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S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

sfchronicle.com

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Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#81

Post by jiveturkey »

imperialdrive wrote: post #55
jiveturkey wrote: post #6

My kneejerk was to say, yeah 1->3 is a tripling. In modern journalistic terms that is 'skyrocketing'. Then I read TFA. Yep 30->90. 'skyrocketing'. That's not to say it isn't concerning. The downed wire incident that is the highlight of the story seems quite bad. But human drivers do much, much worse things, with very high frequency. Weekly sideshows, for example. The article is very unfair.

I'm on the streets of SF for hours a day, every day, mostly on bicycle. Often at night, when these AVs are at their peak output. The difference in their behavior is scary noticeable, especially within the last 30 days. I'm very curious about the programming reason behind it.

i have no basis for this guess, but i'd suppose it's more miles being driven, not a significant programming update.

yep, TFA linkes to another article that there was a recent significant increase in miles driven.

i guess that doesn't necessarily jibe with your perception of a noticeable difference in singular behavior, but our brains do funny things. when you buy a certain new make of car, suddenly you wonder why so many of them are on the road. (they always were)

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#82

Post by saalweachter »

cameldrv wrote: post #49

I've just got to say I'm so impressed with both Waymo and Cruise. Last year they did 4.5 million miles put together in California with zero fatalities. This is an incredible achievement.

The US rate is 0.57 fatalities per 100 million passenger miles.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#83

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

ameister14 wrote: post #60
more_corn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber performed self driving car tests in downtown San Francisco for a bit. I personally saw an error where self driving cars turning right on red failed to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk who had right of way. It was a bug. The driver looped and tried again while I was standing there and it happened again. It was an incident. It was a safety incident. Getting killed by a robot breaking the rules is no less dead…

It doesn't commit the fallacy of whataboutism - it's the same issue and a direct substitute. Any safety incident is unacceptable is not a realistic standard, and I am not sure why a lower rate of incident is not a convincing argument for you. Yes, getting killed by a robot leaves you no less dead, but if 5 people are killed by robots where 10 people would have been killed by people, isn't that a net positive?

If 10 people were killed by people, then there could be 10 wrongful-death lawsuits and 10 car insurance claims and 10 cases of liability and 10 criminal investigations and 10 driver's licenses sanctioned, where each and every human behind the wheel must accept responsibility and assume liability for the harm caused to other human beings, and/or property.

If 5 people are killed by SDCs, then 5 executors will need to visit our website, create an account, and submit a request for reimbursement for funeral expenses. Please upload your death certificate and all itemized receipts. Our best AI will absolutely make its best efforts to find out which remote human operator caused those cars to begin driving, and then we will launch an internal investigation into whether their pay should be cut, or maybe we'll put them on paid leave instead and connect them with a grief counselor. Thank you for choosing WayMo. Scan this QR code to install our app!

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#84

Post by JoshTko »

imperialdrive wrote: post #46
wordsarelies wrote: post #23

So it's funny, when they first started rolling these out folks were interested, intrigued even. Folks walking would give them deference, mostly not run in front of them if they saw them, very unlike how they treat regular drivers. But now folks are getting sick of them. So they were modeling all their behavior and driving around cooperative pedestrians and cars (mostly) now they have to model for an adversarial publi…

They are MUCH more aggressive now. It used to be that if you saw one, you could be 99% sure it would stop and wait for the path to be fully clear. Now, they will buzz right by you within a foot or two. Very alarming how quickly they progressed to being careless.

Google will optimize minimizing deaths/accidents vs maximizing trips/revenue. So it seems that buzzing closer to people is optimal for Google.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#85

Post by tick_tock_tick »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #21
DragonStrength wrote: post #14

I left SF a year ago but had Cruise and Waymo cars in my neighborhood constantly. They were a total nuisance. They'd jerk towards pedestrians in crosswalks leading to this uncomfortable standoff where no one in the neighborhood would ever step in front of one. I'd wager any stats here are way lower than real incidences as I was nearly hit multiple times and never got to the "report it" stage as there are so many barr…

I have similar experiences (as a pedestrian) crossing in front of Cruise cars, especially at 4-way stops when there aren't crosswalks explicitly drawn. It's odd because the cars are generally excruciatingly cautious, but for some reason as I'm crossing they seem to calculate exactly how fast they can take off such that they pass me right as I'm clear of their path -- whereas most drivers might wait for the pedestrian…

> whereas most drivers might wait for the pedestrian to reach the sidewalk before passing.

You're joking right? No one wait for you to clear the street. Hell most driving start advancing when you're going to be clear by the time they make it to you.

> What would happen if I "dropped" my wallet and turned around to pick it up?

Same thing a human would; hit you or slam on the brakes. They'll just do it faster and harder.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#86

Post by idopmstuff »

notakio wrote: post #51
standardUser wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is a tired argument, but it's not wrong: There is equal or greater cause for concern with cars driven by people, we're just used to those horrors and reluctant to trade them for a different set of horrors, even if they are conclusively less horrible. I lived carless in downtown SF for 10 years, usually with a walking commute, and it was not pleasant. Packed streets full of angry, stressed drivers honking…

I have no dog in this fight. If anything, my final takeaway was that my impressions were entirely anecdotal and/or experiential, and not based on any sort of legitimate analysis with useful data. It should probably be done, but my point was more that it's only getting more complicated as people take action based on their perception, whether that perception is supported rationally or not. So now, on top of a reasonabl…

I don't think that complicates anything from a policy perspective. If self-driving cars are good (i.e. safer than human drivers), we should be rolling them out. If a small number of people interfere with them or damage them, we should just arrest those people and prosecute them for the relevant crimes. I don't think that vandalism of self-driving cars is going to be a serious issue long term, given that anyone vandalizing them is going to be on camera, plus people will just get used to them and find other things to be mad about.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#87

Post by Barrin92 »

standardUser wrote: post #22
notakio wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved out of SF ~2018, and only recently revisited, and the increased frequency with which I saw robocars was immediately concerning to me, largely based on the potential for things to go wrong, and with just how frequent they were. My second thought was, after hearing friends and family still there echo nothing for disdain for them, "how long before someone starts setting these on fire?" as some sort of nuisance c…

I know this is a tired argument, but it's not wrong: There is equal or greater cause for concern with cars driven by people, we're just used to those horrors and reluctant to trade them for a different set of horrors, even if they are conclusively less horrible. I lived carless in downtown SF for 10 years, usually with a walking commute, and it was not pleasant. Packed streets full of angry, stressed drivers honking…

>There is equal or greater cause for concern with cars driven by people

No there isn't. Driverless cars drive under a fraction of the conditions and in self selected locations precisely because the tech is still shoddy. Not to mention they only function at all because they're vastly outnumbered by humans who know how to respond to them.

Let's do an actual experiment to compare. 100% driverless cars with current tech, from different companies on all road conditions that humans drive on during busy hours in a city and see how that goes. To even attempt to compare driverless cars to human drivers without seeing the dynamics of a non-trivial amount of them interacting, which humans need to do all the time, is meaningless.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#88

Post by speedgoose »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #30

>Cruise and Waymo say city officials have mischaracterized their safety track records. Their driverless taxis, the companies say, have lower collision rates than human drivers and public transit. This is comparing the mean driverless incident rate to the mean human driver incident rate. This is disingenuous, since a small minority of human drivers cause the vast majority of incidents, thereby severely inflating the m…

Thankfully driving safer than the mean or median taxi driver seems very achievable.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#89

Post by opportune »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #21
DragonStrength wrote: post #14

I left SF a year ago but had Cruise and Waymo cars in my neighborhood constantly. They were a total nuisance. They'd jerk towards pedestrians in crosswalks leading to this uncomfortable standoff where no one in the neighborhood would ever step in front of one. I'd wager any stats here are way lower than real incidences as I was nearly hit multiple times and never got to the "report it" stage as there are so many barr…

I have similar experiences (as a pedestrian) crossing in front of Cruise cars, especially at 4-way stops when there aren't crosswalks explicitly drawn. It's odd because the cars are generally excruciatingly cautious, but for some reason as I'm crossing they seem to calculate exactly how fast they can take off such that they pass me right as I'm clear of their path -- whereas most drivers might wait for the pedestrian…

I have the opposite experience, I live by a bunch of 4way stops that drivers get very pushy about if you try to use as a pedestrian. The driverless cars never put me in a dangerous situation at those intersections but human driven cars do very frequently.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#90

Post by idopmstuff »

more_corn wrote: post #45
standardUser wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is a tired argument, but it's not wrong: There is equal or greater cause for concern with cars driven by people, we're just used to those horrors and reluctant to trade them for a different set of horrors, even if they are conclusively less horrible. I lived carless in downtown SF for 10 years, usually with a walking commute, and it was not pleasant. Packed streets full of angry, stressed drivers honking…

Uber performed self driving car tests in downtown San Francisco for a bit. I personally saw an error where self driving cars turning right on red failed to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk who had right of way. It was a bug. The driver looped and tried again while I was standing there and it happened again. It was an incident. It was a safety incident. Getting killed by a robot breaking the rules is no less dead…

> Your argument that human drivers suck commits the fallacy of whataboutism.

No, it doesn't. Self-driving cars are potential substitutes for human-driven cars. If self-driving cars cause fewer injuries/accidents/etc. per mile driven, then everyone will be safer if we replace human-driven cars with them. If you object to self-driving cars being on the road even if they're safer than human-driven cars, you are implicitly saying that your preference is for more people to be injured.

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