5 ms·

Um so WHY was the Cruise car stopped in a travel lane to begin with? I skimmed 2x but don’t see this explained..

by gkop 4y ago

flutas 4y ago
From the article. > a San Francisco Fire Department truck responding to a fire tried to pass a doubled-parked garbage truck by using the opposing lane. a traveling autonomous vehicle (...) was blocking its path. While a human might have reversed to clear the lane, the Cruise car stayed put (......) Tiffany Testo, a spokesperson for Cruise, confirmed the incident. She said the driverless car had correctly yielded to the oncoming fire truck in the opposing lane and contacted the company’s remote assistance workers, So it sounds like the car was driving perfectly fine, but stopped when a car was coming at it head on and it didn't reverse. I think the real issue here is a double parked garbage truck forcing the fire truck to go into oncoming traffic in the first place. Maybe there's a need for a loading only zone there so that the garbage truck doesn't have to block the travel lane.
- saulpw 4y ago
  The real issue is that not every situation can be perfectly modeled, real human systems aren't (and can't be!) perfect, so sometimes you need to think outside of the box and with human priorities.
- cozzyd 4y ago
  the garbage truck might be double parked because another car was illegally parked, even if there's a loading zone... In practice, double parking is extremely common in all cities...
  - bagacrap 4y ago
    ban street parking
- BeefWellington 4y ago
  > I think the real issue here is a double parked garbage truck forcing the fire truck to go into oncoming traffic in the first place. Maybe there's a need for a loading only zone there so that the garbage truck doesn't have to block the travel lane. I disagree. Driverless vehicles NEED to be able to handle these unexpected situations in an appropriate manner. That they don't currently is in fact a "real issue" and in this case at least is evidence this tech may not be ready for primetime.
  - flutas 4y ago
    > Driverless vehicles NEED to be able to handle these unexpected situations in an appropriate manner. That they don't currently is in fact a "real issue" and in this case at least is evidence this tech may not be ready for primetime. Personal opinion here, but I think defaulting to "stop and contact support staff" is as good of a "fix" as we will have for a long time. According to Cruise (so potentially biased) it took 25s for the firetruck to be able to move after the scenario was encountered, though the article says the garbage truck moved.
    - Volundr 4y ago
      > Personal opinion here, but I think defaulting to "stop and contact support staff" is as good of a "fix" as we will have for a long time. I both agree, and see this as yet another reason driverless cars are on the road WAY too early.
      - tadfisher 4y ago
        Then there will never be driverless cars on the road, because that's kind of a requirement to gather knowledge to build capable driverless vehicles.
        Volundr 4y ago
        This outcome is acceptable to me, though I doubt the assertion. I don't think we are good enough at AI yet to put cars on the road with any amount of data. When we are I think we'll be capable of training them without having to put vehicles with dangerous behaviors on the road to gather data.
- SllX 4y ago
  > I think the real issue here is a double parked garbage truck forcing the fire truck to go into oncoming traffic in the first place. Maybe there's a need for a loading only zone there so that the garbage truck doesn't have to block the travel lane. If there’s a discussion to be had here, it’s not through the frame of the needs of driverless cars. Self-driving has to work in the driving environment that exists today to be viable, and double parked garbage trucks are part of the regular order of that driving environment.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    When the emergency vehicle is delayed, what percentage of the delay is Cruise’s fault and what percentage is the garbage truck’s? I assign less than 50% to Cruise.
    - SllX 4y ago
      Let’s be generous and say 50/50. But look at it this way: one was a vehicle with no driver present in the seat, and the other was a vehicle in which a driving agent is never not present. A human driver in that situation should not spend longer than 5 seconds figuring out and implementing a way to safely let the fire truck pass. The Cruise car took longer. If a human were present with two working eyes and ears and armed with good judgement, they may never have been blocking the way in the first place because a fire truck in SF is blaring it’s horns while it charges to the situation it was called in to answer so it is entirely possible that seeing the garbage truck parked up ahead, they would have opted to not even continue driving because that looks like an obvious choke point for an emergency vehicle trying to pass. Alas, I cannot reasonably expect that kind of situational awareness and judgement from an average human driver so maybe that’s also too big an ask from Cruise. Also note this from the article: > The fire truck only passed the blockage when the garbage truck driver ran from their work to move their vehicle. So in the end, the Cruise vehicle was not the one which allowed the fire engine to pass but a hurried garbageman moving his truck after getting back in the driver’s seat. 50/50 may actually be too generous to Cruise here.
      - treesprite82 4y ago
- godshatter 4y ago
  It stopped because it recognized that it needed to stop to let an emergency vehicle get past it. Unfortunately, it stopped right next to a double-parked garbage truck in the next lane. No one had programmed in a set of contingencies for "stopped to let something pass, no room for it to pass". This is one of who knows how many contingencies it doesn't have a solution for which is why, in my opinion, this kind of thing will be quite common for a long time until enough events like these are found and software is changed to handle them. I'm hoping that none of these kinds of unanticipated events will cause fatalities, but I'm skeptical that will be the case.
boomboomsubban 4y ago
Because you yield to oncoming fire trucks.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  This is a good idea because it is a 28 tonne truck full of water tanks coming at you at 50mph.
- gkop 4y ago
  Is this mentioned in the article, or do you have inside knowledge, or are you guessing? Edit: you are correct, flutas explained in sibling comment that it was alluded to in article. Thanks you both!
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    I'm just stating a common traffic law. If you're driving, and an emergency vehicle is coming at you with it's lights on, you yield.
    - gkop 4y ago
      Ah, well for what it's worth that is the reason that Cruise provided that their vehicle stopped in the travel lane in this instance. I think it's important to know what the autonomous car was thinking.

Um so WHY was the Cruise car stopped in a travel lane to begin with? I skimmed 2x but don’t see this explained..

by gkop 4y ago

Um so WHY was the Cruise car stopped in a travel lane to begin with? I skimmed 2x but don’t see this explained..

From the article. > a San Francisco Fire Department truck responding to a fire tried to pass a doubled-parked garbage truck by using the opposing lane. a traveling autonomous vehicle (...) was blocking its path. While a human might have reversed to clear the lane, the Cruise car stayed put (......) Tiffany Testo, a spokesperson for Cruise, confirmed the incident. She said the driverless car had correctly yielded to the oncoming fire truck in the opposing lane and contacted the company’s remote assistance workers, So it sounds like the car was driving perfectly fine, but stopped when a car was coming at it head on and it didn't reverse. I think the real issue here is a double parked garbage truck forcing the fire truck to go into oncoming traffic in the first place. Maybe there's a need for a loading only zone there so that the garbage truck doesn't have to block the travel lane.

saulpw 4y ago
The real issue is that not every situation can be perfectly modeled, real human systems aren't (and can't be!) perfect, so sometimes you need to think outside of the box and with human priorities.
cozzyd 4y ago
the garbage truck might be double parked because another car was illegally parked, even if there's a loading zone... In practice, double parking is extremely common in all cities...
- bagacrap 4y ago
  ban street parking
BeefWellington 4y ago
> I think the real issue here is a double parked garbage truck forcing the fire truck to go into oncoming traffic in the first place. Maybe there's a need for a loading only zone there so that the garbage truck doesn't have to block the travel lane. I disagree. Driverless vehicles NEED to be able to handle these unexpected situations in an appropriate manner. That they don't currently is in fact a "real issue" and in this case at least is evidence this tech may not be ready for primetime.
- flutas 4y ago
  > Driverless vehicles NEED to be able to handle these unexpected situations in an appropriate manner. That they don't currently is in fact a "real issue" and in this case at least is evidence this tech may not be ready for primetime. Personal opinion here, but I think defaulting to "stop and contact support staff" is as good of a "fix" as we will have for a long time. According to Cruise (so potentially biased) it took 25s for the firetruck to be able to move after the scenario was encountered, though the article says the garbage truck moved.
  - Volundr 4y ago
    > Personal opinion here, but I think defaulting to "stop and contact support staff" is as good of a "fix" as we will have for a long time. I both agree, and see this as yet another reason driverless cars are on the road WAY too early.
    - tadfisher 4y ago
      Then there will never be driverless cars on the road, because that's kind of a requirement to gather knowledge to build capable driverless vehicles.
      - Volundr 4y ago
        This outcome is acceptable to me, though I doubt the assertion. I don't think we are good enough at AI yet to put cars on the road with any amount of data. When we are I think we'll be capable of training them without having to put vehicles with dangerous behaviors on the road to gather data.
SllX 4y ago
> I think the real issue here is a double parked garbage truck forcing the fire truck to go into oncoming traffic in the first place. Maybe there's a need for a loading only zone there so that the garbage truck doesn't have to block the travel lane. If there’s a discussion to be had here, it’s not through the frame of the needs of driverless cars. Self-driving has to work in the driving environment that exists today to be viable, and double parked garbage trucks are part of the regular order of that driving environment.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  When the emergency vehicle is delayed, what percentage of the delay is Cruise’s fault and what percentage is the garbage truck’s? I assign less than 50% to Cruise.
  - SllX 4y ago
    Let’s be generous and say 50/50. But look at it this way: one was a vehicle with no driver present in the seat, and the other was a vehicle in which a driving agent is never not present. A human driver in that situation should not spend longer than 5 seconds figuring out and implementing a way to safely let the fire truck pass. The Cruise car took longer. If a human were present with two working eyes and ears and armed with good judgement, they may never have been blocking the way in the first place because a fire truck in SF is blaring it’s horns while it charges to the situation it was called in to answer so it is entirely possible that seeing the garbage truck parked up ahead, they would have opted to not even continue driving because that looks like an obvious choke point for an emergency vehicle trying to pass. Alas, I cannot reasonably expect that kind of situational awareness and judgement from an average human driver so maybe that’s also too big an ask from Cruise. Also note this from the article: > The fire truck only passed the blockage when the garbage truck driver ran from their work to move their vehicle. So in the end, the Cruise vehicle was not the one which allowed the fire engine to pass but a hurried garbageman moving his truck after getting back in the driver’s seat. 50/50 may actually be too generous to Cruise here.
    - treesprite82 4y ago
godshatter 4y ago
It stopped because it recognized that it needed to stop to let an emergency vehicle get past it. Unfortunately, it stopped right next to a double-parked garbage truck in the next lane. No one had programmed in a set of contingencies for "stopped to let something pass, no room for it to pass". This is one of who knows how many contingencies it doesn't have a solution for which is why, in my opinion, this kind of thing will be quite common for a long time until enough events like these are found and software is changed to handle them. I'm hoping that none of these kinds of unanticipated events will cause fatalities, but I'm skeptical that will be the case.

boomboomsubban 4y ago

Because you yield to oncoming fire trucks.

Gordonjcp 4y ago
This is a good idea because it is a 28 tonne truck full of water tanks coming at you at 50mph.
gkop 4y ago
Is this mentioned in the article, or do you have inside knowledge, or are you guessing? Edit: you are correct, flutas explained in sibling comment that it was alluded to in article. Thanks you both!
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  I'm just stating a common traffic law. If you're driving, and an emergency vehicle is coming at you with it's lights on, you yield.
  - gkop 4y ago
    Ah, well for what it's worth that is the reason that Cruise provided that their vehicle stopped in the travel lane in this instance. I think it's important to know what the autonomous car was thinking.