5 ms·

Cruise blames Outside Lands for driverless car traffic fiasco in San Francisco

67 points by mikhael 3y ago

ramesh31 3y ago
Autonomous driving would be a solved problem today if we got all of those pesky people out of the way. Navigating a dark dirt road in a snowstorm is a piece of cake compared to predicting a drunk pedestrian's walk into the street. This is why I don't have much hope for L5 in the near future.
- peter422 3y ago
  Wait until you hear about what happens when it's the driver who is drunk and not the pedestrian. Autonomous cars can be far from perfect and still safer than human drivers, who all consistently overestimate how safe they are.
  - driverdan 3y ago
    Doesn't make any difference if they're sitting in the middle of the road with their hazards on, refusing to drive.
    - Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
      Statistically, autonomous cars sitting in the middle of the road with their hazards on are also safer than human drivers. As long as there’s space for bikes and pedestrians to get past, it’s probably a net win.
      - Dah00n 3y ago
        In the TikTok posted in the thread I doubt that the risk of a crash in that situation is less than without the Cruise stopped in the middle of the road. So more dangerous, not less. How safe it is in another situation is irrelevant to any pedestrian risking getting hit there.
gumby 3y ago
If the vehicles were actually autonomous they wouldn't need a network connection.
- iancmceachern 3y ago
  Mic drop
- sp332 3y ago
  They're not completely autonomous, but a remote driver can take control if there's an issue. If the car doesn't have a connection so a safety driver can take over, it's probably safer to brick it before it gets into a situation where it needs a safety driver.
  - pavon 3y ago
    That is a reasonable design decision for a small fleet of test vehicles. It is not reasonable for a large fleet of production vehicles. Causing massive traffic disruptions is a safety hazard in itself, and these companies should not be allowed to scale up their fleet as large as they have until the rate of vehicle stalls is on par with normal car breakdown rates.
    - notatoad 3y ago
      it seems like this incident was isolated to a single intersection in SF. i don't think we need to make an assumption that cruise vehicles shut down when they lose cell connection. more likely is that there was a situation on this street outside a music festival that required remote intervention, and when the cars couldn't connect to get that assistance they stopped moving. and that would be a sane design decision even at scale.
      - jowday 3y ago
        I worked in the AV industry - not at Cruise but based on incidents like this and other things I’ve seen from riding in Cruise cars - they absolutely need a cell phone connection and will strand or pull over (or stop in the middle of the street) if there’s anything more than a very transient break in remote connectivity. Fundamental parts of the stack assume that if there’s any uncertainty in a situation, a remote operator will be available to clarify how the car should proceed. The car can’t make certain safety or operational guarantees without this.
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
So they are vulnerable to simple WiFi jamming and interference? Unfortunate. Poor, poor Cruise. Poor stupid Cruise. I pity them. Thanks for disclosing it, though!
shrubble 3y ago
So the exact kind of situation where you would want robotaxis, such as a music festival, is exactly the kind of situation they didn't plan for and didn't have a way to mitigate?
jessfyi 3y ago
Cruise doesn't currently offer any payment for vulnerability disclosures [0] so I wouldn't be surprised if attacks involving this vector (think Stingrays) aren't going to be looked at now, if not already being exploited without the public hearing about it. A conspiracy theorist might note DEFCON happening this weekend and disruptions Cruise vehicles have experienced prior to this weekend as another potential explanation for these issues, rather than OSL-related congestion alone. [0] https://getcruise.com/security/ https://getcruise.com/security/
cameldrv 3y ago
You'd think they could at least pull over to the side of the road if they lost their network connection.
lokar 3y ago
SF should just start towing and crushing them
alsodumb 3y ago
Looking over the incidents in the last few months, it's pretty clear that Waymo is significantly better than Cruise in tech - Cruise has a lot of things to fix and they clearly rushed it but have good PR team to sell it well and make it seem like Waymo and Cruise are in the same bucket. If I were Waymo, I'd start doing the best I can to distance myself from Cruise - I think it's unfair for any city regulations that'll come after things like this to effect Waymo which is doing much better but is in the 'AV' category with Cruise. Look at this hilarious video where a Cruise is stuck in the middle of the road and a Waymo passes by it, imo better than what other human drivers did: https://www.tiktok.com/@highwithlo/video/7266311787237362990 https://www.tiktok.com/@highwithlo/video/7266311787237362990 Listen to the audio; small things like this can significantly skew public opinion/belief. Edit: More evidence - checkout Cruise twitter account reply history; most of the replies are Cruise justifying why they fucked up or hyping up their approvals and numbers. Look at Waymo's history, there is barely any mention of an incident (I'm making a fair assumption that both companies have a similar PR strategy of responding to popular tweets with incidents involving their vehicles). Cruise: https://twitter.com/Cruise/with_replies https://twitter.com/Cruise/with_replies Waymo: https://twitter.com/Waymo/with_replies https://twitter.com/Waymo/with_replies
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  That is hilarious. The Waymo Jag did an excellent job.
  - almost_usual 3y ago
    Doesn’t mean it was autonomous, a lot of those Waymo vehicles still have drivers in them.
    - alsodumb 3y ago
      Some of Cruise and Waymo cars have drivers in them, but based on my personal experience and what I've been hearing from friends, they see a lot more Cruise with drivers than Waymos these days. Not sure if this particular car had a driver, but the comments on the video seem to say it didn't.
ambicapter 3y ago
> The California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday voted to lift all restrictions for Cruise and Waymo’s full commercialization in the city amid vocal opposition from city officials. Why do the state's removal of restrictions override the city's? Surely if the city officials had objections they can just impose their own restrictions within city limits?
- dmoy 3y ago
  Idk how California law works for this particular area, but some states for certain types of things have state-level preemption, placing limits what local governments can restrict or apply. Though it's a lot more common for things like tax, it happens for a wide variety of subjects: https://ballotpedia.org/Preemption_conflicts_between_state_and_local_governments https://ballotpedia.org/Preemption_conflicts_between_state_a... I wonder if something like that is happening here
- semiquaver 3y ago
  The state is sovereign, the city is not. All authority the city has has been delegated by state laws. The state (wisely) does not want to delegate transportation regulation to thousands of municipalities.
  - ambicapter 3y ago
    That makes sense. I guess I would expect the state to be more conservative in its rulings than the city.
zeruch 3y ago
So a tech clown show is blaming a techbro-hipster clown show....got it.
sjburt 3y ago
What a weird defense; Grant Ave/North Beach is nowhere near Outside Lands (in Golden Gate Park).
SaberTail 3y ago
So what's going to happen when we get a big earthquake? It sounds like the streets could end up clogged with driverless cars confused by the debris and unable to communicate, blocking emergency vehicles.
- almost_usual 3y ago
  I truly doubt driverless vehicle obstruction will matter in an event like that. Uncontrolled lithium battery fires throughout the city from EVs on the other hand..
nine_zeros 3y ago
Yes, blame everything but yourself. Classic.
willio58 3y ago
As someone who’s 2 days into this festival and have seen cruise and Waymo cars a lot this weekend.. I think it’s overblown. We took a regular person-driven Uber tonight from the festival and it took 30 minutes to just get out of the traffic jams created by all the road blockades and shear boards of people. Cars are just not a good solution for moving that many people full stop. Add in self-driving cars and it’s even more of a cluster but what we really need is a metro stop there and more in the areas people stay during the festival.
- relyks 3y ago
  Why not self-driving buses? That will be next.
  - willio58 3y ago
    The thing that’s great about metros is that you’re not stuck in traffic. Of course in SF it’s like a metro/tram hybrid which is okay but not great.
    - relyks 3y ago
      Yeah, I agree. I actually prefer trains
robbrown451 3y ago
I live in SF and saw at least twenty driverless Cruise vehicles today while walking around the Mission. It's really quite sudden to see so many, really I've just noticed in the last week or so. My daughter asked me yesterday "are we in the future?!" Previously they all had someone behind the wheel. Personally I don't understand the hate. There are a lot of frustrations in this city, but they really aren't one of them. They all seem to drive perfectly and predictably, by my observation. I understand that there will be issues like this, but none of them are realistically safety issues. I look forward to a day where driverless taxis become cheap enough (due to lack of having to pay someone, and supply and demand) that more people can choose to be carless. I still need a car because I need to get my kid to school outside the city. But now that she doesn't need a booster seat, and now that Cruise vehicles seem ok with having a medium sized dog in them (kind of a problem previously if I want to take my dog across town to a park), I'm almost at the point I could get rid of my car and use public transportation as well as robotaxis when needed. So much space in the city is taken up by parked cars, and this should free up a lot. At the very least I think having robotaxis will allow a lot of two car families to only have one car. I understand the concerns about lost jobs but what do you want to do, bring back switchboard operators and elevator operators? If a machine can do the job, I just don't think that's a good use of a human.
- politelemon 3y ago
  > I look forward to a day where driverless taxis become cheap enough (due to lack of having to pay someone, and supply and demand) Going by previous history, this is unlikely to happen. The companies seek profit and will simply pocket the margins instead of passing them on.
  - dventimi 3y ago
    Then customers will choose their cheaper competitors.
    - tjoff 3y ago
      You assume there will be competitors.
ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
Paywalled.
iancmceachern 3y ago
My wife and I have been attending and we can honestly say it's the worst planned festival we've been to in a long time in terms of crowd flow, safety in that regard, and transportation in and out and to and from the festival. It's really a nightmare. That being said, it's made for a couple of pretty magical nights walking through Golden gate park. It really is a magical place, SF, golden gate park. The weather here is amazing, this is August! It's just not the experience I think a lot of others are prepared for.

67 points by mikhael 3y ago

Autonomous driving would be a solved problem today if we got all of those pesky people out of the way. Navigating a dark dirt road in a snowstorm is a piece of cake compared to predicting a drunk pedestrian's walk into the street. This is why I don't have much hope for L5 in the near future.

peter422 3y ago
Wait until you hear about what happens when it's the driver who is drunk and not the pedestrian. Autonomous cars can be far from perfect and still safer than human drivers, who all consistently overestimate how safe they are.
- driverdan 3y ago
  Doesn't make any difference if they're sitting in the middle of the road with their hazards on, refusing to drive.
  - Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
    Statistically, autonomous cars sitting in the middle of the road with their hazards on are also safer than human drivers. As long as there’s space for bikes and pedestrians to get past, it’s probably a net win.
    - Dah00n 3y ago
      In the TikTok posted in the thread I doubt that the risk of a crash in that situation is less than without the Cruise stopped in the middle of the road. So more dangerous, not less. How safe it is in another situation is irrelevant to any pedestrian risking getting hit there.

gumby 3y ago

If the vehicles were actually autonomous they wouldn't need a network connection.

iancmceachern 3y ago
Mic drop
sp332 3y ago
They're not completely autonomous, but a remote driver can take control if there's an issue. If the car doesn't have a connection so a safety driver can take over, it's probably safer to brick it before it gets into a situation where it needs a safety driver.
- pavon 3y ago
  That is a reasonable design decision for a small fleet of test vehicles. It is not reasonable for a large fleet of production vehicles. Causing massive traffic disruptions is a safety hazard in itself, and these companies should not be allowed to scale up their fleet as large as they have until the rate of vehicle stalls is on par with normal car breakdown rates.
  - notatoad 3y ago
    it seems like this incident was isolated to a single intersection in SF. i don't think we need to make an assumption that cruise vehicles shut down when they lose cell connection. more likely is that there was a situation on this street outside a music festival that required remote intervention, and when the cars couldn't connect to get that assistance they stopped moving. and that would be a sane design decision even at scale.
    - jowday 3y ago
      I worked in the AV industry - not at Cruise but based on incidents like this and other things I’ve seen from riding in Cruise cars - they absolutely need a cell phone connection and will strand or pull over (or stop in the middle of the street) if there’s anything more than a very transient break in remote connectivity. Fundamental parts of the stack assume that if there’s any uncertainty in a situation, a remote operator will be available to clarify how the car should proceed. The car can’t make certain safety or operational guarantees without this.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

So they are vulnerable to simple WiFi jamming and interference? Unfortunate. Poor, poor Cruise. Poor stupid Cruise. I pity them. Thanks for disclosing it, though!

shrubble 3y ago

So the exact kind of situation where you would want robotaxis, such as a music festival, is exactly the kind of situation they didn't plan for and didn't have a way to mitigate?

jessfyi 3y ago

Cruise doesn't currently offer any payment for vulnerability disclosures [0] so I wouldn't be surprised if attacks involving this vector (think Stingrays) aren't going to be looked at now, if not already being exploited without the public hearing about it. A conspiracy theorist might note DEFCON happening this weekend and disruptions Cruise vehicles have experienced prior to this weekend as another potential explanation for these issues, rather than OSL-related congestion alone. [0] https://getcruise.com/security/ https://getcruise.com/security/

cameldrv 3y ago

You'd think they could at least pull over to the side of the road if they lost their network connection.

lokar 3y ago

SF should just start towing and crushing them

alsodumb 3y ago

Looking over the incidents in the last few months, it's pretty clear that Waymo is significantly better than Cruise in tech - Cruise has a lot of things to fix and they clearly rushed it but have good PR team to sell it well and make it seem like Waymo and Cruise are in the same bucket. If I were Waymo, I'd start doing the best I can to distance myself from Cruise - I think it's unfair for any city regulations that'll come after things like this to effect Waymo which is doing much better but is in the 'AV' category with Cruise. Look at this hilarious video where a Cruise is stuck in the middle of the road and a Waymo passes by it, imo better than what other human drivers did: https://www.tiktok.com/@highwithlo/video/7266311787237362990 https://www.tiktok.com/@highwithlo/video/7266311787237362990 Listen to the audio; small things like this can significantly skew public opinion/belief. Edit: More evidence - checkout Cruise twitter account reply history; most of the replies are Cruise justifying why they fucked up or hyping up their approvals and numbers. Look at Waymo's history, there is barely any mention of an incident (I'm making a fair assumption that both companies have a similar PR strategy of responding to popular tweets with incidents involving their vehicles). Cruise: https://twitter.com/Cruise/with_replies https://twitter.com/Cruise/with_replies Waymo: https://twitter.com/Waymo/with_replies https://twitter.com/Waymo/with_replies

brucethemoose2 3y ago
That is hilarious. The Waymo Jag did an excellent job.
- almost_usual 3y ago
  Doesn’t mean it was autonomous, a lot of those Waymo vehicles still have drivers in them.
  - alsodumb 3y ago
    Some of Cruise and Waymo cars have drivers in them, but based on my personal experience and what I've been hearing from friends, they see a lot more Cruise with drivers than Waymos these days. Not sure if this particular car had a driver, but the comments on the video seem to say it didn't.

ambicapter 3y ago

> The California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday voted to lift all restrictions for Cruise and Waymo’s full commercialization in the city amid vocal opposition from city officials. Why do the state's removal of restrictions override the city's? Surely if the city officials had objections they can just impose their own restrictions within city limits?

dmoy 3y ago
Idk how California law works for this particular area, but some states for certain types of things have state-level preemption, placing limits what local governments can restrict or apply. Though it's a lot more common for things like tax, it happens for a wide variety of subjects: https://ballotpedia.org/Preemption_conflicts_between_state_and_local_governments https://ballotpedia.org/Preemption_conflicts_between_state_a... I wonder if something like that is happening here
semiquaver 3y ago
The state is sovereign, the city is not. All authority the city has has been delegated by state laws. The state (wisely) does not want to delegate transportation regulation to thousands of municipalities.
- ambicapter 3y ago
  That makes sense. I guess I would expect the state to be more conservative in its rulings than the city.

zeruch 3y ago

So a tech clown show is blaming a techbro-hipster clown show....got it.

sjburt 3y ago

What a weird defense; Grant Ave/North Beach is nowhere near Outside Lands (in Golden Gate Park).

SaberTail 3y ago

So what's going to happen when we get a big earthquake? It sounds like the streets could end up clogged with driverless cars confused by the debris and unable to communicate, blocking emergency vehicles.

almost_usual 3y ago
I truly doubt driverless vehicle obstruction will matter in an event like that. Uncontrolled lithium battery fires throughout the city from EVs on the other hand..

nine_zeros 3y ago

Yes, blame everything but yourself. Classic.

willio58 3y ago

As someone who’s 2 days into this festival and have seen cruise and Waymo cars a lot this weekend.. I think it’s overblown. We took a regular person-driven Uber tonight from the festival and it took 30 minutes to just get out of the traffic jams created by all the road blockades and shear boards of people. Cars are just not a good solution for moving that many people full stop. Add in self-driving cars and it’s even more of a cluster but what we really need is a metro stop there and more in the areas people stay during the festival.

relyks 3y ago
Why not self-driving buses? That will be next.
- willio58 3y ago
  The thing that’s great about metros is that you’re not stuck in traffic. Of course in SF it’s like a metro/tram hybrid which is okay but not great.
  - relyks 3y ago
    Yeah, I agree. I actually prefer trains

robbrown451 3y ago

I live in SF and saw at least twenty driverless Cruise vehicles today while walking around the Mission. It's really quite sudden to see so many, really I've just noticed in the last week or so. My daughter asked me yesterday "are we in the future?!" Previously they all had someone behind the wheel. Personally I don't understand the hate. There are a lot of frustrations in this city, but they really aren't one of them. They all seem to drive perfectly and predictably, by my observation. I understand that there will be issues like this, but none of them are realistically safety issues. I look forward to a day where driverless taxis become cheap enough (due to lack of having to pay someone, and supply and demand) that more people can choose to be carless. I still need a car because I need to get my kid to school outside the city. But now that she doesn't need a booster seat, and now that Cruise vehicles seem ok with having a medium sized dog in them (kind of a problem previously if I want to take my dog across town to a park), I'm almost at the point I could get rid of my car and use public transportation as well as robotaxis when needed. So much space in the city is taken up by parked cars, and this should free up a lot. At the very least I think having robotaxis will allow a lot of two car families to only have one car. I understand the concerns about lost jobs but what do you want to do, bring back switchboard operators and elevator operators? If a machine can do the job, I just don't think that's a good use of a human.

politelemon 3y ago
> I look forward to a day where driverless taxis become cheap enough (due to lack of having to pay someone, and supply and demand) Going by previous history, this is unlikely to happen. The companies seek profit and will simply pocket the margins instead of passing them on.
- dventimi 3y ago
  Then customers will choose their cheaper competitors.
  - tjoff 3y ago
    You assume there will be competitors.

ShadowBanThis01 3y ago

Paywalled.

iancmceachern 3y ago

My wife and I have been attending and we can honestly say it's the worst planned festival we've been to in a long time in terms of crowd flow, safety in that regard, and transportation in and out and to and from the festival. It's really a nightmare. That being said, it's made for a couple of pretty magical nights walking through Golden gate park. It really is a magical place, SF, golden gate park. The weather here is amazing, this is August! It's just not the experience I think a lot of others are prepared for.