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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

#841

Post by seanmcdirmid »

runarberg wrote: post #807
Symbiote wrote: post #770

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am staring aghast with European eyes at a city of 4 million people where the commuter rail doesn't run outside peak hours. How do you get home if you go out for a couple of drinks with colleagues, or stay late for a call? You shouldn't be asking for a couple of trains between 8pm and midnight. They should be every half hour, or more! Midnight until 6am on Saturday and Sunday could be every hour or two. (I live in C…

I agree. I actually live a bit closer to Seattle then OP, only 40 min on bus + boat (add 20 outside of commuter hour for a second bus). The Sounder doesn’t actually run anywhere near me, (well I could take the 118 south to the Tahlequah ferry terminal, 10 min boat to Point Defiance, a Pearce transit bus to Tacoma, and ride the Sounder from there; which urbanists call the “long way”). so this doesn’t affect me persona…

I live in Ballard, so the sounder goes right by me. We (my kid and I) even watch it go by sometime. Nowhere near to get on, though, so I’ve actually never been on one before. It would be a cool way to link Ballard to downtown Seattle by rail before 2040.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#842

Post by kbos87 »

mlcrypto wrote: post #779
pbarnes_1 wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a Waymo come to a screeching halt in a split second as a... less than intelligent individual... skateboarded in front of a bus, into the extremely busy road . If it was a human that person would have been dead, no question. Sometimes I'm riding in a Waymo (which I do every single day, 4x) and it does something, and I double take. Then a second later I see whatever it was it reacted to, and I'm like "dang, why d…

Or maybe they know they can do anything in front of the car because it will always yield. It will be interesting to see the game theory develop when most of the roads are full of driverless cars so you can gain an edge on the road risk free

I don’t know about “do anything in front of the car”… it’s still a several thousand pound mass that isn’t exempt from the laws of physics… but I for one would be MUCH more willing to be a cyclist on the road if most of the cars were autonomous vehicles behaving within the letter of the law.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#843

Post by ajross »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #796
ajross wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my experience, having been on FSD beta for almost two years now. It's still "un-human-driver-like" in a bunch of surprising ways, but the actual meat and potatoes "does it do more or less stupid stuff" is I think ahead of my own driving at this point. At this point I trust its microdriving (lanekeeping, distance management, speed control, collision/obstacle avoidance, etc...) more than my own for sure. The hig…

Can it detect stationary obstacles at freeway speeds? Do we have good evidence? Because autopilot couldn't.

Meh, we've been here before. That's a vague and impossible point to argue. I mean, sure, yes it does. Does it for all possible obstacles? Probably not? I certainly haven't tested. This kind of "$SYSTEM must have feature $X which is possessed by $COMPETITOR or else it will fail" is just plain bad analysis. It's possible for a Tesla to (1) be a better driver than you on the whole while still (2) doing weird stuff that you're sure you never would.

FWIW: Stationary junk in the freeway causes accidents with human drivers every day, all the time. People are absolutely terrible at dodging crap in the road. But you and everyone else will swear up and down that you'd *never* drive over a shed tire or whatever, even though evidence says you totally would.

Basically: no, you'll never get the evidence you want to "prove" the logical construct you've created. So Teslas, to you, will never be "safe". But in the real world they obviously are.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#844

Post by runarberg »

blincoln wrote: post #827
Symbiote wrote: post #770

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am staring aghast with European eyes at a city of 4 million people where the commuter rail doesn't run outside peak hours. How do you get home if you go out for a couple of drinks with colleagues, or stay late for a call? You shouldn't be asking for a couple of trains between 8pm and midnight. They should be every half hour, or more! Midnight until 6am on Saturday and Sunday could be every hour or two. (I live in C…

The Sounder is a heavy rail train on rails that are shared with other trains (e.g. freight). It runs about 7 times per day in one direction and about 10 times per day in the other. There's no reason to run additional trains on that line, because taking it depends almost entirely on finding an empty space in parking garages that are full by about 6AM. The Seattle area has a newer, dedicated light rail system (Link) th…

I’m not so sure about that. The North line connects to Edmonds which is a major ferry terminal used by a fairly large number of people on the Kitsap peninsula, Port Townsend etc. plus another ferry terminal on Mukilteo for Whitby island. These are major connections which are unusable in the 4 trains a day frequency (Sounder only runs 2 trips and Amtrak Cascade the other 2; latter does not stop at Mukilteo). The link is good and all that but it won’t reach Everett for another 20 years and it won’t connect with the ferries either.

The South direction is a little better (and is improving even further with more Cascade runs on the horizon) but it is the same story. For example, Pyuallup and Sumner are both decent sized towns wit centrally located station, which won’t get light rail and the 1 line won’t reach Tacoma until 2035 at least. There is also a decent transit center at Lakewood, however I would argue it should probably be better to run the 620 all the way to Tacoma, from where Olympia people could jump onto a Sounder or light rail.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#845

Post by oceanplexian »

gerdesj wrote: post #654
pbarnes_1 wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a Waymo come to a screeching halt in a split second as a... less than intelligent individual... skateboarded in front of a bus, into the extremely busy road . If it was a human that person would have been dead, no question. Sometimes I'm riding in a Waymo (which I do every single day, 4x) and it does something, and I double take. Then a second later I see whatever it was it reacted to, and I'm like "dang, why d…

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…

> I'm not sure a machine would have noticed an odd lump next to a lamppost, with a civic rubbish bin next to it, in the rain.

As opposed to what? You don’t have RADAR, or LIDAR, or echolocation, or any other way to “detect” a person in the road. You have human vision.

This is the idea behind Tesla FSD. If human vision is good enough, computer vision is good enough. We have cameras that can approximate human vision. All the other companies using sensors are doing so as a crutch, because they didn’t have the chops to solve the vision problem.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#846

Post by fhub »

wolverine876 wrote: post #697
fhub wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

a) Share some anecdotes as I was lucky enough to get early access by simply applying through the app. b) I'm a believer/early adopter and as such I guess I've enjoyed sharing my experiences.

It turned out I was wrong about the windscreen wipers. LIDAR from other vehicle tripping the rain sensors.

In any event, I do wish Waymo the very best. They aren't just trying to do something hard, they are doing it whilst getting lots of opposition from SF gov. Whether the business model works - time will tell.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#847

Post by ramblerman »

pbarnes_1 wrote: post #515
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 saw a Waymo come to a screeching halt in a split second as a... less than intelligent individual... skateboarded in front of a bus, into the extremely busy road . If it was a human that person would have been dead, no question. Sometimes I'm riding in a Waymo (which I do every single day, 4x) and it does something, and I double take. Then a second later I see whatever it was it reacted to, and I'm like "dang, why d…

I wonder if this will become new pedestrian behavior? Once people learn that waymo will stop for them no matter what they can just cross in front of it.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#848

Post by Animats »

jjoonathan wrote: post #636
CSMastermind wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by the lower number of accidents that AVs are involved in per distance travelled compared to human-driven vehicles Just a note that this number is hard to calculate accurately with an acceptable degree of certainty. Anyone claiming that AVs are involved in fewer accidents per distance traveled than human drivers is either extrapolating from incomplete data or baking some unreliable assumptions into their statement.…

Tesla just announced 500 million miles driven by FSD [1]. Per the video, were it fully autonomous they could have a 95% CI on "safer than human" at only 275 million miles [2], but obviously having human supervision ought to remove many of the worst incidents from the dataset. Does anyone know if they publish disengagement data? [1] https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/... [2] https://youtu.be/y…

Tesla's mileage numbers are meaningless because the human has to take over frequently. They claim credit for miles driven, but don't disclose disconnects and near misses.

California companies with real self driving have to count their disconnects and report all accidents, however minor, to DMV. You can read the disconnect reports online.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#849

Post by Karrot_Kream »

xnx wrote: post #763
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking police officers to enforce traffic violations is a very expensive use of their time. Police offers cost a lot of money to employ, and we have a lot of publicly accessible road space. Having officers even regularly stationed at 50% of the most common routes would probably take up a lot more manpower than they have now and that means more taxes to pay for them. Creating a dedicated traffic enforcement division i…

> Asking police officers to enforce traffic violations is a very expensive use of their time. Is it? Seems like heavy enforcement could pay for itself in terms of fines.

The average police officer in the Bay Area costs $200k with benefits. Can each police officer bring $200k worth of fines in per person? Moreover, what kind of a system will you create if you incentivize officers to pay their own salary through fines?

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#850

Post by Karrot_Kream »

robertlagrant wrote: post #723
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public transit. We like to sensationalize every small problem on American buses and trains but they're also a lot safer than cars. Many countries have implemented transit systems around the world and while the US has been designed around the car shortsightedly for decades, transit is a well-understood mode with well-understood safety considerations.

Cities have been designed around cars (or their precursor - horses/horse and carts) for much longer than decades. Individual transport is universally useful; transit is an optimisation for certain situations.

> Individual transport is universally useful

Indeed and the most individual form of transport is walking and most cities in the world are built around walking. Only the US lays its cities out to require cars. It never really laid its cities for horses and carts (with the exception of Salt Lake City.) Before the car, cities were being built around the streetcar, and before that around walking. It's not like people lived in suburbs and went around in horse and buggy lol.

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