Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cruise told by CA DMV to reduce robotaxi fleet 50% following crash

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 205 posts

Re: Cruise told by CA DMV to reduce robotaxi fleet 50% following crash

#91

Post by Dylan16807 »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #65
gruez wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've said it before when a self-driving Uber killed a woman, and I'll say it again: But that car had a safety driver, who turned out to be negligent. What's the difference between a company testing a self-driving car with a safety diver killing someone because the safety driver was negligent, and a company doing deliveries with a human driver, and killing someone because the driver was negligent?

The car hit her because Uber purposefully disabled the Volvo SUV's built-in autobraking systems, and because the self-driving system detected and classified her with plenty of time to react...and simply did nothing to avoid hitting her. A complete and total failure of the self-driving control logic. It's also arguable that she was killed as a direct result of Nevada happily allowing Uber to conduct their self-driving…

> Safety drivers were lipstick on a pig, designed to make self-driving cars more palatable to the public.

I go the other way with that information.

Safety drivers being used that way are bullshit.

If they didn't have the safety driver then there's no way in hell the braking systems would have been disabled and need manual intervention.

Therefore it was bad management and the entire idea of using safety drivers that way that was the problem, not the underlying self-driving system.

Re: Cruise told by CA DMV to reduce robotaxi fleet 50% following crash

#92

Post by reustle »

seizethecheese wrote: post #11
bdowling wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Noticing and responding to emergency sounds/signals in the road… How do deaf drivers respond to sirens from emergency vehicles?

Flashing lights

There are many instances in dense cities where the streets are too tight between buildings or busy with buses and cars to see down the other road at an intersection.

Japan gets around this by having ambulances at least slow down and look both ways for each red light they are driving through. Doesn’t seem like a huge ask.

Re: Cruise told by CA DMV to reduce robotaxi fleet 50% following crash

#93

Post by Dylan16807 »

jancsika wrote: post #79
thereisnospork wrote: post #50

Absurd: Are we going to call for a 50% reduction in human operators next time there is a crash caused by something with a pulse? We can't have progress if we don't get over this inane sentimentality(?) over how accidents, deaths, and dismemberments are just 'how things are' so long as they are caused by people and 'Safety of the traveling public is the California DMV’s top priority[0]' when a robot does it. [0]Editor…

> We can't have progress if we don't get over this inane sentimentality(?) over how accidents, deaths, and dismemberments are just 'how things are' so long as they are caused by people and 'Safety of the traveling public is the California DMV’s top priority[0]' when a robot does it. That sure does sound like the way to have progress. Blockchain and self-driving seem to be the only digital domains where adherents argu…

> lowering our standards

Lowering from what baseline? I almost always see people advocate for similar accident rates as humans or better. That's not lowering.

> It's actually difficult to come up with an analogy in any other domain. Perhaps if VR hardware had some inane limitation that required users to always walk the entire physically analogous distance to move around in the virtual world. And when a user complains about not being able to teleport to different areas, VR adherents push back that the VR world is no worse than the physical world in this sense.

In this analogy, is walking the only option in the physical world too? Or can VR have vehicles too?

If yes to either of those, I don't see what's so ridiculous about this scenario. Am I the dumb one?

For the analogy to fit, there must have been enormous amounts of money spent on trying to invent VR teleportation, but it hadn't happened yet.

And in that case... yes the complaint is valid, but it doesn't make VR a failure.

You wouldn't be lowering your standards because of the lack of teleportation.

Re: Cruise told by CA DMV to reduce robotaxi fleet 50% following crash

#94

Post by oezi »

8bitsrule wrote: post #87

Good idea. Let's extend that to all gasoline vehicles. They can only be driven (or robo-ride) every other day. Cuts congestion and gas consumption. Makes parking easier. Every driver can still get to all of things they have to. They just have to learn to schedule things better. Car pool, transit, whatever. Most cars aren't driven many hours a day anyways.

When they did such things for instance in Beijing, the wealthy just bought two cars to cover either day.

Re: Cruise told by CA DMV to reduce robotaxi fleet 50% following crash

#95

Post by rightbyte »

shwaj wrote: post #52
7e wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do terrible drivers drive as much as Cruise does? Terrible drivers at least eventually get better through practice. Having 100 poorer than average driving autonomous cars in the streets driving around 24x7 is a net worsening. Autonomous cars improve more slowly than humans do.

Your point about terrible drivers getting better through practice doesn’t make much sense to me: - autonomous cars are also getting better with practice - we’re alway producing new batches of terrible drivers. This is unlike autonomous cars, where all cars within a particular fleet (Waymo, Cruise) are monotonically becoming better drivers

Why would they get monotonically better? Is that your experience with modern best practice software development? Where companies push user hostile features and bugs automatically without user interaction.

All Waymo cars could simultaneously degrade due to an update (or hack). Imagine if all them did full left at the same time.

Re: Cruise told by CA DMV to reduce robotaxi fleet 50% following crash

#96

Post by rightbyte »

swid wrote: post #29
joshuahedlund wrote: post #2

> The latest Cruise incident occurred Thursday night when a Cruise robotaxi and an emergency vehicle crashed and left a passenger injured. Cruise said in a social media post that one of its self-driving Chevy Bolt EVs entered an intersection on a green traffic light at Polk and Turk streets when it was struck by an emergency vehicle that appeared to be en route to an emergency scene. Noticing and responding to emerge…

Cruise released a statement which said the car did hear the siren when it was louder than background noise. No indication how close the siren was for that to happen, but it sounds pretty definitive that audio sensors are already part of the kit.

A siren does not have to be lauder than background noise to be hearable.

Re: Cruise told by CA DMV to reduce robotaxi fleet 50% following crash

#97

Post by renewiltord »

jhugo wrote: post #17

> “Over one hundred people lose their lives every day on American roadways, and countless others are badly injured, Cruise said in a statement sent via email. I’m so tired of this angle being accepted at face value. Current driverless cars are not even capable of safely navigating situations that below-average human drivers rarely struggle with, like avoiding driving into clearly marked wet concrete, or not crashing…

I've definitely seen human cars in wet concrete in SF before. Most human accidents in this city just don't get reported.

Guy ran a red light and put me in the ICU for a week. Wasn't even in the news.

Re: Cruise told by CA DMV to reduce robotaxi fleet 50% following crash

#98

Post by renewiltord »

petre wrote: post #67
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [2015] In California alone, 431 people died in accidents involving young drivers[0] By your logic we should also stop allowing 15-20 year olds to learn how to drive in public. So far the robots have done less damage. [0] https://www.inlandempirelawyers.com/blog/young-driver-accide...

In Europe they can't drive normal cars before 18. They will be able to to so after 17 if accompanied by an adult and will be subject to a probation period of 2 years after taking the test. Also speed "limitiers" will be required in all new vehicles after 2024. Most of these would probably be audible nags, like the one that beeps if one drives without the seatbelt. https://transport.ec.europa.eu/news-events/news/europ…

Absolutely insane that your society allows children to experiment on unwitting people without consent.

Re: Cruise told by CA DMV to reduce robotaxi fleet 50% following crash

#99

Post by petre »

renewiltord wrote: post #98
petre wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe they can't drive normal cars before 18. They will be able to to so after 17 if accompanied by an adult and will be subject to a probation period of 2 years after taking the test. Also speed "limitiers" will be required in all new vehicles after 2024. Most of these would probably be audible nags, like the one that beeps if one drives without the seatbelt. https://transport.ec.europa.eu/news-events/news/europ…

Absolutely insane that your society allows children to experiment on unwitting people without consent.

What are you talking about?

Re: Cruise told by CA DMV to reduce robotaxi fleet 50% following crash

#100

Post by Gud »

rightbyte wrote: post #95
shwaj wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point about terrible drivers getting better through practice doesn’t make much sense to me: - autonomous cars are also getting better with practice - we’re alway producing new batches of terrible drivers. This is unlike autonomous cars, where all cars within a particular fleet (Waymo, Cruise) are monotonically becoming better drivers

Why would they get monotonically better? Is that your experience with modern best practice software development? Where companies push user hostile features and bugs automatically without user interaction. All Waymo cars could simultaneously degrade due to an update (or hack). Imagine if all them did full left at the same time.

Your objections make little sense. Waymo is not working on a mobile phone widget but on advanced process control software. And yes, this class of software is getting increasingly better.

Of course software bugs will be introduced, and later rectified. We live in an imperfect world.

Post reply on HN