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Grumpy Locals Are Sabotaging Cruise and Waymo Robotaxis with Traffic Cones
- black_13 3y ago[dead]
- talldatethrow 3y agoThese companies always say these taxis are safer on average than the human drivers. Yes, but I don't drink and drive, which accounts for a huge amount of driver deaths (plus others of course). I don't speed at crazy speeds. I don't aggressively try to pass. I don't use my cell phone to text. The average deaths stats for a person who does none of the above are VASTLY different than the theoretical average of deaths per 1M miles.
- skeaker 3y agoI wish this were true, but other drivers that do make those mistakes and can crash into you and kill you at no fault of your own.
- chongli 3y agoThose drivers can also crash into and kill you if you’re a passenger in a self-driving car. The question is: what is my excess death rate if I convert from being a normal, non-impaired driver to a passenger in a self-driving car, assuming all else is equal?
- jpambrun 3y agoThe obvious long term goal for society is not to have any human drivers anymore. We won't get the full benefits until that point.
- chongli 3y agoIf we're going to do that, why not invest in mass transit for cities (and between cities)? Leave the self-driving stuff for trips out into the countryside.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago> The obvious long term goal for society is not to have any human drivers anymore. There's another obvious long-term goal: to eliminate personal vehicle ownership. This is why ride-sharing apps are breaking into the taxi market: because the more people who enjoy not driving their own car, will think twice when contemplating the purchase of a personal vehicle, especially because it's going to become increasingly bothersome to buy and maintain these things. Mark my words: someday it will be prohibitive for the 99% to own a vehicle; eventually it may even be prohibited.
- RandallBrown 3y agoI'd love to see those numbers. I'm not worried about my driving, I'm worried about the other people who are drunk, fast, aggressive, and/or texting.
- jjulius 3y ago>... I... Good for you. You are not everyone, and you are not immune from the consequences of the choices that others make when they are on the road.
- toast0 3y agoWhich is why all the other fine people on the road should be replaced by robots, but not me!
- elromulous 3y agoBut what about the _other_ people on the road who drink and drive.
- larnik 3y agoYou might be right. Or you might be in the majority of people who overestimate their driving skills.
- talldatethrow 3y agoI made zero mention of my driving skill. Assume I have normal driving skill, but don't drink, don't go over 80mph, don't pass aggressively, and don't text and drive. A Tesla is currently safer than people that do that, and they want me to believe that system is safe enough to get into. But it's not as safe as a sane responsible driver.
- jlund-molfese 3y agoMost people think they're a better driver than average [1], and I bet if you asked 100 people with a history of drunk driving, 90 would say it was a one-time thing, deny it, or argue that it wasn't really that dangerous because they were just going around the block. The autonomous car doesn't get drunk. It doesn't get tired. It doesn't get road rage. It isn't in a hurry, and it doesn't need to text its girlfriend while going 80 mph. Whatever its flaws will be, they will be consistent. 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3835346/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3835346/
- micromacrofoot 3y agoyeah the self driving car gets bugs written by some overworked grad named kevin who was hung over at work that day
- ClassyJacket 3y agoYour last sentence reminded me of "That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."
- lowbloodsugar 3y agoI just posted the same quote, but hey I see people are downvoting you, so maybe I'll delete mine. Thanks for taking one for the team. +1
- Anthony-G 3y agoLikewise, I figured the author was using that particular sentence cadence as a subtle reference to the Terminator (as a more advanced artificially intelligent autonomous creation).
- fragmede 3y agoBut sensors get dirty and the ML model that's being used gets updated to a suboptimal but later model. Or reverted to a worse model because the newer one has a bug. I took a Cruise home late last night and it failed to take a right turn that it took successfully when it picked me up. It mistook the space for the bicycle lane to be for the car, because there was no car parked in the other side of the intersection late at night. Riding in them it's definitely like living in the future, but it's clear that the technology still needs time to mature. I'll keep riding them and provide bug reports while they're in beta, but I'm not uninstalling Uber/Lyft any time soon, especially because their service area is limited to the city, nothing in the East Bay or down the Peninsula yet. The cars are small and cramped, but clean. No one is allowed in the front seats so it really only seats two people. Three if they're all small and friendly. I definitely trust it more than a drunk driver at 2 AM if that's the question though. The meat of it is this: city driving is harder because of all the chaos, but it's actually easier to be safe, because no one's really moving all that fast. If you floor it, you're not going to get going all that fast before the next light. On the freeway, a bad model could lead to doing over 100 mph and then making a hard turn, causing the vehicle to flip over and crash.
- mlyle 3y agoJust about everyone believes themselves to be an above average driver with a lower than average risk profile. And besides, it's not like we're just talking about replacing only the safest drivers' miles with AVs. We don't really know how safe Waymo is yet, because there's not enough data. It's pretty safe: it's more patient and cautious than most humans are willing to be and also has perfect vigilance; on the flip-side there's more situations it just doesn't understand. Waymo's goal is to be a more vigilant version of the safest human drivers. They're probably not quite there yet.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> Just about everyone believes themselves to be an above average driver with a lower than average risk profile. If by “average” one means “mean annual liability cost”, this is entirely plausible. Doesn't seem likely that that’s normally distributed.
- genmud 3y agoMe and my wife constantly have this debate... she worked in insurance and insists that self driving cars will be safer than human drivers. One example she brings up is the time a car in an airport hit a parked plane. My response is there is a non zero chance that guy got fired from the airport and picked up developing software for self driving cars. We still disagree on that topic.
- twelve40 3y agoTo make this go from a useless dataset of one remark to something insightful, you'd have to back up your "VASTLY" claim with, say, the number of people who suffer/die in road accidents through no fault of their own.
- minwcnt5 3y agoFWIW, Waymo benchmarks their safety against a model of an always attentive driver, so they claim they're not just safer than an average driver, but safer than a very good driver. They mentioned this in their blog post today.
- creativitree 3y agoGood point
- jagtstronaut 3y agoAlthough I understand it is quite contentious, I disagree with this sentiment. I think we have proven even before motor vehicles that humans are pretty poor at operating a moving vehicle and when it is capable of easily killing another human being it doesnt bode well. I am not advocating for blind trust in corporations, but I certainly do advocate for pushing the boundaries a bit. Either that or invest heavily in public transport but I dont think that is going to happen in most of the US.
- jb12 3y agoIn the past two weeks in San Francisco, I have seen: - Cruise car stopped dead in the middle of Oak street at Divisadero, at night, with no emergency lights on. - Waymo car driven onto the sidewalk to pick up a passenger on Scott street at Haight street - Waymo car stopped, blocking the whole road on Carmelita street because it started a 3 point turn and then decided it didn't have enough room to continue - Cruise car swerving out in front of traffic from the kerb on Divisadero at Ellis street without signaling
- flyinglizard 3y agoAs if things in SF weren't dystopian enough.
- LightBug1 3y agoI think we'll see more of this as AI matures. It's getting more and more difficult to distinguish between human and AI drivers.
- liaukovv 3y agoNext thing you know they'll be cursing at you using speakers
- LightBug1 3y agoI'm looking forward to the first full-on high speed police pursuit of an autonomous Waymo through downtown San Francisco ... (== turing complete).
- Rumudiez 3y agomissed opportunity for "touring complete"
- yowlingcat 3y agoThis sounds like a great premise for a video game not unlike Crazy Taxi, but from the perspective of a highway trooper who needs to chase buggy autonomous cabs.
- stargrazer 3y agoThe article doesn't say, but for those of us who are uninformed, what does the cone do? Is it decoration, or does it 'actively' interfere with the navigation sensors?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- michaelt 3y agoWell, I would guess that it leaves the vehicle stranded until someone comes along to remove the cone. The vision system recognises the cone, gets confused because a cone on the hood is outside of the normal operating parameters, and refers the problem to a teleoperator. Pulling high-G manoeuvres in the hopes of dislodging the cone obviously isn't an option. The teleoperator can't do anything about the cone, so the car becomes stranded.
- xattt 3y agoCan the teleoperator not maneuver the car out of the way? Yes, robocabs are annoying, but how would these forms of protest play out in another, less permissive country?
- drozycki 3y agoThey don’t have a way to remotely drive the vehicle. They complete Mechanical Turk-like tasks, classifying images, approving the vehicle’s plan around an obstacle, etc.
- boshalfoshal 3y agoThat actually depends. You can either have teleoperators do waypoint control, or you can have them directly drive the vehicle remotely. Waypoint controling has its upsides and downsides, and so does direct teleops. The main upside of waypoint control is you have less strict latency requirements and its easier for operators to "drive," the obvious downside is that it requires the onboard planner to be working. Direct teleop allows for more granular control, but has stricter latency requirements and is often annoying to actually drive with.
- mint2 3y agoI’ve been curious what happens if a very red ball is suspended in front of rectangular cardboard about 7 ft up. No person would mistake it for a signal, but what about these “self driving” cars?
- BurningFrog 3y agoI assume the cars have a database of existing traffic lights.
- smnrg 3y ago[dead]
- zardo 3y agoAnd run any new traffic lights put up if they aren't in the database yet?
- twelve40 3y agoso they probably re-map this stuff on a very regular basis, that's why it's kept to limited locations because of cost of this
- vinay427 3y agoI would hope there are special cases for handling construction/lane closure temporary traffic lights, for instance.
- plagiarist 3y agoI once saw a video of a Tesla interpreting a reddish moon as an infinite series of red lights.
- bombcar 3y agoI saw a video of the screen showing this massive array of stop signs and it was ignoring them all. Can’t remember what was causing it.
- cs702 3y agoOops, there's no training data for that.
- xattt 3y agoThere is now!
- readyplayernull 3y agoWell, humans also get confused by cones: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36335581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36335581
- yazaddaruvala 3y agoReminds me of when the first scooters and bikes were deployed across Seattle. "Oh this is the worst! people leave them in the middle of the sidewalk" "They are just gonna get stolen and stripped for parts" "Everyone please, actively break them, throw them into ditches, or into the water." X years later, people in Seattle love them - they are constantly in use. Less traffic on the streets, fewer drunk people driving. The homeless have a few stolen ones but actually use them practically (so good for them). And people have learned to park them half-decently. This will be the same story for AVs. The tech is gonna improve faster than the complaints get filled, and very soon everyone is gonna love paying 80% less for their Ubers.
- clnq 3y agoDogs bark but the caravan moves on, as the (probably) Turkish saying goes.
- dizhn 3y agoYeah it is Turkish. "İt ürür, kervan yürür."
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y agoDoes that rhyme in Turkish? I’m curious now if it has a certain “beat” when it’s spoken that sort of helps it persist as an idea in the language (at least that seems to). Sort of a short form poetry.
- dizhn 3y agoYes it rhymes. Turkish words are always read as they are written so if it's the same letters it'll sound the same. The way we were thought about these in school regarding proverbs and idioms is that they were distilled through time to be their most economical and impactful form. So yes, the good ones rhyme and are either funny or poignant.
- gretch 3y ago
- cyberax 3y agoThe cars in question have 360-degree camera coverage. Use facial recognition and sue these clowns. In a civil court, where they have to pay for their own attorneys. > This aligns with their statement that "all cars are bad" regardless of who is (or isn't) behind the wheel. So take what they say with a grain of salt. I absolutely hate and dislike bike lanes. They are nothing but urban sabotage. Should I be able to put up concrete blocks in bike lanes because I dislike them?
- maltalex 3y ago> I absolutely hate and dislike bike lanes. They are nothing but urban sabotage. You probably have never seen them done properly. Many implementations especially in North America are indeed urban sabotage for everyone involved.
- cyberax 3y agoI have not studied ALL cities in the US, but in Seattle, SF, and Portland new bike lanes in more than 90% of cases carry _less_ traffic than the car lane that they had replaced. For the rest 10% there isn't enough data. They quite literally sabotage traffic. Heck, even Berlin that is supposed to be "transit heaven" is waking up: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/26/cyclists-berlin-right-wing-mayor-bans-new-cycle-paths/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/26/cyclists-b...
- pengaru 3y ago> The cars in question have 360-degree camera coverage. Use facial recognition and sue these clowns. In a civil court, where they have to pay for their own attorneys. Clowns generally obscure their faces genius
- jjulius 3y ago>They are nothing but urban sabotage. You're thinking of cars/roads. And I think you should head outside and get some air.
- cyberax 3y ago
- baybal2 3y ago[dead]
- King-Aaron 3y agoThis is why the robots will turn around and kill us all, everyone's so mean to them.
- kfarr 3y agoJust wait until the rear is clear and accelerate backwards. The cone will fall forwards, then drive around and resume course.
- gsabo 3y agoIf I saw a car stuck like this I would probably remove the cone.
- monkaiju 3y agoThank god, good luck to the locals. I imagine some strategic paint applications could seize these monstrosities up as well
- phendrenad2 3y agoSomeone needs to put some cones in front of the locals to prevent them from doing this.
- renewiltord 3y agoIt's my lovely city of San Francisco. The list of things the locals have been grumpy about is quite large. Let me list some of the ones I know of: 1. An ice-cream store opening on a block with another ice-cream store on it. Owner eventually gave up, but there's an entertaining live tweet thread about it https://twitter.com/_fruchtose/status/1271280300228632576?s=20 https://twitter.com/_fruchtose/status/1271280300228632576?s=... 2. A cafe where too many people would work on their laptops (they petitioned to say it was a zoning violation - coworking space not cafe). It was a nice cafe. Place blighted now 3. A housing project that would take away the Nordstrom valet parking lot. The housing project was blocked, but Nordstrom left independently. Now neither Nordstrom nor housing exists As far as I can tell, if "grumpy locals" do something in SF, chances are that a normal human being would do the opposite.
- stockerta 3y agoI never understood how these self driving cars are legal.
- pantojax45 3y agoI almost was hit by a Cruise car turning left at a busy intersection while I was in the crosswalk (with a walk signal). When I see a car attempting to turn left, I slow down or stop to make sure it sees me. Cruise car just kept going and got super close to hitting me. But there’s no way to complain or collect stats on it. Doesn’t seem ready for real world use.
- qbxk 3y agoeven though the cars aren't very smart, i feel like this is a good demonstration for why humans will always have something of value that an AI does not: silliness, when properly applied it can defeat anything
- deathlight 3y agoUnfathomably based.
- roycebranning 3y agoI've seen people run into the streets in front of cruises just to mess with them.
- eiiot 3y agoDoesn’t this just cause the cars to block traffic more?