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> Still, Cruise says those drivers have had to take over manual control of vehicles engaged in Cruise Anywhere service only on a few occasions Not trying to po

> Still, Cruise says those drivers have had to take over manual control of vehicles engaged in Cruise Anywhere service only on a few occasions Not trying to pour cold water on this but.. it's all about those "few occasions". The difference between level 2 and level 4/5 autonomy is vast. Those "few occasions" would presumably be accidents without the intervention of the safety driver. A small corporate shuttle service that "only had a few accidents" would not be considered a very safe service. So for a service that really only makes sense at level 4, the reporting really ought to focus on those "few occasions", the stringent safety standard that needs to be met to remove drivers, and the actual progress towards it. That's the real meat of the story.

burke 9y ago
I'm not sure what those "few occasions" were, but I think there's another category of problem that these could fall into other than would-be accidents: If the car over-cautiously decided it didn't know what to do, came to a safe stop, and threw on the 4-ways while it waited for human input, that's not as terrible.
- dastbe 9y ago
  Except when that isn't a safe thing to do.
- abalone 9y ago
  That's a fair point, although those would still constitute breakdowns in a level 4. Further reason for the reporting to focus on these incidents.
- jorts 9y ago
  I was driving home a few months ago in the rain on Division in SF. Cars were stopped, and I immediately couldn't figure out why. When I passed the stopped vehicles I got my answer: there was seemingly a wall of water coming down from the freeway overhead and an autonomous car was stopped as it apparently didn't know how to handle the situation.
  - welcomecomrade 9y ago
    In other words, the autonomous car was smart enough to not drive into a waterfall, whereas you were not.
  - _up 9y ago
    Couldn't they have something like a real Human remote driver. That can intervene, but also can oversee multiple cars.
    - ufo 9y ago
      Does anyone here know if California driving law allows for remotely-operated vehicles like that?
      - mikepurvis 9y ago
        Hopefully not, at least not yet. That doesn't sound nearly as safe, or as accountable— you just wouldn't have the same situational awareness looking at sensor feeds vs. looking out the actual windows.
    - sdenton4 9y ago
      Would need incredibly low latency for that to be safe, I think. FPS games use a pile of tricks to send minimal data over the network which wouldn't be available to an autonomous car: we don't have access to the game engine, after all...
      - vidarh 9y ago
        It would need to be very low latency if the cars can not take sufficient action fast enough to be safe. But if the cars get to a point where they are safe enough but where that safety comes at the expense of being overly cautious in some instances (refusing to drive through a sheet of water and deciding to stop) that may be acceptable. E.g. in the given example, the car only needs input to say pretty much "safe to proceed at low speed until past obstacle, then reassess".
      - 9y ago
sloppycee 9y ago
I'm not involved in autonomous vehicles at all but as an engineer, I'm pretty confident we are a long way away from level 4/5. Without significantly reworking current infrastructure the challenges presented by city driving are too fuzzy to guarantee safety. For example, traffic lights can be obscured, out of order, or spoofed; unless they are modified to support av; I don't think this is solvable. Although autonomous vehicles will require a safety driver for a while, interim benefits still exist and services like this will potentially provide the momentum needed to make those infrastructure changes.
- organsnyder 9y ago
  > For example, traffic lights can be obscured, out of order, or spoofed Wouldn't that also potentially impact human drivers?
- ncallaway 9y ago
  > Without significantly reworking current infrastructure the challenges presented by city driving are too fuzzy to guarantee safety. But, there's no guarantee of safety now. Human drivers are fallible and fail all the time. A guarantee of safety is a crazy metric to require before we can allow autonomous vehicles. A better metric is: "before the vehicle is more safe than the median human driver". Once it hits that level of safety, it should be in the streets.
olegkikin 9y ago
> Those "few occasions" would presumably be accidents without the intervention of the safety driver. You don't know that. Doesn't the car simply slowly stop if it doesn't know what to do? > A small corporate shuttle service that "only had a few accidents" would not be considered a very safe service. As soon as it's safer than a human-operated one, it's already good enough - there's literally no safer option.
- richardwhiuk 9y ago
  It's not about not knowing what to do, it's about not recognizing things that threaten safe travel.
Fricken 9y ago
At the end of 2016 all companies testing autonomous vehicles in California filed their disengagement reports. Waymo reported 1 unplanned disengagement every 5000 miles, and GM reported 1 every 180. Nobody else was even in the running. These metrics are crude, but it's currently the only benchmarking system we've got, and we'll see in December where Cruise is really at when they report their 2017 numbers. Cruise does distinguish itself by driving mostly on busy downtown SF streets, a challenging environment, and they've released impressive videos showing off their capabilities. A few weeks ago Kyle Vogt claimed Cruise would surpass Waymo 'in a few months', whether they do or not remains to be seen, but they are making sustained progress and they have the full force of General Motors behind them. Unlike Waymo, Tesla's Autopilot program, and Uber's autonomous driving program, Cruise's operation has been drama free, without any lawsuits, leadership blowouts, or departures of key people. This implies they've got a solid team under good leadership, and I think it matters a lot with complex software projects like this.
- TwoFactor 9y ago
  There was actually a dispute about a potential Cruise cofounder getting compensation for equity at the acquisition. They recently settled the lawsuit out of court [1]. I agree they have good leadership, but they're not without any lawsuits. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/car-startup-cruise-settles-legal-case-involving-cofounder-2016-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/car-startup-cruise-settles-le...
- biggc 9y ago
  Is disengagement per X miles really a good metric. It doesn't reflect the difference between driving in different environments, i.e dense urban areas, suburban streets, and open highways.
  - Fricken 9y ago
    Yes, it's a crude metric. The other thing is disengagements are self reported, and an unplanned disengagement doesn't necessarily mean a crash was narrowly avoided, it may be an overly cautious test driver, or the result of some non-safety critical intervention. After the core software problems have been solved, the key challenge shifts to discovering edge cases, which become progressively more marginal the further advanced the software becomes, and the only way to find these edge cases is through 1000s of miles of driving waiting for unexpected situations to show up.
anindha 9y ago
San Francisco would be one of the harder cities to make self-driving work: bad light, heavy traffic traffic, bicycles, poor lane markings, spotty GPS downtown, etc. I haven't been to Phoenix, so can't comment on the difficulty of running a self driving car there, but I would guess its easier than SF.
- strange_quark 9y ago
  All the problems you listed are going to be issues with most major cities. I would hope that self driving companies are testing their tech outside the SV bubble because the rest of us have to deal with rain, snow, sleet, high winds, and other weather that causes low visibility and low traction.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
vm 9y ago
I've seen ~10 Cruise cars around Mission Dolores and Soma in SF. 100% of the time the driver has his hands on the wheel and appears to be making the turns himself. I'm skeptical of how automated this service actually is. Maybe those are training runs or the drivers are letting the wheel guide them.
- shadykiller 9y ago
  I have made the same observation in SOMA area. Not even once I saw the car being driven autonomously
  - ask_hn_54321 9y ago
    [Deleted]
- azundo 9y ago
  I believe current regulations require the test driver to have her or his hands on the wheel at all times so that's not a good indication of whether or not the car is driving autonomously.
- adrianmacneil 9y ago
  Our drivers always keep their hands on the steering wheel, even while in autonomous mode. There isn't really any way you could tell externally whether the car is engaged or not, other than some of the nuances of our driving behavior. Source: I work at Cruise
stordoff 9y ago
> Those "few occasions" would presumably be accidents without the intervention of the safety driver. I'm not sure that's a safe presumption. The car could have done the right thing but not been confident enough in the planned course of action. Still not great, but not a presumed accident either.

burke 9y ago

I'm not sure what those "few occasions" were, but I think there's another category of problem that these could fall into other than would-be accidents: If the car over-cautiously decided it didn't know what to do, came to a safe stop, and threw on the 4-ways while it waited for human input, that's not as terrible.

dastbe 9y ago
Except when that isn't a safe thing to do.
abalone 9y ago
That's a fair point, although those would still constitute breakdowns in a level 4. Further reason for the reporting to focus on these incidents.
jorts 9y ago
I was driving home a few months ago in the rain on Division in SF. Cars were stopped, and I immediately couldn't figure out why. When I passed the stopped vehicles I got my answer: there was seemingly a wall of water coming down from the freeway overhead and an autonomous car was stopped as it apparently didn't know how to handle the situation.
- welcomecomrade 9y ago
  In other words, the autonomous car was smart enough to not drive into a waterfall, whereas you were not.
- _up 9y ago
  Couldn't they have something like a real Human remote driver. That can intervene, but also can oversee multiple cars.
  - ufo 9y ago
    Does anyone here know if California driving law allows for remotely-operated vehicles like that?
    - mikepurvis 9y ago
      Hopefully not, at least not yet. That doesn't sound nearly as safe, or as accountable— you just wouldn't have the same situational awareness looking at sensor feeds vs. looking out the actual windows.
  - sdenton4 9y ago
    Would need incredibly low latency for that to be safe, I think. FPS games use a pile of tricks to send minimal data over the network which wouldn't be available to an autonomous car: we don't have access to the game engine, after all...
    - vidarh 9y ago
      It would need to be very low latency if the cars can not take sufficient action fast enough to be safe. But if the cars get to a point where they are safe enough but where that safety comes at the expense of being overly cautious in some instances (refusing to drive through a sheet of water and deciding to stop) that may be acceptable. E.g. in the given example, the car only needs input to say pretty much "safe to proceed at low speed until past obstacle, then reassess".
    - 9y ago

sloppycee 9y ago

I'm not involved in autonomous vehicles at all but as an engineer, I'm pretty confident we are a long way away from level 4/5. Without significantly reworking current infrastructure the challenges presented by city driving are too fuzzy to guarantee safety. For example, traffic lights can be obscured, out of order, or spoofed; unless they are modified to support av; I don't think this is solvable. Although autonomous vehicles will require a safety driver for a while, interim benefits still exist and services like this will potentially provide the momentum needed to make those infrastructure changes.

organsnyder 9y ago
> For example, traffic lights can be obscured, out of order, or spoofed Wouldn't that also potentially impact human drivers?
ncallaway 9y ago
> Without significantly reworking current infrastructure the challenges presented by city driving are too fuzzy to guarantee safety. But, there's no guarantee of safety now. Human drivers are fallible and fail all the time. A guarantee of safety is a crazy metric to require before we can allow autonomous vehicles. A better metric is: "before the vehicle is more safe than the median human driver". Once it hits that level of safety, it should be in the streets.

olegkikin 9y ago

> Those "few occasions" would presumably be accidents without the intervention of the safety driver. You don't know that. Doesn't the car simply slowly stop if it doesn't know what to do? > A small corporate shuttle service that "only had a few accidents" would not be considered a very safe service. As soon as it's safer than a human-operated one, it's already good enough - there's literally no safer option.

richardwhiuk 9y ago
It's not about not knowing what to do, it's about not recognizing things that threaten safe travel.

Fricken 9y ago

At the end of 2016 all companies testing autonomous vehicles in California filed their disengagement reports. Waymo reported 1 unplanned disengagement every 5000 miles, and GM reported 1 every 180. Nobody else was even in the running. These metrics are crude, but it's currently the only benchmarking system we've got, and we'll see in December where Cruise is really at when they report their 2017 numbers. Cruise does distinguish itself by driving mostly on busy downtown SF streets, a challenging environment, and they've released impressive videos showing off their capabilities. A few weeks ago Kyle Vogt claimed Cruise would surpass Waymo 'in a few months', whether they do or not remains to be seen, but they are making sustained progress and they have the full force of General Motors behind them. Unlike Waymo, Tesla's Autopilot program, and Uber's autonomous driving program, Cruise's operation has been drama free, without any lawsuits, leadership blowouts, or departures of key people. This implies they've got a solid team under good leadership, and I think it matters a lot with complex software projects like this.

TwoFactor 9y ago
There was actually a dispute about a potential Cruise cofounder getting compensation for equity at the acquisition. They recently settled the lawsuit out of court [1]. I agree they have good leadership, but they're not without any lawsuits. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/car-startup-cruise-settles-legal-case-involving-cofounder-2016-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/car-startup-cruise-settles-le...
biggc 9y ago
Is disengagement per X miles really a good metric. It doesn't reflect the difference between driving in different environments, i.e dense urban areas, suburban streets, and open highways.
- Fricken 9y ago
  Yes, it's a crude metric. The other thing is disengagements are self reported, and an unplanned disengagement doesn't necessarily mean a crash was narrowly avoided, it may be an overly cautious test driver, or the result of some non-safety critical intervention. After the core software problems have been solved, the key challenge shifts to discovering edge cases, which become progressively more marginal the further advanced the software becomes, and the only way to find these edge cases is through 1000s of miles of driving waiting for unexpected situations to show up.

anindha 9y ago

San Francisco would be one of the harder cities to make self-driving work: bad light, heavy traffic traffic, bicycles, poor lane markings, spotty GPS downtown, etc. I haven't been to Phoenix, so can't comment on the difficulty of running a self driving car there, but I would guess its easier than SF.

strange_quark 9y ago
All the problems you listed are going to be issues with most major cities. I would hope that self driving companies are testing their tech outside the SV bubble because the rest of us have to deal with rain, snow, sleet, high winds, and other weather that causes low visibility and low traction.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

vm 9y ago

I've seen ~10 Cruise cars around Mission Dolores and Soma in SF. 100% of the time the driver has his hands on the wheel and appears to be making the turns himself. I'm skeptical of how automated this service actually is. Maybe those are training runs or the drivers are letting the wheel guide them.

shadykiller 9y ago
I have made the same observation in SOMA area. Not even once I saw the car being driven autonomously
- ask_hn_54321 9y ago
  [Deleted]
azundo 9y ago
I believe current regulations require the test driver to have her or his hands on the wheel at all times so that's not a good indication of whether or not the car is driving autonomously.
adrianmacneil 9y ago
Our drivers always keep their hands on the steering wheel, even while in autonomous mode. There isn't really any way you could tell externally whether the car is engaged or not, other than some of the nuances of our driving behavior. Source: I work at Cruise

stordoff 9y ago

> Those "few occasions" would presumably be accidents without the intervention of the safety driver. I'm not sure that's a safe presumption. The car could have done the right thing but not been confident enough in the planned course of action. Still not great, but not a presumed accident either.