4 ms·

Uber self driving car drives on the wrong side

20 points by thesanerguy 10y ago

ljoshua 10y ago
> “I couldn’t see any of the damage,” says Jason, the Uber driver, who requested Quartz withhold his last name because he feared being deactivated by the company. Difficulties of self-driving tech aside, fearing that you will be "deactivated" by a company sounds rather dystopian...
- divbit 10y ago
  > fearing that you will be "deactivated" without reading the article, I'm imagining Jason as the AI driving the (self-driving) car..
  - J5892 10y ago
    "NO DISASSEMBLE JOHNNY-5!!!"
alistproducer2 10y ago
Being totally serious here, given how terrible their mapping software is, I'm not really surprised they're not crushing autonomous vehicles. I'm by no means trying to say mapping is an easy problem but if you couldn't pull together a competent version of the much easier problem, chances are you won't do much better with the harder one.
- malisper 10y ago
  I thought Uber uses Google Maps. When I open the app, I see "Google" in the bottom left.
  - athenot 10y ago
    They are moving away from Google Maps. It's too important of a component for them to entrust to another company. It's the same reason Apple implemented their own mapping.
  - skywhopper 10y ago
    Alas, Google Maps has a ton of errors and omissions that can only be corrected with a lot more human work than these companies are ever going to be willing to put in.
- yaur 10y ago
  From the article it looks like one of these incidents, not knowing that a street was one way during or after the incident, was probably a mapping problem. I don't want to diminish the difficulty of autonomous vehicles but I'm not sure that keeping up to date on every road and driving regulation change is that much easier. There also places, Iceland comes to mind but also in the rural US, where speed limits are completely divorced from what is a reasonable speed even ideal conditions. So anyone that wants to do autonomous vehicles outside of urban centers is going to have to do a better job at understanding the road network than local government is doing.
  - alistproducer2 10y ago
    This is why mapping and GPS, as a solution to AVs will only get so far and the guys who really understand this problem know it. There's starting to be people coming forward saying this problem is nowhere near solved by 2020 like marketing departments would like to have us believe.
  - mc32 10y ago
    This brings up a question, how will fully automated systems deal with temporary detours, the signs for some of which are badly placed and hard to understand by humans, at times. Sometimes it's a construction worker waving confusing indications. Some detours last just a few minutes or hours, so it's not likely a source of truth map would get updated. Or maybe they would.
yannyu 10y ago
This article reads like a fear-mongering hit piece rather than even remotely unbiased journalism. It's unfortunate because I think the author does have some detailed knowledge on governmental regulations of self-driving cars as well as differences in implementation between the various companies, but the article as a whole seems to dismiss all self-driving car technology as not even being remotely viable based just a few recent incidents. >For now Uber’s cars have limited operating hours and terrain, and they must travel with two humans up front—a designated “safety driver” behind the wheel and an engineer in the adjacent seat. Even so, the company is pushing this technology onto the public when it remains largely unproven and other tests of driverless cars around the US have yielded their fair share of accidents. Earlier this year a self-driving Google car hit a public bus while trying to make a right turn in Silicon Valley. In May, the driver of a Tesla Model S died in an accident while he had the autopilot function enabled. Google suffered its worst crash yet just a few weeks ago when another driver ran a red light and barreled into its self-driving Lexus. >Uber is taking advantage of a regulatory void in Pennsylvania, which has yet to enact autonomous vehicle legislation. Its self-driving cars are insured for up to $5 million per incident, in line with pending legislation in the state. Uber has repeatedly declined to specify to Quartz who would be held liable were one its self-driving cars involved in an accident, saying it doesn’t deal in hypotheticals. The company also doesn’t have an ethics board and is reluctant to discuss “trolley problem” scenarios, in which a car might have to protect one group of people (say, its passengers) at the cost of another (i.e., pedestrians). The DOT cautions in its guidelines that self-driving cars will inevitably have to be programmed to make “ethical judgements.”
- untog 10y ago
  How on earth is it a fear-mongering hit piece? It reports, accurately, some of the difficulties Uber have had in launching self-driving cars. I don't see any dismissal of self-driving cars as a concept, just reporting of the difficulties that you encounter along the way. Are we really at the point where any coverage that is even vaguely critical is a "hit piece"?
  - greglindahl 10y ago
    "pushing this technology onto the public" is a bit much, as is the author's summary of Google's driving experiences. I don't think it rises to the level of fear mongering, but it reads like "I barely understand this so I'll repeat a few things I found by googling".
riphay 10y ago
Obviously lots of work to do for all the players in the autonomous vehicle game. And I actually like Uber's approach to testing: get lots of miles of testing while being paid to do it by your customers. Clearly not a cash positive venture but it's still a cool business model. I'm wondering if the autonomous vehicle industry will fight for market share along the lines of which company's software platform is better. Will consumers who buy such a car be looking at safety records as much as comfort and looks? Will we end up seeing "Ford Fusion powered by Uber" vs "VW Golf powered by Apple" etc.? Maybe we end up with only a few platforms that fight for market share, like Windows vs Mac and Android vs iOS.
- dgacmu 10y ago
  They're not getting paid. Rides in a self driving car are currently free. (source: I live in pittsburgh...)

20 points by thesanerguy 10y ago

> “I couldn’t see any of the damage,” says Jason, the Uber driver, who requested Quartz withhold his last name because he feared being deactivated by the company. Difficulties of self-driving tech aside, fearing that you will be "deactivated" by a company sounds rather dystopian...

divbit 10y ago
> fearing that you will be "deactivated" without reading the article, I'm imagining Jason as the AI driving the (self-driving) car..
- J5892 10y ago
  "NO DISASSEMBLE JOHNNY-5!!!"

alistproducer2 10y ago

Being totally serious here, given how terrible their mapping software is, I'm not really surprised they're not crushing autonomous vehicles. I'm by no means trying to say mapping is an easy problem but if you couldn't pull together a competent version of the much easier problem, chances are you won't do much better with the harder one.

malisper 10y ago
I thought Uber uses Google Maps. When I open the app, I see "Google" in the bottom left.
- athenot 10y ago
  They are moving away from Google Maps. It's too important of a component for them to entrust to another company. It's the same reason Apple implemented their own mapping.
- skywhopper 10y ago
  Alas, Google Maps has a ton of errors and omissions that can only be corrected with a lot more human work than these companies are ever going to be willing to put in.
yaur 10y ago
From the article it looks like one of these incidents, not knowing that a street was one way during or after the incident, was probably a mapping problem. I don't want to diminish the difficulty of autonomous vehicles but I'm not sure that keeping up to date on every road and driving regulation change is that much easier. There also places, Iceland comes to mind but also in the rural US, where speed limits are completely divorced from what is a reasonable speed even ideal conditions. So anyone that wants to do autonomous vehicles outside of urban centers is going to have to do a better job at understanding the road network than local government is doing.
- alistproducer2 10y ago
  This is why mapping and GPS, as a solution to AVs will only get so far and the guys who really understand this problem know it. There's starting to be people coming forward saying this problem is nowhere near solved by 2020 like marketing departments would like to have us believe.
- mc32 10y ago
  This brings up a question, how will fully automated systems deal with temporary detours, the signs for some of which are badly placed and hard to understand by humans, at times. Sometimes it's a construction worker waving confusing indications. Some detours last just a few minutes or hours, so it's not likely a source of truth map would get updated. Or maybe they would.

yannyu 10y ago

This article reads like a fear-mongering hit piece rather than even remotely unbiased journalism. It's unfortunate because I think the author does have some detailed knowledge on governmental regulations of self-driving cars as well as differences in implementation between the various companies, but the article as a whole seems to dismiss all self-driving car technology as not even being remotely viable based just a few recent incidents. >For now Uber’s cars have limited operating hours and terrain, and they must travel with two humans up front—a designated “safety driver” behind the wheel and an engineer in the adjacent seat. Even so, the company is pushing this technology onto the public when it remains largely unproven and other tests of driverless cars around the US have yielded their fair share of accidents. Earlier this year a self-driving Google car hit a public bus while trying to make a right turn in Silicon Valley. In May, the driver of a Tesla Model S died in an accident while he had the autopilot function enabled. Google suffered its worst crash yet just a few weeks ago when another driver ran a red light and barreled into its self-driving Lexus. >Uber is taking advantage of a regulatory void in Pennsylvania, which has yet to enact autonomous vehicle legislation. Its self-driving cars are insured for up to $5 million per incident, in line with pending legislation in the state. Uber has repeatedly declined to specify to Quartz who would be held liable were one its self-driving cars involved in an accident, saying it doesn’t deal in hypotheticals. The company also doesn’t have an ethics board and is reluctant to discuss “trolley problem” scenarios, in which a car might have to protect one group of people (say, its passengers) at the cost of another (i.e., pedestrians). The DOT cautions in its guidelines that self-driving cars will inevitably have to be programmed to make “ethical judgements.”

untog 10y ago
How on earth is it a fear-mongering hit piece? It reports, accurately, some of the difficulties Uber have had in launching self-driving cars. I don't see any dismissal of self-driving cars as a concept, just reporting of the difficulties that you encounter along the way. Are we really at the point where any coverage that is even vaguely critical is a "hit piece"?
- greglindahl 10y ago
  "pushing this technology onto the public" is a bit much, as is the author's summary of Google's driving experiences. I don't think it rises to the level of fear mongering, but it reads like "I barely understand this so I'll repeat a few things I found by googling".

riphay 10y ago

Obviously lots of work to do for all the players in the autonomous vehicle game. And I actually like Uber's approach to testing: get lots of miles of testing while being paid to do it by your customers. Clearly not a cash positive venture but it's still a cool business model. I'm wondering if the autonomous vehicle industry will fight for market share along the lines of which company's software platform is better. Will consumers who buy such a car be looking at safety records as much as comfort and looks? Will we end up seeing "Ford Fusion powered by Uber" vs "VW Golf powered by Apple" etc.? Maybe we end up with only a few platforms that fight for market share, like Windows vs Mac and Android vs iOS.

dgacmu 10y ago
They're not getting paid. Rides in a self driving car are currently free. (source: I live in pittsburgh...)