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Dashcam footage shows driverless cars clogging San Francisco
- xnx 4y agoI am not surprised a transit agency cherry picks data to try and make their competition look bad.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- woodruffw 4y agoDo SF and other municipalities collect fees that compensate the public for these kinds of externalities? It seems absurd that companies performing driverless research can hobble public services and infrastructure without providing some form of compensation, ideally directed towards improving those services.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- michaelt 4y agoIn any other locality, the compensation would be a bunch of highly paid tech jobs, paying fat stacks of tax and pulling money from all over the world into the local economy - both from the jobs directly working on the cars' software, and by bootstrapping a technology hub. Of course, in the case of SF you could argue they have far more highly paid tech jobs than the city can support already, and no need to bootstrap a technology hub....
- woodruffw 4y agoThis isn't a strong argument for externalities: no municipality in the world would (should?) accept toxic waste being dumped in its water supply just because a small fraction of its tax base is paid handsomely to do so. Put another way: the value proposition for SF (and other tech cities) exists above and prior to these companies being allowed to treat the city's streets as a testing ground.
- michaelt 4y agoCities allow road users to mess up traffic all the time. Got a large vehicle that blocks multiple lanes while turning? No problem. Heavy 18-wheelers that fuck up the road surface? We're pro-business. Trash collectors need to stop to collect trash? Of course they do. Customers trying to parallel park block a complete lane of traffic, in addition to the lane of on-street parking? No worries. Taxis want to stop traffic to pick up customers? Sure thing. Delivery drivers want to double park? Well, you gotta deliver somehow, just make it quick. Parked vehicles blocking the cycle lane? Well you'll just have to go around. Slow cyclist in a narrow street? They've got every right to be there. Hire scooters all over the sidewalk? Yeah, that happens. I'm not sure the comparison to toxic waste dumping is really warranted.
- woodruffw 4y agoAt least in NYC, nearly all of these have corresponding taxes, levies, or outright bans. For example, the city charges additional taxes against both taxi operators and riders to compensate the public for the congestion they induce[1]. Similarly, 53’ trailers are outright illegal in NYC (because they destroy the road surface, as you mentioned, and can’t navigate the city safety). Enforcement is currently poor, however. The point is this: using city streets to trial-run experimental technology is something new and distinct, and it isn’t immediately clear to me why the public shouldn’t be compensated for the bother. [1]: https://www.tax.ny.gov/bus/cs/csidx.htm https://www.tax.ny.gov/bus/cs/csidx.htm
- AlexandrB 4y agoThe idea of fining the companies involved is proposed near the end of the article: > As driverless cars keep racking up the miles, San Francisco transit advocates propose a variety of measures to lessen their impact. Jaime Viloria of Equity on Public Transit, a grassroots group of riders in the Tenderloin neighborhood, says companies operating autonomous vehicles should be fined for causing delays.
- Ajedi32 4y agoSeems fair. If a manually driven car were to block a streetcar like that surely that would result in a fine? This shouldn't require any sort of special treatment for self driving cars one way or the other.
- bradleybuda 4y agoHaha, not in San Francisco, no. We've stopped enforcing traffic laws. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/sfpd-traffic-tickets-17355651.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article...
- vuln 4y agoWhat if a manually operated car mechanically breaks down, runs out of gas, or causes an accident are you going to give them a “traffic delay” fine?
- firstlink 4y ago[flagged]
- Fatnino 4y agoBecause the government then uses those fees to build or upkeep a public good and the public is spared from having to pay the taxes to do so.
- kjksf 4y agoWhen exactly did that imaginary, completely made up "sparing of taxes" ever happened? This is San Francisco. The only thing I ever hear from politicians is an additional tax, on top of all the other taxes. But prove me wrong: when in the last 10 years did San Francisco "spared" or lowered taxes? San Francisco has a budget of $14 billion dollars. Paris, France: €4.4 billion euro. The issue is not lack of money but mind boggling, ineffective, corrupt spending of the money.
- Fatnino 4y agoTaxpayers are "spared" when a new tax doesn't get added on top because a project got it's funding elsewhere. I can't speak for the city level taxes in sf because I don't pay those, but I know that in California sometimes taxes can expire and the voters don't renew them.
- i80and 4y agoI know you're being inflammatory to make a point, but calling this "fascistic" is really out of line and dilutes the concept.
- chihuahua 4y agoThat horse left the barn a long time ago. Over the past several years, the word "fascistic" (and "fascist", obviously) has become so overused that now it just means "something I don't like." Just like "awesome" now means "pretty good."
- grandmczeb 4y agoThe Traffic Congestion Mitigation Tax is designed for exactly this purpose. https://sftreasurer.org/business/taxes-fees/traffic-congestion-mitigation-tax-tcm https://sftreasurer.org/business/taxes-fees/traffic-congesti... https://www.sfcta.org/funding/tnc-tax https://www.sfcta.org/funding/tnc-tax
- vuln 4y agoFines? For stopping traffic? Hahahahhahaha. You can steal ~899$ worth of shit and the cops don’t show up. Open air drug markets, people shitting in the streets, thousands of homeless people. But yeah let’s pontificate about fines for someone disrupting traffic. You gonna fine the person that runs out of gas, causes an accident or just mechanically breaks down?
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago>You gonna fine the person that runs out of gas, causes an accident or just mechanically breaks down? I'm much more interested in fining the crap out of the people who don't have an "excuse" for their bad traffic performance.
- vuln 4y agoWho is the judge of the “excuse”? What you’re talking about is a two tiered justice system. Just because xyz conglomerate causes an issues “zomg fine them1!1!1!1” but when it’s someone that runs out of gas or mechanically breaks down “well they’re poor so it can slide”. This doesn’t work. You’ll waste more money prosecuting and collecting the fines from xyz conglomerate. If the poor person gets the fine too then it puts them in an even worse position. How do we know the poor person didn’t run out of gas intentionally hoping some Good Samaritan offers a couple gallons or road side assistance helps with a couple gallons paid for by tax payers.
- woodruffw 4y agoYou're making this more complex than it actually is: the scenario in question is a self-driving car that's already known to the local government and is explicitly being used for testing/research purposes. It's difficult to imagine an innocent or unlucky citizen who would be ensnared in a fine structure designed to disincentivize traffic problems caused by experimental self-driving cars.
- lm28469 4y agoI think you read to fast or are projecting. OP clearly refers to a fee on autonomous car companies using public infra as a testing ground. Causing traffic jam is but a tiny part of it
- ElfinTrousers 4y agoDear manufacturers of driverless cars: let's see how they do in Boston. We'll be here anytime you're feeling brave.
- igetspam 4y agoAs a human driver who has navigated both Boston and SF, they're both equally terrible. Once you're in the middle of downtown for either city, you should abandon your car, your plans and hope. Just walk.
- rippercushions 4y agoThe weather in Boston is considerably more challenging than SF though.
- ghaff 4y agoFor all its reputation, I'm not sure Boston is clearly a lot harder to drive in generally than a lot of San Francisco is--given Boston weather for maybe 8 months out of the year. However, after a big snowstorm (admittedly not much this year) it's a whole other game. And while it's easy to say just don't use self-driving if there's a snowstorm or if lanes are partially blocked by snow, that's not ultimately a driving system that can be depended on. And I guarantee people who maybe only drive a few dozen times a year in the worst conditions will be an absolute menace on the roads. (And "just don't drive then" isn't an option for a lot of people in a lot of circumstances.)
- clsec 4y agoWell, as an example, last year the lights at the intersection outside my apartment went out during a heavy rain storm. I also tend to have a lot of driverless cars in my neighborhood. I watched how cars were dealing with the blacked out intersection. I saw two different Waymo cars stop at the intersection as CA law requires. Then I saw a Cruise car approach the intersection. As it did it slowed a little but then seemed to speed up as it blew through the intersection. I could only imagine the nightmare during a bad nor'easter!
- _asrm 4y agowhat a time to be alive
- waynenilsen 4y agoStandard should be relative to human
- mjburgess 4y agoFor reference, the human standard is <1 death in every 100 million miles driven.
- uoaei 4y agoIt doesn't seem like you're including classic and obvious externalities. What about causing traffic that prevents vital organs or rescue personnel from reaching those in need in time? Disruption of economic activity (qua output) can be significant in places where traffic is substantial and solvable yet unsolved. In my personal experience (I've spent significant time in the neighborhoods around Nvidia's headquarters) approximately 3 cars fewer get through any given stoplight if an autonomous vehicle is in that lane. I can imagine how in a place like SF this could cause real, measurable negative impacts.
- mjburgess 4y agoI think my comment has been read as being "pro self-driving", whereas I intended it to be anti. Self-driving cars have already killed many more people than 1/100mill -- it's about 1 in 1 mil iirc. My comment was to frame the saftey of driving in the relevant units: amount of driving. When scaled by the right factor, "human driving" is incredibly safe by comparison.
- krupan 4y agoYou have to be including Tesla's not actually self driving to get to that statistic for self driving cars.
- hirundo 4y agoThese sound like expected growing pains for such complex software, and that there are rapid and effective iterations in progress. I salute SF and its residents for putting up with this and suffering such delays, making a sacrifice that improves it for the rest of us. Their tolerance will eventually save lives as well as improving mobility all over. I just hope that they will continue to extend that tolerance to still allowing human drivers for a long time after automated ones are more safe. It's almost inevitable that there will be a story like this someday about the hazards of letting humans disable their auto-pilot.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ncr100 4y agoIt is tragic and foul for technology to make things worse in this way, IMO. The bus- / train-riders have no choice in the matter. It adds hours onto the driver's day. It's a shame the mitigation takes as long as the article claims it does.
- Overtonwindow 4y agoI feel like San Francisco is NOT a good city to test autonomous vehicles. Flat, grid cities would make better test grounds, preferably without streetcars.
- uoaei 4y agoIf subjects aren't passing tests, the solution is to make the tests easier? (Remember this the next time someone says "teachers are the reason our kids are dumb".)
- jonas21 4y agoDidn't Waymo start testing without backup drivers in Phoenix, which is exactly as you describe (and also has clear weather nearly every day)? I think they only moved on to SF after deciding things worked well enough there.
- dbcurtis 4y agoWhat? No. Please tell me this is not how you test your own code — only cases for “happy path”, ignore exceptions, no corner case coverage. Line coverage goals of 10% or so. Waymo has a lot of miles in quiet suburbs with broad streets and light traffic. How has that helped them when they get to SF?
- tanseydavid 4y ago"Happy Path" gets all of the love.
- dbcurtis 4y agoBut… does it? :) Why would you assume there is only on logic flow :) Testers must be evil-minded white-hats.
- chkaloon 4y agoI'll probably be downvoted, but city infrastructure needs to be a partner in this. I've always thought driverless vehicles are a losing proposition unless road infrastructure engineering and transit is upgraded along with it. If SF is just ignoring it until it causes problems, well they're part of the problem.
- uoaei 4y agoMy dream long-term would be completely separated infra for cars+buses and for bikes+scooters. Human-driven cars will be pointless except on backwoods trails or racetracks in any case.
- scottLobster 4y agoWe better start on another baby boom then. Mass transit of any sort requires a certain population density to be viable. Unless you define any given suburb as "backwoods".
- iamerroragent 4y ago[flagged]
- scottLobster 4y agoIt's anecdotal, but as an upper middle class, gun-owning, formerly (pre-Trump) Republican-voting American white guy raised in a largely white upper middle class suburb, I've ridden my adopted city's bus many times and it's fine. I'd happily take it to work and save on gas if it went straight there, as it stands taking the bus turns a 30 minute commute into an hour+ commute. Also my kid's doctor and dentist are completely inaccessible by bus, never mind other activities. Whatever the original motivations for suburbs, I've yet to meet anyone who moved to a suburb to get away from <insert ethnicity>, and I've had enough unasked for conversations with racists to know I don't immediately alienate them for whatever reason. Commute, crime, space and schools are usually at the top of the list of reasons for moving to a suburb. Sure you can argue institutionalized racism and such is somewhat integrated into those things, but very few people (with the possible exception of the less educated regions of the South/Midwest) are consciously turning down properties solely because a black family lives next door. At any rate, those people are bitter losers and idiots who's opinion grows less relevant each passing year. There are plenty of more rational people who could be convinced if mass transit was made practical
- sixQuarks 4y agoThe article says there was 83 minutes of disruption caused by autonomous vehicles. I wonder what amount of disruption was caused by homeless and mentally ill people during the same period.
- AlexandrB 4y agoThe homeless and mentally ill don't pretend that they're solving society's transportation woes.
- tanseydavid 4y agoOn 6th street in SF they do.
- sixQuarks 4y agoDo you honestly believe the world WILL NOT transition to autonomous vehicles in the future, even if that future is far down the road?
- pookha 4y agoI only see this taking over if it's force fed down the publics throat by authoritarian regimes (China style). The public at-large doesn't want an algorithm to completely remove the steering wheel...Needs to be a fluid mixture of human and algorithm with these self-driving designs (Tesla style). Sorry.
- sixQuarks 4y agoIt probably will be for the first few years.
- rsync 4y agoYes I believe that and I will actively work toward a future that does not contain (most) autonomous vehicles. Pick any date in the future and I will wager that my 16yo son can more intelligently navigate a tricky driving scenario and deal more effectively with tough edge cases. In addition to our human superiority at driving we also owe it to each other to enter these driving transactions with literal skin in the game. I need to know that your driving strategies are backed up with "... or else I will be dead". The solution to our societal woes is not the further over-production of personal autos and autonomous driving - it is the investment in real mass transit (the kind that runs on rails).
- post_break 4y agoI don't understand why they don't have a big red STOP button on the roof or something to immediately call for either a driver or why don't these have remote control take over so they can be quickly moved out of the way? Imagine if one of these parks itself in front of an ambulance or fire truck?
- biztos 4y agoI’m sure I’m not the only one who would be tempted to hit that button every time the Corporate Robocopmobile stops at a light.
- ricardobeat 4y agoThey call home when this happens, one of the reports mentions a Waymo employee showed up after less than a a minute. What they seem to be missing is a “get out of the way” path-planning mode when it doesn’t know how to proceed.
- mrweasel 4y agoI was thinking the same thing. The car on the tarm/light-rail track clearly don't have any concept of being in the way. It seems to be the same case with the car blocking the bus in the first example. Neither of those systems seem to have a notion of reversing or pulling over to make space. The ability to "read the road" seem to leave a lot to be desired.
- midoridensha 4y ago>The car on the tarm/light-rail track clearly don't have any concept of being in the way. That sounds the same as most human drivers.
- opportune 4y agoI believe they actually do have that kind of mode. When you are riding in one of these cars commercially they have an “end ride” button that cancels the route and gets the vehicle to pull over. I think most clogs are when cars are mapping so I’m not sure if they either don’t have enough data to offer that when they get stuck (depends on how much they depend on mapping to implement the feature). It could also just be that they figure a stuck car is too messed up to reliably pull over without causing more problems, so to err on the side of caution they don’t use that feature.
- classified 4y agoAh, the great American tradition of having the public play guinea pigs for those looking to make money.
- codyb 4y agoI'd imagine that's the world's tradition for thousands of years and any thing different is a recent development and rather exclusive
- londgine 4y agoDrivered cars are causing the majority of the clog. I don't see more of a problem with driverless cars. Externalities are already taxed in the form of gas tax, but if they want to target electric vehicles as well, they can make every road a toll (with today's cameras it's not hard to do, without even requiring drivers to stop and pay).
- jeffrallen 4y agoDoes SF Mini have a zero tolerance, "you block us, we tow you" policy? Tow companies are super eager to answer calls, because they get a cut of the impound fees. The free market at work! :) I think after a few times bailing their cars out of impound, these companies would find a way to "return to profitability".
- ncr100 4y agoNo.
- AlotOfReading 4y agoThe cost to send a person out there to rescue the car is already expensive and towing fees would be a rounding error compared to the vast amounts of money being spent on engineering/development right now.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoDoes the article compare these incidents with similar cases of disabled cars that did have drivers? No? Then nothing to learn here.
- neonate 4y agohttp://web.archive.org/web/20230410130758/https://www.wired.com/story/dashcam-footage-shows-driverless-cars-cruise-waymo-clogging-san-francisco/ http://web.archive.org/web/20230410130758/https://www.wired.... https://archive.ph/PAhqM https://archive.ph/PAhqM
- zecken 4y agoI've been held up longer by side shows at intersections than driverless cars here. Not that SF is the lawless hellscape the media pretends is the case, but I do think it's a bit rich that city officials are pointing fingers at fairly remarkable services using paid permits that work well 99% of the time while failing to enforce laws that are broken more frequently.
- opportune 4y agoSame. As a pedestrian in SF I very frequently get put in danger by impatient human drivers at 4 way stop signs. No self driving car has ever put me in danger, and I interact with them quite frequently. The national media of course wants to produce content confirming the biases of people who are (in the back of their minds) anxious about the prospect of SDC but don’t have exposure to them. I have a lot of exposure to them - not as an employee though - and think Cruise, Waymo, and Zoox are all doing a great job at being cautious and respectful with their testing programs. Sure they do get stuck sometimes, but human drivers disrupt traffic too, and honestly SDC are already better at being safe drivers around pedestrians and other vehicles than humans IME. It’s just that they are so cautious sometimes they just stop and create situations like this. Most people who haven’t been living with SDC for years like we have in SF want to hand wring about them based on articles like this, but the reality is quite different. You’ll note you don’t hear much about the cars injuring people or getting in accidents despite the appetite for negative SDC media coverage.
- WeylandYutani 4y agoDo they have pedestrians or bicycles in San Francisco?
- RajT88 4y agoI am guessing you've never been there. It's like any other big American city in that regard. On top of that they have a bunch of electric scooters and electric skateboards and such.
- abeppu 4y ago> Jaime Viloria of Equity on Public Transit, a grassroots group of riders in the Tenderloin neighborhood, says companies operating autonomous vehicles should be fined for causing delays. Insufficient. They'll only count it as part of the cost of doing business. I think every person director or above at these companies should be eligible to be delayed at random for a time equal to the total human-minutes of delay caused to transit riders and people in private vehicles. If a driverless vehicle blocks a train with 60 riders for 15 minutes, those directors and executives should in aggregate spend 15 hours not able to go wherever they want to go, and in a way which they are unable to schedule in advance.
- opportune 4y agoThey already have a system for this, it’s called “driving on the 101 during rush hour”
- abeppu 4y agoThe whole point of this article is that driverless vehicles are causing delays which are qualitatively different and longer than what human drivers would do. Pointing out that bad traffic already exists elsewhere (presumably caused by human drivers) does not decrease the problems that these companies are creating for the public, and certainly doesn't create accountability.
- tick_tock_tick 4y agoWe don't have consequences if a normal person blocks a train for 15 minutes why would we add them for automated cars first?
- abeppu 4y agoIf you stand in front of a muni train for 15 minutes, and refuse to speak to or respond to anyone, I think there's a decent chance you'll experience a negative consequence.
- 4y ago
- strstr 4y agoThis article is making a mountain out of a molehill. The crux of the article seems to be “wow! If you block traffic it really adds up to wasting people’s time!”. Duh. Lots of things do this, many less valuable than driverless cars. As an example, Seattle’s drawbridges sound like much more of a disaster than whatever time is being wasted by Cruise vehicles. Sailboats can’t even make it under the Fremont bridge, so every rich dude with a boat blocks traffic (including multiple bus lines) for 10 min when they sail by.
- advisedwang 4y ago> As an example, Seattle’s drawbridges ... Those bridges don't open 7-9AM and 4-6PM, which shows that we have and should continue to regulate to mitigate disruptions!
- dpkirchner 4y ago> Sailboats can’t even make it under the Fremont bridge, so every rich dude with a boat blocks traffic (including multiple bus lines) for 10 min when they sail by. I've dreamt of a reverse-toll system where those folks end up paying drivers, pedestrians, and bus passengers some token amount for the delay (not enough to encourage lolligagging but enough to encourage boats to find better travel times or coordinate to spread the tolls.
- bombcar 4y agoAmusingly in almost all jurisdictions, based on ancient law, the boats have right-of-way over the bridge. Special laws sometimes are passed to have "boat times" so the boat has to wait until the top of the hour or similar.
- seanmcdirmid 4y agoThe irony being that the ship canal in Seattle was created after the roads and cars already existed, so it’s not like boats were there first and drawbridges came later. There are some special laws about when the bridge can open during the week, but not on the weekend.
- ra7 4y agoThe self driving taxi companies will be very happy that minor traffic inconveniences are the only thing people are complaining about at this point.
- ridgered4 4y agoAnyone ever think about what a nightmare driverless cars will be if they actually work? Right now our crumbling infrastructure is loaded with traffic. Imagine if the max amount of driving a human can endure is removed entirely as a final constraint on the total utilization rate of this infrastructure and is replaced with a relentless driving machine that never tires or gets frustrated and has no fear of death. People would commute up to 4 hours one way, napping in their cars, maybe even longer. Delivery vehicles running all hours of the night, perhaps with no one ever in them at all. People sending the cars to go pick things up or people that they otherwise wouldn't have time in their day to do. Even if you don't want to live in your car that the pressure will still be exerted on you because you'll be competing with people that do. Cars instructed to circle the block in areas with no parking clogging the streets. You'll need a self driving car yourself to even get a spot since you'll never defeat all the robot vultures. People will forget how to drive entirely of course so there will be no going back. The whole thing will feed on itself, people will need more self driving cars to get back the time stolen by other self driving cars.
- mindvirus 4y agoOf course, like anything there will be major societal changes. But consider a few brighter possibilities: * Cars are all electric, since the one downside major downside (a long time to charge versus gas) is reduced if they can go charge themselves. So less pollution and noise. * The number of cars may increase, but so will the capacity of roads due to faster speeds and higher density. So a city could possibly only have a couple of car accessible roads. * Parking can also get denser, as cars can presumably park themselves and coordinate. So you could build a few massive parking garages (for example) to serve thousands of cars, or require them to park outside of the city.
- gpm 4y ago> Cars are all electric [...] So less [...] noise Tire noise dominates at speeds above roughly 30 kph (20 mph), so on reasonably fast roads not really. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Propulsion-noise-the-tyre-road-noise-and-the-total-A-weighted-level-from-a-passenger-car_fig4_266205731 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Propulsion-noise-the-tyr... Of course, self driving cars might also mean slower cars, because the drivers are less impatient, and if that is true then noise would go down. On the flip side, self driving cars might end up meaning faster cars because they can coordinate better, increasing noise levels.
- kristianpaul 4y agoit is dispiriting and disempowering,” he says. “There's no one there to communicate with at all.”
- narrator 4y ago[flagged]
- brenns10 4y agoWow, found the WEF conspiracy theorist :)
- narrator 4y agoI like to pretend that the city officials aren't just dumb and there's some sort of overarching method to their madness. Yeah, I did string together a bunch of stuff, but I like the idea of roving crackheads keeping people from leaving their fifteen minute cities and forcing them out of single family housing which is otherwise enormously popular. All those commercial buildings downtown that have been emptied out will get converted into "safe" residential apartments and then the whole sunset and outlying areas can slowly get turned over to the roving crackheads attended to by legions of government employees with enormous pensions who make sure their open-air drug markets proceed in an orderly fashion while the normies get chased out of their nice single family houses into high security "sustainable" pods.
- sberens 4y ago> Autonomous cars in San Francisco made 92 unplanned stops between May and December 2022 So about one unplanned stop every 3 days? Seems a bit of a stretch to call it "clogging" San Francisco.
- jaberabdullah 4y ago[flagged]
- SanderNL 4y agoI’m not quite sure driverless cars solve an actual problem. I mean it’s cool, but it feels like a massive, near AGI level effort to reach what, driving a car? What else can it do? It seems so limited. If I had to bet I’d say we solve general AI first and then driverless cars are somewhat of a byproduct. Like many oldskool specialty AI’s get owned by general purpose LLM’s nowadays.
- Waterluvian 4y agoI’ve always wondered about a hypothetical South Park episode where it feels 100% South Park and yet they play the entire thing straight with no exaggeration. This could be that.
- spike021 4y agoA few days ago, my mom told me how a day or two before she was driving in the city (San Francisco) and a Waymo pulled up in the next lane to her. It started merging into her lane right beside her, and she thought she was going to be hit by it. Fortunately not, but afterward she attempted to get the driver's attention and realized there was none. Not sure what you do in that situation, honestly.
- Animats 4y agoNow this surprised me.[1] Cruise AV rear-ended a Muni bus at slow speed. Clear, daylight, dry. That should not happen. [1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/file/cruise_032323-pdf/ https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/file/cruise_032323-pdf/
- YeGoblynQueenne 4y agoWhat I'm loving is how they put the "Clear Form" button right next to the "Print" button, so it's easy to press it by mistake. MWAHAHAHAHA.
- jmole 4y agothis is incredibly frustrating. look at the dashcam footage. What's taking up space? The driverless car, or the long lines of parked cars on each side of the road?
- tyingq 4y agoI wonder if this scenario will play out on a large scale when driverless semi-trucks start displacing jobs. Where some people might sabotage the system in various ways to make a point. Not just drivers either, as it eventually affects things like roadside gas stations, restaurants, hotels, etc. Not pushing a luddite agenda, just curious how it might all play out.
- kube-system 4y agoDriving is an exercise in line following, until it isn't. This problem isn't solvable until AGI is invented, or we (again) limit automated vehicles to closed circuits where exceptions are less likely to cause cascading faliures.
- colinsane 4y agoif you define driving as a binary “solved” v.s. “unsolved”, then it’s simpler to just say that driving is “unsolvable”. humans have been driving for a century and we still have 30,000 traffic fatalities per year in just the U.S.: human-level automation (AGI) doesn’t solve that. sure, you could tune the driving parameters to significantly reduce that count — but not for free and not without creating new (but hopefully smaller) problems. at some point it just mirrors any other unsolved human system, where you’re left debating values and tradeoffs. think the Ford Pinto memo [1] but where the tradeoffs are “do we tune driving parameters to achieve 10 fatalities/year and 10M man-years of travel time per year, or 1 fatality and 11M man-years of travel time?” personally i think the tradeoffs in this article are overblown. 99% of us accept that traffic lights are stupid and will delay every 2am no-other-cars-on-the-road trip by a few minutes. but when it’s a new autonomous system suddenly those delays are to be treated as unsolved problems? don’t get me wrong, i like when people acknowledge that there are things around us that ought to be improved, but the distinction here just seems arbitrary. it’s just some weird status quo bias that seems to carry more weight than i can justify. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Cost–benefit_analysis,_the_Pinto_Memo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Cost–benefit_analys...
- kube-system 4y agoRoads where drivers and machines share the road give us the worst of both worlds — humans who get drunk, fall asleep, and get distracted, and machines that can’t communicate with other drivers in exceptional circumstances. The issues don’t get better when you mix them together, you just get more types of issues on the same road. Self driving vehicles which run on their own closed circuits have existed for a half century in production. They work so well that they’re downright boring.
- seanmcdirmid 4y agoHow much of this is unique to the cars being self driving rather than being taxis that have to pick up and drop off people without well designated areas for doing that? Because if it’s the latter, it sounds like these vehicles don’t have problems different from manned Ubers or taxis. But then again, at least in the latter cases the drivers can respond better to context.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- syntheweave 4y agoNot long after viewing the story, I walked down to 9th and Irving and saw that the N Judah was stuck. By a regular old delivery truck. Better statistical data on these incidents is called for.
- panzagl 4y agoWhile his companions softly keened a dirge to Horvy and Phipps and quietly mopped up their blood, he frowned and shook his head. "They oughtn't to let old ladies carry magnums," he murmured. Witherspoon-Hobbs nodded agreement across the front-seat corpse. "They oughtn't to let 'em carry anything. God, how I hate Feet," he muttered, looking down at his shrunken legs. "Wheels forever!" he softly cheered.
- moomoo11 4y agoAs a victim of these “driverless cars” when they decide fuck it I’m done in a one way street at late night.. Literally spent close to half an hour stuck like this once in SOMA behind one of these.
- ntr-- 4y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20230411013742/https://www.wired.com/story/dashcam-footage-shows-driverless-cars-cruise-waymo-clogging-san-francisco/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230411013742/https://www.wired...
- fnordpiglet 4y agoThe bit in the article about being unable to communicate with the car made me think of the LLM wave. A screen on the front and back of the car could provide feedback about what it’s currently trying to do in a situation like this rather than just blinking hazard lights. Using voice recognition to feedback it can interact with people yelling at it, giving at least a qualitative feedback loop to other users on the road. The dispiriting nature of encountering a blocking car and not knowing what it’s planning to do or responding to honks etc is something that can now be fixed.
- jondwillis 4y ago>That left the Muni driver in a bind. “I can’t move the bus,” the driver said to one of two riders on board. “The car is automatic driving.” my problem with busses is that they are huge and, in my experience, mostly empty. they create traffic and their weight damages roads. as far as public transportation goes, busses are as braindead as it gets.