5 ms·

Driverless Uber runs red light in downtown San Francisco

35 points by derwiki 10y ago

woofyman 10y ago
Human drivers run red lights all the time /s
brandur 10y ago
I hate to be glib, but: those driverless cars will fit right in in San Francisco. (But seriously, traffic enforcement around here is terrible and is reaching preposterously dangerous levels for pedestrians. The intersection in that video is next to the MOMA downtown; human drivers block the crosswalk regularly, and I've seen them run the red exactly as depicted in the video at least a few times.)
- derwiki 10y ago
  I'm more curious why the Uber employee sitting in the driver seat didn't pump the brakes.
  - ams6110 10y ago
    I think the answer is obvious: he wasn't paying attention.
  - Jach 10y ago
    Maybe the Uber driver was the one who ran the light after taking manual control?
- aceperry 10y ago
  Sure, but you'd want the driverless cars to at least follow the laws and rules of the road. I've been driving in SF ever since I got my driver's license, and as the city has gotten more and more traffic over the years, I think the traffic problems are as good as can be hoped for. There are just too many cars, pedestrians, buses, and bikes sharing the roads in the downtown area. Traffic enforcement is difficult when you can't get around easily and I think SF has done a pretty good job of keeping the traffic moving. One thing that they've done was to have traffic control officers in the downtown area to ensure that traffic moves along. This looks to be the best solution for the amount of traffic.
acchow 10y ago
I really hope they don't "move fast and break things" with human lives. I don't recall Google's self driving cars having run a red light. Do we have data on this?
- mtgx 10y ago
  If they are indeed running the self-driving car on Ubuntu, a full desktop operating system, then I think we're already way past moving fast and breaking things, and well into "how X11 can kill you" territory. https://i.redd.it/nnvqmprcjj3y.png https://i.redd.it/nnvqmprcjj3y.png
  - serge2k 10y ago
    That's gotta be a separate system which just reads data and displays it right? right?
cesarb 10y ago
Was the car in this video in driverless mode, or was it in manual mode with a human driver controlling the vehicle? AFAIK, most current driverless cars still have a manual mode.
aaron695 10y ago
Meh, could have been in manual mode. Which they have stated it would be in downtown driving.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

35 points by derwiki 10y ago

Human drivers run red lights all the time /s

I hate to be glib, but: those driverless cars will fit right in in San Francisco. (But seriously, traffic enforcement around here is terrible and is reaching preposterously dangerous levels for pedestrians. The intersection in that video is next to the MOMA downtown; human drivers block the crosswalk regularly, and I've seen them run the red exactly as depicted in the video at least a few times.)

derwiki 10y ago
I'm more curious why the Uber employee sitting in the driver seat didn't pump the brakes.
- ams6110 10y ago
  I think the answer is obvious: he wasn't paying attention.
- Jach 10y ago
  Maybe the Uber driver was the one who ran the light after taking manual control?
aceperry 10y ago
Sure, but you'd want the driverless cars to at least follow the laws and rules of the road. I've been driving in SF ever since I got my driver's license, and as the city has gotten more and more traffic over the years, I think the traffic problems are as good as can be hoped for. There are just too many cars, pedestrians, buses, and bikes sharing the roads in the downtown area. Traffic enforcement is difficult when you can't get around easily and I think SF has done a pretty good job of keeping the traffic moving. One thing that they've done was to have traffic control officers in the downtown area to ensure that traffic moves along. This looks to be the best solution for the amount of traffic.

acchow 10y ago

I really hope they don't "move fast and break things" with human lives. I don't recall Google's self driving cars having run a red light. Do we have data on this?

mtgx 10y ago
If they are indeed running the self-driving car on Ubuntu, a full desktop operating system, then I think we're already way past moving fast and breaking things, and well into "how X11 can kill you" territory. https://i.redd.it/nnvqmprcjj3y.png https://i.redd.it/nnvqmprcjj3y.png
- serge2k 10y ago
  That's gotta be a separate system which just reads data and displays it right? right?

cesarb 10y ago

Was the car in this video in driverless mode, or was it in manual mode with a human driver controlling the vehicle? AFAIK, most current driverless cars still have a manual mode.

aaron695 10y ago

Meh, could have been in manual mode. Which they have stated it would be in downtown driving.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]