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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 peo

by 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.
      - steveBK123 3y ago
        Not what some sources have said: "State officials claimed that Cruise showed the DMV and California Highway Patrol onboard video of its car braking hard and stopping. But, Cruise failed to share footage showing the pedestrian being dragged as the car maneuvered to the side of the road, according to the state." https://www.ktvu.com/news/cruise-failed-to-share-footage-of-pedestrian-being-dragged-dmv-says https://www.ktvu.com/news/cruise-failed-to-share-footage-of-... Curious why they didn't share all the video if they think they did such an excellent job?
        chroma 3y ago
        Cruise said they shared all the video from the crash with government agencies including the DMV, and the DMV says Cruise didn't because they managed to get an additional video from another government agency. So how could Cruise be hiding the video if another government agency has it? It seems much more likely that Cruise shared everything and there was some mix-up with the California DMV. I've encountered that situation many times. The most egregious example was them fining me for not paying registration fees on a vehicle I had sold over five years earlier. I know there's nothing that will ever convince you that autonomous vehicles are safe, but please think about what safe autonomous vehicles would look like if they were rolled out. These sorts of stories get tons of eyeballs, so journalists are trying to find any example of an autonomous system harming people. Even better if you can blame tech companies for being negligent or irresponsible. So every single incident, even if it's caused by a psychopath hit-and-run driver, is blamed on the machine. And every detail is exaggerated and misconstrued to make the machine (and the manufacturer) seem as terrible as possible. So the stories simply don't matter. The figure of merit is fatalities per passenger mile. Currently, Cruise's is zero. Cruise employees are riding in these vehicles, as are their family members. They walk near these vehicles every day. If they actually believed they were unsafe, they'd deploy the vehicles far away from their homes.
  - minwcnt5 3y ago
    This is completely false. The Cruise vehicle stopped, then started again and dragged the woman under it. The majority of her injuries resulted from the dragging, which is entirely Cruise's fault.
lastofthemojito 3y ago
> The vehicles seem to be incredibly safe when compared to human driven vehicles Well, according to the article they are often human-driven. Anyhow, Caltrans estimates 8.8 million miles traveled by vehicles in SF daily. That's 6.4 billion miles during the 2-year period that Cruise did less than 700,000 miles. In California there's 1.38 deaths per 100,000,000 miles traveled. Cruise doing ~1% of the mileage in which one would expect a death to occur doesn't seem like enough of a sample to declare a comparative safety advantage.
- chroma 3y ago
  Cruise has now done over 4 million driverless miles on public roads.[1] That figure doesn’t include miles with safety drivers. 1. https://twitter.com/kvogt/status/1690050803283922944 https://twitter.com/kvogt/status/1690050803283922944

by chroma 3y ago

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.
    - steveBK123 3y ago
      Not what some sources have said: "State officials claimed that Cruise showed the DMV and California Highway Patrol onboard video of its car braking hard and stopping. But, Cruise failed to share footage showing the pedestrian being dragged as the car maneuvered to the side of the road, according to the state." https://www.ktvu.com/news/cruise-failed-to-share-footage-of-pedestrian-being-dragged-dmv-says https://www.ktvu.com/news/cruise-failed-to-share-footage-of-... Curious why they didn't share all the video if they think they did such an excellent job?
      - chroma 3y ago
        Cruise said they shared all the video from the crash with government agencies including the DMV, and the DMV says Cruise didn't because they managed to get an additional video from another government agency. So how could Cruise be hiding the video if another government agency has it? It seems much more likely that Cruise shared everything and there was some mix-up with the California DMV. I've encountered that situation many times. The most egregious example was them fining me for not paying registration fees on a vehicle I had sold over five years earlier. I know there's nothing that will ever convince you that autonomous vehicles are safe, but please think about what safe autonomous vehicles would look like if they were rolled out. These sorts of stories get tons of eyeballs, so journalists are trying to find any example of an autonomous system harming people. Even better if you can blame tech companies for being negligent or irresponsible. So every single incident, even if it's caused by a psychopath hit-and-run driver, is blamed on the machine. And every detail is exaggerated and misconstrued to make the machine (and the manufacturer) seem as terrible as possible. So the stories simply don't matter. The figure of merit is fatalities per passenger mile. Currently, Cruise's is zero. Cruise employees are riding in these vehicles, as are their family members. They walk near these vehicles every day. If they actually believed they were unsafe, they'd deploy the vehicles far away from their homes.
- minwcnt5 3y ago
  This is completely false. The Cruise vehicle stopped, then started again and dragged the woman under it. The majority of her injuries resulted from the dragging, which is entirely Cruise's fault.

lastofthemojito 3y ago

> The vehicles seem to be incredibly safe when compared to human driven vehicles Well, according to the article they are often human-driven. Anyhow, Caltrans estimates 8.8 million miles traveled by vehicles in SF daily. That's 6.4 billion miles during the 2-year period that Cruise did less than 700,000 miles. In California there's 1.38 deaths per 100,000,000 miles traveled. Cruise doing ~1% of the mileage in which one would expect a death to occur doesn't seem like enough of a sample to declare a comparative safety advantage.

chroma 3y ago
Cruise has now done over 4 million driverless miles on public roads.[1] That figure doesn’t include miles with safety drivers. 1. https://twitter.com/kvogt/status/1690050803283922944 https://twitter.com/kvogt/status/1690050803283922944