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Please stop fixating on those California disengagements. They mean approximately nothing. They are unregulated, voluntarily reported incidents. A low number cou

by gok 8y ago

Please stop fixating on those California disengagements. They mean approximately nothing. They are unregulated, voluntarily reported incidents. A low number could mean that safety drivers are acting irresponsibly, or that the vehicles are only being used on public roads in known-safe circumstances. I strongly suspect that the quest for a low disengagement number is what got that woman in Arizona killed by Uber. These reports really should be sealed from the public. AV startups seem to be using their disengagement rate as a way raise money. They are aided by journalists hungry to make sense of a highly secretive field publishing these figures completely out of context.

FireBeyond 8y ago
> These reports really should be sealed from the public. Yeah, the public has no right to know what vehicles on public roads are capable (or incapable of). And we wouldn't want pesky innocent deaths to impede with Uber's ability to "bring self driving to market"...
- gok 8y ago
  The public has a right to know how unaided AVs on public roads operate. The "number of disengagements" of prototypes reported by corporate research programs has no relation to this.
  - jononor 8y ago
    What's a better metric or way of measuring it?
linkregister 8y ago
Really? I'm pretty sure it was irresponsible staffing and unsafe software: Uber reduced their drivers from two to one per vehicle. That driver was watching a cell phone video and not watching the road, but Uber should have known that was a risk and taken action to mitigate it. The Uber self-driving program was trying to move too fast, before the software was ready. That and the operations failure made it inevitable that someone was going to be killed.