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

California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

931–940 of 1001 posts

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#931

Post by screye »

rapind wrote: post #929
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…

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 th…

> Google... Phenomenal engineering, and horrible customer service

How can a company with THAT MUCH MONEY be THAT plagued with an issue that everyone has been shouting about for more than a decade ??

I wonder if there is a business model in contracting in Google's customer care. I'm sure someone could do a lot better with Google's customer budget. Google can start off with a few departments, and then have performance based expansion. If it goes too well, they can always get acquired in.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#932

Post by jprete »

fhub wrote: post #277
Lonestar1440 wrote: post #120

From 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…

I’m reasonably sure I’ve done things like that. I wouldn’t need the mirror check because I would already know what’s there during the right turn. However I would personally aim to stay dead center in lane to reduce the skateboarder’s uncertainty during their own tricky maneuver.

This isn’t to say the Waymo car did a bad job. It sounds like a good choice in the situation.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#933

Post by kfarr »

redox99 wrote: post #629
cp9 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

freedom is not "everyone has a car". freedom is no one has to have a car to get where they need to go and do what needs done. for example, my favorite bar in my city is like .75 miles away. I would love to walk there, but functionally you can't because the two roads you need to take to get there are dangerous with limited or no sidewalks and extremely dangerous intersections (one is a blind corner where the cars are…

Having a car is always more freedom than not having a car. Where I live I sometimes walk, sometimes bike, sometimes take the subway, sometimes use my car, and sometimes use my truck. I'm nowhere near rich enough, but having your own private jet would also give you a lot of extra freedom. However I don't consider these self driving taxis to give you much freedom (because you don't own them).

In a dense city car ownership is a financial trap. It’s a depreciating liability whose use is extremely limited by available real estate (normal people use the terms traffic and parking). (Also the number one killer of kids.) Lack of ownership is the point.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#934

Post by jprete »

TuringNYC wrote: post #717
mike_d wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo is amazing, knowing some of the stuff they do behind the scenes to ensure safety - I would feel safer riding in a Waymo than driving myself. My biggest fear has always been that Cruise or Tesla would shit the bed so bad we don't get any self-driving, either because of regulatory constraints or ruining the public perception of them.

Can any engineers in the field comment on whether the [very cool!] Waymo vs Cruise performance anecdotes being discussed here would have been the result of Google's millimeter-level scanning of SF? Or is it just better algos only? Or both?

I’d think better algorithms. A detailed scan of a city’s streets and layout is obsolete before it’s completed.

A driver (bot or not) needs very good reactions to bad situations observed in the field. And ideally a good sense for when a situation is one step from trouble. As a driver, if I can’t see through a bus then I’m going to assume a crazy pedestrian is waiting to jump in front of me.

(A lot of drivers are quite bad frankly and don’t do most of the stuff you’d want someone to do if they’re directing a one-ton blunt weapon around town at 35mph.)

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#935

Post by perryizgr8 »

fhub wrote: post #569
unshavedyak wrote: post #546

Earlier 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…

The current ride pricing feels about 10-20% less than an Uber in SF - but I haven't really checked properly. So don't expect the rideshare product (Waymo One) to be a super cheap option.

In the long term, prices will be determined by what the market will bear. It will be irrelevant if Waymo is cheaper to operate because they don't have to pay a driver. And if Waymo is the only game in town, as it seems to be far ahead of everyone else, expect only a minor discount over the regular human driven cab.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#936

Post by mlyle »

ehsankia wrote: post #580
pbarnes_1 wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been in this situation, and it's something that seems to get tweaked every week. They definitely pushed the "aggressive" lever up a little over the last month. I think it's one of those cases where it's sort of obvious it can calculate trajectories and speeds much better than a human, so it's a safe manoeuvre in theory, but it "feels" bad as a passenger. Same thing for where it can see that it can squeeze throug…

It's a lose lose situation. I've been reading conversation about self driving cars for years and what you always heard back in the days is that they were way too conservative on these kinds of turns and blocked traffic. Hell even in this very thread people are saying that about Cruise. Yet when they make it more aggressive, people feel unsafe. As you say, this is something they are constantly tweaking to find the per…

The thing is, the capabilities are not likely to be a strict superset of a human's.

So, if you make it have the same aggressiveness on "average" by having it take advantage of its superior capabilities, those situations are going to feel sketchy to a person.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#937

Post by ironman1478 »

grogenaut wrote: post #751
ironman1478 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person who hit and run the woman in the first place shows this is obviously not true. You think they didn't notice?There was a muni bus who hit a pedestrian a few weeks ago and didn't even notice.

The person who hit and run commuted a felony. Cruise not providing evidence as asked and required by their testing agreement did similar. A muni bus and a car are different. But the big issue is hiding / eliding the data.

I agree that hiding data is bad and the company should be punished. I was simply commenting on the fact that people frequently do not stop when running over pedestrians, which the parent comment claimed.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#938

Post by Lonestar1440 »

jiveturkey wrote: post #789
Lonestar1440 wrote: post #120

From 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…

average miles per year for male drivers in the US is 16,550. So 10-20k is smack in the middle average. not a LOT. ok, maybe it's objectively "a lot", but you are no more qualified than the average driver to assess. maybe it's more compelling to say: as an average driver, EVEN I can see that Cruise is far less competent than Waymo.

I didn't realize the average was so high, but looked it up and confirmed.

Still feels like "a LOT" when I finally get home, and I also don't know anyone personally who drives nearly this much. Probably biased by my living in the city.

Re: California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

#939

Post by MaxikCZ »

screye wrote: post #931
rapind wrote: post #929

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> Google... Phenomenal engineering, and horrible customer service How can a company with THAT MUCH MONEY be THAT plagued with an issue that everyone has been shouting about for more than a decade ?? I wonder if there is a business model in contracting in Google's customer care. I'm sure someone could do a lot better with Google's customer budget. Google can start off with a few departments, and then have performance…

Because Google doesn't exists for you, it exists for shareholders. They calculated that not having customer support is more profitable, end of story.
Post reply on HN