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Study reveals robotaxis causing surprisingly little disruption on streets
- tiahura 4y agoThis was my take when reading the other article. 12 incidents in 6 months seemed low to me.
- fasthands9 4y agoSeems impossible to tell without comparable data on humans. I'd assume 99%+ of all miles are still by humans? Unless you have that base rate who knows.
- sagarm 4y agoIn 2022, human drivers in San Francisco killed 20 pedestrians and another ~25 people in vehicles (probably motorcycles and scooters). I think one cyclist. If the human to software driven mile ratio is greater than 50, then the expected number of fatalities for software driven miles would be <1 right now. So the data is insufficient.
- danesparza 4y agoWhat other article?
- just_steve_h 4y agoSF Muni has reported on at least a dozen instances where a transit vehicle has been blocked from proceeding by a driverless vehicle. That’s only “surprisingly little” if one had expected widespread chaos.
- Scalene2 4y agoHow many instances where a transit vehicle was blocked from proceeding by a driverful vehicles?
- renewiltord 4y agoThis is SF, so everyone knows this happens every day hahaha.
- Zigurd 4y agoCompared to double-parked vehicles?
- jeffrallen 4y agoDouble parked vehicles do not drive through police tape and snare themselves in downed electric wires.
- linksnapzz 4y agoNot only that, the expectation for safety in automated devices is much higher. The benchmark shouldn't be "as safe as cars driven by Californians"; it should be "as safe as elevators in California, per mile."
- Dylan16807 4y agoYou can wait for that benchmark if you want. I want to let one take over most of my driving as soon as it's median-driver safe.
- linksnapzz 4y agoThe median driver is a risk to his own life as much as the life of other motorists. The average robotaxi is not only an imperfect driver, but also has no concept of its own mortality, which is not the case for almost all the worst human drivers. The benchmark for "safer" is a lot higher than you think.
- lostdog 4y agoHuman-driven vehicles do keep trying to drive down the Muni tunnel for some reason: https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Motorist-in-Muni-tunnel-was-drunk-SF-police-say-2631083.php https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Motorist-in-Muni-tunnel... https://sfist.com/2019/08/19/once-again-a-foolish-driver-drove-through-the-muni-tunnel-at-duboce-park/ https://sfist.com/2019/08/19/once-again-a-foolish-driver-dro... https://www.ktvu.com/news/cars-drive-in-munis-sunset-tunnel-4-times-in-the-past-month https://www.ktvu.com/news/cars-drive-in-munis-sunset-tunnel-... https://sf.streetsblog.org/2015/01/05/how-can-muni-stop-car-drivers-from-jamming-its-tunnels/ https://sf.streetsblog.org/2015/01/05/how-can-muni-stop-car-...
- milesskorpen 4y agoI think you need to compare it to overall number of incidents. I personally have seen many more blocks from double parked Amazon delivery trucks than driverless vehicles.
- smohare 4y ago[dead]
- v0idzer0 4y ago12 instances in 6 months is 2 per month. Reminder that over 100 humans in the US crash and die in their car PER DAY
- HWR_14 4y agoThis analysis fails pretty dramatically on the size (46 square miles of San Fransisco vs. ~3.5 million square miles of the US) population (810k of San Fran vs. ~330 million of the US) autonomous cars percentage (not doing that lookup) and scale of incident (blocking public transit vs. lethal crash).
- v0idzer0 4y agoAgreed but the point is humans are terrible drivers and we need to solve that. We basically accepted a covid level death toll on the roads each year. It will be tough to do when seemingly every major media company has set the bar for robotaxis at “perfect from day 1” when humans themselves are absolutely atrocious at driving
- HWR_14 4y ago> We basically accepted a covid level death toll on the roads each year. That's not even close to true. COVID killed at least an order of magnitude more people than road deaths (and that's not having an end date for COVID, just averaging everything over the past 3 years). Humans seem fine at driving For every 100,000,000 miles traversed, about one person dies. The latest Tesla FSD total distance numbers I saw were about 35,000,000 miles in total (but that number is 10 months old). Humans are involved in accidents once every 19,000,000 miles. In December 2021, FSD was involved in accidents once every 4,400,000 miles
- jeffrallen 4y agoIt only takes watching the widespread chaos of Ubers murderous testing program and Cruise's brilliant performance during the last wind storm to come to expect widespread chaos from the chaos monkey techbros who decide what algorithms risk our lives on the public streets. (I am anti-robocar because I am a professional software developer. I know what the sausage is made of.)
- noogle 4y agoWe will have no choice. Cities need to become denser to accommodate the growing population and reduce footprint. Efficient public transportation (trams/subway) are no longer regulatory or financially feasible enough to build (how is the second avenue line in Manhattan going?). Robotaxis and ad-hoc buses are a potential solution. Autonomous cars are a localized regulation, so can be adopted gradually. The cities that will innovate will reap the benefits and those that will still dedicate their human resources to driving will lag.
- thethethethe 4y ago> Efficient public transportation (trams/subway) are no longer regulatory or financially feasible enough to build (how is the second avenue line in Manhattan going?). Uh are you sure about that? I don't think self driving cars are that more efficient than just regular human drivers. Giving up and accepting mediocrity (but fully automated!) doesn't seem like a very compelling argument
- thethethethe 4y ago> (I am anti-robocar because I am a professional software developer. I know what the sausage is made of.) To be fair, I am a SWE and I have very little idea how these things work but I do know how driving and humans work and the results are not pretty
- v0idzer0 4y agoHuge props to Forbes for resisting the allure of the “machines will kill us all” clickbait easy money and reporting some facts
- smohare 4y ago[dead]
- xnx 4y agoReminder that forbes.com is mainly a blogging/self-publishing tool like Medium. The author, Brad Templeton, is not employed or paid by Forbes. Edit: forbes.com/sites/ is not a self-service as I thought. Though not full employees, it looks like there is some editorial vetting of Forbes "Contributors".
- HWR_14 4y agoIs that true? Do you have more details about it?
- xnx 4y agoIt's a little more opaque and less open than I thought. Not as self-service as I thought. Here's one description from https://joshsteimle.com/writing/become-forbes-writer.html https://joshsteimle.com/writing/become-forbes-writer.html : "Contributors at Forbes are unpaid writers, domain experts with day jobs, as opposed to staff writers who are full time employees of Forbes"
- kragen 4y agoHmm, if they're not paying him, why does he just put links to these articles on his own blog (ideas.4brad.com), instead of copying the whole article? Also https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-blogging-platforms/ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-bloggi... doesn't list Forbes itself (just WordPress, Wix, Weebly, Drupal, Squarespace, CMS Hub, and Medium), and https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-become-a-contributing-blogger-on-Forbes https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-become-a-contributing-blogger... says: > The easiest way is to know what you're talking about, write often and follow the best practices of news craft (i.e., pick up the phone and call people, be clear and don't make shit up). Our channel editors and staff writers are always on the watch for people they trust, would read and would want their posts adjacent to. It is an evolving vetting process. I've turned people down who are mostly issue advocates or run non-profits. This kind of mouthpiece stuff is what made HuffPo unreadable. We've parted ways with contributors for writing shoddy, libelous posts. We've taken people down for flogging their own newsletter, investment advisory business, PR agency, whatever. We have economists, financial advisors, lawyers, environmentalists, lockpickers, liberals, libertarians, China watchers, NY tech scene watchers, people covering only celebrity tweets. We like freelance journalists, who only have themselves to flog. I would personally rather sign someone up who wrote short every day than someone who wrote 2,000 word posts three times a month. (Bruce Upbin) So I don't think it's accurate to describe Forbes as a self-publishing tool. https://bloggingtips.com/how-to-write-for-forbes/ https://bloggingtips.com/how-to-write-for-forbes/ says Forbes pays their contributing bloggers US$250 a month.
- Animats 4y agoSF Muni lists their delay incidents here.[1] In the last 24 hours: - "K Ingleside blocked near Ocean and Capitol by a non-Muni collision." - "N Judah blocked at 8th and Irving by an automobile on the track way." - "Non-Muni collision at 16th and Mission. Expect delays and reroutes for the 14/14R, 22, 33, 49, and 55." Those are just human automobile-related delays in the last day. Lots of others - police activity, fire hoses, Muni vehicle problems, signal system failures. [1] https://www.sfmta.com/tweets/sfmta_muni https://www.sfmta.com/tweets/sfmta_muni
- qup 4y agoIs this few or many?
- mjevans 4y agoAgreed, this doesn't give a relative magnitude nor an accurate comparison to comparable services operated by humans nor against vehicles operated by (potentially impaired) humans.
- TomK32 4y agoFor comparison: Vienna has a large tram system and their trams are block by other vehicles four to five times a day on average. This number is going down because of changes to street design so car drivers are less likely to park their car wrong. https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000145150263/anzahl-der-falschparker-die-wiens-strassenbahnen-blockierten-ging-zurueck https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000145150263/anzahl-der-fa...
- xnx 4y agoI encourage anyone interested in the topic of self-driving cars (this author calls them "robocars") to read more articles from this author. He provides a very reasoned analysis of most every self-driving car topic: Tesla sensors, safety, parking issues, business models, etc.
- brenns10 4y ago> I founded ClariNet, the world's first internet based business, am Chairman Emeritus of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a fellow of the Foresight Institute. My current passion is self-driving vehicles and robots. I worked on Google's car team in its early years and am an advisor and/or investor for car OEMs and many of the top startups in robocars, sensors, delivery robots and even some flying cars. Plus AR/VR and software. I am founding faculty and computing chair for Singularity University, and I write, consult and speak on robocar technology around the globe. (Emphasis added) This doesn't sound like the bio of a person who gives a fair shake at AVs. This sounds like a person who is quite literally invested in the success of AVs and is using the Forbes platform to lend legitimacy to his opinions. To be fair, it also sounds like the bio of a person who's quite knowledgeable about AVs. But I'd rather get my commentary about AVs from somebody who doesn't have a financial interest in their success.
- YeBanKo 4y agoI’d rather read someone who has a stake at the subject, which is clearly disclosed, than try to find a totally unbiased objective observer.
- ghaff 4y agoPeople don't want experts, who probably have at least some stake in a topic, writing about it. And they don't want some theoretically "objective" journalist or other outside observer writing about it. I'm not sure who that leaves. (Obviously some journalists and other writers are pretty knowledgable about the topics they cover but they're still often filtering and interpreting what experts have told them.)
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- jameshart 4y agoIs "robotaxis" the word we're going with here? Because that sounds more like it ought to be the name for a subfield of robotics relating to optimizing the physical arrangement or orientation of robots...
- slowwriter 4y agoI was confused about "robot-axis" for a solid two minutes before I realized the article is about "robo-taxis".
- z500 4y agoMy first thought was plants slowly moving towards robots.
- kragen 4y agoBrad's been calling them both "robocars" and "robotaxis" since 02009: https://ideas.4brad.com/robocars-bringing-you-flying-cars https://ideas.4brad.com/robocars-bringing-you-flying-cars
- xnx 4y agoI wish we could adopt "autos" as the term. You would think that something called an automobile would be able to drive itself.
- jameshart 4y agoYou can even buy an automatic automobile, and it still needs someone to drive it. We should sue for false advertising.
- YeGoblynQueenne 4y agoI though so too (what the title says) when I read the Wired article referenced, but I realise now, reading the article above, that I have no idea how many "robotaxis" [1] are in San Francisco. The interesting statistic -that the Wired article didn't mention either, as far as I can tell- is how many such disruptive incidents are caused by number of robocars circulating, or by number of miles driven by them, or some other relevant ratio; and compared to ordinary cars, of course. It's the same way we consider accidents caused by robocars. Not in terms of absolute numbers, but in terms of relative ones. ________________ [1] jameshart I'm looking at you :P
- larkinrichards 4y agoInsufficient sample size to support this article. Cruise can only operate in a small region between 10pm and 5:30 am when bus service is limited and there will be few interactions to report. Waymo rides are still significantly limited. No clear data on service rates or range. All other programs have a safety driver in the car who is able to quickly react and prevent reports of an incident.
- spookie 4y agoOh, that timeframe really puts things into perspective. No wonder it's not a problem.
- grandmczeb 4y ago> Cruise can only operate in a small region between 10pm and 5:30 am when bus service is limited and there will be few interactions to report. This is wrong. One of the incidents referenced in the article happened during the day (driverless cruise rear ending a bus.)
- kyleyeats 4y agoHas anyone complaining about the robot cars ever seen a sideshow? Humans regularly shut down bridges here.
- runlaszlorun 4y agoI’d be more on board with things personally if the autonomous cars had their own sideshows. It’d soften the image up. And the kids would love it…
- joshu 4y agoI have been in the self-drifting supra. It was a good deal smoother than a human would be…
- runlaszlorun 4y agoNice. I hadn’t heard of that but will def search it out online. I’ll bet the physics and control systems are pretty interesting on that one.
- runlaszlorun 4y agoJust noticed your username. Is that a zen reference by chance?
- joshu 4y agoJust a pleasant coincidence
- brenns10 4y agoI believe that you'll find the plenty of people complaining about both of them. Speaking as one of those people. The sideshows have woken me up at night on a couple occasions.
- dsfyu404ed 4y agoThese are two different kinds of bad behavior. Robots are not failing in a way that emulates some teenager in his 90s shitbox doing donuts in the street. They are failing in a way that emulates some middle aged middle manager in her $50k SUV who stops at a cloverleaf because the traffic is intimidating. The latter case is far more frustrating to most people because the person or robot is inconveniencing everyone not willfully, but out of their own inability to do something the rest of the driving public can do fine whereas the teenager doing donuts can be more easily empathized with by most people in a Falling Down sort of way. And unlike a semi truck that simply can't move fast enough to not inconvenience others or an elderly person taking a long time to go up some stairs the robo-car and incompetent driver don't have what most people consider a good excuse for their behavior.
- BurningFrog 4y agoReminder that purpose built robotaxis will be smaller and nimbler than the converted 5-seaters in use now.
- clnq 4y agoI hope so, but for some reason, I doubt that small cars will catch on soon, whether driverless or regular. They make a lot of sense economically and ecologically. Despite that, companies have been building things like Mircolino and Isetta for a while and no one seems to be buying.
- russell_h 4y agoThe post you’re replying to is talking specifically about driverless (probably electric) taxis, which will likely be a pretty different market and form factor than anything which exists today.
- clnq 4y agoBig cars are seen as a status symbol even if one is being driven in them. Even modern electric cars are big. I’m not sure going driverless will change much.
- mrpopo 4y agoAnd why would that be?
- BurningFrog 4y agoThere is no need for a driver seat or a steering wheel, to start with. If you take out the front row seats and the trunk, that's already a much smaller vehicle.
- andreygrehov 4y agoThere was recently exactly the opposite news... duh. I wish HN filtered out all the big media websites (Forbes, NYTimes, etc.)
- throwaway2037 4y agoDuring the FTX fallout, I saw many articles share here -- some from major and others from mid-sized media websites. Across the board, they were mostly worse that any reporting from Financial Times (ft.com) and their blog FT AlphaVille (ftalphaville.ft.com). FTA "guerilla analysis" is so good that it breaks major scandals 2-5 times per year. (See Wirecard in Germany.) So, no, not all big media websites. Plus, The Guardian (UK) does some excellent reporting in the United States on touchy subjects that domestic media does want to touch. (NZZ Neue Zürcher Zeitung is legendary in German language media for the same type of coverage in Germany and Austria.)
- pimlottc 4y agoMy brain read that as “robot axis” at first
- moomoo11 4y agoWas kinda hoping for fast deliveries with drones by now instead we get self driving cars. Wish we could go for a future that’s car free in cities and services by drone delivery. Walkable and safe streets. Not complaining, but I just don’t really care for self driving cars personally. Seems like a waste of money when we don’t even have good streets and transit.
- brenns10 4y agoI'm definitely on the side of walkable and safe streets, but I guess I'm interested why you think drones would be a better option than delivery vehicles, or that they would deliver on the promise of a car free future? Drones are loud, and it can't be avoided (they need to move air to provide lift, and doing so creates vibration - I.e noise). Cars are definitely loud but not on the scale of a swarm of drones. Drones don't have the cargo capacity of, e.g. a moderately sized van. We don't have the traffic management policies for low air traffic, and we do have those policies already for street traffic. Most importantly, deliveries don't account for the majority of traffic: in fact, most commercial deliveries happen at off hours for traffic. If you eliminated deliveries in cities, you may get rid of some annoying double parked Amazon vans, but you wouldn't meaningfully reduce traffic. The majority of traffic is people in personal automobiles (usually one or two per several ton SUV). We get walkable and safe streets by changing our building codes and parking requirements to make walkable neighborhoods legal to build. And by building useful public transit, at a local and regional level. And by incentivizing personal mobility options like (e-)bikes and scooters, while disinventivizing cars. But delivery vehicles, along with work trucks and vans: I have no problem with them staying exactly as is. If we get rid of the vast majority of personal vehicle traffic, then commercial delivery vans will be no big deal, and small deliveries will happen via ebikes and cargo ebikes. No need for drones!
- moomoo11 4y agoDrones move in 3d space. Maybe a lot more investment would have yielded some cool ways to navigate in 3d space around cities. I know there are regulations around where and how drones can be used but in a city like SF it’s probably fine. Besides when have regulations stopped startups from defining something new and better? Cars and trucks just take up way too much space. They also pollute. I like scooters but they don’t have a lot of range:time advantage. At least with drones you could deploy relay style movement so the drones could move items between multiple drones, of various types and capabilities, to get the item to the final destination. Or work in tandem with the scooter people.
- Lapsa 4y agosurprisingly somebody paid for the study
- omneity 4y agoJust follow the money.
- uptown 4y agoThe two self driving taxis stuck in the middle of 2nd and Townsend after the end of last night’s Giants game disagree.
- brenns10 4y agoSo this is basically some Forbes contributor's reaction piece to the recent Wired article full of anecdotes of Muni disruptions: https://www.wired.com/story/dashcam-footage-shows-driverless-cars-cruise-waymo-clogging-san-francisco/ https://www.wired.com/story/dashcam-footage-shows-driverless... And I'm happy to entertain the calls of "where's the data" in response to anecdotes. But the thing is, this article just takes the same information reported by Wired and says "it's really not that bad [presumably compared to human drivers], and even if it is that bad, I don't care because I hope AVs will be better than humans someday(TM)". What really matters here is how disruptive the AVs are in terms of minutes of public transit delay per vehicle mile traveled (VMT), compared to human driven vehicles. Of course human drivers cause the majority of incidents on SF roads: they're the vast majority of VMTs, and they are the ones permitted to drive during the daytime that makes up the bulk of Muni service. Until there's data on real SF streets saying that AVs are causing less delays per VMT, then IMO, the criticism can't be ignored. Especially since we've been lead on by AV companies insisting that autonomous technology would be safer (and presumably less disruptive) than humans. We need to take their assertions with a grain of salt, given that they're trying to extract profits on our streets. And plus, there's a whole area of the original wired article that is much harder to contradict. Dealing with the disruptions caused by AVs is so much more demoralizing than dealing with a human. A human realizes they've made a mistake, moves their car to the side, and awkwardly waves people by. An AV throws on its hazards and waits in the middle of an intersection until its "handlers" can be bothered to intervene. It's a faceless and inhumane experience that will never be quicker than a human driver making an innocent mistake. No amount of data can change that.
- YeBanKo 4y ago> according to city transportation authorities, who collected the data from social media reports, 911 calls, and other sources, because companies aren’t required to report all the breakdowns.” Seems like making companies report all break downs will allow to reason about progress they are making better.
- asfarley 4y agoI think there’s likely to be phase-change behavior when robotic vehicles represent the majority.