at least part of how a human would do it. But I have a suspicion that we're very, very…

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.

And yet a common thread in post-mortems on so many self-driving car collisions boils down to, "the car doesn't have object permanence."

It may have some ability to track specific things in specific ways in a manner that's hard-coded by engineers. But if that's the same thing as an actual mental model of the world then that implies that we've had a significant piece of AGI in the form of many video games for about half a century now and just not known it.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#743

Post by xnx »

twoWhlsGud wrote: post #391
jsemrau wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe of interest. There has been research by SwissRe on this topic. https://jdsemrau.substack.com/p/paper-review-comparative-saf...

That's behind a paywall. Do you have a link to the SwissRe paper by chance? (Which might also behind a paywall, of course ; )

Waymo also talks about its work with SwissRe here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-Qu6HNZu8g

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#744

Post by [deleted] »

IKantRead wrote: post #626
l33t7332273 wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this comment is slightly exaggerated. I didn’t see that many ads for AI companies and while I did see some driverless vehicles, they were in the minority and I only saw them on my second full day exploring the city. There are a large number of homeless people openly doing drugs, and there is some poop, but I find these descriptions to be generally inaccurate. Don’t get me wrong, the situation is bad, but base…

That comment is just based on my experience going to SF a few weeks ago. - Every billboard on the way to the hotel from the airport was for AI (which not the case a few months ago) - Uber driver interrogated me all the way to the hotel on the value prop of my current project at work - Went to grab a burger and had to dodge 2 people screaming at me, walked passed a man crying because I believe a friend had just gotten…

[deleted]

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#745

Post by InTheFutureRob »

Really disappointed at the suspension. Seems like a knee jerk reaction, although cruise should have been more transparent. At this point we should have 4 or 5 self driving car companies testing on public roads not just 2 companies (Waymo and Cruise I don't count Tesla to be self driving but driver assist, the 2 are waymo and Cruise), in Two cities (Phoenix and San Franscio, although LA< Houston Dallas coming soon). In 2015 I anticipated by early 2020s we would have self driving taxis in a dozen US metro cities not just two. What can we do to accelerate the transition towards this fantastic future? Also Canada so far behind.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#746

Post by ClumsyPilot »

ethbr1 wrote: post #539
pbarnes_1 wrote: post #521

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…

One huge advantage sensor-equiped vehicles have is knowing velocity and acceleration of traffic around them. Human drivers are often conservative because they don't know the speed/acceleration of a potentially colliding vehicle. We look at something and estimate (How fast? Speeding up or slowing down?), but we don't know . If you could put an actual number on it, I think you could drive a lot more "aggressively" and…

but they don't know capabilities orf vehicles, say a vespa vs some sports bike.

While humans do and will behave differently around these vehicles.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#747

Post by nemothekid »

fhub wrote: post #602
gmassman wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Are you able to play music on the car speakers from your phone? The process on iPhone seems very awkward (talking to google assistant instead of just selecting a song).

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#748

Post by xnx »

bluGill wrote: post #533
fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the bus had dynamic routing, so it could show up where I am when I’m ready, and take me where I want to go, I’d be a huge fan. I don’t mean this ironically! I think dynamically dispatched, self-driving buses and vans will eventually save public transit. They’ll enable a much higher quality of service than current bus systems. Which drive around mostly-empty stopping every few blocks so it takes forever to get anyw…

You don't want dynamic routing. You want frequent predictable routing. Dynamic means you call and 1-15 minutes later a bus comes. Then it takes you to your destination, but you have no idea when you will get there because sometimes it takes long detours for someone else. Frequent predictable routing means when you feel like leaving you just walk out the door confident that the bus will be there soon (even if you see…

That seems like very 20th century thinking. We should be aspiring to shape public transport to the needs of the riders instead of making the riders learn fixed routes and transfers. Waymo is very likely to be superior to existing public transportation in all dimensions for almost every transit need. There might still be a role for big buses and trains in the peak of rush hour (if that still exists).

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#749

Post by bhelkey »

bluGill wrote: post #390
barkingcat wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans should be the baseline precisely because they aren't very good. Imagine a whole fleet of hundreds of self driving car that are worst than the average human driver (who are already really bad) all making the exact same worst than human mistakes.

I don't want imagination, I want real numbers! Several groups must have them, but so far nobody is talking, except those who have reason to conceal the truth. (Average drivers includes those driving drunk, which isn't a useful compare for someone who doesn't do that) It is not hard to imagine that self driving cars are normally better except for some situation. If we can know those situations we can also talk about h…

> I want real numbers

Every single accident involving a self driving car in California must be reported to the DMV. In addition, miles driven and disengagements are reported. All that information is available today online (e.g. accidents [1]).

> nobody is talking

No one talks data about the biggest player Waymo because "human driver causes an accident" is not news.

In September, there were three crashes involving a Waymo car. On September 3rd and again on the 11th, a driver hit a parked Waymo car[1]. On September 30th, a car rear-ended a Waymo car stopped at a red light[1].

[1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/auto...

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#750

Post by xnx »

Retric wrote: post #446
fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the bus had dynamic routing, so it could show up where I am when I’m ready, and take me where I want to go, I’d be a huge fan. I don’t mean this ironically! I think dynamically dispatched, self-driving buses and vans will eventually save public transit. They’ll enable a much higher quality of service than current bus systems. Which drive around mostly-empty stopping every few blocks so it takes forever to get anyw…

A bus/tram that shows up every 3 minutes (average wait time 1.5 minutes) is going to generally beat dispatched self driving cars in terms of convenience. 20 busses per hour is a completely reasonable level of service for most of the day in a major city and doesn’t need any kind of routings because swapping lines has such a minimal wait time. However, if you’ve only experienced terrible public transit then it seems li…

> driving empty vehicles only makes congestion worse.

The number of empty bus seats I see go by is astounding Those buses take up a lot of road space and block arterial traffic when people are boarding.

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