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Uber ordered to stop self-driving vehicle service in San Francisco

techcrunch.com

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Re: Uber ordered to stop self-driving vehicle service in San Francisco

#81

Post by judahmeek »

ijustdontgetit wrote: post #68
goalieca wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber exemplifies the libertarian / anarchist subculture in tech. It seems to be a winning strategy for them so far. Edit: to clarify my position. This is why software will never be regarded as an engineering profession. There is a complete disregard for everything that would make us a profession. I'm saddened with the way the world has gone in 2016. It's like we rebelled against adulthood on a global scale.

So I have an off topic question? I originally got into tech because I hate my life and thought that tech was this outlet that could actually make some change. I come from a world of violence and abuse and never really cared for the powers that be. Tech seemed like the answer. So my question to the people who don't feel this way: why are you in tech? Serious question. Tech only seems interesting because you can move f…

I switched from Marketing to Computer Science because I got tired of writing multiple page essays based on a few sentences out of a textbook and I wanted to be in a field of study where I was judged by what I could or couldn't do rather than by how many buzzwords I could fit in an essay.

But there's plenty of other reasons to be in tech: The promise of money is almost as good as the finance industry; The ability to touch a lot of lives and improve people's quality of life is another possibility; The desire to understand technology as it exponentially permeates our lives was another aspect of my decision.

Re: Uber ordered to stop self-driving vehicle service in San Francisco

#82

Post by taneq »

aetherson wrote: post #63
Overtonwindow wrote: post #4

I really hope California isn't overreacting, possibly due to industry pressure from taxis etc. The state should be doing all it can to support, grow, and encourage this innovation.

I don't think that the taxi industry has a lot of pull at the state level. Perhaps in some cities, but Uber has generally not had a lot of difficulty besting taxis politically in California thus far.

If they did, you'd think the government would be cracking down on unlicensed taxi services (which is what Uber really is) as an immediate and clearly illegal threat to the regulated market which taxis were originally promised by the state.

Re: Uber ordered to stop self-driving vehicle service in San Francisco

#83

Post by krasin »

rgarrett88 wrote: post #77
krasin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Michigan just passed a set of very pro-self-driving cars laws: http://fortune.com/2016/12/09/michigan-self-driving-cars/ So, Uber only hit the wall in SF, and can still continue testing elsewhere. That said, I don't like the aggressive gambling with pedestrians lifes like Uber or Tesla do.

>That said, I don't like the aggressive gambling with pedestrians lifes like Uber or Tesla do. We gamble with pedestrian's lives every time we get in a car. No one has seen how these vehicles perform in real world scenarios. It seems very possible they could perform better than humans on average.

My guess is that the levels of these systems will differ. Some systems will be better than humans (on average), and some systems will be worse. The gamble I mention is that Uber and Tesla are putting too many machines on the road at once without having good priors for their current level of competence.

Re: Uber ordered to stop self-driving vehicle service in San Francisco

#84

Post by jdale27 »

Boxbot wrote: post #36
JamilD wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Updated Uber statement: "This incident was due to human error. This is why we believe so much in making the roads safer by building self-driving Ubers. This vehicle was not part of the pilot and was not carrying customers. The driver involved has been suspended while we continue to investigate." https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/14/uber-looking-into-incident...

I find it telling that they do not actually say whether the car was in autonomous mode when it ran the red light, only that it was "due to human error". Was the human error that they didn't assume manual control and stop the car?

Obviously the error was made by the human who wrote the software that drove the car... hence, human error. QED.

Re: Uber ordered to stop self-driving vehicle service in San Francisco

#85

Post by serge2k »

dmix wrote: post #74
geofft wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody, until someone gets hurt. It's a valid political position to believe that people don't need government regulation (laws) to behave themselves, not make mistakes, and not take risks that might lead to mistakes. It's the libertarian/anarchist viewpoint, as mentioned. But that's not how the government in San Francisco, California, or the US works. Those of us who don't hold to the libertarian or anarchist positio…

Just to play devils advocate here. Assuming Uber gets a permit to test autonomous vehicles in public, how much risk has been mitigated as a result vs not having a permit and allowing them to continue testing? Reading the legislation, the only requirement for the permit are: - have insurance with up to $5 million - the driver has a drivers license and has "Instruction on the automated driving system technology", as we…

Knowing how to drive and having insurance both sound like reasonable things for people to do, but we still mandate driver licensing and insurance.

Re: Uber ordered to stop self-driving vehicle service in San Francisco

#87

Post by Fricken »

detaro wrote: post #78
brilliantcode wrote: post #37

This is really worrying for Uber. It's supposedly burning 2 billion dollars a year. It doesn't own any fleet of vehicles or it's drivers. Neither is there a sustainable cost savings that doesn't involve lighting pile of cash on fire. It desperately needs driverless cars before Tesla and Google kills their business off. Now Uber has finally hit a regulatory wall which it won't be able to pay off. It's likely to hit mo…

> Now Uber has finally hit a regulatory wall which it won't be able to pay off. I wouldn't be surprised if they just can say "sorry, misunderstanding", apply for a permit like everybody else and continue with a bit more oversight.

That's what will happen, but it's fashionable to predict Uber's imminent demise.

Re: Uber ordered to stop self-driving vehicle service in San Francisco

#88

Post by Daviey »

sundaeofshock wrote: post #73
Daviey wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are permits for Autonomous vehicles. Uber couldn't legitimately abide by a permit as they would need to confirm that the "autonomous vehicle is operated for testing purposes only"... and they want to use it as part of their business model straight away. Without looking into the specific legislation, on the surface it looks like a reasonable interpretation. All of the references from Uber state they are doing "s…

Uber doesn't get to decide if they are in violation of California regulations. As for the permit, there is no guarantee that Uber will get one if they apply for it; the state can refuse such an application. If they keep showing callous disregard for public safety, they may not even be around to get refused by the State of California.

Uber does get to decide if they follow the law and not the DMV's interpretation of it.

Providing the vehicle required human monitoring the actions of the car, it isn't classed as an autonomous vehicle.. or do you disagree with my interpretation of the below?

  (1) “Autonomous technology” means technology that has the capability to drive a vehicle without the active physical control or monitoring by a human operator.
  (2) (A) “Autonomous vehicle” means any vehicle equipped with autonomous technology that has been integrated into that vehicle.
http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xh...

Providing the vehicle design still requires a human to be monitoring the car, it by my interpretation not an autonomous vehicle. Obviously, this will change in the future.. and then they will require a permit.

Re: Uber ordered to stop self-driving vehicle service in San Francisco

#89

Post by nodesocket »

JamilD wrote: post #15

I want self-driving cars to happen as quickly as possible, but Uber seems like they were extremely reckless and negligent here. Why not apply for a permit and stay on the safe side? And with at least two reported incidents of these cars running red lights, it seems like driver training and attentiveness was lacking. If the software wasn't ready, fine, but you have to be aware of that and train your drivers to be 100%…

The real question is how hard is this permit to obtain? I'm also guessing the permit limits Uber from doing what they want completely.

Re: Uber ordered to stop self-driving vehicle service in San Francisco

#90

Post by doktrin »

goalieca wrote: post #30
dsl wrote: post #8

Uber is a company built on ignoring laws. Everything they did in the beginning was against some form of taxi or car hire regulation, in the name of disruption. (Regardless of what you think of the laws in question, they were still being broken in the eyes of most regulators) I don't know how I feel about that type of corporate philosophy (or Facebook's "move fast break things") in light of projects where people can a…

Uber exemplifies the libertarian / anarchist subculture in tech. It seems to be a winning strategy for them so far. Edit: to clarify my position. This is why software will never be regarded as an engineering profession. There is a complete disregard for everything that would make us a profession. I'm saddened with the way the world has gone in 2016. It's like we rebelled against adulthood on a global scale.

> the libertarian / anarchist subculture

pls

more like the greedy, callous and obnoxiously self important subculture in tech

(inb4 downvotes from uber's legion of koolaid drinking fanboys & employees)

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