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I was kind of shocked in 2019 to see those cars driving around SF. Most jurisdictions would never allow this in a million years. Why would you allow some tech

I was kind of shocked in 2019 to see those cars driving around SF. Most jurisdictions would never allow this in a million years. Why would you allow some tech company to develop its technology at the risk of pedestrian safety? What benefit does this have to the people living in these neighborhoods?

foobarian 3y ago
When cab drivers are too poor to afford living in your town you gotta come up with some kind of plan B.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Raise prices and the people who need/want to take cabs need to deal with it or move elsewhere.
- asveikau 3y ago
  They just do extremely long commutes from parts very far east. They're already in the car and already used to driving for a long time, may as well add Visalia to SF. (Visalia is especially far, but I had a driver in SF tell me once that's where he drove in from.)
vkou 3y ago
> Why would you allow some tech company to develop its technology at the risk of pedestrian safety? If we cared about pedestrian safety, we wouldn't let ~half[1] the drivers on the roads drive. [1] I kid, it's more like 5-10%.
- happytoexplain 3y ago
  We can't reasonably measure the safety of individuals until they do something concrete, like get caught driving recklessly/drunk/distracted. If a company endangers people because they wanted to hit their timeline or save face or whatever, that's pure evil. They're simply incomparable. We can address both things. The "but people are statistically worse" argument is a horrible, thoughtless "gotcha" in the form of whataboutism that makes light of people's lives.
  - add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
    > The "but people are statistically worse" argument is a horrible, thoughtless "gotcha" It's also laughably unproven, unless it was to be scaled up, exposed to the full range of driving conditions, and measured for a long time.
  - vkou 3y ago
    A small percentage of people drive like shit in concrete ways all the time. Not signaling, driving too fast for the conditions, aggressive merges, cutting people off on turns. It's just that nobody cares about enforcing low-level violations, and we just let them keep trying, keep rolling the dice, until their lack of consideration for other people kills someone.
renegade-otter 3y ago
Which is doubly curios that tech companies seem to have so much influence on the SF municipality, yet do not use it to fix the city's other issues, like homelessness and just shocking levels of petty crime. Their employees live there, after all. They live there. But maybe it aligns with their vision of a free-for-all libertarian paradise, I am not sure.
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
  My impression is that nobody has identified a solution to SF's homeless problem that's both effective and politically viable.
chroma 3y ago
The vehicles seem to be incredibly safe when compared to human driven vehicles, so what’s the problem? Cruise has caused zero deaths. In that same time, 144 people have been killed by vehicles in San Francisco.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  Low sample sizes leads to funny math.There are 400 Cruise vehicles in SF and 400,000 non-Cruise vehicles in SF. LA Times re: SF " On average, 30 people die and more than 500 are severely injured in the city's streets each year" Cruise severely injured 1 pedestrian this year, so sounds like it's 2x worse than human drivers at least. Since there are 1000x more of them and they've only caused 500x the severe injuries. When Cruise causes its first fatality it will immediately be 33x worse. A person playing Russian Roulette for 1 round successfully may extrapolate that there is zero risk. A person who has played 1000 rounds doesn't exist.
  - chroma 3y ago
    It’s incorrect to say that Cruise severely injured a pedestrian. The pedestrian was hit by a human driver (who then fled the scene). The first collision knocked the pedestrian into the path of the Cruise vehicle. The Cruise vehicle tried to swerve to avoid the pedestrian, then slammed on the brakes and stopped within 20ft. A human driver in the same situation would have done the same or worse.
    - steveBK123 3y ago
      The human would not have dragged the pedestrian 20 feet after recognizing they had one under their car.
      - chroma 3y ago
        Incorrect. The pedestrian was dragged for 20ft because that’s how long car took to stop. The slower the car would have been to react, the more the pedestrian would have been dragged. And humans get confused and have people pinned under their cars all the time. Nobody wants to continue running over a person (even if it’s the best course of action in hindsight), and they often get out of the vehicle to check before even noticing that someone is underneath.

foobarian 3y ago

When cab drivers are too poor to afford living in your town you gotta come up with some kind of plan B.

ghaff 3y ago
Raise prices and the people who need/want to take cabs need to deal with it or move elsewhere.
asveikau 3y ago
They just do extremely long commutes from parts very far east. They're already in the car and already used to driving for a long time, may as well add Visalia to SF. (Visalia is especially far, but I had a driver in SF tell me once that's where he drove in from.)

vkou 3y ago

> Why would you allow some tech company to develop its technology at the risk of pedestrian safety? If we cared about pedestrian safety, we wouldn't let ~half[1] the drivers on the roads drive. [1] I kid, it's more like 5-10%.

happytoexplain 3y ago
We can't reasonably measure the safety of individuals until they do something concrete, like get caught driving recklessly/drunk/distracted. If a company endangers people because they wanted to hit their timeline or save face or whatever, that's pure evil. They're simply incomparable. We can address both things. The "but people are statistically worse" argument is a horrible, thoughtless "gotcha" in the form of whataboutism that makes light of people's lives.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  > The "but people are statistically worse" argument is a horrible, thoughtless "gotcha" It's also laughably unproven, unless it was to be scaled up, exposed to the full range of driving conditions, and measured for a long time.
- vkou 3y ago
  A small percentage of people drive like shit in concrete ways all the time. Not signaling, driving too fast for the conditions, aggressive merges, cutting people off on turns. It's just that nobody cares about enforcing low-level violations, and we just let them keep trying, keep rolling the dice, until their lack of consideration for other people kills someone.

renegade-otter 3y ago

Which is doubly curios that tech companies seem to have so much influence on the SF municipality, yet do not use it to fix the city's other issues, like homelessness and just shocking levels of petty crime. Their employees live there, after all. They live there. But maybe it aligns with their vision of a free-for-all libertarian paradise, I am not sure.

CoastalCoder 3y ago
My impression is that nobody has identified a solution to SF's homeless problem that's both effective and politically viable.

chroma 3y ago

The vehicles seem to be incredibly safe when compared to human driven vehicles, so what’s the problem? Cruise has caused zero deaths. In that same time, 144 people have been killed by vehicles in San Francisco.

steveBK123 3y ago
Low sample sizes leads to funny math.There are 400 Cruise vehicles in SF and 400,000 non-Cruise vehicles in SF. LA Times re: SF " On average, 30 people die and more than 500 are severely injured in the city's streets each year" Cruise severely injured 1 pedestrian this year, so sounds like it's 2x worse than human drivers at least. Since there are 1000x more of them and they've only caused 500x the severe injuries. When Cruise causes its first fatality it will immediately be 33x worse. A person playing Russian Roulette for 1 round successfully may extrapolate that there is zero risk. A person who has played 1000 rounds doesn't exist.
- chroma 3y ago
  It’s incorrect to say that Cruise severely injured a pedestrian. The pedestrian was hit by a human driver (who then fled the scene). The first collision knocked the pedestrian into the path of the Cruise vehicle. The Cruise vehicle tried to swerve to avoid the pedestrian, then slammed on the brakes and stopped within 20ft. A human driver in the same situation would have done the same or worse.
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    The human would not have dragged the pedestrian 20 feet after recognizing they had one under their car.
    - chroma 3y ago
      Incorrect. The pedestrian was dragged for 20ft because that’s how long car took to stop. The slower the car would have been to react, the more the pedestrian would have been dragged. And humans get confused and have people pinned under their cars all the time. Nobody wants to continue running over a person (even if it’s the best course of action in hindsight), and they often get out of the vehicle to check before even noticing that someone is underneath.