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San Francisco fire chief fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks
- tpl 3y agoWhy are the people operating the trucks not getting ticketed for all this then? These various programs should be accruing points on their license just like a real driver. Cruise would probably be off the road if they did this though.
- yardie 3y agoIt appears these robotaxis need an emergency button similar to the ones on industrial robots. But instead of completely stopping, a remote operator immediately takes over and bugs out. Meanwhile, the AI can take a backseat and observe how to respond in a situation like this. Because obviously they don't have enough training when dealing with emergency situations.
- rcme 3y agoThe article mentions that employees can take remote control over the cars but sometimes that’s not enough to fix the issue.
- wiihack 3y agoI think in case of an emergency the doors of the car should get unlocked and someone nearby should overtake
- delecti 3y agoThat's a good way to make carjacking easy.
- xzel 3y agoKia and Hyundai have already made that trivial the past few years. At least with the tender to their provider and GPS the robot taxis should be recoverable and disableable.
- m00x 3y ago- Get carjacked - Car enabled carjacking mode - Locks all doors, locks manual controls, drives directly to the first SFPD station.
- dylan604 3y agoMaybe they should institute the emergency foam filling system to protect the occupants as well
- 542354234235 3y agoExcellent idea. You inspire joy joy feelings in those around you.
- wholinator2 3y agomaybe instead of adding even more complexity to solve the issues our solutions are creating, we could wait until we have solutions that don't create huge issues. What happens if the thing locks all the doors and manual controls and then drives off a bridge? Or if it's caught fire. Personally I'm barely okay with taking planes, if there was a car that could, at any moment, turn into a prison cell I'm not going near one of those things as long as I live. Even if they say they've disabled the "feature". Do we really trust these corporations with our lives so much that we're willing to get perma-locked into their test vehicles?
- saalweachter 3y agoI feel like you could have some sort of standard handle on the front of a robotaxi to lead it around.
- duncan-donuts 3y agoIdk I think I agree with the chief here that they're not ready for primetime if we're suggesting we put a halter and lead rope on an autonomous vehicle.
- bombcar 3y agothe elites don't want you to know but the robotaxis in san francisco are free you can take them home i have 458 robotaxis
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dylan604 3y agoMaybe a game controller gets unlocked from the back of the front seat so the passenger can take over GTA style
- pbhjpbhj 3y agoThe closest I've come to this scenario is playing games (eg CSGO) where you can take over a bot. So often, I take over a bot (without spectating their play first) and immediately die because I have no context for their situation and they're about to be shot at; in many of those situations I feel there bot would have done better than I did. This makes me feel a human operator probably would be no good at taking control ... however a computer that has access to more data (eg data from other vehicles), or that has more control (of other vehicles, of traffic lights, of pedestrian crossings, etc.) or more capabilities, might be far more successful than a person?!
- junon 3y agoEhhh I think you give too much credit to CSGO bots.
- soco 3y agoI don't see how the situation is similar. The robotaxi is parked in front of you, you connect to it and move it away. The entire context is right there.
- wholinator2 3y agowell honestly, if we're saying that the person being inconvenienced is the one who gets to take control, there's probably gonna be a lot of angry people driving these cars off of bridges or into ditches or something. Giving an incredibly frustrated person control of a separate car, though better for context, is probably worse for desired outcome.
- soco 3y agoHow about the robotaxi company driving in respect to regulations and other's property, then we wouldn't have this discussion. Oh, it's technically not possible? Well, then don't drive them.
- nradov 3y agoThat is not an adequate solution. During major public safety incidents, cellular data networks frequently go down or at least suffer from serious lag.
- tomohawk 3y agoA family member was a NY fire fighter many years ago. The Soviets had a lot of people at the UN, and they had diplomatic plates. They would park wherever they wanted, often blocking things. There was nothing the police could do. The fire chief decided to have fire drills. Whenever a cop saw a car with diplomatic plates parked in front of a hydrant, they would call the fire department, who would come out and perform a drill. Upon seeing the vehicle blocking the hydrant, they would practice breaching through the vehicle to attain access to the hydrant. The vehicle would not survive in a drivable state. The Soviets complained, but stopped blocking fire accesses. EDIT: the firechief could solve this by putting truck or police cruiser style bullbars on their vehicles and "carefully nudging" the miscreant vehicles out the the way.
- bell-cot 3y agoHeheheheh. Bare-knuckled, but I like that approach. Beyond instructing emergency responders "if it doesn't stay away, just smash its windows" (mentioned in the article, at n=1 scale)...I wonder if robotaxis have some convenient central depot, which might find its driveways block by emergency street repairs, or some such.
- kindatrue 3y agoDamn that's rough. I saw a car parked in front a fire hydrant at a fire in Queens once. FDNY simply smashed the windows to open the doors, and then ran a hose through it.
- shagie 3y agoAs an aside, the "why not over, under, or around?" question that gets asked. https://www.firehouse.com/operations-training/hoselines-water-appliances/article/12373752/water-supply-for-fireground-operations-hydrants-ldh-water-main-firefighter-training https://www.firehouse.com/operations-training/hoselines-wate... That has some "how much pressure can be loss to friction and still provide the necessary water rate at the other end." Bends in the hose will increase the amount of friction and thus reduce the flow rate.
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- mikewarot 3y agoAI training data doesn't include public safety scenarios is malpractice at minimum. This is nuts. There is sufficient evidence that these are not ready for prime time.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pixel3234 3y agoMost countries have penalty points on driving license. If some driver is violating traffic rules too often, they should lose driving license! Self driving cars should not have an exception!
- dylan604 3y agoare you suggesting this on a per car basis, or all cars working off of the same point system? accruing enough points to unlock "suspended license" achievement would seem appropriate to be applied to the entire fleet since it's the same "AI".
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoDo points get deducted or erased when the AI upgrades version? If the AI uses semver, how many points off for a major revision release?
- pixel3234 3y agoPer driving license. It already works like that with truck driver and other professional drivers. They may have 5x more accidents than normal person, but they drive 20x more miles.
- dylan604 3y agoTruck drivers are individual people making discrete decisions. A robocar company all uses the same training data to make the same results. Put 10 different human drivers in the same situation, you'd expect a variance of decisions being made. Put 10 robocars in the same situation, you'd expect 1 decision being made. Is this not how they are being tested? Am I crazy to assume this?
- s1gsegv 3y agoAbsolutely, however holding the entire fleet responsible for the number of faults that would disqualify a single driver also seems wrong. If a taxi driver drives 8 hours a day, then 10 robotaxis will drive 80 hours in that same day and statistically be subject to perform 10x the number of faults, if we're holding them to the same standard. Now, if 12 points loses your license, you have 10 cars, and rack up 120 points across the fleet, it seems obvious that on the whole the fleet is performing worse than a fleet of human drivers we would otherwise ban. Not an easy problem, to be sure. On one hand, companies can't be allowed free reign to clog up the roads and cause havoc without consequence. On the other, if we NIMBY the development too much, we will be stuck behind countries that don't. In my opinion, we're near the right balance but probably need to take some short term action to make it clear to companies that a remedy for the current behavior around emergency vehicles needs to be priority 0.
- kindatrue 3y agoThis is going to get even more lolsob when Cruise deploys its self-driving car without a steering wheel[1]. [1] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/02/gm-seeks-us-approval-to-put-driverless-cruise-origin-into-commercial-service/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/02/gm-seeks-us-approval-to...
- rurp 3y agoThe specific examples listed out in the article are egregious, causing real harm. The fire chief is right to be angry, if anything her response is too measured. From the article: - Running through yellow emergency tape and ignoring warning signs to enter a street strewn with storm-damaged electrical wires, then driving past emergency vehicles with some of those wires snarled around rooftop lidar sensors. - Twice blocking firehouse driveways, requiring another firehouse to dispatch an ambulance to a medical emergency. - Sitting motionless on a one-way street and forcing a firetruck to back up and take another route to a blazing building. - Pulling up behind a firetruck that was flashing its emergency lights and parking there, interfering with firefighters unloading ladders. - Entering an active fire scene, then parking with one of its tires on top of a fire hose.
- bunga-bunga 3y agoThat list is almost funny, as if they’re already trying to kill us.
- ASalazarMX 3y agoIt would be funnier without the life endangerment, but it is funny regardless. Practical AI can be so smart and so clueless at the same time, it's like watching a kid grow up. I don't know if massive fines are the way to go, because they could cripple that technology, but firefighters should have free reign to shove those vehicles around when they misbehave, or some way to signal them to get the hell out of the way.
- c00lio 3y agoIf this were a human driver, at least half of those would loose you your driver's license. Why are there no such consequences for the companies?
- ryan93 3y agoYou won’t even lose your license for killing people or multiple DUIs
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- mrobins 3y agoBare minimum these cars should have the equivalent of a fire service key like elevators.
- junon 3y agoYou can't steal an elevator, but you can steal a car. This system would almost definitely be abused.
- cirrus3 3y agoThat isn't a solution. Any time spent dealing with the car is a failure. > The fire chief said each robotaxi company offers training to help deal with “bricked” vehicles. > “We have 160,000 calls a year. We don’t have the time to personally take care of a car that’s in the way when we’re on the way to an emergency,” she said.
- tennisflyi 3y ago[flagged]
- dopylitty 3y agoIt’s absolutely insane that automated driving is allowed on public streets. It should be completely banned until such time as there exists a comprehensive testing regime for validating that the automated system functions in all the scenarios it might be expected to face including emergency vehicles, construction, pedestrians, bad weather, and damaged sensors.
- Sharlin 3y agoTo be fair, human drivers are not validated either to function correctly in those scenarios. Though it would certainly be nice if they were.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoA human operator can be yelled at and made to leave. They don't become an unresponsive lump of metal blocking the road when stymied by emergency vehicle activity.
- crote 3y agoIf a human did this, they would probably be arrested and lose their driver's license. Stuff like this is something you just can't do. But self-driving cars get away with it because we haven't figured out how to hold them responsible yet.
- phpisthebest 3y ago>>self-driving cars get away with it because we haven't figured out how to hold them responsible yet. We have a liability model in place. Fine the company
- masswerk 3y agoThis may not work out, as the fines may be lower than the costs of development to address the underlying issues, while it's at the same time all about basic safety of the community. (The fines would have to be higher than the cost of "oops, we have to employ human safety drivers and put them into every car.")
- HankB99 3y agoI'm surprised no one has mentioned the US legal system as part of a solution. If a robo-taxi causes material harm, sue the operator for some multiple of the cost of the harm. I suppose the drawback to this strategy is that real harm has to happen first and that could easily involve loss of life or limb, but perhaps the threat of that would be enough to motivate the robo-taxi providers to fix the problem.
- Sharlin 3y agoYes, but it seems here that the regulators are bending over backwards to dole out permits for these vehicles without bothering to think about the externalities. Still, one would think that 1) the operators could be charged with obstruction of emergency services and/or 2) they could be sued for damages in the civil court.
- anigbrowl 3y agoIf the US legal system is so effective why are there so many personal injury cases? Growing up abroad, US litigousness was a joke when I was in elementary school (>40 years ago). Other developed countries seem to have significantly lower problems with avoidable mortality; maybe the American approach is just not that great.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> If a robo-taxi causes material harm, sue the operator for some multiple of the cost of the harm. There haven’t been many cases of actual harm. This article pretty much lists out situations which could cause harm but didn’t, due to factors out of the operator’s or fire department’s control.
- jeffbee 3y agoThese articles always conflate all industry participants but when you dig into it, it's always Cruise that is causing the problem. SFMTA's complaint to the state about Waymo cites 13 incidents in Appendix B involving Cruise cars. The very best thing Waymo could do is lobby the state government to establish strict rules so their own reputation doesn't get diluted by Cruise. There are a quarter million vehicle crashes in the DataSF Fire Department Calls For Service. Self-driving cars will prevent these. It's the systematically better way to go.
- kakuri 3y agoI have seen several Waymo cars stopped for no good reason or blocking the street while very slowly trying to figure out what to do.
- foobarbazetc 3y agoYup. Waymo >>>>>>>>>> Cruise. It’s not even close. Still wouldn’t get into a Waymo for another 3-5 years, but the quality gap is huge.
- hamolton 3y agoAfter riding in both Cruise and Waymo cars in SF, I think that Waymo cars are so much more road-ready. While my Waymo rides all seemed pretty smooth albeit with a timid driver, my cruise rides featured extremely skittish behavior around other cars, missing several turns to avoid being around others, and stopping in odd places, especially for dropoff and pickup.
- rurp 3y ago> There are a quarter million vehicle crashes in the DataSF Fire Department Calls For Service. Self-driving cars will prevent these. That's a bold claim. Do you have evidence to support it? I'm not talking about results from controlled or ideal driving conditions, I mean evidence showing that self driving will definitely be better at the conditions those quarter million accidents occur in. Perhaps there's some research I'm unaware of but as far as I know the best we can say is that self driving might end up being safer for general usecase driving, but that there are wide disagreements about how likely that chance is.
- nordsieck 3y agoI do think that, as long as someone hasn't yet invented the sufficiently smart self driving car, that robo-taxis will be required to have some sort of override mode, either cell or satellite based; something where a remote human operator can take over, using the sensor data to drive the car until it can get back to situations where it can actually handle. I understand that lag can be an issue, but if speeds are limited to 5-10 mph, that should be less of a problem.
- jokoon 3y agoIt's weird, I'm a developer, and I really want AI to work, but it just doesn't, so I'm just generally against AI in general. And it seems it's far, far from working properly. It's difficult to see domains where AI can really improve productivity without having major drawbacks. I'm not against research on AI, but as long as science cannot define what intelligence really is, I guess AI will not make major advances.
- swayvil 3y agoIt's almost as if navigating reality requires something better than logic and maps. Like humans have magic eyeballs or something.
- jb12 3y agoThis past weekend in SF, I saw a driver slow and stop to reverse parallel park on Bush Street at Fillmore. An automated Cruise car stopped right behind him, blocking the driver from reversing into the parking spot. The guy got out to yell at the driver to back up, but then saw that it was driverless. He drove off, and someone else got the spot.
- jayrot 3y agoIt's not a bug it's a feature?
- masklinn 3y agoI fear if that happened to me the next stop would be to a hardware store for a sledgehammer.
- jeffbee 3y agoDid they signal? This has happened to me many times with humans driving right up on my bumper even while I signal and am in reverse gear.
- CoffeeOnWrite 3y agoWhat’s your angle here? In practice humans frequently neglect to signal in instances where it is legally required (I don’t know if it is strictly legally required in California when parallel parking, but it’s certainly good common sense). Human drivers know that people don’t signal and account for that. In this particular scenario the reverse lights would be a crystal clear indication of the driver’s intent, even if they failed to signal. I don’t want to assume the intent of your comment, I don’t know what you’re getting at..
- jeffbee 3y agoJust wondering because it's not always apparent that a car is slowing to park parallel, especially if they don't signal. The only way I know to make it really clear is to stop alongside the open spot, signal, move ahead slowly and put it in reverse, but half the time humans still don't get the message.
- crmd 3y ago>Under the agency’s own rules, issues such as traffic flow and interference with emergency workers can’t be used to deny expansion permits. The resolutions list four “goals” to be considered: inclusion of people with disabilities improved transportation options for the disadvantaged reduction of greenhouse gases; and passenger safety
- maerF0x0 3y agoSeems to me a simple regulation like a fire department access in buildings could solve this. eg1: What about a direct line to a 24/7 operations center with cruise? eg2: Or how about a proximal access console controller that allows them to take control of the the vehicle (with occupants consent if occupied) . This neednt be a total ban on AVs
- 7952 3y agoThat seems like a solution in an emergency, but these kind of interactions must happen all the time. And it is part of a wider problem where the baseline data about the world changes and not communicated in a standardised way. It could be a fire truck, road closure for cycling event, tornado ripping through a town, a terrorist attack, a secret service motorcade, oil on the road, anything. And dealing with those situations is much easier with that data. Making that data explicit could help everyone, not just self driving cars. It would be useful if vehicles with sirens/emergency lights/hazard lights could broadcast position and identity in a similar way to ADS-B. Make data open and allow third parties to forward, store and re-broadcast that data. Make the consumer of the data (such as a self driving car) responsible for how it uses that data.
- maerF0x0 3y ago> It could be a fire truck, road closure for cycling event, tornado ripping through a town, a terrorist attack, a secret service motorcade, oil on the road, anything. Some of these are likely just a lack of training data. However, I agree that there needs to be a better self awareness of "Cruise has insufficient training data about this exact situation, now we fall back into a safer discovery mode, where we make reasonable guesses and also ask for the help of an operator"
- srj 3y agoThe time it would take to pull out a phone and call a Cruise support line is already too long.
- maerF0x0 3y ago
- nycdatasci 3y agoThe incidents in the article are inexcusable. But to be fair, I manually reviewed a dozen accident reports on the CA state website and 100% were due to human error in other vehicles or due to issues with an operator of an AI vehicle in manual mode: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/autonomous-vehicles/autonomous-vehicle-collision-reports/ https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/auto...
- vostrocity 3y agoDang, was it common knowledge that Apple is testing its autonomous driving tech on public roads? I had no idea!
- BurningFrog 3y agoHuman driven cars have a "tell the driver what to do" function that SDCs are still missing. This will have to be added somehow.
- anigbrowl 3y agoWelcome to Johnny cab
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoSome simple infrastructure could help with this. A no-fly zone for robo-stuff that travels with fire engines for instance. Require all robo companies to respect these zones. Radio or something.
- mint2 3y agoHow do these companies not have a simulator built to help train cars for simulated non-standard scenarios? Have dogs, kids, fire trucks, caution tape etc and run them with 100k variations. And then do real world staged validation. Actually why are extensive real world mock scenarios not running 24/7? If a car does something bad, do mock scenarios around it. Please tell me they are doing these things because it’s crazy if they aren’t.
- minwcnt5 3y agoThey are. At least Waymo has published details about their closed course testing. Dunno about Cruise.
- mint2 3y agoIn that case, By the way cars don’t know how to approach fire trucks, fire hoses, and caution tape it’s is very apparent whatever they are doing in the closed is a failure or grossly inadequate
- Reubachi 3y agoOf course they are...I'm sure you've seen the dozens of marketing videos of tesla detection cameras/sensors stopping short for a kid chasing a ball into the street. now, like anything else, does test/staging translate to production? Not even remotely. Automomous vehicle manufacturers claim to be in a monitoring/production phase to compare to their internal testing/staging. And over time we'll normalize Autonomous driving and the associated risks. We used to drive all the nails in the world with a hammer precariously aiming at your own hand.