15 ms·

Firefighters forced to smash window of driverless Cruise taxi to stop it

266 points by cma 4y ago

mindcrime 4y ago
Less anybody think "this is no big deal", let me assure you as a former firefighter, cars driving over fire hoses is a MAJOR deal. Whether the car is driven by a human or AI. And sadly, humans do this all too often anyway. FWIW, the reason(s) this is bad - if not obvious - include: - The hose can (and does) get snagged on the car's under-carriage, which can rip it away from a hydrant, or engine, or yank an attack line right out of the hands of the crew manning it. - Hoses snagged by cars can, as they're being unexpectedly pulled somewhere they were never expected to be, catch firefighters in the legs and cause them to fall. I'm aware of at least one case where a firefighter suffered a pretty severe head injury in one of these scenarios. - Even if the hose isn't snagged, damage from the vehicle driving over the hose can cause the hose to rupture. Hopefully I don't have to say any more about why that would be a Bad Thing. - Even if the hose isn't snagged, or doesn't burst at the moment the vehicle runs over it, the damage from this kind of thing is cumulative with all the other damage fire hoses suffer, which can lead to the need to replace it prematurely. And let me assure you, this stuff is not cheap. - Probably more that I'm forgetting right now.
- retrac 4y ago
  I'm slightly alarmed by the general scenario of a driverless vehicle approaching an emergency situation. A human-driven vehicle will respond to gestures from firefighters to go around, etc. And even most dull humans will have more situational awareness and flexibility than an AI is likely to, particularly as these sorts of scenarios are edge cases by definition. E.g. depending on your jurisdiction and the situation, it may be proper to run a red light to make way for an emergency vehicle. The insistence of the driver waving frantically at you is part of that judgement call. Software is not ready for that yet, I think.
  - redtriumph 4y ago
    Sounds like having support for interpreting human gestures will solve some of the problems. But how do we distinguish real emergency scenario from fake one? Such kinds of problems will only scale up as we apply L5 cars take on more public roads, but I wonder how long or what changes will have to be done in current road signs, critical city infra to support them.
    - outworlder 4y ago
      > Sounds like having support for interpreting human gestures will solve some of the problems. Add that to the _LONG_ list of issues that will have to be solved until we can even think about releasing autonomous cars in the streets.
    - jxf 4y ago
      > But how do we distinguish real emergency scenario from fake one? A car shouldn't make that call. It should err on the side of safety and assuming the emergency is real. When you see flashing lights on the highway coming up behind you, do you think "I bet that ambulance is faking it so they can get home faster", or do you just move over?
      - Swenrekcah 4y ago
        But then you have essentially enabled everyone to wave your car to a stop, which could be very convenient for certain types of people. I think the simple truth is that we are still a long long long time away from fully autonomous cars to be safely deployed anywhere except on very specific paths that are mostly closed off to everyone else. But they could be tremendously useful there, for instance driving buses or airport shuttles and that kind of thing.
        ocdtrekkie 4y ago
        So this is currently possible today: I can walk out on any street today and redirect traffic. With or without my reflective vest, drivers will generally listen to me. And self-driving vehicles must as well. Note that when I am doing traffic direction with appropriate authority, most drivers will never have heard of the organization I'm a part of (a local CERT team), nor have any real way to vet the authority I have. The authority they can determine I have is mostly that I'm doing it and no police officer has come by to tell me to stop doing it. (Note that CERT members do not and should not self-deploy, mind you, and if you choose not to heed our directions, we almost certainly can find a cop car to come let you know you screwed up.) Also bear in mind, many people directing traffic aren't public safety personnel at all. Construction workers are private employees, events have their own staff which direct traffic in various contexts, including public roads. There's no definitive way to determine that someone is authorized to direct traffic, cars just need to obey them.
- btbuildem 4y ago
  Wouldn't even the sudden drop in pressure be dangerous to the crew manning the hose?
  - mindcrime 4y ago
    Under the right circumstances, yes. Basically there are many, many bad things that can happen if a car drives over a hose, and not very many good things.
- bsder 4y ago
  > And sadly, humans do this all too often anyway. This is actually probably one of the best arguments for self-driving cars. The self-driving cars will eventually stop doing this. Humans, never.
  - mindcrime 4y ago
    Agreed, in the general sense. I do also think it's important that we not get caught up in holding self-driving cars to an overly high standard, especially in comparison to error prone humans. Speaking only for myself, once self-driving cars are consistently as good as or slightly better than humans, I would find them acceptable for broad use. I don't think the standard needs to be "zero error, ever" although that would be a nice aspirational goal for sure.
- flandish 4y ago
  Just saying, as another firefighter, this post above is fantastic. To add: a vehicle driving over a hose also means a vehicle is likely to be “in” the scene operating area. Random cars where we don’t expect them can lead to all sorts of injury. Granted, as a truck comp guy, I often had to deal with engine guys not leaving room - but first due is first due. ;)
  - mindcrime 4y ago
    "Pull past and leave room for the ladder" Words not heard often enough! :-)
- dheera 4y ago
  Question, wouldn't it suffice to just put a couple traffic cones in front of it? AVs should be already trained to recognize and stop for those.
  - mindcrime 4y ago
    As always, be wary of the word "just". Things that seem trivial can turn out to be surprisingly difficult. :-) In this context, the issue is actually pretty simple: it's a factor of available personnel and time. At least in the US, most municipal fire departments don't have the budget for enough staffing to run with all of their companies fully staffed (by NFPA standards). I'd posit that 3-person companies are the most common configuration you find these days, with 4-person being rare, and 5-person (or more) being all but unheard of. Ironically some volunteer departments actually put apparatus out the door with 4, 5, or 6 personnel more often than most paid departments. The tradeoff is the staffing with volunteer departments tends to be highly variable, so that same department, on a different day, may roll a truck with 1 or 2 personnel, or not roll at all. Anyway, back to the point. Let's a assume a typical "working fire": the first due company arrives, and there is a LOT of stuff that needs to get done, and in a hurry. Size up needs to be done, ideally with somebody doing a 360° walkaround. One or more attack lines need to be stretched and put into operation. A primary search needs to be conducted unless somebody on scene can absolutely confirm that everybody is out of the building. Vertical ventilation may be required. Additional lines may need to be pulled to protect exposures. A water supply needs to be established. A RIT (rapid intervention team) should ideally be in place to rescue any firefighters who become trapped. Did I mention that you're starting out with 3 people on that first arriving apparatus (and the operator needs to stay with the apparatus as a general rule)? And then as the subsequent arriving apparatus come in, their crews usually slot in behind the first company, doing all of the things on the list above, which are of critical priority. What isn't on the list of critical priorities (in relative terms) is "place cones around the supply line, or other hose that happened to fall in the street". Now by the time the 7th or 8th due company arrives, you probably have staffing for things like putting out cones, doing traffic control, etc. But they're probably coming from the other side of town, or might be a mutual aid company from another department. So you could easily be looking at 10, 12, 15, or more minutes before they roll up. So it's during that first, let's say 15 minutes, of an incident, that you usually don't have cones put put, traffic control established (PD might be available to help with that, but they're dealing with their own staffing issues), and so on. And during this time is when things like "car running over the supply line" tend to happen. It's unfortunate, but largely it's just the reality of the way things work today, based on the staffing that's available. If every company was showing up with 5 or 6 personnel, this stuff would happen a lot sooner.
- heleninboodler 4y ago
  Interesting. A couple months ago, there were firefighters at my condo complex running a hose across the driveway into the building. I got past just before they ran the hose, but I stopped and asked them if they would be gone by the time I returned in about 30m, and they said "probably not, but if we're here you can just drive over the hose." That surprised me.
  - fukawi2 4y ago
    Our brigade has hose ramps so we can let people drive over... But they're pretty far down the list of priorities to pull off the truck unless we're just training.
  - mindcrime 4y ago
    Yeah, that would surprise me as well. I can think of a couple of possible explanations: - You were talking to somebody really young and inexperienced, who did not themselves realize the risk of letting somebody drive over hose. - You were talking to a prototypical "world-weary, crusty old greybeard" who was so jaded and cynical that they were thinking to themselves: "It doesn't matter what I say, this person is going to drive over my hose anyway." - They did in fact have the ramps, that @fukawi2 mentioned, deployed. Hose ramps do make if somewhat reasonable to drive over hose, but they are rarely deployed in my experience.
- gyudin 4y ago
  Or you can just put signs that road is closed in front of it so nobody has to second guess it. Seems like some cognitive bias that people have to have same knowledge as you and take an educated guess in a few seconds they notice hoses.
  - Doxin 4y ago
    If you've got a drivers license you should be able to not drive over unexpected objects in the road.
cuteboy19 4y ago
So what is the solution? Let emergency services have a remote control STOP button? But it would have many implications for passengers too
- nonfamous 4y ago
  Escalators have big red “Emergency Stop” buttons anyone can press when things go wrong. Why not one for autonomous vehicles, too?
  - epicureanideal 4y ago
    Carjackings and other crimes where people could press the button in a bad part of town and pull the riders out.
    - mmcconnell1618 4y ago
      Or just jump in front of the car which is supposed to stop and then your companions handle carjacking the immobilized vehicle. There are many ways to normally stop or trick an autonomous vehicle without needing a big red button to stop it. Spike strips are used by police to stop human driven vehicles all the time.
      - defen 4y ago
        What about if someone triggers it when you're traveling 75 mph on the highway?
        rootusrootus 4y ago
        I.e. what if someone pulls in front of you on the highway and then stands on the brakes?
    - goodpoint 4y ago
      Do you have a bulletproof car that can effectively protect the driver? Or are you just imagining Mad Max?
cma 4y ago
Aren't they supposed to respond to gestures? What do they do if someone is directing traffic? And I guess the question if they do respond to traffic directing gestures: how do they avoid obvious pranks from drunk people?
- __s 4y ago
  Throw on a reflective vest & you'll have no problem pranking human drivers with your traffic signals
  - LeifCarrotson 4y ago
    A surprising number of humans have no problem with doing things to faceless computers and public or corporate infrastructure that they would never do to another human being with whom they were making eye contact. Few are willing to don the reflective vest and ruin someone's day by lying to their face and directing them down a bad detour, but I have no problem believing that a lot of people would laugh at a stupid self-driving car wasting its time and energy following their hand signals.
    - cj 4y ago
      Isn't the idea that there would be humans in the self-driving car? At least 90% of the time, I would hope.
    - vorpalhex 4y ago
      But a self driving car SHOULD follow anyone directing traffic. There are valid reasons for <random citizen> to be directing traffic, like losing their load on the highway or helping traffic flow around a stopped vehicle.
    - kzrdude 4y ago
      Would you step in front of a self-driving car to make it emergency brake? I think a lot of people would if they could. It's another instance of what you mentioned - teenage gangs bullying and playing with lonely empty self-driving cars.
charcircuit 4y ago
Did the city pay for the damages?
- arp242 4y ago
  Why should it? I don't see how the firefighters did anything wrong.
  - lflux 4y ago
    Firefighters practically salivate at the possibility of smashing the windows of a car parked in front of a hydrant they need to access for supply. This isn't much different.
    - rcpt 4y ago
      From what I can tell here there wasn't even a fire.
    - kderbyma 4y ago
      'Need to access'.....yes.....and your point? they salivate over saving lives! Stfu
      - LarryMullins 4y ago
        I've talked to some that said it was one of the job perks. I don't blame them at all, it seems necessary and fun. It's one of those "instant justice" kind of things.
    - cma 4y ago
      They have to do that to avoid a kink in the hose I think.
      - lflux 4y ago
        Correct, the supply hoses don't like bending much.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
crazygringo 4y ago
Obviously autonomous vehicles need to be able to respond to officials directing traffic for any reason -- making way for ambulances, stopping for firefighters, being pulled over for a faulty headlight. Surely Cruise and Waymo have thought about this. Curious how it's supposed to work normally, and whether something about it failed in this case? How is an official supposed to get a moving autonomous vehicle to stop or obey non-standard directions (back up to make room for a fire truck)? Is it supposed to require any special training on the part of officials, or are remote operators supposed to always be watching for it? And what happens if the regular communications channel to remote operators fails?
- onion2k 4y ago
  Obviously autonomous vehicles need to be able to respond to officials directing traffic for any reason. In that case it would also need to tell the difference between a cop and someone impersonating a cop, or it's going to be really easy to mess with self-driving cars.
  - jcoder 4y ago
    That sounds like a them problem—society won’t change any practices to accommodate these toys that are demonstrating how little value they bring every day.
    - beambot 4y ago
      You mean the same society that built thoroughfares, roads, stop lights, and laws for the benefit of transporting people and goods? Why wouldn't they modify the infrastructure to save a substantial fraction of the costs? Transportation is literally the 2nd greatest household expense [1], and the cost is dominated by labor. I'm not sure how you could conclude that the potential for massive savings is a "toy". https://20somethingfinance.com/transportation-costs/ https://20somethingfinance.com/transportation-costs/
      - lazyasciiart 4y ago
readonthegoapp 4y ago
should firefighters wear cameras so we can see wtf is going on out there? i guess it would cost a lot of money, and prob be very wasteful, wreck privacy even more, etc. but... i wouldn't mind knowing a bit more of what's going on out there. now that our streets are even-more deadly beta robot playgrounds. and, with all the new tech, maybe we can learn some things.
- malfist 4y ago
  This is victim blaming. Why should firefighters wear cameras so a autonomous taxi company can avoid accountability?
  - readonthegoapp 4y ago
    victim blaming? who's the victim?
mattlondon 4y ago
To be honest, as a human driver I'd not give a second thought to driving over a hose. Not saying that is right or not, just surprised this is apparently an issue worth smashing a car up for. I have no recollection of this being in the highway code for instance
- ghaff 4y ago
  Seriously? You'd just drive over a firehose because it was in your way?
  - mattlondon 4y ago
    Yeah I would.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      That is unintentionally the best argument for autonomous vehicles I've seen in a while.
    - ykl 4y ago
      You will at a minimum get a ticket and very likely you will get your car smashed by some very angry firefighters / police. If you rupture the hose, you will also get an extremely expensive bill to replace the hose. If the hoses catches or the water pressure drop screws up something on the firefighting side or results in injury or other damage, you'll be held liable for that too. California Vehicle Code § 21708: "No person shall drive or propel any vehicle or conveyance upon, over, or across, or in any manner damage any fire hose or chemical hose used by or under the supervision and control of any organized fire department." I dunno man, that's an enormous amount of downside to take in exchange for avoiding the minor inconvenience of just finding a detour so as to not drive over the hose.
  - lmm 4y ago
    I've ridden over cleaning hoses (and one time a boat's hose that I assume was supplying water or fuel or something) without a second thought. Obviously I'd be careful around an emergency vehicle setup with lights and sirens and all that, but just a random hose lying across the road? Yeah I'd probably drive over it without thinking.
alexfromapex 4y ago
This is going to slowly evolve into "law enforcement needs a killswitch" which is a scary thought
- wwweston 4y ago
  Eh, of all the threats I can think of, law enforcement being able to killswitch autopilot on my car is not even gonna make the top 100. Whether on the run for crimes or being pursued by sinister oppressors the automotive autopilot is not gonna be a key margin of liberty. And being able to HERF any vehicle dead is probably coming no matter what: https://boingboing.net/2018/04/30/zapguns-r-us.html https://boingboing.net/2018/04/30/zapguns-r-us.html On the other hand, I can actually see a lot of merit in autopilot killswitches for anybody, including law enforcement.
  - thangalin 4y ago
    > On the other hand, I can actually see a lot of merit in autopilot killswitches for anybody, including law enforcement. Including thieves?
    - tpmx 4y ago
      The human driver could still take command (I presume), so I don't see that as a relevant attack vector.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- tenpies 4y ago
  The really scary part is when the kill switch is in reference to your life rather than the car's movement. Like the theories about the death of Michael Hastings in 2013. Hacks of cars were demonstrated in 2015 and documents from the CIA released by Wikileaks showed they have explored the idea as early as 2014[1], but at the time it was still presumed that killing someone by hacking their vehicle would be quite resource-extensive. --- [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/03/08/what-we-know-about-car-hacking-the-cia-and-those-wikileaks-claims/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/03/0...
freitzkriesler 4y ago
[flagged]
- thereisnospork 4y ago
  >other things that can cause bodily harm. So everything? I, for instance, recall a certain style of sketchers that had to be recalled because they caused bodily injury. Do you likewise demand (e.g.) independent and peer-reviewed studies before new footwear can be put on the market?
  - freitzkriesler 4y ago
    Don't be a fool. You know what I mean. Medicines and self driving cars can cause irreperable damage on a larger scale than a shoe does. You sound like you would be first in line to give a pregnant woman Thalidomide too and that was considered "safe and effective" as well until it wasn't.
    - thereisnospork 4y ago
      >Medicines and self driving cars can cause irreperable damage on a larger scale than a shoe does. Don't be a fool - irreparable harm is occurring and you and people like you are standing in the way of fixing it. The current state of the art kills 40,000 people a year.[0] You've got to consider the bigger picture around 'dangerous'. Skepticism here isn't prudent, isn't reasonable, and frankly will be responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands. The analogy is inane because your premise is. [0]Say it with me: "A number if people equivalent to everyone I've ever met or will ever meet will die this year by automobile in America." And maybe one of them will be from a self driving car.
      - freitzkriesler 4y ago
        I bet you like to run untested alpha builds in production environments too. Be my guest and risk killing yourself by beta testing dangerous self driving vehicles and medical procedures that haven't gone through their trials. I risk nothing by not participating. Just do us all a favor and try not to take out others For Science™. Enjoy doing someone else's QC for free.
btbuildem 4y ago
I can see how this kind of thing would not be in the self-driving training sets. But a person standing in the way should cause the vehicle to stop, right? Pedestrian of any kind, including a firefighter in full gear. It's hard to speculate what happened without knowing the details, but I'm imagining a scenario where someone stood there to block the car's progress, and once they realized it's a dumb robot that will proceed as soon as the path is "clear", they did the next logical thing (which was to smash the robot).
- atrettel 4y ago
  There are a lot of these kind of edge cases that are just not going to end up in training data sets, at least not in sufficient quantities in sufficient time. That makes it hard for 100 percent data-driven approaches to adapt to all circumstances, since so much data is needed. A human can reason and understand odd circumstances without prior "training data". That's an advantage in my view. Current AI systems like these just respond to the data given to them --- garbage in, garbage out, as the saying goes. In my view, we should be worried not just about what data is missing but also what data is either unintentionally or even intentionally incorrect. One day a hacker will find a way to insert malicious data (in contrast to malicious code) and try to exploit these systems. That's just inevitable at this point. I hope that these autonomous systems end up with a lot more fail safes, since episodes like this one are only going to become more common, in my view.
  - crooked-v 4y ago
    You might like the scifi story "Car Wars", which does some exploring of the subject: https://doctorow.medium.com/car-wars-a01718a27e9e https://doctorow.medium.com/car-wars-a01718a27e9e
- Psychlist 4y ago
  > Pedestrian of any kind, including a firefighter in full gear. You assume that a firefighter will be recognised as a person. Even if they're wearing breathing gear or carrying a sack etc. And would definitely respond appropriately to hand gestures, driving away from the fire rather than queuing neatly behind a fire appliance or something. For all the people concerned that a driverless car might stop somewhere it shouldn't, I'm way more concerned that the car will drive on when it really should stop. Especially given some of the insanity we've seen in Auckland with the current floods, the idea that a driverless car might not recognise someone standing waist deep in floodwaters or whatever, then just drive on through, doesn't excite me. There's too many cases where actual human drivers fail to respond appropriately even though we have 100-odd years of selection pressure encouraging them to.
fernly 4y ago
Parallel case with a standardized solution: override controls in elevators for emergency responders.
Animats 4y ago
The letter from various SF agencies to the state CPUC has more info.[1] Cruise vehicles stopping for some reason and tying up traffic is a headache. This happens reasonably often. Sometimes on streetcar tracks and in bus lanes, which has the MUNI people annoyed. Apparently Waymo doesn't do this as much. [1] https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-documents/2023/01/2023.01.25_ccsf_23.0125_cpuc_cruise_tier_2_advice_letter_protest_002.pdf https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-docume...
guardiangod 4y ago
Cant the driver-less car, when it sees a fire truck, automatically stop the car at a safe location? Then if the fire truck did not move after 3 minutes, re-route to get away from the fire truck?
- robocat 4y ago
  Next headlines: Driverless cars cause traffic jam at accident scene. Driverless cars cause traffic jam while tenders waiting at traffic lights.
  - mr_toad 4y ago
    There were numerous instances of the cars blocking traffic mentioned in the report. Someone decided that they weren’t headline material.
freitzkriesler 4y ago
The fact that the NHTSA allows these "beta" self driving vehicles is an affront to their mandate. Sorry but I don't beta test self driving cars, medicines, and other things that can cause bodily harm on a wonton. Thalidomide was considered safe and effective for pregnant women until it wasn't. You want to be a guinea pig, be my guest and while you're at it, go ahead and install alpha builds for your BE infrastructure. Edit: the fact that this was down voted speaks volumes to me about how people view safety. Sad!
trackofalljades 4y ago
Watch them implement some kind of "fix" which then causes erroneous hard stops from full speed because of a stripe or something, resulting in pileups.
Kirr 4y ago
Johnny Cab gets closer to reality with every passing day. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWgrvNHjKkY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWgrvNHjKkY )
morpheos137 4y ago
Are driverless cars are a solution in search of a problem or a problem in search of a solution? I think the latter. The problem is psychological and and the solution is for people to grow up. Technology is no where near the state necessary to navigate the real world, because it has no model of the real world comparable to the human brain. Competent adults who have looked into this problem understand this. The "driverless" phenomenon is a fascinating case study in how dumb investors can be when cheap money is coupled with baseless mass delusion. Cars are not smart in 2023. They can't be because the technology does not exist, for example, for a robot to reliably recognize and flexibly respond to open ended an emergency situation in the real world the way a human can. Maybe some situations can be some of the time but not any where near the rate a competent driver can. The principals of so called self-driving company's should be held personally liable for accidents if the technology is so great. Because that is what happens to human drivers who commit infractions.
- cipheredStones 4y ago
  > The problem is psychological and the solution is for people to grow up. To quote a popular Tumblr post, "If your solution to some problem relies on “If everyone would just…” then you do not have a solution. Everyone is not going to just. At not time in the history of the universe has everyone just, and they’re not going to start now." Human flaws are not going to go away any time soon, and you probably can't improve the overall quality of human driving on any scale less than decades. Whether or not they're useful right now, driverless cars are promising because the technology improves over time.
layman51 4y ago
I am so confused. Smashing the windshield of a Cruise taxi is able to stop it from moving forward?
- mr_toad 4y ago
  Driving with a broken windshield is a safety hazard so it’s not really surprising that it’s programmed not to.
paddw 4y ago
It's hard to understand how the regulatory fervor which extends towards most of "big tech" seemingly has so little effect on the autonomous vehicles industry.
vvpan 4y ago
In the long-term self-driving vehicles will just become trains.
rcpt 4y ago
Was there actually a fire? > fire hoses on the ground in the area of active firefighting It sounds like there wasn't.
- hmry 4y ago
  I don't know what meaning of "active firefighting" you're thinking of that doesn't involve fire, but you can open the PDF linked in the article and see "On January 21, 2023, a similar incident occurred. San Francisco Fire Department Staff were on duty at the scene of a fire on Hayes Street near the intersection with Divisadero Street."
  - rcpt 4y ago
    I don't know either but would not be surprised if for some non-fire reason they were plugging in a hose. I don't know why firetrucks show up on medical 911 calls or why fire departments run the lifeguards. But they do all those non-fire things and even more.
    - BenjiWiebe 4y ago
      As a volunteer firefighter I'd be surprised if they pulled a line when there's no fire. Cleaning up the line is hard work and not something we do for fun.
- burntwater 4y ago
  Is that a relevant question? Seems to me that the issue is that the cars ran over fire hoses, and ignored firefighters. Whether or not there was actually fire anywhere nearby seems completely irrelevant.
Willish42 4y ago
This is one of those futuristic sounding headlines I would've found so cool to dream about 10+ years ago as a not-too-far-off sci-fi hypothetical. Weird how mundane and unsurprising this feels after many years of headlines about self driving. It's hard to have a lot of faith in a concept that seems so doomed for failure before it's even hit a critical market size.
tempestn 4y ago
> Cruise did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment made outside typical working hours. As an aside, this seems like somewhat of an issue with modern journalism. I guess you have to get the article out asap to avoid being scooped, but then it ends up missing key information, like a statement from Cruise that might have been received if they'd been given a business day to respond. If you wait though, it's old news and no one cars about the added details.
linsomniac 4y ago
Clarification, as there are comments saying otherwise: Article says Jan 2023 incident was active fire fighting and June 2022 was an active fire scene. Additionally that running over hoses is a violation of CA vehicle codes and "can possibly injure firefighters".
shultays 4y ago
Aren't there "road blocked" sign in their tools? Don't such cars recognise it?
stefap2 4y ago
There was something similar recently, when a Waymo car drove into a construction zone: https://www.teslarati.com/waymo-almost-drives-trench/ https://www.teslarati.com/waymo-almost-drives-trench/

266 points by cma 4y ago

Less anybody think "this is no big deal", let me assure you as a former firefighter, cars driving over fire hoses is a MAJOR deal. Whether the car is driven by a human or AI. And sadly, humans do this all too often anyway. FWIW, the reason(s) this is bad - if not obvious - include: - The hose can (and does) get snagged on the car's under-carriage, which can rip it away from a hydrant, or engine, or yank an attack line right out of the hands of the crew manning it. - Hoses snagged by cars can, as they're being unexpectedly pulled somewhere they were never expected to be, catch firefighters in the legs and cause them to fall. I'm aware of at least one case where a firefighter suffered a pretty severe head injury in one of these scenarios. - Even if the hose isn't snagged, damage from the vehicle driving over the hose can cause the hose to rupture. Hopefully I don't have to say any more about why that would be a Bad Thing. - Even if the hose isn't snagged, or doesn't burst at the moment the vehicle runs over it, the damage from this kind of thing is cumulative with all the other damage fire hoses suffer, which can lead to the need to replace it prematurely. And let me assure you, this stuff is not cheap. - Probably more that I'm forgetting right now.

retrac 4y ago
I'm slightly alarmed by the general scenario of a driverless vehicle approaching an emergency situation. A human-driven vehicle will respond to gestures from firefighters to go around, etc. And even most dull humans will have more situational awareness and flexibility than an AI is likely to, particularly as these sorts of scenarios are edge cases by definition. E.g. depending on your jurisdiction and the situation, it may be proper to run a red light to make way for an emergency vehicle. The insistence of the driver waving frantically at you is part of that judgement call. Software is not ready for that yet, I think.
- redtriumph 4y ago
  Sounds like having support for interpreting human gestures will solve some of the problems. But how do we distinguish real emergency scenario from fake one? Such kinds of problems will only scale up as we apply L5 cars take on more public roads, but I wonder how long or what changes will have to be done in current road signs, critical city infra to support them.
  - outworlder 4y ago
    > Sounds like having support for interpreting human gestures will solve some of the problems. Add that to the _LONG_ list of issues that will have to be solved until we can even think about releasing autonomous cars in the streets.
  - jxf 4y ago
    > But how do we distinguish real emergency scenario from fake one? A car shouldn't make that call. It should err on the side of safety and assuming the emergency is real. When you see flashing lights on the highway coming up behind you, do you think "I bet that ambulance is faking it so they can get home faster", or do you just move over?
    - Swenrekcah 4y ago
      But then you have essentially enabled everyone to wave your car to a stop, which could be very convenient for certain types of people. I think the simple truth is that we are still a long long long time away from fully autonomous cars to be safely deployed anywhere except on very specific paths that are mostly closed off to everyone else. But they could be tremendously useful there, for instance driving buses or airport shuttles and that kind of thing.
      - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
        So this is currently possible today: I can walk out on any street today and redirect traffic. With or without my reflective vest, drivers will generally listen to me. And self-driving vehicles must as well. Note that when I am doing traffic direction with appropriate authority, most drivers will never have heard of the organization I'm a part of (a local CERT team), nor have any real way to vet the authority I have. The authority they can determine I have is mostly that I'm doing it and no police officer has come by to tell me to stop doing it. (Note that CERT members do not and should not self-deploy, mind you, and if you choose not to heed our directions, we almost certainly can find a cop car to come let you know you screwed up.) Also bear in mind, many people directing traffic aren't public safety personnel at all. Construction workers are private employees, events have their own staff which direct traffic in various contexts, including public roads. There's no definitive way to determine that someone is authorized to direct traffic, cars just need to obey them.
btbuildem 4y ago
Wouldn't even the sudden drop in pressure be dangerous to the crew manning the hose?
- mindcrime 4y ago
  Under the right circumstances, yes. Basically there are many, many bad things that can happen if a car drives over a hose, and not very many good things.
bsder 4y ago
> And sadly, humans do this all too often anyway. This is actually probably one of the best arguments for self-driving cars. The self-driving cars will eventually stop doing this. Humans, never.
- mindcrime 4y ago
  Agreed, in the general sense. I do also think it's important that we not get caught up in holding self-driving cars to an overly high standard, especially in comparison to error prone humans. Speaking only for myself, once self-driving cars are consistently as good as or slightly better than humans, I would find them acceptable for broad use. I don't think the standard needs to be "zero error, ever" although that would be a nice aspirational goal for sure.
flandish 4y ago
Just saying, as another firefighter, this post above is fantastic. To add: a vehicle driving over a hose also means a vehicle is likely to be “in” the scene operating area. Random cars where we don’t expect them can lead to all sorts of injury. Granted, as a truck comp guy, I often had to deal with engine guys not leaving room - but first due is first due. ;)
- mindcrime 4y ago
  "Pull past and leave room for the ladder" Words not heard often enough! :-)
dheera 4y ago
Question, wouldn't it suffice to just put a couple traffic cones in front of it? AVs should be already trained to recognize and stop for those.
- mindcrime 4y ago
  As always, be wary of the word "just". Things that seem trivial can turn out to be surprisingly difficult. :-) In this context, the issue is actually pretty simple: it's a factor of available personnel and time. At least in the US, most municipal fire departments don't have the budget for enough staffing to run with all of their companies fully staffed (by NFPA standards). I'd posit that 3-person companies are the most common configuration you find these days, with 4-person being rare, and 5-person (or more) being all but unheard of. Ironically some volunteer departments actually put apparatus out the door with 4, 5, or 6 personnel more often than most paid departments. The tradeoff is the staffing with volunteer departments tends to be highly variable, so that same department, on a different day, may roll a truck with 1 or 2 personnel, or not roll at all. Anyway, back to the point. Let's a assume a typical "working fire": the first due company arrives, and there is a LOT of stuff that needs to get done, and in a hurry. Size up needs to be done, ideally with somebody doing a 360° walkaround. One or more attack lines need to be stretched and put into operation. A primary search needs to be conducted unless somebody on scene can absolutely confirm that everybody is out of the building. Vertical ventilation may be required. Additional lines may need to be pulled to protect exposures. A water supply needs to be established. A RIT (rapid intervention team) should ideally be in place to rescue any firefighters who become trapped. Did I mention that you're starting out with 3 people on that first arriving apparatus (and the operator needs to stay with the apparatus as a general rule)? And then as the subsequent arriving apparatus come in, their crews usually slot in behind the first company, doing all of the things on the list above, which are of critical priority. What isn't on the list of critical priorities (in relative terms) is "place cones around the supply line, or other hose that happened to fall in the street". Now by the time the 7th or 8th due company arrives, you probably have staffing for things like putting out cones, doing traffic control, etc. But they're probably coming from the other side of town, or might be a mutual aid company from another department. So you could easily be looking at 10, 12, 15, or more minutes before they roll up. So it's during that first, let's say 15 minutes, of an incident, that you usually don't have cones put put, traffic control established (PD might be available to help with that, but they're dealing with their own staffing issues), and so on. And during this time is when things like "car running over the supply line" tend to happen. It's unfortunate, but largely it's just the reality of the way things work today, based on the staffing that's available. If every company was showing up with 5 or 6 personnel, this stuff would happen a lot sooner.
heleninboodler 4y ago
Interesting. A couple months ago, there were firefighters at my condo complex running a hose across the driveway into the building. I got past just before they ran the hose, but I stopped and asked them if they would be gone by the time I returned in about 30m, and they said "probably not, but if we're here you can just drive over the hose." That surprised me.
- fukawi2 4y ago
  Our brigade has hose ramps so we can let people drive over... But they're pretty far down the list of priorities to pull off the truck unless we're just training.
- mindcrime 4y ago
  Yeah, that would surprise me as well. I can think of a couple of possible explanations: - You were talking to somebody really young and inexperienced, who did not themselves realize the risk of letting somebody drive over hose. - You were talking to a prototypical "world-weary, crusty old greybeard" who was so jaded and cynical that they were thinking to themselves: "It doesn't matter what I say, this person is going to drive over my hose anyway." - They did in fact have the ramps, that @fukawi2 mentioned, deployed. Hose ramps do make if somewhat reasonable to drive over hose, but they are rarely deployed in my experience.
gyudin 4y ago
Or you can just put signs that road is closed in front of it so nobody has to second guess it. Seems like some cognitive bias that people have to have same knowledge as you and take an educated guess in a few seconds they notice hoses.
- Doxin 4y ago
  If you've got a drivers license you should be able to not drive over unexpected objects in the road.

cuteboy19 4y ago

So what is the solution? Let emergency services have a remote control STOP button? But it would have many implications for passengers too

nonfamous 4y ago
Escalators have big red “Emergency Stop” buttons anyone can press when things go wrong. Why not one for autonomous vehicles, too?
- epicureanideal 4y ago
  Carjackings and other crimes where people could press the button in a bad part of town and pull the riders out.
  - mmcconnell1618 4y ago
    Or just jump in front of the car which is supposed to stop and then your companions handle carjacking the immobilized vehicle. There are many ways to normally stop or trick an autonomous vehicle without needing a big red button to stop it. Spike strips are used by police to stop human driven vehicles all the time.
    - defen 4y ago
      What about if someone triggers it when you're traveling 75 mph on the highway?
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        I.e. what if someone pulls in front of you on the highway and then stands on the brakes?
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    Do you have a bulletproof car that can effectively protect the driver? Or are you just imagining Mad Max?

cma 4y ago

Aren't they supposed to respond to gestures? What do they do if someone is directing traffic? And I guess the question if they do respond to traffic directing gestures: how do they avoid obvious pranks from drunk people?

__s 4y ago
Throw on a reflective vest & you'll have no problem pranking human drivers with your traffic signals
- LeifCarrotson 4y ago
  A surprising number of humans have no problem with doing things to faceless computers and public or corporate infrastructure that they would never do to another human being with whom they were making eye contact. Few are willing to don the reflective vest and ruin someone's day by lying to their face and directing them down a bad detour, but I have no problem believing that a lot of people would laugh at a stupid self-driving car wasting its time and energy following their hand signals.
  - cj 4y ago
    Isn't the idea that there would be humans in the self-driving car? At least 90% of the time, I would hope.
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    But a self driving car SHOULD follow anyone directing traffic. There are valid reasons for <random citizen> to be directing traffic, like losing their load on the highway or helping traffic flow around a stopped vehicle.
  - kzrdude 4y ago
    Would you step in front of a self-driving car to make it emergency brake? I think a lot of people would if they could. It's another instance of what you mentioned - teenage gangs bullying and playing with lonely empty self-driving cars.

charcircuit 4y ago

Did the city pay for the damages?

arp242 4y ago
Why should it? I don't see how the firefighters did anything wrong.
- lflux 4y ago
  Firefighters practically salivate at the possibility of smashing the windows of a car parked in front of a hydrant they need to access for supply. This isn't much different.
  - rcpt 4y ago
    From what I can tell here there wasn't even a fire.
  - kderbyma 4y ago
    'Need to access'.....yes.....and your point? they salivate over saving lives! Stfu
    - LarryMullins 4y ago
      I've talked to some that said it was one of the job perks. I don't blame them at all, it seems necessary and fun. It's one of those "instant justice" kind of things.
  - cma 4y ago
    They have to do that to avoid a kink in the hose I think.
    - lflux 4y ago
      Correct, the supply hoses don't like bending much.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

crazygringo 4y ago

Obviously autonomous vehicles need to be able to respond to officials directing traffic for any reason -- making way for ambulances, stopping for firefighters, being pulled over for a faulty headlight. Surely Cruise and Waymo have thought about this. Curious how it's supposed to work normally, and whether something about it failed in this case? How is an official supposed to get a moving autonomous vehicle to stop or obey non-standard directions (back up to make room for a fire truck)? Is it supposed to require any special training on the part of officials, or are remote operators supposed to always be watching for it? And what happens if the regular communications channel to remote operators fails?

onion2k 4y ago
Obviously autonomous vehicles need to be able to respond to officials directing traffic for any reason. In that case it would also need to tell the difference between a cop and someone impersonating a cop, or it's going to be really easy to mess with self-driving cars.
- jcoder 4y ago
  That sounds like a them problem—society won’t change any practices to accommodate these toys that are demonstrating how little value they bring every day.
  - beambot 4y ago
    You mean the same society that built thoroughfares, roads, stop lights, and laws for the benefit of transporting people and goods? Why wouldn't they modify the infrastructure to save a substantial fraction of the costs? Transportation is literally the 2nd greatest household expense [1], and the cost is dominated by labor. I'm not sure how you could conclude that the potential for massive savings is a "toy". https://20somethingfinance.com/transportation-costs/ https://20somethingfinance.com/transportation-costs/
    - lazyasciiart 4y ago

readonthegoapp 4y ago

should firefighters wear cameras so we can see wtf is going on out there? i guess it would cost a lot of money, and prob be very wasteful, wreck privacy even more, etc. but... i wouldn't mind knowing a bit more of what's going on out there. now that our streets are even-more deadly beta robot playgrounds. and, with all the new tech, maybe we can learn some things.

malfist 4y ago
This is victim blaming. Why should firefighters wear cameras so a autonomous taxi company can avoid accountability?
- readonthegoapp 4y ago
  victim blaming? who's the victim?

mattlondon 4y ago

To be honest, as a human driver I'd not give a second thought to driving over a hose. Not saying that is right or not, just surprised this is apparently an issue worth smashing a car up for. I have no recollection of this being in the highway code for instance

ghaff 4y ago
Seriously? You'd just drive over a firehose because it was in your way?
- mattlondon 4y ago
  Yeah I would.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    That is unintentionally the best argument for autonomous vehicles I've seen in a while.
  - ykl 4y ago
    You will at a minimum get a ticket and very likely you will get your car smashed by some very angry firefighters / police. If you rupture the hose, you will also get an extremely expensive bill to replace the hose. If the hoses catches or the water pressure drop screws up something on the firefighting side or results in injury or other damage, you'll be held liable for that too. California Vehicle Code § 21708: "No person shall drive or propel any vehicle or conveyance upon, over, or across, or in any manner damage any fire hose or chemical hose used by or under the supervision and control of any organized fire department." I dunno man, that's an enormous amount of downside to take in exchange for avoiding the minor inconvenience of just finding a detour so as to not drive over the hose.
- lmm 4y ago
  I've ridden over cleaning hoses (and one time a boat's hose that I assume was supplying water or fuel or something) without a second thought. Obviously I'd be careful around an emergency vehicle setup with lights and sirens and all that, but just a random hose lying across the road? Yeah I'd probably drive over it without thinking.

alexfromapex 4y ago

This is going to slowly evolve into "law enforcement needs a killswitch" which is a scary thought

wwweston 4y ago
Eh, of all the threats I can think of, law enforcement being able to killswitch autopilot on my car is not even gonna make the top 100. Whether on the run for crimes or being pursued by sinister oppressors the automotive autopilot is not gonna be a key margin of liberty. And being able to HERF any vehicle dead is probably coming no matter what: https://boingboing.net/2018/04/30/zapguns-r-us.html https://boingboing.net/2018/04/30/zapguns-r-us.html On the other hand, I can actually see a lot of merit in autopilot killswitches for anybody, including law enforcement.
- thangalin 4y ago
  > On the other hand, I can actually see a lot of merit in autopilot killswitches for anybody, including law enforcement. Including thieves?
  - tpmx 4y ago
    The human driver could still take command (I presume), so I don't see that as a relevant attack vector.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
tenpies 4y ago
The really scary part is when the kill switch is in reference to your life rather than the car's movement. Like the theories about the death of Michael Hastings in 2013. Hacks of cars were demonstrated in 2015 and documents from the CIA released by Wikileaks showed they have explored the idea as early as 2014[1], but at the time it was still presumed that killing someone by hacking their vehicle would be quite resource-extensive. --- [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/03/08/what-we-know-about-car-hacking-the-cia-and-those-wikileaks-claims/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/03/0...

freitzkriesler 4y ago

[flagged]

thereisnospork 4y ago
>other things that can cause bodily harm. So everything? I, for instance, recall a certain style of sketchers that had to be recalled because they caused bodily injury. Do you likewise demand (e.g.) independent and peer-reviewed studies before new footwear can be put on the market?
- freitzkriesler 4y ago
  Don't be a fool. You know what I mean. Medicines and self driving cars can cause irreperable damage on a larger scale than a shoe does. You sound like you would be first in line to give a pregnant woman Thalidomide too and that was considered "safe and effective" as well until it wasn't.
  - thereisnospork 4y ago
    >Medicines and self driving cars can cause irreperable damage on a larger scale than a shoe does. Don't be a fool - irreparable harm is occurring and you and people like you are standing in the way of fixing it. The current state of the art kills 40,000 people a year.[0] You've got to consider the bigger picture around 'dangerous'. Skepticism here isn't prudent, isn't reasonable, and frankly will be responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands. The analogy is inane because your premise is. [0]Say it with me: "A number if people equivalent to everyone I've ever met or will ever meet will die this year by automobile in America." And maybe one of them will be from a self driving car.
    - freitzkriesler 4y ago
      I bet you like to run untested alpha builds in production environments too. Be my guest and risk killing yourself by beta testing dangerous self driving vehicles and medical procedures that haven't gone through their trials. I risk nothing by not participating. Just do us all a favor and try not to take out others For Science™. Enjoy doing someone else's QC for free.

btbuildem 4y ago

I can see how this kind of thing would not be in the self-driving training sets. But a person standing in the way should cause the vehicle to stop, right? Pedestrian of any kind, including a firefighter in full gear. It's hard to speculate what happened without knowing the details, but I'm imagining a scenario where someone stood there to block the car's progress, and once they realized it's a dumb robot that will proceed as soon as the path is "clear", they did the next logical thing (which was to smash the robot).

atrettel 4y ago
There are a lot of these kind of edge cases that are just not going to end up in training data sets, at least not in sufficient quantities in sufficient time. That makes it hard for 100 percent data-driven approaches to adapt to all circumstances, since so much data is needed. A human can reason and understand odd circumstances without prior "training data". That's an advantage in my view. Current AI systems like these just respond to the data given to them --- garbage in, garbage out, as the saying goes. In my view, we should be worried not just about what data is missing but also what data is either unintentionally or even intentionally incorrect. One day a hacker will find a way to insert malicious data (in contrast to malicious code) and try to exploit these systems. That's just inevitable at this point. I hope that these autonomous systems end up with a lot more fail safes, since episodes like this one are only going to become more common, in my view.
- crooked-v 4y ago
  You might like the scifi story "Car Wars", which does some exploring of the subject: https://doctorow.medium.com/car-wars-a01718a27e9e https://doctorow.medium.com/car-wars-a01718a27e9e
Psychlist 4y ago
> Pedestrian of any kind, including a firefighter in full gear. You assume that a firefighter will be recognised as a person. Even if they're wearing breathing gear or carrying a sack etc. And would definitely respond appropriately to hand gestures, driving away from the fire rather than queuing neatly behind a fire appliance or something. For all the people concerned that a driverless car might stop somewhere it shouldn't, I'm way more concerned that the car will drive on when it really should stop. Especially given some of the insanity we've seen in Auckland with the current floods, the idea that a driverless car might not recognise someone standing waist deep in floodwaters or whatever, then just drive on through, doesn't excite me. There's too many cases where actual human drivers fail to respond appropriately even though we have 100-odd years of selection pressure encouraging them to.

fernly 4y ago

Parallel case with a standardized solution: override controls in elevators for emergency responders.

Animats 4y ago

The letter from various SF agencies to the state CPUC has more info.[1] Cruise vehicles stopping for some reason and tying up traffic is a headache. This happens reasonably often. Sometimes on streetcar tracks and in bus lanes, which has the MUNI people annoyed. Apparently Waymo doesn't do this as much. [1] https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-documents/2023/01/2023.01.25_ccsf_23.0125_cpuc_cruise_tier_2_advice_letter_protest_002.pdf https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-docume...

guardiangod 4y ago

Cant the driver-less car, when it sees a fire truck, automatically stop the car at a safe location? Then if the fire truck did not move after 3 minutes, re-route to get away from the fire truck?

robocat 4y ago
Next headlines: Driverless cars cause traffic jam at accident scene. Driverless cars cause traffic jam while tenders waiting at traffic lights.
- mr_toad 4y ago
  There were numerous instances of the cars blocking traffic mentioned in the report. Someone decided that they weren’t headline material.

freitzkriesler 4y ago

The fact that the NHTSA allows these "beta" self driving vehicles is an affront to their mandate. Sorry but I don't beta test self driving cars, medicines, and other things that can cause bodily harm on a wonton. Thalidomide was considered safe and effective for pregnant women until it wasn't. You want to be a guinea pig, be my guest and while you're at it, go ahead and install alpha builds for your BE infrastructure. Edit: the fact that this was down voted speaks volumes to me about how people view safety. Sad!

trackofalljades 4y ago

Watch them implement some kind of "fix" which then causes erroneous hard stops from full speed because of a stripe or something, resulting in pileups.

Kirr 4y ago

Johnny Cab gets closer to reality with every passing day. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWgrvNHjKkY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWgrvNHjKkY )

morpheos137 4y ago

Are driverless cars are a solution in search of a problem or a problem in search of a solution? I think the latter. The problem is psychological and and the solution is for people to grow up. Technology is no where near the state necessary to navigate the real world, because it has no model of the real world comparable to the human brain. Competent adults who have looked into this problem understand this. The "driverless" phenomenon is a fascinating case study in how dumb investors can be when cheap money is coupled with baseless mass delusion. Cars are not smart in 2023. They can't be because the technology does not exist, for example, for a robot to reliably recognize and flexibly respond to open ended an emergency situation in the real world the way a human can. Maybe some situations can be some of the time but not any where near the rate a competent driver can. The principals of so called self-driving company's should be held personally liable for accidents if the technology is so great. Because that is what happens to human drivers who commit infractions.

cipheredStones 4y ago
> The problem is psychological and the solution is for people to grow up. To quote a popular Tumblr post, "If your solution to some problem relies on “If everyone would just…” then you do not have a solution. Everyone is not going to just. At not time in the history of the universe has everyone just, and they’re not going to start now." Human flaws are not going to go away any time soon, and you probably can't improve the overall quality of human driving on any scale less than decades. Whether or not they're useful right now, driverless cars are promising because the technology improves over time.

layman51 4y ago

I am so confused. Smashing the windshield of a Cruise taxi is able to stop it from moving forward?

mr_toad 4y ago
Driving with a broken windshield is a safety hazard so it’s not really surprising that it’s programmed not to.

paddw 4y ago

It's hard to understand how the regulatory fervor which extends towards most of "big tech" seemingly has so little effect on the autonomous vehicles industry.

vvpan 4y ago

In the long-term self-driving vehicles will just become trains.

rcpt 4y ago

Was there actually a fire? > fire hoses on the ground in the area of active firefighting It sounds like there wasn't.

hmry 4y ago
I don't know what meaning of "active firefighting" you're thinking of that doesn't involve fire, but you can open the PDF linked in the article and see "On January 21, 2023, a similar incident occurred. San Francisco Fire Department Staff were on duty at the scene of a fire on Hayes Street near the intersection with Divisadero Street."
- rcpt 4y ago
  I don't know either but would not be surprised if for some non-fire reason they were plugging in a hose. I don't know why firetrucks show up on medical 911 calls or why fire departments run the lifeguards. But they do all those non-fire things and even more.
  - BenjiWiebe 4y ago
    As a volunteer firefighter I'd be surprised if they pulled a line when there's no fire. Cleaning up the line is hard work and not something we do for fun.
burntwater 4y ago
Is that a relevant question? Seems to me that the issue is that the cars ran over fire hoses, and ignored firefighters. Whether or not there was actually fire anywhere nearby seems completely irrelevant.

Willish42 4y ago

This is one of those futuristic sounding headlines I would've found so cool to dream about 10+ years ago as a not-too-far-off sci-fi hypothetical. Weird how mundane and unsurprising this feels after many years of headlines about self driving. It's hard to have a lot of faith in a concept that seems so doomed for failure before it's even hit a critical market size.

tempestn 4y ago

> Cruise did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment made outside typical working hours. As an aside, this seems like somewhat of an issue with modern journalism. I guess you have to get the article out asap to avoid being scooped, but then it ends up missing key information, like a statement from Cruise that might have been received if they'd been given a business day to respond. If you wait though, it's old news and no one cars about the added details.

linsomniac 4y ago

Clarification, as there are comments saying otherwise: Article says Jan 2023 incident was active fire fighting and June 2022 was an active fire scene. Additionally that running over hoses is a violation of CA vehicle codes and "can possibly injure firefighters".

shultays 4y ago

Aren't there "road blocked" sign in their tools? Don't such cars recognise it?

stefap2 4y ago

There was something similar recently, when a Waymo car drove into a construction zone: https://www.teslarati.com/waymo-almost-drives-trench/ https://www.teslarati.com/waymo-almost-drives-trench/