Related: robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks just wrote up an incident where a Cruise cab he was riding in stopped suddenly in the middle of an intersection, nearly causing a bad collision: http://rodneybrooks.com/autonomous-vehicles-2023-part-ii/. Consistent with the discussion here of Cruise cars being dangerously timid.
California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment
921–930 of 1001 posts
Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment
#922I had an epiphany about self driving recently late at night on the streets of San Francisco. It was a somewhat deserted part of town, and the roads were empty. There was a lone Cruise car chugging along and constantly stopping at red lights. The signals were so badly optimized that the car would be the only one waiting at a completely empty intersection for minutes at a time, only to be stopped again at the next one,…
Somehow it’s the tech bros fault.
Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment
#923[dead]
Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment
#924I do not understand why we're letting these companies test autonomous cars without someone clearly on the hook for both financial and criminal liability for each car.
Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment
#925I had an epiphany about self driving recently late at night on the streets of San Francisco. It was a somewhat deserted part of town, and the roads were empty. There was a lone Cruise car chugging along and constantly stopping at red lights. The signals were so badly optimized that the car would be the only one waiting at a completely empty intersection for minutes at a time, only to be stopped again at the next one,…
Somehow it’s the tech bros fault.
Youre right it's not their fault directly. Instead, taxes should be higher on texh companies so planners can do their jobs.
Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment
#926As a pedestrian I'm not a fan of being an unwitting part of a private company's beta testing. Before this devolves into whatboutism vs the safety of human drivers, my opposition is to adding yet another unknown safety layer to walking down the street. Usually when private companies are developing products that could kill, drugs for example, it is on the company to exhaustively prove the safety and effectiveness befor…
> It seems odd that self driving cars have been skipping this step. [Citation needed]
No, it's not.
"It seems odd that self driving cars have been skipping this step." is an opinion referencing well-known current events. You can't expect everyone commenting on this article to re-reference the saga of Cruise in San Francisco; especially when it's frequently covered on the front page of Hacker News.
Furthermore, you should know that a Hacker News discussion is not Wikipedia. These discussions are not the kind of things where every off-the-cuff statement needs to be backed up with references.
Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment
#927But not Waymo. Which confirms all my personal biases. More seriously, the statement cites four specific clauses that caused the permit to be suspended. The second one seems really interesting as it implies that there was a lie of omission where the others are more or less what I’d expect regarding safety risks: > Today’s suspensions are based on the following: > 13 CCR §228.20 (b) (6) – Based upon the performance of…
People intentionally or unintentionally get under trains and get killed. Train service in many countries continues to function.
The thing about trains is the rails are only made for trains.
I don’t think it is a good idea to mix human and machine driven cars, especially in city roads where there are cyclists, pedestrians, trucks.
I would love to see AV only lanes restricted to geofenced parts of the cities.
Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment
#928Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't wait till those are generally available. I'd go out more if i could have a nice night and not have to deal with coming home later. Hell i live about 1.5h from Seattle and i never go because it's just awful (to me) dealing with cars there. If i could get a cab all the way there and back? Oh man, amazing. Or even park and ride would be nice. Cities seem so much more approachable to me if i don't need to drive t…
Just curious about prices there. How much would a cab, Uber, or Waymo cost for a trip that takes 1.5h to do? To me (European) that would cost a fortune... probably doing that distance for a night out would be something to do by local train or bus service.
I took an Uber to/from Seattle Airport, but that was like 7 years ago back when they were in undercutting price mode lol. Iirc it was in the $80 range (per trip).
Well worth it to me because i dislike traffic and parking that much. However i bet i could find a park and ride that's easy and save myself a decent chunk. .. not sure how to find a _safe_ park and ride, though.. heh.
Autonomous rides would be great for me though as they represent stability. Getting a driver was always a mixed bag. Would they be creepy? Talk a lot? Drive poorly? etcetc. Down in Florida i had one break the law several times and in general drive like a maniac. I don't take that many ubers/etc, but the ones i have have really felt like a mixed bag. A dice roll on all the variables, more bad than good.
Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment
#929From my perspective as a person who lives in San Francisco and also drives a LOT (10-20k miles per year, and many small drives within the city): Cruise cars do not perform acceptably. They manage to avoid collisions by driving extremely conservatively, but the way they traverse, say, a left turn against traffic is absurd. They slow everyone down, including emergency vehicles and public transit, by performing far belo…
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…
Maybe this is a fluke, but a few months ago an ABC reporter documented her Waymo ride and it had a couple goof ups. https://youtu.be/-Rxvl3INKSg
Ultimately, I don't think the driving screw ups were that big of a deal (just my opinion). The big deal though is the moronic lack of customer support. How hard is it really to have a customer support staff a phone call away that can reassure the customer and either debug the issue to get them sorted out or at least offer alternatives. It would do so much to improve the users perception.
So, typical Google... Phenomenal engineering, and horrible customer service.
Maybe it was a just hit piece though and they cut out some contextual video? No idea.
Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment
#930From my perspective as a person who lives in San Francisco and also drives a LOT (10-20k miles per year, and many small drives within the city): Cruise cars do not perform acceptably. They manage to avoid collisions by driving extremely conservatively, but the way they traverse, say, a left turn against traffic is absurd. They slow everyone down, including emergency vehicles and public transit, by performing far belo…
> driving extremely conservatively
> traverse, say, a left turn against traffic is absurd
> far below the level of most Human drives
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90702355/40-of-san-franciscos-tr...
[2] https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/speed-campaign-speeding...
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> Waymo vehicles are objectively far better. They drive like Humans do. Still some issued with weather and construction, but they work well alongside busses, trucks, and private cars without slowing anyone down.
I'd take this further. Given that self-driving cars not a fashion/emotional purchase, we should similarly tech-them-out to improve collision outcomes. Make the car collide with a pedestrian at their feet rather than the torso. Make it impossible for someone to go 'under' the car. promote outside-airbag design to minimize collision impact.
For starters, I support mandating driverless cars for all people with DUIs (at any phase in life), the elderly and those who have been in serious at-fault-accidents. Yes, self-driving cars are worse than the average human driver. But these people are clearly in the bottom 10 percentile.