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I don't know why you think Cruise isn't on track. Their numbers are also good, although probably not as good as Waymo, but they are also much younger than Waymo

I don't know why you think Cruise isn't on track. Their numbers are also good, although probably not as good as Waymo, but they are also much younger than Waymo. Cruise is being punished by the state of California right now because they tried to cover up their vehicle's worsening of a particular human-caused accident, not because of some problem with their overall numbers. EDIT: If you disagree, please link to the quantitative data that suggests Cruise isn't on track.

flutas 3y ago
Another aspect to Cruise (and potentially waymo, but it hasn't been publicly stated) is that they claim thousands of miles per disengagement...when on average their cars needed remote assistance every 4-5 miles[0]. Waymo does the same thing, but the numbers just aren't publicly known. IMO stuff like this is going to lead the public to trust it less, since they're gaming numbers as hard as possible. [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/06/cruise-confirms-robotaxis-rely-on-human-assistance-every-4-to-5-miles.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/06/cruise-confirms-robotaxis-re...
- jessriedel 3y ago
  You're comparing apples to oranges. Disengagements means there is a safety driver present that takes over to prevent a dangerous situation. The car requesting remote assistance, which occurs when there is not a safety driver, is an inconvenience and expense but does not mean there is a dangerous situation. (Of the 22 Cruise rides I took, it happened 3 times, and at no point was there danger.) It just means the car is confused. Conflating these things and accusing Cruise of deception is itself being dishonest (even though Cruise has actually been dishonest on many occasions!). The whole game plan is have a bank of human operators who prove remote assistance at initially high rates which is then driven lower over time as the edge cases are ironed out iteratively. The fact that Cruise is only using one human remote assistant to manage ~15 rides, as mentioned in the article you link, tells us that the rate of remote assistance is already so low that it will be a very modest expense. For more, see the comment from Cruise's CEO: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38145997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38145997
  - flutas 3y ago
    > Disengagements means there is a safety driver present that takes over to prevent a dangerous situation. California, at least, cites a disengagement as "whether because of technology failure or situations requiring the test driver/operator to take manual control of the vehicle to operate safely."[0] Would a car being confused and not being able to proceed without input be a disengagement by that definition? I think so, based off of "technology failure", but it's not reported as that. > It just means the car is confused. Conflating these things and accusing Cruise of deception is itself being dishonest. When a car is confused what happens? It stops. That is a safety issue by itself, as it can lead to emergency services not being able to properly respond and killing someone[1]. The fact people are trying to downplay this as "nothing" is shocking imo. What happens when a fleet of vehicles get confused, they all stall and it results in gridlock and frustration.[2] [0]: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/autonomous-vehicles/disengagement-reports/ https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/auto... [1]: https://sfstandard.com/2023/09/01/person-dies-cruise-robotaxi-blocks-san-francisco-ambulance/ https://sfstandard.com/2023/09/01/person-dies-cruise-robotax... [2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2022/07/08/cruise-robotaxis-keep-stalling-on-sf-streets-how-upset-should-we-be/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2022/07/08/cruise...
    - jessriedel 3y ago
      > California, at least, cites a disengagement as "whether because of technology failure or situations requiring the test driver/operator to take manual control of the vehicle to operate safely. At your Ref. [0], I just opened up the CSV titled "2022 Autonomous Vehicle Disengagement Reports (CSV)" under the header "2022 Disengagement reports". Under the column "Driver present (yes or no)", every single entry said "yes". > When a car is confused what happens? It stops. That is a safety issue by itself No, the car pulls over, just as it and every other taxi does when picking people up or dropping them off. It does not just stop in the middle of an intersection. I had 3 of these events in 22 trips, which means the number of times the car pulled over was overwhelmingly dominated by normal pick-up and drop-off, not confusion. > as it can lead to emergency services not being able to properly respond and killing someone[1] This article is deceptive, and you're either being deceived or are furthering it. An ambulance being delayed for seconds or minutes by human-driven cars in the road happens all the time. It is a constant occurrence. "90 seconds elapsed between the patient being put on the stretcher and the ambulance leaving the scene" means that at worst the ambulance was delayed by 60 seconds because stretchers don't teleport instantly into ambulances. The article does not causally attribute the death to the delay because that is extremely unlikely. It's not how emergency medicine works. This is just a classic case of fear mongering. ("Ambulance has to take detour around construction. Patient died. Therefore, construction caused death." No.) This of course doesn't mean that delaying ambulances unnecessarily by even a second should go without punishment/fine. It's avoidable and should be fixed. But it's wrong to think this doesn't happen with humans, and its slander to suggest the delay probably caused a death in this instance. > The fact people are trying to downplay this as "nothing" is shocking imo. What happens when a fleet of vehicles get confused, they all stall and it results in gridlock and frustration.[2] Be more quantitative.
high_derivative 3y ago
For one, Cruise has essentially disintegrated over the past few months? All key execs left https://fortune.com/2023/12/13/general-motors-cruise-executive-departures/ https://fortune.com/2023/12/13/general-motors-cruise-executi..., massive layoffs, founders left. Cruise is done.
- jessriedel 3y ago
  Happy to bet on this (and indeed I have, by buying GM stock). Cruise is definitely dealing with a huge, self-inflected PR disaster here. But all signs I have seen is that their tech is very advanced (although, as previously noted, probably a bit behind Waymo). Cruise and Waymo are heads and shoulders above their competitors, and there won't be only one winner (if for no other reason than the threat of anti-trust), so Cruise is likely to succeed. Again, if you have data that shows Cruise is behind Waymo by a lot, or is behind any other company, please link it.
  - high_derivative 3y ago
    Could be a good bet, very asymmetric. The question to me is if the execs are leaving because they know Cruise doesn't have it technically and the jig is up, or if it's really more temporary. Hard to know from the outside. It's also hard to translate Cruise's much worse human-intervention numbers (vs Waymo) into a quantative measure of 'behindness' in terms of how difficult it is to catch up. That's why it could be a good bet. Or not.
    - jessriedel 3y ago
      The event precipitating executives leaving related to the single accident and the deceptive behavior by Cruise surrounding it. To my knowledge, the data shows the tech is good (at least as safe as human drivers) and rapidly improving. But I agree it's hard to know from the outside, and that the sensibleness of the bet definitely depends on the fact that the potential upside is so massive.

flutas 3y ago

Another aspect to Cruise (and potentially waymo, but it hasn't been publicly stated) is that they claim thousands of miles per disengagement...when on average their cars needed remote assistance every 4-5 miles[0]. Waymo does the same thing, but the numbers just aren't publicly known. IMO stuff like this is going to lead the public to trust it less, since they're gaming numbers as hard as possible. [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/06/cruise-confirms-robotaxis-rely-on-human-assistance-every-4-to-5-miles.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/06/cruise-confirms-robotaxis-re...

jessriedel 3y ago
You're comparing apples to oranges. Disengagements means there is a safety driver present that takes over to prevent a dangerous situation. The car requesting remote assistance, which occurs when there is not a safety driver, is an inconvenience and expense but does not mean there is a dangerous situation. (Of the 22 Cruise rides I took, it happened 3 times, and at no point was there danger.) It just means the car is confused. Conflating these things and accusing Cruise of deception is itself being dishonest (even though Cruise has actually been dishonest on many occasions!). The whole game plan is have a bank of human operators who prove remote assistance at initially high rates which is then driven lower over time as the edge cases are ironed out iteratively. The fact that Cruise is only using one human remote assistant to manage ~15 rides, as mentioned in the article you link, tells us that the rate of remote assistance is already so low that it will be a very modest expense. For more, see the comment from Cruise's CEO: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38145997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38145997
- flutas 3y ago
  > Disengagements means there is a safety driver present that takes over to prevent a dangerous situation. California, at least, cites a disengagement as "whether because of technology failure or situations requiring the test driver/operator to take manual control of the vehicle to operate safely."[0] Would a car being confused and not being able to proceed without input be a disengagement by that definition? I think so, based off of "technology failure", but it's not reported as that. > It just means the car is confused. Conflating these things and accusing Cruise of deception is itself being dishonest. When a car is confused what happens? It stops. That is a safety issue by itself, as it can lead to emergency services not being able to properly respond and killing someone[1]. The fact people are trying to downplay this as "nothing" is shocking imo. What happens when a fleet of vehicles get confused, they all stall and it results in gridlock and frustration.[2] [0]: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/autonomous-vehicles/disengagement-reports/ https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/auto... [1]: https://sfstandard.com/2023/09/01/person-dies-cruise-robotaxi-blocks-san-francisco-ambulance/ https://sfstandard.com/2023/09/01/person-dies-cruise-robotax... [2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2022/07/08/cruise-robotaxis-keep-stalling-on-sf-streets-how-upset-should-we-be/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2022/07/08/cruise...
  - jessriedel 3y ago
    > California, at least, cites a disengagement as "whether because of technology failure or situations requiring the test driver/operator to take manual control of the vehicle to operate safely. At your Ref. [0], I just opened up the CSV titled "2022 Autonomous Vehicle Disengagement Reports (CSV)" under the header "2022 Disengagement reports". Under the column "Driver present (yes or no)", every single entry said "yes". > When a car is confused what happens? It stops. That is a safety issue by itself No, the car pulls over, just as it and every other taxi does when picking people up or dropping them off. It does not just stop in the middle of an intersection. I had 3 of these events in 22 trips, which means the number of times the car pulled over was overwhelmingly dominated by normal pick-up and drop-off, not confusion. > as it can lead to emergency services not being able to properly respond and killing someone[1] This article is deceptive, and you're either being deceived or are furthering it. An ambulance being delayed for seconds or minutes by human-driven cars in the road happens all the time. It is a constant occurrence. "90 seconds elapsed between the patient being put on the stretcher and the ambulance leaving the scene" means that at worst the ambulance was delayed by 60 seconds because stretchers don't teleport instantly into ambulances. The article does not causally attribute the death to the delay because that is extremely unlikely. It's not how emergency medicine works. This is just a classic case of fear mongering. ("Ambulance has to take detour around construction. Patient died. Therefore, construction caused death." No.) This of course doesn't mean that delaying ambulances unnecessarily by even a second should go without punishment/fine. It's avoidable and should be fixed. But it's wrong to think this doesn't happen with humans, and its slander to suggest the delay probably caused a death in this instance. > The fact people are trying to downplay this as "nothing" is shocking imo. What happens when a fleet of vehicles get confused, they all stall and it results in gridlock and frustration.[2] Be more quantitative.

high_derivative 3y ago

For one, Cruise has essentially disintegrated over the past few months? All key execs left https://fortune.com/2023/12/13/general-motors-cruise-executive-departures/ https://fortune.com/2023/12/13/general-motors-cruise-executi..., massive layoffs, founders left. Cruise is done.

jessriedel 3y ago
Happy to bet on this (and indeed I have, by buying GM stock). Cruise is definitely dealing with a huge, self-inflected PR disaster here. But all signs I have seen is that their tech is very advanced (although, as previously noted, probably a bit behind Waymo). Cruise and Waymo are heads and shoulders above their competitors, and there won't be only one winner (if for no other reason than the threat of anti-trust), so Cruise is likely to succeed. Again, if you have data that shows Cruise is behind Waymo by a lot, or is behind any other company, please link it.
- high_derivative 3y ago
  Could be a good bet, very asymmetric. The question to me is if the execs are leaving because they know Cruise doesn't have it technically and the jig is up, or if it's really more temporary. Hard to know from the outside. It's also hard to translate Cruise's much worse human-intervention numbers (vs Waymo) into a quantative measure of 'behindness' in terms of how difficult it is to catch up. That's why it could be a good bet. Or not.
  - jessriedel 3y ago
    The event precipitating executives leaving related to the single accident and the deceptive behavior by Cruise surrounding it. To my knowledge, the data shows the tech is good (at least as safe as human drivers) and rapidly improving. But I agree it's hard to know from the outside, and that the sensibleness of the bet definitely depends on the fact that the potential upside is so massive.