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> Today we are opening up our driverless cars in San Francisco to the public I doubt that means what they hope we think it means. So your employees have been t

> Today we are opening up our driverless cars in San Francisco to the public I doubt that means what they hope we think it means. So your employees have been taking your carefully designed ride and now you've let a couple of non-employees ride the course. If it means more than that, especially allowing random rides with random passengers, I'd be very surprised.

minwcnt5 5y ago
It is not a "course", the employees request to be picked up and dropped off anywhere in the city, just like requesting an Uber/Lyft ride.
- mwattsun 5y ago
  Well, that's surprising. I've driven San Francisco as an Uber/Lyft driver and it's a nightmare. I'm really curious how it checks for side traffic when it's nose is pointed at the sky at a stop sign on a steep hill.
  - gxs 5y ago
    It might actually do a lot better than you and I. Remember, it's equipped with radar so it can probably see cars the next block over.
    - mwattsun 5y ago
      radar doesn't see around corners. At any rate, would have to see some evidence that it can handle the worst of The City before I took a ride, like the incessant construction, steel plates on the road covering new holes, taped off lane changes, resulting traffic jams where merging is happening and so on. It's a really difficult environment for a human and I've never heard the claim yet that self-driving was better than humans.
      - exhaze 5y ago
        Cruise publishes a lot of their AVs driving around SF for over an hour. In a video from their YouTube channel [1], at around 22:29, you can see exactly how they handle a steep 4-way intersection. You can also see on the above visualization what objects their system sees as it is performing the maneuver. The evidence is easily accessible - next time I suggest you just research a little bit first instead of going straight to speculating. [1] https://youtu.be/HiG__iqgYHM?t=1349 https://youtu.be/HiG__iqgYHM?t=1349
        mwattsun 5y ago
        Where was I speculating? I expressed skepticism and said I'd have to see some evidence. You provided some and I'm still not convinced from this. Those are fairly mild hills on wider streets in bright sunshine. But now I know where to get more evidence, so thanks. Edit: The Cruise CEO kvogt says it's geofenced. That's what I thought. In a few years our next generation of low-cost compute and sensing lands in these vehicles and our service area will be large enough that you forget there is even a geofence https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30169708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30169708
      - minwcnt5 5y ago
        The car handles a lot of those situations on its own, but can also call remote operators if it's confused, who will instruct it on how to proceed. As to the earlier question about intersections at steep streets, I would guess they just avoid the most difficult blocks. But they do also have superhuman vision, since they have lidar and cameras on the roof of the car (higher vantage point than a human).
kgin 5y ago
Get ready to be surprised. The routes are created by the car on the fly. There is no preset course. The service area is bounded by the current permit, but within those bounds, the car can go anywhere.
- mwattsun 5y ago
  I want to be surprised, but after all the hype by FSD boosters, I'm prepared to be disappointed. I'm skeptical because San Francisco is probably the worst city in North America to do this. I could believe this in San Jose with it's wide flat boulevards and I'm suspicious it's not San Jose first. San Francisco is unique in that the city planners decided to ignore that they had mountains in the middle of their city and laid a grid plan over the mountains. Most other cities lay roads that gently circle around and up a mountain. Not San Francisco. You go a straight line up and then straight down at an extreme angle. The only way this can work is if they've cherry picked the safest streets and geofenced the cars to those routes. That's not what most people imagine about robo taxis. Not glorified light rail without the rails.
  - redytedy 5y ago
    I think your criticism in this thread is fully valid. But I wanted to say that even "glorified light rail" is an incredible accomplishment... The challenges are immense for getting failure rates as low as that would require. Behavior prediction, avoidance, pedestrian interaction, etc are all issues for any subset of streets.
    - mwattsun 5y ago
      I thought the same thing after I had time to think about the light rail comment. I certainly don't want to downplay the technical achievements. I am really excited about the progress. I think myself and others just want these companies to be honest with us, give it to us straight and tell us how we can help create the future, not blast out PR releases meant to suck in the less informed investor. I suppose if that's the only way to get the money to create this then I should learn to accept it. Edit: two other concerns of mine 1) SF is a great place to kill a pedestrian with not completely proven driving technology, especially kids, because there are so many of them. And 2) These companies give very little consideration, if any, to the millions of people who drive for a living who might no longer have that means of supporting themselves.

minwcnt5 5y ago

It is not a "course", the employees request to be picked up and dropped off anywhere in the city, just like requesting an Uber/Lyft ride.

mwattsun 5y ago
Well, that's surprising. I've driven San Francisco as an Uber/Lyft driver and it's a nightmare. I'm really curious how it checks for side traffic when it's nose is pointed at the sky at a stop sign on a steep hill.
- gxs 5y ago
  It might actually do a lot better than you and I. Remember, it's equipped with radar so it can probably see cars the next block over.
  - mwattsun 5y ago
    radar doesn't see around corners. At any rate, would have to see some evidence that it can handle the worst of The City before I took a ride, like the incessant construction, steel plates on the road covering new holes, taped off lane changes, resulting traffic jams where merging is happening and so on. It's a really difficult environment for a human and I've never heard the claim yet that self-driving was better than humans.
    - exhaze 5y ago
      Cruise publishes a lot of their AVs driving around SF for over an hour. In a video from their YouTube channel [1], at around 22:29, you can see exactly how they handle a steep 4-way intersection. You can also see on the above visualization what objects their system sees as it is performing the maneuver. The evidence is easily accessible - next time I suggest you just research a little bit first instead of going straight to speculating. [1] https://youtu.be/HiG__iqgYHM?t=1349 https://youtu.be/HiG__iqgYHM?t=1349
      - mwattsun 5y ago
        Where was I speculating? I expressed skepticism and said I'd have to see some evidence. You provided some and I'm still not convinced from this. Those are fairly mild hills on wider streets in bright sunshine. But now I know where to get more evidence, so thanks. Edit: The Cruise CEO kvogt says it's geofenced. That's what I thought. In a few years our next generation of low-cost compute and sensing lands in these vehicles and our service area will be large enough that you forget there is even a geofence https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30169708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30169708
    - minwcnt5 5y ago
      The car handles a lot of those situations on its own, but can also call remote operators if it's confused, who will instruct it on how to proceed. As to the earlier question about intersections at steep streets, I would guess they just avoid the most difficult blocks. But they do also have superhuman vision, since they have lidar and cameras on the roof of the car (higher vantage point than a human).

kgin 5y ago

Get ready to be surprised. The routes are created by the car on the fly. There is no preset course. The service area is bounded by the current permit, but within those bounds, the car can go anywhere.

mwattsun 5y ago
I want to be surprised, but after all the hype by FSD boosters, I'm prepared to be disappointed. I'm skeptical because San Francisco is probably the worst city in North America to do this. I could believe this in San Jose with it's wide flat boulevards and I'm suspicious it's not San Jose first. San Francisco is unique in that the city planners decided to ignore that they had mountains in the middle of their city and laid a grid plan over the mountains. Most other cities lay roads that gently circle around and up a mountain. Not San Francisco. You go a straight line up and then straight down at an extreme angle. The only way this can work is if they've cherry picked the safest streets and geofenced the cars to those routes. That's not what most people imagine about robo taxis. Not glorified light rail without the rails.
- redytedy 5y ago
  I think your criticism in this thread is fully valid. But I wanted to say that even "glorified light rail" is an incredible accomplishment... The challenges are immense for getting failure rates as low as that would require. Behavior prediction, avoidance, pedestrian interaction, etc are all issues for any subset of streets.
  - mwattsun 5y ago
    I thought the same thing after I had time to think about the light rail comment. I certainly don't want to downplay the technical achievements. I am really excited about the progress. I think myself and others just want these companies to be honest with us, give it to us straight and tell us how we can help create the future, not blast out PR releases meant to suck in the less informed investor. I suppose if that's the only way to get the money to create this then I should learn to accept it. Edit: two other concerns of mine 1) SF is a great place to kill a pedestrian with not completely proven driving technology, especially kids, because there are so many of them. And 2) These companies give very little consideration, if any, to the millions of people who drive for a living who might no longer have that means of supporting themselves.