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> “Over one hundred people lose their lives every day on American roadways, and countless others are badly injured, Cruise said in a statement sent via email.

• whimsicalism 3y ago
  Just because they have weird failure cases does not mean they fail more often than human drivers. FWIW as a biker in SF i feel much more comfortable around driverless than actual drivers, especially in areas like the Mission where people don’t check their right before turning onto streets like Guerrero or Valencia. The self driving ones always do
  • fsckboy 3y ago
    but just because they have weird failure cases does not mean they fail less often than human drivers either.
    • gruez 3y ago
      Right, but the OP seems to be skipping that part entirely. The only metric we should care about is overall accident rates (controlling for reasonable variables of course), not "safely navigating situations that below-average human drivers rarely struggle with".
      • hef19898 3y ago
        Given that driverless cars are slim minority on our roads, if they exist at all, failure modes actually do matter a lot. Human drivwr failure modes are what everybody is used to, and trained by everyday life to cope with. The radom, unpredictable stuff driverless cars do is in itsrlf dangerous from that perspective.
        • deleted 3y ago
          [deleted]
        • Retric 3y ago
          This isn’t the kind of thing you need to theorize about when there’s real world data to look at. American drivers have 13.5 deaths per billion vehicle miles, you can try and adjust that for conditions etc but people still fuck up driving good cars in nearly perfect conditions. The fully autonomous cars without safety drivers haven’t yet crossed the threshold to compare fatalities, but you can compare vs the 5 million car accidents in the U.S. each year 43% of which resulted in injuries. So there’s enough data to know they aren’t wildly dangerous.
          • lancesells 3y ago
            I think the jury is still out since these cars are deployed in very specific, limited environments. In my opinion you need to compare only the areas they are driving in vs the accidents in only those areas. If they don't use freeways or specific streets, or drive in the rain, than those needed to be excluded in the data. There are other factors like if they make unintended stops, cause traffic, etc. that don't get marked as accidents. I would love it if they all worked and saved lives but I'm not yet sold on this.
      • Gabrys1 3y ago
        I don't think that IS a fair metric. Be it for Tesla or for robotaxi and let me explain why. Tesla vehicles should be compared to similar vehicles driven by people that can afford a Tesla. (Not to a national average that includes lots of small, cheap or old cars). Robotaxis incident rates should be compared to taxi incident rates in the specific areas. There should be some way of factoring in the overly-cautious driving causing other drivers to do stupid shit because they got annoyed by the cars in question. (Not sure how exactly though)
        • gruez 3y ago
          >Tesla vehicles should be compared to similar vehicles driven by people that can afford a Tesla. (Not to a national average that includes lots of small, cheap or old cars). >Robotaxis incident rates should be compared to taxi incident rates in the specific areas. That's what I said in the original comment? >overall accident rates (controlling for reasonable variables of course)
          • Gabrys1 3y ago
            You did say that, not sure how I missed that. Sorry for that
            • Tempest1981 3y ago
              Your example helped me. I wasn't thinking of that.
  • chaboud 3y ago
    An unlicensed driver in the Mission plowed into me on my motorcycle because he panicked and slammed on the gas. Cruise cars, conversely, generally result in close calls due to aborted lane changes, cutting me off, or absurd double parking, but I can safely assume that a Cruise car will sit at a stop sign for minutes on end of other drivers don't give it a turn. Cruise vehicles operate like over-cautious student drivers, dangerously lacking assertiveness and commitment. Basically, if the Mission is your bar for quality, we may as well let elementary school kids drive. Nonetheless, Cruise vehicles for into that tapestry quite nicely. Unless I'm going to the Mission, it's best to avoid it altogether.
    • bluGill 3y ago
      Assertiveness is a bad thing in drivers. Sure you wait longer for others to do the right thing, but you also don't force crashes because of your bad driving.
      • bombcar 3y ago
        It’s more expectedness. I find CA drivers to be very assertive, meaning they will accelerate to pass you while joining the freeway; in the Midwest people will slow down when merging to be polite, which causes many more issues.
        • admax88qqq 3y ago
          Neither of those is assertiveness IMO
        • whimsicalism 3y ago
          Shows how subjective it is - from my Boston/DC perspective, CA drivers are ridiculously diffident
    • bombcar 3y ago
      You also have the situation where an assumed perfect car that drives exactly as you expect, but once in a million goes just kills you - is likely to be much less annoying (unless you’re dead) than a car that every single time you interact with it does weird things, even though it never kills you at all
  • j7ake 3y ago
    Evaluating safety of self driving cars is not just a matter of comparing number of failures of number of accidents, or any one scalar number. Just to illustrate my point, imagine a case where self driving cars have same number of fatal deaths (normalised by whatever you need to convince yourself), but self driving cars disproportionately fail on dark skinned children. Then it is obvious that self driving cars are worse. Weird failure cases, cases where a bad human driver would do better, are bad for self driving cars.
    • ajross 3y ago
      Your point is that we shouldn't have self-driving vehicles because... we can't prove they're not racist? I'm not following. I mean, yes, you're correct that there are edge cases in any moral analysis and it's not just about comparing two numbers (though in safety arguments, yeah, it's almost always about simple numbers). But you don't get to wave that fact as a get-out-of-jail-free card in an argument! You need to show us the edge case. And the best you can do is "the cars might be racist"?
      • ryanklee 3y ago
        GP's example is just to give a hypothetical instance of why qualitative analysis needs to be considered as well.
• s0rce 3y ago
  Here is a human that drove into wet concrete: https://www.wlwt.com/article/car-drives-through-wet-concrete-ohio/44075210 https://www.wlwt.com/article/car-drives-through-wet-concrete... I'm sure its not that uncommon just not publicized, people are terrible drivers.
  • 7e 3y ago
    Do terrible drivers drive as much as Cruise does? Terrible drivers at least eventually get better through practice. Having 100 poorer than average driving autonomous cars in the streets driving around 24x7 is a net worsening. Autonomous cars improve more slowly than humans do.
    • yazaddaruvala 3y ago
      The myth about good vs bad drivers has long been out to bed. All drivers are better than average drivers. The problem for all humans is alcohol, sleep deprivation, stress, phones, coffee, makeup, shaving, food, etc. Everyone, including you, has read at least one text while driving. Sleep deprived actors by definition cannot correctly judge their ability to be sleep deprived. None of us are immune to these realities. The only way safely (with data) testing self-driving robots is “net worsening” for humanity is if you aren’t taking a long term view.
      • Dylan16807 3y ago
        > Sleep deprived actors by definition cannot correctly judge their ability to be sleep deprived. What is that supposed to mean? Especially 'by definition'?? Your body gives you plenty of feedback for sleep deprivation.
        • yazaddaruvala 3y ago
          Sleep deprivation causes a reduction in ability to reason. Similar to being drunk. A drunk person can also feel drunk, but “how drunk is too drunk?” Similarly “how sleep deprived is too deprived?” The answer is, at a minimum, that a second “sober” party make that judgement.
• KennyBlanken 3y ago
  They're engaged in a standard PR / argument technique of whataboutism. When facing negative PR, you blather about something else positive. One reason is that you're pushing the positive info into people's brains even if they know what you're doing, and the second: there are tons of morons who will happily eat the "this random positive thing offsets or excuses the negative thing." "Your cars aren't stopping for police pulling them over for traffic violations, and even driving off from officers who have no idea what to do because regulators are firmly in the industry's pocket and not requiring firms offer solid ways for first responders to command these vehicle's control systems, or at least committing to having a human supervisor available to quickly take remote control of the vehicle and move it." PR response: "but what about all those crashes human drivers get into that we don't?" ...which doesn't change the fact that we have vehicles running around that are almost completely free from policing.
• KirillPanov 3y ago
  > like avoiding driving into clearly marked wet concrete, or not crashing into an emergency vehicle that has its sirens and lights blazing Or just a simple left turn without a green arrow.
• _acco 3y ago
  You’re missing the point. It’s an appeal that we need to change the status quo. They may not be there yet. But AVs are the only serious contender to solve the traffic fatality problem.
  • llbeansandrice 3y ago
    Trains. Buses. Bikeable areas. How did we land in a spot where the “only serious contender” to solve this problem is VC funded companies using the roads and people’s lives as beta testing grounds? Absolutely absurd.
    • jahewson 3y ago
      I get where you’re coming from but SF is full of busses, it has trams, light rail, (even some cable cars!) and a subway. A couple of years ago it was stuffed full of electric scooters. Bikeable areas are constrained by the hills or practically impossible due to the road layout (bus lanes, tram tracks, crazy Victorian street plan) pedestrians who go literally anywhere they want at any time, questionable grid system that inhibits walkability with endless crosswalks. Changing anything significant costs billions of dollars. We don’t have any credible solutions to these. It’s like a massive technical debt where you can’t rebuild and every fix breaks something else.
      • camgunz 3y ago
        Some of these things are basically solved (e-bikes chew through hills, physically separated bike lanes solve the "no space for bikes" issue, etc) but SF is still super car friendly. It has to be because of road and zoning regulations, so roads have to be maintained at a certain level and must be a certain width, and there must be a certain amount of parking, etc. If we gave walkability and biking the same amount of deference and funding our cities would be cyclist/pedestrian paradises.
      • rubidium 3y ago
        Coming from a major metro area in the Midwest, on my recent visit to San Fran you could get to MANY more useful things in a 15 min walk. Because of its density, I don’t think San Fran has a real transportation problem to speak of (for those who live in the city proper). For those who live outside of it, sure. But that’s just par for the course rush hour issues at any major metro.
• jahewson 3y ago
  Is this not a logical fallacy? “Technology fails at something simple therefore it will fail at something complex.” Humans might fail in that manner but this technology was trained and operates in an entirely different manner. I think you may also be rather too generous to human drivers. My grandmother crashed into a parked car at 10mph, flipping her car upside down in the process. My wife’s grandmother phoned up her son mid-journey to ask which pedal was the accelerator and which was the break - when unsure she would just press both!
• thephyber 3y ago
  The evidence is always nuanced and we should be wary of motivated reasoning from those who stand to profit / lose from decisions made from such evidence. /throatclearing BUT the thing that most people ignore is that self-driving cars share a learning network, where the entire network benefits from hitting and learning from edge cases. Humans tend to have to re-learn their mistakes on a per-human basis. And that doesn’t even begin to cover the common failure conditions of humans — stressed, exhausted, distracted, frustrated, greedy, emotionally unstable, unpredictable, imprecise, etc. So long as the cost of the damage is borne by the car manufacturer/owner and there was minimal harm done to life, I’m perfectly willing to allow self-driving car experiments to continue. … Not that I had any significant power to stop it in the first place.
• renewiltord 3y ago
  I've definitely seen human cars in wet concrete in SF before. Most human accidents in this city just don't get reported. Guy ran a red light and put me in the ICU for a week. Wasn't even in the news.
  • dtgriscom 3y ago
    Next time you're in an accident, make sure to be more famous.
• cmarschner 3y ago
  Better cognition? Maybe. As long as planners contain a single if statement in C++, totally. But sensors? These cars scan the environment with dozens of sensors, much better than what a human can do. Better perception? Yes, although the perception models have come a long way but they are still quite primitive compared to what a human can do.
• ajross 3y ago
  > Current driverless cars are not even capable of safely navigating situations that below-average human drivers rarely struggle with, like avoiding driving into clearly marked wet concrete, or not crashing into an emergency vehicle that has its sirens and lights blazing. Those are both very common accidents for human drivers. It's fine if you want to argue with numbers about whether or not Cruise/Waymo/Tesla are more or less likely to get into these accidents. But please don't spin and claim that people don't do this too. That is simply incorrect and you know it.
• justapassenger 3y ago
  What boils my blood each time I hear self driving company talk about metrics, is total ignorance to decades of safety engineering and processes developed there. They act like reasoning about safety of automated systems is brand new area that they need to develop and disrupt. Sure, heavy reliance on AI makes some traditional forms of validation more tricky, but BS metrics and test in prod is so reckless, that will end up only hurting the industry. When there will be a big tragedy, because of reckless approach, government will be forced to drop heavy hammer of regulations and make it much harder to develop self driving tech.
  • Dalewyn 3y ago
    >BS metrics and test in prod is so reckless, When you put it that way, it strongly mirrors what is seen in computer programming and I am inclined to wonder how much of it is simply the computer programming culture leaking into the automotive world.
    • ilinx 3y ago
      There are reckless people in software development, and there are reckless people in the automotive world. Any industry is going to have people who cut corners to be early to a new market. I’m a software developer, and being asked to test in prod is a massive red flag. It’s almost always prompted by someone with fairly little technical background.
      • dylan604 3y ago
        >It’s almost always prompted by someone with fairly little technical background. Or it's a sales team that knows a big $$$ contract is out there and this thing needs to be in PROD now and not in the normal cycle of DEV -> QA/Staging -> PROD. There are many reasons for doing things in prod, none of them are valid reasons, but there are many of them that people use. "The specific data we need to test against isn't in DEV" is one of my pet peeves.
• avree 3y ago
  A human driver killed a 4-year girl and her mother this week. How many 4-year olds has Cruise killed? My point is that picking false equivalencies and anecdotal evidence doesn't work, in both directions.
  • bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
    In fairness, cruise is smart enough to not even attempt to unleash their cars on areas challenging enough to cause the death of a 4yo. If they did, who knows what would happen.
    • CardenB 3y ago
      It was by 4th and king station right? Cruise cars drive there all the time. https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-king-st-crash-driver-arrested-4-year-old-killed-car-sf-fatal-71-year-old-karen-cartagena/13660153/ https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-king-st-crash-driver-arre...
    • avree 3y ago
      Huh? Cruise were given street permits long ago.
• lamontcg 3y ago
  > I’m so tired of this angle being accepted at face value. Current driverless cars are not even capable of safely navigating situations that below-average human drivers rarely struggle with, like avoiding driving into clearly marked wet concrete, or not crashing into an emergency vehicle that has its sirens and lights blazing. The incident was reported as the Cruise robotaxi being struck by an emergency vehicle. It sounds less like the car drove into the big vehicle with the flashing red lights and more like the vehicle wasn't visible and the robotaxi drive into the intersection and was struck. This is a common failure mode of below average human drivers as well. I agree that its a failure mode that needs to be eliminated and looks pretty bad on Cruise for not anticipating and testing this, but that is a situation that below-average human drivers absolutely do struggle with.
  • lamontcg 3y ago
    Yeah it sounds like the corner was blind and the Cruise was in the right lane and the Firetruck had crossed into the oncoming traffic lane and struck the cruise on the right side: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2023/08/18/cruise-robotaxi-hit-by-on-call-fire-engine--is-it-the-fire-trucks-fault https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2023/08/18/cruise... The title may sound a little bit inflammatory but emergency vehicles are usually found at fault when they enter a red light, even when they're running lights and sirens and have a collision. They don't get tickets for breaking the law, but they are often found civilly at fault for collisions that happen when they do. They're expected to slow and visually clear the intersection, and if they were using the oncoming lane and couldn't see cross traffic they should have been more cautious. This happens all the time with humans. One of the many reasons why 2 or more vehicles are usually dispatched (although there's a few videos you can find on youtube of firetrucks from different engine companies responding to the same incident T-boning each other as well). Waymo at least claims to do things much more correctly and like a human in this case: > Waymo representatives believe their vehicle would have handled this situation. According to Waymo, “Waymo has developed various technologies to detect active emergency vehicles even if they are not in direct view. Like humans, our vehicles can hear sirens and reason about the direction, location, and motion of the active emergency vehicle, importantly including whether it is approaching or receding. When we hear sirens, our vehicle will slow and then depending on how the situation develops, we will either pull over or stop ahead of intersections where there might be crossing emergency vehicles, even if we have a green light. The system is designed to remain cautious and not enter an intersection if it is still reasoning whether the emergency vehicle is approaching the intersection based on what it is sensing.” However, it is fair to say that Cruise has said similar things about their own vehicles ability to detect emergency vehicles, and Waymo has not tested in this exact situation. Cruise should still get punished over this, and I don't know if 50% reduction in vehicles is enough of a punishment or what it should be. Going "move fast, break things" on public streets to try to catch up to your competitor should definitely result in you losing more ground that you think you're gaining when you're busted for it, or else it isn't a deterrent.